What has brought us to the point of yet again waging war without any goals for peace? The US stance of becoming a "conquering hero" has not produced success in many decades, and it's a stance that has led to the deaths of millions of Afghanis, Iraqis, and Pakistanis in the "War on Terror" that dragged on for 13 years and counting.
Why are we not learning from history and making changes to our approach? Good grief, we've killed millions of people -- a good portion of whom were civilians. We've detained and tortured tens of thousands of people from those countries. We've demonstrated that we're a ruthless, brutal, savage foe that will pulverize the bones of cab drivers who surrender to our troops. We have disseminated photographic and video proof that we'll blow up children, murder detainees awaiting a hearing for unknown charges, sexually abuse and humiliate just about anyone available, and kidnap noncombatant children to use as leverage against their fathers.
And the US perpetrators of those savage acts -- how do they look in those videos and photographs? Gleeful. Like they're at a frat party, sometimes with drinks in their hands. Eager to bash someone's head in, smear feces on naked bodies, piss on holy books, sic dogs on terrified/terrorized civilians, smash into homes, bomb wedding parties, and murder random innocent people because they're angry that other people killed their comrades.
We have firmly shown that we are the moral equivalent of ISIL.
And now ISIL is using that moral equivalency to taunt the US into taking military action and therefore solidify ISIL's credibility in the world as a nation builder that is being taken on by the world's most powerful but least effective military.
Way. To. Go. Mission accomplished.
By 2012, Syrians had begun fleeing their country. In that year, more than 200,000 fled to neighboring countries. Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan took in the largest populations of refugees, and Turkey took in most of the early refugees, many of whom were organizers of opposition groups that stood up to the Syrian government.
The Syrian government was slaughtering its own people, gassing civilians, destroying entire villages and obliterating agricultural production. No one was safe. People could stay and be targets, they could join resistance forces, or they could flee. There were virtually no other alternatives.
No one stepped in to provide any safety for Syrians. There were no alternatives for Syrians beyond staying where they were, fleeing the country, or joining a resistance group.
In 2012, Syria began shelling refugee areas in southern Turkey, killing both Turks and Syrians. Turkey begged the United States and the international community at large to intervene before Turkey itself retaliated. No assistance resulted, and Turkey attacked a military base in Syria.
The border clashes between Turkey and Syria escalated throughout 2013, yet more refugees poured into Turkey. The UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) estimates there are nearly a million Syrian refugees in southern Turkey, and Syria continues to shell those areas and attempt airstrikes. Turkey stepped up its retaliation efforts in 2014, as the US and other countries have failed to step in and the UNHCR has provided only limited assistance to shelter and protect Syrian refugees.
There may have been similar border clashes between Syria and Iraq, but because of Iraq's unstable government and military capabilities, Iraq has been unable to retaliate to any incursions into its borders. Instead, Iraq became a prime target and breeding ground for the growing Syrian resistance forces flexing their military and ideological muscles.
There are more than 3,000,000 Syrian refugees in countries neighboring Syria. Three million people who are being chased down by either resistance forces such as ISIL (which wants to conscript those willing or kill those who aren't) or chased down by the Syrian government (which wants them all dead). No one is protecting them.
Here in the United States, when government safety nets are dismantled, we're told to rely on "faith-based communities" to provide needed assistance. It's the same in other countries. When the UNHCR pulled out of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 1980s, faith-based groups in Pakistan took over the work of overseeing the abandoned UN refugee camps. And look how that turned out: increasingly militaristic and opportunistic groups of extremist Muslims used the refugee camps as training grounds for "freedom fighters," who also received military assistance from the United States. (The Taliban is one of the "freedom fighter" groups that received US military training, equipment, and assistance in the 1980s, and it's claimed that even Osama bin Laden himself was a recipient of that training and assistance.)
Well, that didn't turn out very well, did it?
Now the United States is replicating that very model in Syria and Iraq. Syria's government has gone mad: slaughtering its own citizens, decimating cities and agricultural areas, chasing refugees down in Turkey and Iraq. The United States, United Nations, NATO, and other countries and organizations have left Syria's populace to run to "faith-based" organizations for hope.
And -- lo and behold -- it turns out that several of those "faith-based" organizations are militaristic and opportunistic. Thanks to the US's abandoning of incredibly large stashes of weapons, ordnance, and other military equipment in Iraq, some of the most militaristic organizations were able to arm themselves with sophisticated weapons and mount a serious resistance to the Syrian government -- but their goals became loftier. ISIL doesn't stop at attacking the Syrian government; it has created a mission statement of replacing the Syrian and Iraqi nations with a "faith-based" state.
