Will a limited no-fly zone help Syrians?

Increasingly and with varying degrees of optimism, more and more opponents of Assad advocate a no-fly zone in Syria.  It would be great if it saved civilian lives.   But probably its capacity to do so has been exaggerated, and certainly it isn't nearly enough to bring substantial protection to Syrians.   To avoid its being touted as some sort of 'solution', its limitations need keeping in mind.

What sort of zone is at all likely?   Certainly a no-fly zone over all of Syria would save many lives; it might even help end the conflict.   But no such zone is suggested by any prominent advocates, and for good reason.   It would, in the attempt, be more costly than the West would ever countenance.  Syrian air defences are not state-of-the-art but they are substantial and in large measure located near populated areas.   Taking  them out would certainly mean civilian deaths.  But the main problem with any such proposal is political, not military.

Such a zone would rightly be seen as a fatal blow to Syria's sovereign government.  (Indeed that would be the best thing about it!)  It could never pass muster as a mere implementation of some alleged 'duty to protect'.  Russia would veto its endorsement in the UN, and without that endorsement there is no reasonable chance the West would go ahead with it.  Indeed Russia's ability and its unknown degree of willingness to provide Syria with advanced means of air defense would alone make such a proposal too radical for the West to contemplate.  The remote possibility of confrontations between Western and Russian air assets in Syrian skies would seal the death of such ideas.  It is now clear that Russia would at the very least not tolerate a no-fly zone anywhere near its base in Tartous.

So the live option is a no-fly zone over part of Syria.   This will accomplish little.

There is a fundamental difference between a limited zone and the no-fly zones of Iraq, Libya - or even what some hoped for in the earlier stages of the Syrian conflict.   In Libya and Iraq, the zones were to function, or did function, as a stage in the overthrow of the régime.   In Libya's case this was less than explicit only not to offend Russian sensibilities.  In Iraq it was always understood, and indeed the source of complaints, that humanitarianism was not the sole motivation:  the US and the UK were bent on Saddam Hussein's removal.  In Syria today, removal is at most something contemplated as a long-term possibility, and then with considerable reluctance.

The difference has to do with the factor not present in Iraq or in the Libya prior to Gaddafi's fall.   In Syria today, of course, the West is virtually panicked about strong Islamist elements.  This concern isn't confined to ISIS, and its extension to Jabhat al Nusra has to do with more than its 'official Al Qaeda' label.  It's not just that the West is appalled by ISIS' conduct.  It's also that it doesn't trust any Islamist elements in the Syrian revolution, which means that for all practical purposes it doesn't trust the revolution itself.  Groups like Ahrar al Sham, despite their attempts at rapprochement with the West, will never gain Western confidence:  who knows what these guys are really up to?   And that produces a kind of chain reaction.  If you can't trust the radical Islamists, you can't trust the moderate ones, because they're too chummy with the radicals, and you can't even trust the secularists, because they're too chummy with the moderates.  Long story short, by now the West has no enthusiasm for the fall of the régime, so that a no-fly zone would actually be what it pretended to be in earlier cases:  a humanitarian gesture.  But the West is far more interested in fighting ISIS than in humanitarianism.

Anyway, as a gesture, how humane is it?

It will do no great harm to Assad's air capacity; his air force would escape damage because it would not confront advanced US aviation.  So that air capacity would still be fully available for attacks on civilians outside the zone.   Outside the zone, in other words, the slaughter from the air would continue.

What about inside the zone?  Bear in mind that the Syrian armed forces have operated without air cover for over half a century; their air force was entirely outclassed by Israel's.  Today it would be far, far easier for the Syrian army and its allies to accomplish most of their objectives inside the zone.

Their prime objective would be what it has always been, to terrorize civilians in rebel-controlled areas:  beyond that its operations have been largely defensive.  It would be an extreme of wishful thinking to suppose that Syria, with its very extensive artillery and rocket resources, would spare civilians in a no-fly zone.  Such terror operations wouldn't require anything remotely like the exposed troop formations it fielded against Israel, and these operations would be supplemented by militias, operating in built-up areas, utterly beyond the reach of a mission whose sole purpose was to deny them air cover.  Indeed since no one is in any case threatening régime forces from the air, the denial would mean nothing.

