Dear News Media: No Really, "Pro-Assad" is Not A Thing

You guys, I think I need to stop paying attention to the news. It's driving me completely batty. You see, I've discovered a minor problem that makes the whole thing a little harder to digest than it should: I can remember major news stories for longer than two nanoseconds, which is far longer than I'm supposed to. It's an ugly quirk of mine that complicates my ability to digest prevailing narratives. Case in point: Syria.

So, evidently, the opposition to US intervention in Syria is a result of the evil, evil leftists joining ties with the alt-right to do the bidding of the omniscient, omnipresent Vladimir Putin and worship Assad. Or so the story goes. No mention of the Russian left-wing anti-Putin activists who see America presenting Creepy Shirtless Horse Guy™ as a godlike being and going “um, can you not? That’s so not helping.” And before someone lays into me, I don’t actually dispute the idea that Trump has, at least at one point, had an inappropriate and corrupt relationship with the Russian government, not do I oppose investigating that relationship; I’ve only ever disputed specifics and motives behind those specifics. I’m allowed to pick apart questionable details, the responses to which set an ugly precedent.

Outside of Syria itself, you’re very unlikely to find an individual who has a lot of positive things to say about Assad, or really, anything to say about Assad. Assad aint exactly Saddam Hussein, who, by the time of Dubya’s reign, had been presented as a pretty classic villain archetype in US media for years. In fact, outside of the circles who drive themselves mad excessively reading about politics (I envy those who are apolitical sometimes), the name was seldom mentioned very much at American dinner tables until fairly recently. I’m willing bet money that most Americans on both sides of this issue didn’t even know his name until they heard being “pro-Assad” was the new big insult against the anti-war left. By the way, that's a conversation worth having: we're arguing about a conflict that most people on either side know very little about. That's a very serious problem that might be addressed if we start having a sincere dialogue.

So, why is it that so many people have tried to stop US military intervention in Syria multiple times?

We were having military intervention in Syria pushed on us during the early second term of the Obama administration, when we weren’t even out of Iraq. There was a population of very young adults, those just about 18 or so, that either didn’t remember or barely remembered a time when we weren’t at war with two countries at once. At the same time, there was also a population of adults several years ahead of them, those of us in our late-twenties to early thirties, who saw the economy get crushed by those wars, to the point that when it finally crashed in 2008, we were already lucky if we could even pull off living paycheck to paycheck, and then we were told it was time to get revved up to do it all again. And about those wars? We saw our peers die in too long, too ugly wars. So yes, the idea that going into another country was a bit of a difficult pill to swallow for our generation. Many of the people I knew or knew of in my age group who died young died in the Middle East.

That opposition was only nominally effective. The escalation propaganda surrounding Syria seems to center around the idea that Obama wanted to go in and slay Assad with his bare hands, but the evil hippies with their closeted Assad love due to the hypnotism of the ever-present Sputnik International (a website which wasn’t even founded yet, nor would Russia be involved in the war for another three years. Tricky is the power of the Puteeeeen!) forced him against it. Yeah, except for the part where the US continued to drone bomb the living shit out of Syria. That’s an interesting interpretation of “non-intervention.”

And then the later attacks came, during the early parts of the Trump administration, no less. You know the ones: the ones where Assad was accused of using sarin gas on “beautiful little babies,” and the very act of asking for an appropriate investigation before acting was deemed a fascist, pro-Assad stance? The one where Howard Dean thought it would be appropriate to gaslight Tulsi Gabbard on national television? The ones where Secretary of Defense Mad Dog later stated that there wasn’t strong evidence they were done at the behest of the Syrian government? But even that is far beyond the point. The real problem wasn’t so much the incitement, but the people: we have a president that advocated war crimes on the campaign trail and needed to have it explained to him why he couldn’t use nuclear weapons, and we’re supposed to believe he can handle a fucking regime change war? That involves other nuclear powers (chiefly Russia), and gets us smack in the middle of yet another country's (Iran) proxy war with another likely nuclear power (Israel)? I’m not even convinced Eisenhower could handle that situation without getting us all killed, and Trump aint Eisenhower.

Look, if you wanna say that the opposition to putting more troops on the ground in Syria during the Obama administration was a bad decision in hindsight, that’s all good and well. You might be right. It is a terrible, terrible war in which crimes against humanity have absolutely been committed. No one said this was an easy issue. Anyone on either side of the issue who isn’t horrified by the consequences of either decision is a monster. But today, the discussion of what we should or shouldn’t have done years ago doesn’t actually help in our current situation. And it has absolutely nothing to do with anyone’s feelings about Assad. Every time you push us to excessively increase and increase our already substantial involvement in Syria, you risk a situation that benefits no one, especially not Syrian civilians caught in the middle of a hideous war that we’re doing nothing if not prolonging. And even if we could pull off putting a stop to this war, ending wars being something we’re so skilled at that we’re still in Afghanistan, then what? Our history with improving the human rights of citizens in other countries through regime change is already abysmal, and that was before we had an overgrown child in office.

You are more than welcome to disagree with this, and I absolutely respect that. What I don’t respect is being accused of supporting dictatorships because I think our continued actions are making the situation worse, and the excessive push to stifle dissent and escalate even further is a push for catastrophe.

Not everything has to do with Assad, or Putin, or even passivism and anti-imperialism. It never did. This issue is complicated, and needs to be discussed as such. But in order to have that discussion, you first need to stop fellating yourself long enough to at least address the actual concerns being presented.