The United States has replicated its tactic of arming groups to oppose ISIL, some of which have plans to create a Kurdish state that would comprise Kurdish areas of Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. All the US asks of the Kurds is that they oppose ISIL. In exchange, they'll get all the military training, assistance, and equipment that groups such as the Taliban received in the 1980s.
And we're supposed to overlook the fact that this tactic NEVER WORKS. In fact, this tactic is precisely what fed ISIL.
The US ignored Syrian genocide, mayhem, and military strikes against civilians and refugees for so long that we provided ISIL with time to plan, coordinate, and supply itself with what it needs to conquer neighboring areas in its quest to create a fundamentalist Sunni caliphate that will not tolerate anyone who doesn't share their religious and ideological views.
And having met with so much success that they're able to recruit supporters from all over the world -- young women from Europe, unemployed Bosnians still reeling from the war that decimated that country's hope for economic stability, even scores of recruits from Minneapolis, Minnesota -- ISIL is provoking the US to engage militarily. Further military engagement with the United States invests ISIL with authority and credibility as a state-like entity. And any state-like entity that's been deemed an enemy of the United States that we'll chase "to the gates of Hell" gets a lot of street cred in areas that no longer have a government to protect them and have witnessed what the United States did to Iraq and Afghanistan.
If you were an oppressed Syrian or Iraqi who'd been subjected to US "democratization," whose side are you going to pick? Who the hell is going to go along with a country that actually writes up its policy of taking "broader procedural discretions than the GC [Geneva Conventions]" and subjects civilians to war-crime atrocities?
Rather than setting up an oppositional relationship of "ISIL v. United States," we need to revolutionize our approach to investing groups such as ISIL with credibililty and authority.
My suggestion is this:
The United States should transition its role from military incursion to peacekeeping. Existing refugee sanctuaries in countries bordering Syria should receive protection from the United States, the UN, and NATO.
Within those refugee areas, the United States should invest in Peace Corps, a Health Corps, and other types of relief and community-based opportunities for the refugees themselves to live meaningful lives. There are more then 3,000,000 refugees who've fled Syria, and they deserve self-determination that comes from community organizing that leads to alternatives to joining armies out of desperation.
Investing in the stability of these populations will give them an alternative to "faith-based" assistance that is militaristic in nature. They can reestablish self-determination by building education, housing, community gardens, community livestock, and other necessary aspects of peaceful communities. They can generate area-based job opportunities that will obviate the need for men to surrender to the lures of joining ISIL and other extremist organizations in hopes of helping their families.
These areas will need protection. The US, UN, and NATO should transition their missions from war-making to peacekeeping. There should be job creation to engage military-age populations in efforts to build rather than tear down. There should be opportunities for people to have self-determination rather than wandering around a camp waiting for scraps of food. There should be education for children and for adults as well.
These communities deserve more than tents and rice. UNHCR has a proven history of overseeing refugee camps that provide basic assistance, but reforming the model of a "camp" is necessary to change the way refugee camps become feeders for terrorist groups.
The response to ISIL should be a revolution: a revolution of 3,000,000 refugees who don't have to turn to joining ISIL in the hopes of creating a better tomorrow because they have protection while they establish self-determined communities with assistance from the international community. A revolution of millions of Iraqis who have been ravaged by Saddam Hussein, the United States-led war, and a government that has reverted to Hussein-like tendencies.
Our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were beyond disastrous for the people of those countries. Efforts in Afghanistan to protect women, provide education for girls and women, provide healthcare, and create jobs had some limited success. But now that the US is pulling out of Afghanistan, all of those efforts are being erased, and the community organizers who have been trying to keep those efforts going are being assassinated one by one.
We need to revolutionize our approach to conflict. We need preventive approaches that give alternatives to extremist organizations that prey on the oppressed. We need to protect the organizations that are providing beneficial options to joining a gang or a military group.
We need to ensure that there's safety in peace and refuge from war.
Revolutionize a woefully, tragically unsuccessful approach to conflict that never, ever works. Change our stature in the world from a country that renditions detainees, tortures on a whim, sexually abuses and sometimes enslaves civilians, and outright murders cab drivers by beating them so severely and for so long that their bones are pulverized.
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