Note too that the infamous barrel bombs were themselves a novel improvisation.  It is impossible to believe that the sadistic ingenuity of the régime would be hard-pressed to find some equally devastating means of inflicting agony on civilians, one that did not require delivery from the air.  Indeed not much ingenuity seems to be required.  Even in Aleppo, well within any proposed no-fly zone, the régime has attacked bakeries with artillery.  Every inch of the no-fly zone would be within the reach of régime missiles, rockets or field guns.

You might say that if a no-fly zone proved inadequate, further measures would be taken.   But this is exactly why a no-fly zone encounters such opposition in the first place.  Every new measure would encounter enormous political obstacles and - given years have past and a no-fly zone itself is still only a possibility - there is no good reason to suppose that further measures would in fact be implemented.  And since there is no real political desire to overthrow the régime, the governments implementing the no-fly zone won't have the will to extend it at Assad's expense.

In short the limited no-fly zone proposals seem little more than comfort for those unwilling to countenance a real attempt to destroy the Assad régime.  Only such an attempt will end its murder of innocents.  It would require an unlimited no-fly zone, not a limited one.

Really 'doing something' about Assad: good wishes and realities

Of course it's great that the EU will accommodate many Syrian refugees.  It's also a good thing when a child is saved from a burning building.  But it gives pause when one child is saved, and 80 that could be saved are left to die.

This holds especially when saving one child is made to excuse the abandoning the others.  The refugee drama has something of that character.  For the mainstream Westerners who consider themselves humane, is it nothing short of cathartic.  They agonize over pictures of drowned children.  They welcome the refugees and rage against those who don't.  They tell themselves they've failed and that they're racists: perhaps appropriately this is a matter for the BBC's entertainment section.  And leaders of major Western nations unite in serious efforts to manage the inflow of refugees.

Beyond this, human rights organizations and pundits demand more.  They insist that these measures do not get to 'the root' of the problem.  They say that 'something must be done' about the civil war in Syria and about Assad.  Yet none of these humanitarians would dream of endorsing anything that actually did get at the root of the problem.  Aside from Turkey, only the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia, whom they condemn for not admitting refugees, have shown any inclination to do that.

In fact the refugee drama, with all its humanitarian distractions and satisfactions, absolutely guarantees that the West will not take serious action against Assad, who has murdered roughly eighty times as many as have died trying to reach safety.  (Not a typo; that's 8000% more.*) Accepting the refugees allows the West to see itself as springing into action.  At the same time the crisis allows even those who cry for 'action' on Syria to conceal from themselves their discreet but utterly firm commitment to do nothing whatever about Assad.

For over four years now, these vociferous humanitarians steadfastly refuse to make the hard choices that would put Assad's slaughterhouse out of business.  Or perhaps better to say, the humanitarians have indeed made their hard choice.  They refuse even to consider any solution that likely includes hard-line Islamists coming to power.   Since these are the only realistic solutions, that's exactly equivalent to preferring that any number of Syrians die and are tortured to death to a hard-line Islamic government in Syria.

Why?  For a genuine, lasting solution to the Syrian part of the refugee problem, there is one choice and one choice alone.  After four years it's clear: the war and all its atrocities will continue until one side wins.  The throw-up-our-hands talk about how hard it is to get both sides to a power-sharing agreement is absurd:  were these not 'Arabs', would the victims of a mass murder be expected to share power with him?  Being absurd, it can't happen.  The rebels cannot negotiate because they know Assad can be trusted only to go on murdering innocents.  Assad can't negotiate because he has too much blood on his hands;  he and his supporters have no reason to expect rebel forbearance.  As for talk about how 'Assad must go'; it is fatuous.  If Assad bows out of negotiations, the régime will stay, and find some other monster to lead them.  So the solution is not negotiation; one side must defeat the other.

Which side, then, must humanitarians choose?  If Assad wins, the slaughter will continue unabated:  Assad will want to crush his opponents once and for all, just as his father did a much less sustained rebellion in 1982.  With Russian and Iranian support complemented by Western cowardice, nothing will stop him.  There will be more refugees and many more deaths.

