How and why might Western military intervention in Syria lead to a conflict messier, more unpredictable and more costly than the Iraq War? Columnist Samih Saab of Lebanon’s An Nahar warns that the West, as it has so many times before, is miscalculating the danger of military intervention, and that if it goes ahead in Syria, it will open an almost unimaginable Pandora’s Box of death and instability that will include the formidable arsenal of the Jewish state.
For An Nahar, Samih Saab writes in part:
If the Syrian regime is in crisis, then its Arab and Western opponents are in a greater one. Because relying again on a military solution opens the region up to the unknown, as did the war in Iraq.
The reality is that Syria – if one subtracts its border with Israel from the equation – is exactly like Iraq. And since the West puts the security of the Hebrew state at the top of its priority list when looking at the Middle East, Western military intervention in Syria could turn into a long conflict involving Israel. Moreover, based on the world’s history of civil wars, these types of conflicts soon spread to neighboring countries.
Even if the West succeeds in neutralizing Russia, how will it neutralize Iran, which will defend Syria, considering that losing Damascus would be the greatest blow to Tehran’s strategy since 1976? When Syria falls, it will facilitate Iran’s encirclement and the export of the “Arab Spring” to it, just as U.S. officials called for the export of a “Spring” to Russia as punishment for standing up against using the military option against Damascus.
The Syrian crisis has many ramifications. If a Western military solution is used, it will open the region up to another hell like the one unlocked by the Iraq invasion.
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