Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4145/guest-column-bombing-into-unintended-consequences
In the Netherlands these days, politicians discuss revoking the
passports of citizens who join the opposition to Bashar al-Assad's
government in Syria. In Belgium, the government threatens to revoke
benefits for Belgian nationals who do the same. And in America, the New York Times
reported only a month ago on the growing threat to the West as Western
Muslims rush into the fight against Assad. In fact, only this past
August 20, the Washington Free Beacon reported
that "[s]ignificant numbers of American and European jihadists are
traveling to Syria to join Islamist rebels, prompting new fears of a
future wave of al Qaeda terror attacks in the United States and Europe,
according to U.S. officials."
Among those known to U.S. counterterrorism forces and the FBI: Eric Harroun, 30, a former Army soldier from Phoenix, who was indicted this past June on charges of conspiring to assist a terrorist organization fighting alongside al Nusrah, described
by the government as "an al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group in Syria";
and Nicole Lynn Mansfield, 33, a Muslim convert from Flint, Mich., reportedly "slain by Syrian government forces while fighting alongside rebels" in July.
Now, in response to the alleged chemical weapon attacks by Assad's
government on Syrian civilians, American and European governments have
begun strategizing for likely retaliatory strikes. The problem is that
anything that hurts Assad, however inadvertently, benefits those same
Islamist radicals we've all been worried about. It is tantamount to
defending the very same forces that French Interior Minister Manuel
Valls describes as "a ticking time bomb" for the launching of terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States.
Equally incredible is the fact that, in taking military action in
Syria, America would effectively be standing on the same side as
al-Qaeda affiliate groups who also support them. As counterterrorism
consultants Flashpoint Partners recently reported,
"the lion's share of foreign fighters who are dying in Syria are
fighting with the most hardline organization involved in the uprising:
Jabhat al-Nusra. The leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, Abu Mohammed al-Joulani,
has recently publicly sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda leader Ayman
al-Zawahiri and the group has been blacklisted as a branch of Al Qaeda
in Iraq by the United States Government."
Even worse, just days ago, Al Nusra announced its own plans to "dispatch up to 1,000 rockets against Alawite villages in Syria," according to the Free Beacon.
Would involving ourselves in Syria mean calling them our allies? Or
would America find itself taking on a third position in what is already
an impossible and unresolvable conflict? And if so, what position could
that possibly be?
True, it is a proud and longstanding facet of the American psyche to
intervene in the face of human suffering, to protect the citizens of the
world from the abuses of their leaders. But the question Washington
needs to consider as well is not just whether we can afford another war
with a still-struggling economy and a military exhausted by two others.
Nor is it simply whether we should be involving ourselves in a war
against a country that has brought no direct threat to the U.S. The
bigger question is whether, in Syria, we are ultimately aiding those who
seek our destruction. Speaking to reporters for The Hill recently, former Congressman Dennis Kucinich put it in the clearest possible terms: "So what," he asked rhetorically, "we're about to become Al-Qaeda's air force now?"
U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf,
R-Va., has also expressed reservations, based in large part on his own
visit to Syria in February. "There were a number of people who came out
of Damascus to meet with me," he told me, "and conditions have only
gotten worse since then. You have brutal people involved – and what if
they got our weapons? How would we control it all?"
The window of opportunity for safe involvement in Syria, he feels,
closed about a year ago. "Maybe two years ago we knew who the Free Syrian Army
was," he noted, "but now we don't. Maybe the CIA does, but I certainly
don't." That uncertainty, for Wolf, is just a part of what makes the
stakes so high. "It takes just two hours to drive from Jerusalem to
Damascus," he said. "Now Jordan is in trouble. There are bombings in
Lebanon. Egypt is in crisis. Syria is falling apart. What a war we'd be
facing."
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands.
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