If the rebels win, it's a different story.  They can defeat Assad only with truly massive weapons deliveries, plus money to pay fighters' salaries.  The weapons would have be provided to pretty much anyone but ISIS:  otherwise, as recent experience shows, the effort will fracture.  This precludes a glacial 'vetting' process that the US has proven incompetent to conduct in any case. That means arms will flow, directly or indirectly, to hard-line Islamist fighters.  There is no alternative; their militias have proven by far the most effective against Assad.  They have earned the loyalty of hundreds of thousands of Syrians who will never abandon them because Westerners, safe in their homes, dislike the Islamist agenda.

More or less indiscriminately arming the rebels will make a pretty hard-line Islamist takeover very likely.  That would preclude anything like freedom or democracy or equality for women.  It would all but eliminate the chance of a liberal future for Syria.  Yet this prospect is, from any vaguely moral standpoint, clearly preferable to unending atrocity.

There is even some room for optimism because the aftermath of a rebel victory could be managed to moderate its prospects.  Such prospects seem to exist:  considerable anecdotal evidence suggests many rank-and-file members of hard-line groups are not hard-liners themselves, but have joined up simply for the chance to fight Assad.  The massive aid a rebel victory requires would inevitably come with a large measure of dependence and therefore control.  This would enable the West to steer the victors away from orgies of vengeance.  Some optimism but not too much:  quite possibly the West would have on occasion to send ground troops to prevent sectarian massacres.

So there is some risk.  At this point experts warn about mission creep and the West's inability to build nations.  But no one is suggesting nation-building, and a mission creeps only when its scope has been grossly misconceived.  The West would indeed have to maintain a force of perhaps 30,000 troops to intervene should sectarian violence blossom.  That's triple the number of troops employed by the UN in its current five peacekeeping missions.  Together, the US and the EU alone have a population of 800 million; surely they can spare that many to save so many innocent lives.  But for the experts, it seems that any risk to Western troops is too much risk for the benefit of some crazy Arabs.

After much hand-wringing and impotent indignation about what 'must' happen, the West does indeed welcome some Syrians who haven't been shredded by barrel bombs, or starved to death in besieged areas, or slowly bled out in Assad's torture chambers.  Few if any seem confident that this symptoms-not-causes approach will provide any lasting benefit.  It will certainly make for press awards and for touching moments in school assemblies.  Meanwhile 'humanitarians' don't want Syrians to get the weapons they need to stop Assad's torture and murder - that might lead to an Islamist takeover!  Some 'humanitarians'.

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(*) Most of the refugee deaths have to do with arrival by sea, and Syrians (2100) seem to represent 1/8th of the total of 26,200.  Making pessimistic assumptions about unreported casualties, say 2900 deaths.   The 8000% figure uses the very conservative estimate of 230000 deaths in Syria's war. Perhaps some of these don't count as murdered but on the other hand estimates of those killed run as high as 330,000.

Should the US be even less involved against Assad?

Ahrar al Sham is a pretty large, strong Islamist group that has had considerable success against the Syrian régime lately.  It isn't linked, verbally or substantively, with Al Qaeda.  It is supported by Turkey and Saudi Arabia.  It got a lot of attention in the West lately because its "head of foreign political relations" wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post suggesting that, long story short, Ahrar is nice.  However it is anything but a secret that Ahrar is not that nice, and on good terms with Jabhat al Nusra to boot.  Jabhat al Nusra is linked to Al Qaeda.

Together these groups are a major force against both IS and Assad.  The US will never back either group, but that's exactly why Turkey and Saudi Arabia are Syrians' only hope of ending régime slaughter.   The US offers at most covert and minimal support for anti-Assad rebels, because it doesn't trust such groups to keep away from well, Ahrar and Jabhat al Nusra.  Its own officially 'trained and equipped' 'rebels' aren't even supposed to fight Assad.

