Humanitarian interventionism and the elusive peace

‘Facts are not repressed but their perception is suspended to make room for the assigned meaning.’

                                    - Edmund Husserl

Once again the American battle drums are being beaten for a ‘humanitarian intervention’ in the Syrian civil war. The excuse is very well known. It is a rerun of the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ discourse. But we know what lies behind this farce.  This new postmodern crusade is being fought for the sake of energy and free markets.

By pointing out and emphasizing Syria’s people as victims it then becomes easy to make them conventional and temporary symbols that justify intervention. But this end-means rationality has backfired on numerous occasions, as shown in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Substantial evidence has piled up in order to safely claim that the original intention of meddling in foreign lands is dysfunctional and illegitimate. This is because intervention on humanitarian grounds has always another side to the coin, that of installing a western ‘democratic’ way of life in the countries and regions which are ‘saved’ from their own selves. Postmodern crusaders have substituted the symbols to justify their motives, but their haphazard intentions remain the same.  And the effects are plain for anyone to see. A social conscience and the guts to jettison your television set suffice, in order to be able to separate the truth from mass propaganda.

When it comes to achieving objectives anything holds, even supporting rebels of the caliber of Al-Qaeda. But we must not be surprised by this neo-realistic use of mercenaries to accomplish foreign tasks. We can recall the support by the USA of Islamic Mujahideen elements back in the 1979 Afghanistan war against the USSR. It was those same ‘rogue insurgents’, as they were later rebranded, that emigrated and rearticulated their struggle throughout crisis prone countries - ranging from Bosnia, to Chechnya and Syria itself. In this sense, supporting terrorism has only bred more of it. Therefore, this represents a very awkward and contradictory way of inflaming the causes on which to further justify the war on terror  - surveillance and defense strategies - that has spun the American military-industrial-complex out of proportion, and which has limited civil and constitutional liberties on the way.

Facts, symbols and language itself is twisted around to fit in convenient narratives. In this sense, the Syrian and Libyan populations are victims, but Saudis and Bahrainis (western allies) who are perennially repressed are insurgents.

Obama is in a quandary. He cannot set a bad example for Iran and North Korea by being soft on regimes that have crossed the ‘red line’, as Syria´s purported use of Sarin gas could show. On the other hand, he must not fall prey to Israeli pressure to intervene militarily, as Uncle Sam is not a direct actor in the region.

Syria should not be next in replicating the Iraqi WMD fiasco. If it does so the world will once again be witness to the removal of a legitimate leader, in accordance to the practices of its own culture and history. But most importantly, the United States must be very wary of being tempted to repeat a support of the same ‘terrorists’ who in the near future will make life miserable to the ‘liberated’ peoples of today.

The Syrian civil war is nowhere a glimpse of the pseudo-democratic claims of the ‘Arab Spring’, as the west portrayed it. And the main reason for this is that this new version of the Cold War has transformed Syria into a land base for conflictive proxy interests, ranging from Israeli animosity and Sunni hatred, to its justification as a pawn for the balance of power and reestablishment of a sphere of influence for a resurgent Russia.

The mustering of American forces to contain a rising China and Russia is hampering a new multipolar world.  Besides, a western neoliberal and corporate diktat - which has no other allegiance besides money - is being forced upon other emerging powers on the world stage. The corporate ‘civilizing mission’ means imposing a liberal free-market dogma as a solution. This is why the array of forces opposing this interventionist ‘humanitarian façade’ comprises a convenient but necessary alignment of motley national and cultural interests. The ideological struggles of yesterday have given way to a pragmatic defense of common sense in the now.