Recent debate over American military intervention in Syria has sparked Cold War memories, and the parallels are stark. As I watched a discussion between Sen. John McCain and French writer Bernard Henri-Lévy at a Washington think tank on YouTube from November, this resemblance became apparent.
In a moment of supreme irony, in regards to Syria, the moderator declared, “If the French are ready to go, we should go. That’s my rule of thumb in foreign policy.”
As if he did not realize that the man he was speaking to, Sen. John McCain, spent more than five years of his youth interned by a country initially imperialized by France and later invaded by the United States.
It’s practically a given that the Cold War of the 20th century was, to put it bluntly, stupid. That is, motivated by false fears and assumptions, and responsible for reprehensible quantities of violence and trauma. Therefore, in making the argument for a strong resemblance between U.S. involvement in Syria and Vietnam, I aim to invigorate the historical anxieties of unjust wars past.
At the geopolitical level, former Cold War hegemons, China and Russia, stand firmly opposed to U.S. intervention — just as they were opposed to U.S. intervention in an already deteriorating French conflict in Indochina during the Vietnam War.
At a strategic level, as in the case of Vietnam, the conflict in Syria poses no existential threat to the United States.
However, in his Aug. 31 speech from the White House Rose Garden, President Barack Obama said, “I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization.”
If the president believes he has the authority to bomb a sovereign state without the consent of our elected representatives, then must he not also believe the Syrian conflict poses a direct threat to the common defense or general welfare of the United States, thus warranting a hasty and unapproved attack?
On a moral level, it is ridiculous to suppose more violence from an external force can help produce justice in Syria. Yet, President Obama speaks in the language of justice.
He said, “I’m confident we can hold the Assad regime accountable for their use of chemical weapons, deter this kind of behavior and degrade their capacity to carry it out.”
Flipping the situation on its head helps highlight the absurdity of this reasoning. Imagine a contemporary American civil war. Regardless of the motivating factors for such an event, would any American think for a second it would be acceptable for the Syrian government to impose its self-proclaimed “just will” on our domestic conflict? The reverse is no different, and it is the situation we face.
Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara said it best, “The picture of the world’s greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1,000 noncombatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one.”
Andrew Pentland is a UF history senior. This guest column ran on page 7 on 9/11/2013 under the headline "Lessons from history: Hanoi to Damascus"