Sam Heller and Aaron Stein seem concerned that the US might be failing to prevent Turkey and Saudi Arabia from supporting Ahrar al Sham.  They say that any support for Ahrar Al Sham is "runs counter to US interests"

Just what might those interests be?

Not oil, the US is awash in oil.  Not defense of its bases in the Gulf States or Turkey; no one is going to dislodge the US from there.  Given the permanent massive US presence in the area, the Gulf States have nothing to fear from Iran.  Nor can Israel be a  US concern, because Israel is more than capable of taking care of itself.  Any Islamist threat in Egypt will not be made better or worse because some arms go to an Islamist faction opposed to IS in Syria.  Ahrar al Sham can't pose a threat to American interests because America's now minimal interests in the region are short term and mainly involve its impregnable defense installations.  The only conceivable concern that might be affected is some possible growth of Russian influence in the area.  Since Ahrar fights the Russian/Iranian client Assad, that interest is, to a tiny extent, served by any support it gets.

If US policy in the area is a disaster for the area, that doesn't matter to the Americans.  What they care about is that the policy, a bunch of gestures, be cheap in both dollars and US lives.  Weapons going to Ahrar al Sham would not run contrary to that objective.

What appears to be behind Heller and Stein's odd claim is that Ahrar, contrary to any impression it might try to give, doesn't Share Our Values.  Those, one supposes, are Freedom and Democracy.  But past history aside, it's clear from US support for Sisi that these values aren't dear to 'our' hearts.  Even if they were, there is no course of action the US is willing to take that would advance them:  that would take massive troop commitments, a 'nation-building' exercise.  Given that the US has proven itself incompetent at such exercises, the whole idea of furthering Our Values in the Middle East must be counted a non-starter.

And even warning the US about Ahrar is a puzzling motive for the article - do the authors think that Americans somehow don't worry enough about Islamists?  If Heller and Stein want to stress that they don't like Ahrar and don't enjoy seeing them get any support, why not just say so?  Why pretend there is some political rationale for this expression of sentiment?

Heller and Stein's post raises a larger issue, the manner in which Western powers perceive their role in Middle East politics.  It is a mistake to suppose that if you back someone in, for instance, Syria, you have no influence on them.  No doubt Ahrar, should it acquire some power in Syria, would 'out of the box' do little to improve the situation.  But if it were to acquire some power, it would only be because of its outside support.  Outside supporters would therefore be in a position to affect how Ahrar conducts itself.  It therefore makes no sense to give advice as though Ahrar in power would conduct itself according to its present agenda.  The West might be more willing to end the horror in Syria if it allowed itself to realize that it could, after all, do much to shape the aftermath.

ISIS and the Syrian régime are not in cahoots

When it comes to ISIS (IS, ISIL, The Islamic State), people seem to espouse the following rule: because they're evil, I can just make stuff up about them.  This is a bad idea.  ISIS has to be fought in the real world, not fantasyland.  Mythmaking about ISIS links to the Syrian régime is particularly dangerous: it substitutes a fake battlefield for the  real one.  Whether you look at the big picture or at the battlefield specifics, there is no basis for asserting that the régime and IS are allies, or have a common strategy, much less that they "are one".  There is some basis for supposing that the régime has ever aided IS in specific battles - but very little.  And there is no basis for supposing that, if that's the case, it reveals any kinship or indeed any significant relationship between ISIS and the régime.

The Big Picture

First, consider the thumpingly obvious big picture that ISIS-régime mythmakers ignore or dismiss.  The régime has killed hundreds of thousands of Sunni Muslims.  ISIS portrays itself as the defender of Sunni Muslims against among others Assad, quite successfully, because it does of course defend them.  In areas controlled by ISIS, not one Sunni Muslim is ever arrested, tortured and killed by the régime.  Indeed ISIS makes a show of executing régime supporters: 

Civilians trapped in Palmyra were rounded up by ISIS and forced to watch as the jihadist group executed a group of twenty men accused of fighting on behalf of Syrian Dictator Bashar al-Assad.  ("Monitor: ISIS forces civilians to watch mass execution in Palmyra ")

           

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported Sunday that more than 800 Syrian regime soldiers were executed or captured by the self-proclaimed Islamic state of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) after the group captured the eastern countryside of Palmyra in Homs Province.  ("SOHR: ISIS executes hundreds of Syrian regime forces")

           

As the report indicates, the régime doesn't cover up the atrocities of its alleged pal.  It feasts on them:

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported Sunday that more than 800 Syrian regime soldiers were executed or captured by the self-proclaimed Islamic state of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) after the group captured the eastern countryside of Palmyra in Homs Province.  [...]

