Liberal anti-interventionists have a guilty conscience. They know the Assad regime, now joined by Russia and Iran, has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the worst mass slaughter since the wars in Africa in the 1990’s. They also know that, unlike in Africa, the United States could have done things, relatively easy things, to prevent much of the killing.
This clip will never leave me https://t.co/vKwvVZyOie
— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) August 19, 2016
They know that bombing Assad’s handful of runways and destroying his handful of aircraft and helicopters is an afternoon’s work for the United States Air Force. They know that enforcing a humanitarian no-fly zone over parts of Syria would have been, relatively speaking, neither complicated nor dangerous. Helicopters that have been destroyed on the tarmac cannot drop barrel bombs on hospitals, and Iranian transport planes laden with weapons cannot land on bomb-cratered runways.
Syrian kids are dying left and right. It took #OmranDaqneesh to break through and haunt our conscience. https://t.co/dkZW9plIoi @ABarnardNYT
— Sewell Chan (@sewellchan) August 18, 2016
But liberal anti-interventionists believe there’s something worse than mass civilian slaughter: U.S. military intervention to prevent that slaughter. That may seem a harsh judgment, but if it were not true, wouldn’t the president have acted? Even if Obama, sophisticate that he is, believed that leaving Syria alone was a price he had to pay for the Iran deal, wouldn’t we have seen Obama’s liberal supporters clamoring for action to stop the slaughter? There has been no clamor.
One picture in Europe today. (ht @Sophiemcneill) pic.twitter.com/U0AyQE3wyj
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) August 19, 2016
For liberal anti-interventionists, Syria creates a clash between two dearly held forms of self-regard: the feeling of well-earned moral superiority over the adventurists who got us into the Iraq war, and the feeling of universalist compassion for all peoples of the world. What do you do when your enlightened rejection of militarism is undermining the credibility of your expressions of solidarity with the oppressed?
Many asking how to help Omran & other Syrian kids. I recommend donating to @sams_usa who treated him & @SyriaCivilDef who rescued him #Syria
— Sophie McNeill (@Sophiemcneill) August 19, 2016
Well, now we know. You tweet about how bad you feel. You tweet about how shaken you are by images of destruction and suffering. You express bewilderment at the senselessness of violence. You engage in histrionics. You distract from the moral unseriousness of liberal anti-interventionism by flattering yourself as morally serious on a personal level. You’re haunted by the images of Aleppo, your conscience is tormented, submit tweet, and now you’re a compassionate person who doesn’t have to say whether we should get our hands dirty trying to stop the killing.
It is important, then, for the photogenic dead and wounded children of Syria to understand their actual role in American and European politics today. It is not to shame the indifferent or the cautious into action—it is to provide cover for their inaction. It is to allow westerners an opportunity to reassure each other by posturing and emoting together on social media. One day, should they survive, a few of the children of Aleppo may grow up, learn English, and acquire social media accounts, and at that point they will be able to check in on today’s tortured consciences, just to see how they’re holding up.