Wisdom in doing nothing

Fresh from a meeting with Syrian rebels, Senator John McCain accused the Obama administration of standing idly by while a civil war tears Syria apart. While it once seemed inevitable that rebels would topple Bashar al-Assad, it now appears that the brutal dictator has the upper hand. The fighting could drag on for years and further destabilize the Middle East. Already an estimated 80,000 people have been killed, cities and towns have been demolished and 4 million people have been displaced. About a million refugees have poured over the borders into Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.

McCain is correct that the situation is tragic. But that does not necessarily mean that the United States should intervene militarily. President Obama is rightly skeptical of direct intervention.

Syrian expert Joshua Landis at the University of Oklahoma describes the conflict as war between two Muslim factions: the Shi‘a and Alawites on one side and the Sunnis on the other. The United States could throw its support behind the rebel Sunnis, but there are hundreds of different rebel militias, many of which are radical Islamists. If the United States were to get involved, it would likely have a battle on two fronts: the Assad regime on the one hand and the radical Islamist groups on the other. Does the United States know how to bring peace to a fiercely divided country and put in place a stable government? Can that be accomplished through force? The continued violence and instability in Iraq—site of a previous American military intervention—offers many reasons to doubt.