           

Syrian state TV SANA said on Sunday that 400 people were killed by ISIS since Palmyra was captured.

 “The terrorists have killed more than 400 people including women and children, and mutilated their bodies, under the pretext that they cooperated with the government and did not follow orders,” SANA said, citing residents inside Palmyra.

And for an entity supposedly immune from régime air strikes, ISIS is oddly intolerant those who facilitate régime air strikes:

The ISIS has publicly executed a Syrian it accused of planting tracking devices for deadly regime air strikes, SITE Intelligence reported on Saturday.  ("ISIS executes Syrian for aiding regime air strikes" [AFP story])

           

Oh, about that immunity from air strikes, to which we will return later,  the report adds:

In October and November, the Syrian regime sharply intensified its air strikes on areas held by ISIS or other rebel groups.

           

These strikes include that supposedly most immune of ISIS' holdings, its 'capital', Raqqa:

Some of the deadliest hit the ISIS “capital” of Raqa on November 25, killing at least 95 people.

           

But it's not just a matter of what the régime does to ISIS.  It's also a matter of what ISIS does, not only to régime troops and bases, but also to the regime's core support.  Sometimes, ISIS kills people specifically because they are Alawites, even when these Alawites have not been fighting in the régime army:

In a video released by the Raqqa Media Center, the two men were shown bound and blindfolded, kneeling in the central Naim Square as a large crowd gathered.

Two masked men armed with handguns then approach them from behind, shooting each twice – once in the upper back and once in the back of the head.

The crowd then charges forward, cheering while gunmen fire automatic weapons in the air.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group confirmed the account, also adding that a woman who questioned the executions was told the men were “Nusayri [Alawite] apostates who have raped our women.”   ("Islamist rebels execute Alawite men in Raqqa")

           

Note here the executions seem to be popular.

This is no anomaly.  Here is Joshua Landis on the famed and much-ridiculed ISIS commander Abu Wahid:

Abu Wahib is the ISIS officer who executed the Alawite truck drivers several months ago for not knowing how to pray properly.   ("The Battle between ISIS and Syria's Rebel Militias"  http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/battle-isis-syrias-rebel-militias/)

           

Joshua Landis is a respected source sometimes thought to have sympathies with the régime.  In the context of this  piece, it's worth noting that many sometimes unverified but similar reports  allege ISIS massacres of Alawites.  These are regularly disseminated by the régime.  (In the interests of brevity they won't be displayed here.)  So the régime assiduously cultivates expectations that the Alawites will be massacred by ISIS, which has been merciless to its enemies.  This alone discredits the suggestion that ISIS and the régime are playing some sly backstage game together.

Here then are facts.  ISIS executes captured régime soldiers, individuals accused of helping the régime, and civilians whose only crime seems to be adherence to Assad's Alawite sect.  All Alawites are, in the eyes of ISIS, apostates.  While there is debate about whether killing apostates is justifiable in Islam, no one denies that ISIS thinks so. Of all the parties to the Syrian war, ISIS is by far the most deeply committed to wiping out every last régime soldier and every Alawite civilian.  So the idea that the régime and ISIS share any long-term objectives is utterly absurd.  The question then is whether the might share any short or medium term objectives.

How exactly is that supposed to work?  Anything which increases ISIS' power necessarily increases its danger to the régime.  This can't be compared with 'alliance of convenience' between the Allies and Stalin in World War II.  Stalin hadn't killed numerous Allied troops and civilians.  The Allies hadn't killed numerous Soviet troops and civilians.  They weren't fighting one another.  When they finally met on the battlefield, they shook hands. There was nothing covert about the cooperation; on the contrary all parties made much of it to their subjects.  Rhetoric about destroying communism or capitalism had to do with a remote future.  In Syria the rhetoric is about exterminating people, not systems, and it's supplemented by graphic examples from the present.  It makes no sense at all to suppose that ISIS and the régime would in any way cooperate unless the helper was quite sure that this would not increase the strength of the helped, but only on the contrary weaken them.

