Opinion – If there was a time for the US to get involved in the Syrian conflict, it was in the beginning

President Obama claimed the use of chemical weapons was a ‘red line’ for him. Little did people know at the time, this was a turning point in US foreign policy, which was often termed by the former administration as one of ‘strategic patience.’

If there was a time for the US to get involved in the Syrian conflict, it was in the beginning.

It seems like ages ago when former President Barack Obama delivered a speech in August of 2012, where he warned Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad about using chemical weapons upon his own people. President Obama claimed the use of chemical weapons was a ‘red line’ for him. Little did people know at the time, this was a turning point in US foreign policy, which was often termed by the former administration as one of ‘strategic patience.’ The world later came to realize this was another way of saying, at least in terms of the Syrian civil war, that the United States planned on doing nothing.

If there was a time for the US to take action against Assad, it might’ve been then, because since then, Syria has likely become one of the most complicated battlefields in modern history. Often, the people of the United States and other Western nations have a tendency to gauge war, even civil war, using very prosaic or overly simplistic measures – good versus bad, right versus wrong – and the Syrian civil war has become anything but this. Although most conflicts in the Middle East often have many angles, the Syrian civil war seems to have surpassed them all, with its hodgepodge of participants, that seem to attack or align with each other upon a whim by flip-flopping sides on a daily basis according to constantly shifting mutual interests and goals.

For those whom have not been following the Syrian civil war very closely some of those participants include the US, and US-backed soldiers, the Russians, the Assad regime, ISIS, Al Qaeda (Al Nusra), Iran, Hezbollah, and Sunni tribal militias to name a few. It has also drawn in other players directly affected by the conflict such as Turkey, Lebanon, and Iraq. On any given day, and for any given ends, these participants may align or attack each other seemingly without rhyme or reason. There are no clear lines, no clear goals, and no clear end in sight. The only thing that is clear is the amount of dead that keep piling up, and the growing amount of refugees that are seeking asylum elsewhere.

It is hard for those in Western democracies to understand, that when a long-standing dictatorship, like the one held by the Assad family comes apart, the result is like dropping a piece of plate glass from a very tall building. Hence it is not a gradual effect. It is violent, precipitous, and chaotic. And added are numerous factions and power vacuums that are formed, and to choose the “correct” side quickly becomes a murky quagmire for anyone involved. Yet make no mistake, whether the United States likes it or not it, and other Western nations are just that – involved. The moment the US and Western nations kowtowed to the Vatican and the United Nations to absorb more Syrian refugees than any of these nations could possibly handle, was when the world should have stopped and realized that a coalition needed to be formed to stop the killing. Therefore, the time to act would have been the moment Bashar al-Assad decided that he was willing to commit mass murder in order to maintain power.

Too often Western nations and their citizens view war through a lens that can only be described as World War II-esque. And in doing so, many Western democracies saw, simply taking in Syrian refugees without taking meaningful steps to curtail the actual cause of the flow, was a way to reconcile past ills amassed during those dark days of the Greatest Generation where floods of Jewish refugees were denied asylum. Yet what is missing when viewing war in the Middle East as a two-sided conflict, is that during World War II, most were certain who the enemies of freedom and peace were. If anything can be learned from other conflicts in the Middle East is that there are few simple answers, and solutions must be multi-pronged and not ones performed as single, even well-meaning, endeavours.

The time to act decisively would have, and in many ways, should have come much sooner. For it is abundantly obvious since the Syrian civil war began, that when one side talks of ‘red lines,’ the other side has little compunction about crossing them. The incident involving a US Navy fighter shooting down a Syrian warplane in recent days, should be taken as a stark and indicative reminder that this war has no clear sides, and that victory, however one chooses to define such a word must, and likely will be interpreted using a different set of criteria.