I’m having flashbacks to 2002 and 2003. Back then, we were told that Saddam Hussein was an evil man who had to be stopped, who was an existential threat. In the years that followed the invasion and occupation of Iraq, it came out that the narrative for the Iraq War was false. We had invaded and destroyed a country for a lie. The chaos of the invasion and occupation allowed for the rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which is now known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Then came 2011. We heard much the same sort of narrative about Gaddafi as we had heard about Saddam. He was an evil dictator, he was about to commit a genocide! Like Saddam, he was overthrown and killed, and Libya was invaded and destroyed. Until recently, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant had a significant foothold in Libya, and they still haven’t been completely driven out. In general, Libya became a hotbed for Islamic terrorism, and is now a failed state. And just like with Saddam, it turned out that the narrative used to justify the intervention in Libya was false.
Then came 2013. Then, just like now, we heard a great hullabaloo about a chemical weapons attack in Syria, which was allegedly committed by the Syrian Arab Army. This narrative was false too, or at the very least remains unproven, but unlike the other occasions, the doubts were so many that the US was not able to build international support for intervening in Syria, as it had done in Libya and Iraq. Then Putin offered Obama a way to save face after all his tough talk about a “red line” by jointly supervising the destruction of Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons.
Now we are being fed another story about chemical weapons, again in Syria, despite the lack of evidence and despite the fact that the US helped supervise the destruction of Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons back in 2013. Liberal imperialists have their hair on fire, screaming that we must do something about the “evil” Assad. Once again, infamous war hawks John McCain and Lindsey Graham are bellowing for war against Syria. And now, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has announced the new Trump administration policy on Syria: regime change.
Congratulations, liberal imperialists. It seems you will finally get what you wanted after all. But if you do get your way, then I fully expect that, once again, it will turn out that the narrative used to justify this war was false, just like all the others.
I stand as I did — firmly against any and all forms of intervention against the Syrian Arab Republic, whether by the United States or by its state and non-state proxies. I also stand firmly against any and all forms of intervention against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. In fact, I stand firmly against any and all forms of imperialist intervention against any country by the United States. I do not expect this to be a popular opinion, but I feel it is important for me to clearly state my views. I have seen what happens when the United States invades and occupies a country, and it isn’t good. After having been right so many times you would think people would listen to the anti-war left, but I fear we will be ignored once again.