Can this be said of the régime aiding ISIS against the rebels?  Hardly.  Though the rebels have at times defeated ISIS and regained territory, ISIS has nonetheless gone from strength to strength in Syria.  No one holds that the rebel victories have done ISIS much  harm.  And while ISIS may do great harm to the rebels, the US can be relied on to repair the rebels in their anti-ISIS role.

That's evident in its prompt & generous resupply of TOW anti-tank missiles to anti-ISIS rebel groups after recent ISIS advances. So the regime cannot expect ISIS to do the rebels harm either.  This means that helping ISIS against the rebels isn't going to get the régime any even medium-term advantage and little if any short-term advantage.  (It would be one thing if the regime still seemed poised to overrun rebel positions in Aleppo; but that ship has sailed.) Indeed the best hope for the régime lies in the US plan of converting the rebels into a purely anti-ISIS force.  It would be insane for the régime to respond to this very real prospect by putting itself next to ISIS in the firing line.

It's not just that the régime can't expect ISIS to do lasting harm to the rebels.  It's also that the régime can't see those rebels ISIS attacks as a great danger.   The US is virtually explicit that it will not sponsor campaigns against Assad.  (Some US TOWs do end up being used against the régime, but that's hardly an incentive for the régime to back ISIS.)  The only rebel group that has succeeded in doing great harm to Assad recently is Jabhat al Nusra, which the US would like to destroy.  Though ISIS and Jabhat al Nusra are serious enemies, they have not mounted major offensives against one another in areas where they have both had their greatest victories:  there is no large-scale battle between ISIS and Jabhat al Nusra in Palmyra, Deir Ezzor or Idlib.  So the régime has no reason to suppose that the danger of strengthening ISIS is outweighed by that of strengthening the rebels.  In the South the rebels pose more of a threat, but there ISIS can do little against them and the régime shows no sign of aiding them.

More generally, for some time ISIS has grown stronger and more threatening, particularly in Syria where, apart from the Kurdish areas, the US bombs them only episodically. ISIS moves ever closer to Damascus.  This means that any short or medium term benefits that the régime might expect from collusion with ISIS now become much shorter.  You might offer an enemy some advantage now in exchange for some longer-term benefit to yourself, but not when the enemy is at your gates.

The Details

Given these general considerations, how do the particular facts on the ground stack up against all the reasons ISIS and the régime are anything but allies?  Here are a few specifics.

It is said that "Assad Helped Forge ISIS" by releasing its future leaders from jail.  True.  This is the kind of mistake that over-clever intelligence services have made ever since German intelligence helped Lenin cross over into Russia.  It has nothing whatever to do with whether Assad and ISIS are in an alliance, any more than US sponsorship of Bin Laden indicates that the US and Al Qaeda are in an alliance.

For quite a while now, ISIS-régime conspiracy theorists have asked why the régime hasn't bombed the ISIS headquarters in Raqqa.   This is supposed to be suspicious.  The suspicion presupposes that something crucial to ISIS success on the battlefield goes on in that HQ.  There's no evidence for this and no reason to think so.  ISIS isn't stupid; it's not gonna point a target on a strategically important operations center.  Moreover Raqqa is the sticks as far as the régime is concerned; it was only interested in maintaining air bases there.  It has indeed bombed in support of these bases.  It has also bombed sites in Raqqa which have some actual relation to the ability of IS to keep Raqqa functioning, such as the water plant.  This suggests that its anti-ISIS priorities in Raqqa are more sensible than hitting a highly public 'headquarters'.

It's also said that the régime "drops Barrel Bombs on civilians instead of ISIS".  From the very start of the uprising, the régime has  on hundreds of occasions attacked civilians rather than on military targets.  It has always preferred to terrorize the population in rebel areas in the belief that this will turn people against the rebels.  It's willful blindness to suppose that its practices have somehow changed since ISIS came on the scene.

