Lessons From the Bloodbath in Syria
If you want a good hard glimpse at this crazy world, look at Syria.
The tragedy there illustrates several important truths. Among them: How brutal life can be in this supposedly enlightened age. What a farce is the United Nations, and any concept of internationally enforced justice. How broken and feckless is America’s foreign policy.
Keep your eyes on it, too, because it is also about to reveal a far more important truth—one that could change your life.
A Bloodied Nation
Among all the countries caught in the “Arab Spring” over the past year, Syria has been the bloodiest. The government’s crackdown on protesters has been brutal. In January, the UN said the death toll in the nation’s populist uprising since last March is more than 5,400. An average of 18 more corpses every day for 10 months.
In February, the government’s brutality reached new heights. On February 6, in Homs, the epicenter of the country’s protests, President Bashar al-Assad’s forces reportedly used rockets, tanks, mortar rounds and machine guns to shell a makeshift medical clinic and residential areas. The army also used tanks to shell the Zabadani area near Damascus.
The UN has now stopped estimating Syria’s death toll; it says confirming the data is just too difficult. By mid-February, Human rights groups placed the total dead around 7,300, and Syrian opposition put the figure at just under 9,000. unicef reported that the number of dead includes at least 400 children, some of whom have been “arbitrarily arrested, tortured and sexually abused while in detention.”
On February 21, Assad’s forces intensified their attack on opposition strongholds in Homs and Idlib, assailing them with torrents of shells and mortars. Opposition activists said the death count for the day was at least 100, just in attacks on those two cities.
In Syria, not only is it against the law to demonstrate and protest against the government—it is also illegal to give and receive medical treatment. Since the earliest days of the uprising, Assad has been waging war against any individual or organization able to bring medical aid to Syrians. “It’s very dangerous to be a doctor or a pharmacist,” a pharmacist from Homs told the Guardian. Medical personnel are routinely imprisoned, tortured or killed—like Abdur Amir, the only doctor in the district of al-Qusayr, who was murdered by military troops in November while he was treating civilians wounded during an army assault.
Something People Can Agree On
The humanitarian crisis in Syria has provided an intriguing rallying point for several nations that want to bring an end to the Assad regime.
Within the region, many of Syria’s neighbors see it as an opportunity to strike a blow at their primary concern—Iran. Take note of this.
Syria is Iran’s top ally, and the only Arab state at this point openly partnered with Tehran. If the Sunni protesters were ever able to overthrow their Shiite rulers, this would greatly strengthen Iran’s enemies. As former Israeli negotiator Itamar Rabinovich wrote last year, “Syria is the keystone of the pro-Iran axis. Weakening the Assad regime, to say nothing of its collapse, would be a blow to Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah.” Syrian opposition chief Burhan Ghalioun has already pledged to cut military ties with Iran should he come to power.
That is exactly why the Arab League—including over 20 nations, most notably Saudi Arabia—is putting on the pressure. It has suspended Syria’s membership. In January it called on Assad to step down and transfer power to his deputy while a new government formed. Gulf states are expelling Syria’s ambassadors. They are also funding the Free Syrian Army, which is defecting against the government; and Turkey is training it and hosting its headquarters in a refugee camp just outside the Syrian border.
These Arab states are also increasingly looking in another direction for help. On February 14, the Arab League’s secretary general, Nabil Al-Arabi, traveled to Berlin to discuss with German Chancellor Angela Merkel what measures could be taken to stop the Syrian bloodbath. Chancellor Merkel commended the Arab League’s firm stand against the Assad government. She said the “European Union supports that stance and will stress it with further sanctions.”
Now, note this remarkable irony.
Squandering an Opportunity
America has sunk enormous resources into trying to reshape the Middle East over the past decade. It overthrew the Taliban, then Saddam Hussein. It expended tremendous energies trying to secure Afghanistan and Iraq and empower West-friendly governments in those nations. Just in the last year it supported the ouster of Egypt’s government and actively waged war to topple Libya’s.
Now, what has all that expenditure gained? Afghanistan appears destined to revert to Taliban rule. Iraq is falling under Iran’s influence. Egypt and Libya are ushering Islamists into power. Tehran has grown far more dominant regionally. And America’s relationship with virtually every country in the region has taken a beating.
With Syria, though, you have an increasingly rare instance where U.S. interests actually align with those of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and most of the Arab world.
If America wants to enjoy the support of these nations, this is the way. If it wants to undermine Iran, here’s how. If it really wants to reshape the Middle East, this would be the place to start. And if it feels the need to point to unselfish humanitarianism as the only proper grounds for taking action, then savage Syria provides ample moral justification.
But Washington—after all the strength it has spent in vain—has decided that now is the time for a lighter approach. One of Syria’s rebel commanders lamented the absence of foreign support in Syria, calling his nation’s uprising an “orphan revolution.”
The U.S. certainly doesn’t want another Mideast military venture. In early February, President Barack Obama said he was sure the problem could be solved without arms. The secretary of state said “military intervention has been absolutely ruled out.” The White House tried to push a resolution through the UN Security Council supporting the Arab League plan to get Assad to step down. Yet even this measure—which lacked any real teeth and probably would have been ignored in Damascus—was slapped down, vetoed by Russia and China.
This is what American power, such as it is, has been reduced to. Faced with a grave situation in which it could alleviate suffering, garner international goodwill and help its own interests all at once, the U.S. tries to use a blunt diplomatic tool that has no chance of actually doing the job, and is blocked from doing even that.
On February 20, after 17 consecutive days of Assad’s forces brutally shelling Homs, President Obama’s top military adviser, U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, said any intervention in Syria would be “very difficult” and that it was “premature” to arm the opposition. Of course, a look back through the annals of U.S. foreign policy shows that most interventions have looked “very difficult”—but difficulty has not neutralized Washington’s vast power in the past.
Profound Lessons
How broken and feckless is America’s foreign policy. What a farce is the United Nations, and any concept of internationally enforced justice. How brutal life can be in this supposedly enlightened age. All of these truths about this crazy world are on full display in this mess in Syria.
But keep your eyes on it. Though the stalemate between the government and opposition forces looks set to drag on and get even bloodier, eventually, the Trumpet expects the Assad regime to weaken, perhaps fall. And that is when the other important truth will be revealed in this country.
As the Trumpet has written several times, a divorce between Iran and Syria is coming. We know this because of biblical prophecy, which speaks of two distinct camps emerging within the Middle East in our day. One camp is prophesied to be led by Iran, the other to include Syria. These two are destined to play very different roles in the sequence of end-time events that lead up to Jesus Christ’s Second Coming. (Read about them in our free booklet The King of the South.)
The fact that the Iran-Syria alliance—which has been so strong for so long, and has shaped Middle East geopolitics so much in recent years—is under such tension today is deeply significant. Soon it will fracture. And once again, the inerrancy of biblical prophecy—and of the great God who authored it—will be proven true!