It is said that ISIS and the régime "don't really fight".  Apparently people come to believe this because ISIS has inflicted great losses on the Syrian army, which has run away.  This hardly sounds like a cozy agreement between ISIS and the régime.  What's more, it has occurred only in areas like Palmyra, far from the strategic (and/or Alawite) heartland.  The régime has defended important military targets like Tabqa airbase energetically, as it has its holdings in Latakia, Tartous and Damascus.  The idea that the combats between ISIS and the régime are some pantomime is, frankly, infantile.

It is said that, suspiciously, the régime did not reinforce in Palmyra when ISIS attacked.   But the same was true when Jabhat al Nusra's coalition attacked Idlib:

 “Yet, the regime did not send troop reinforcements or even tried to secure the road between Idlib and Jisr al-Shughour.    ("Assad forced to ‘strategic retreat’")

           

The régime is seen by well-informed commentators as conducting a retreat to its strategic heartland.  This has nothing to do with ISIS-régime collusion.

It is said that ISIS sells oil to the régime.  Perhaps it does; certainly it has some understanding with Assad over some energy assets.  ISIS also denies the régime key energy resources.  In addition it deprives the régime of a great deal of important oil revenue which it reserves for itself.

In any case this is nothing new to the Syrian war.  When the oil fields were under rebel control, they did not interrupt the flow to Damascus.

This also held for gas assets:

At the natural gas-processing plant nearby, which opened in 2000 and once was operated by ConocoPhillips, gas continues to flow through the Arab line – to the Syrian government.

“The gas plant still sends gas to the regime,” said Fadel Abdullah, 31, a former army officer who commands the rebels’ Al Qadisiya brigade that has charge of Deir el Zour. “If it didn’t, the regime would bomb the plant.”

 It's not clear if the rebels profited from this, but is it better if they supplied régime areas for free? Another report agrees that the supply to the régime was maintained because otherwise the régime was likely to bomb the installations (Frantz Glasman, "Deir ez-Zor, à l'est de la Syrie.  Des islamistes, des tribus et du pétrole...", LeMonde Blogs, Un oeil sur la Syrie, 8 December 2013).  Oil sales provided a living for the tribes in the area under rebel control.  No one supposed the rebels were allies of Assad.

It is said that while the régime bombs Aleppo heavily, it hardly touches ISIS-held areas.  This is very much a half-truth because the régime has always bombed ISIS-held areas like Raqqa and Deir Ezzor less, as it did before ISIS held them.  It is also very easy to explain.  Aleppo is Syria's largest city with a pre-war population of over 2,000,000.  It is much closer to strategically crucial areas on the Turkish border and to the South.  Raqqa is a city of 220,000;  Deir Ezzor is about the same size.  They are far from strategically crucial.  The régime devotes more attention to Aleppo because it is far more important, not because it is held by the rebels rather than ISIS.  Perhaps one should add that at this point the régime regularly bombs ISIS-held areas, killing hundreds.  This isn't a very strong sign of ISIS-régime cooperation.

In a related matter, it is said that the rebels have fought the régime much more, and harder, than ISIS.  Of course they have.  The rebels have been entrenched at various times in Aleppo, Homs, and especially the Damascus suburbs.  The fighting has been hardest in these crucial areas.  That has nothing to do with any relationship between Assad and ISIS.

Finally there is at least one specific allegation that the régime has given ISIS air support in its attack on rebel-held Marea (Aleppo) in early June 2015.  The very rarity of the accusation testifies against its significance.   Three-sided wars are themselves very rare.  In a long-running one, it wouldn't be surprising that, once or twice, some régime commander saw some tactical advantage in backing one of his opponents against the other.  That wouldn't be evidence of anything beyond very short-term tactical thinking, certainly not of any alliance, cooperation or kinship between, in this case, the régime and ISIS.

But it's not even clear there is one case of tactical favoring.  What's clear is that the régime bombed, as usual, civilian areas.  The régime bombs such areas constantly, capriciously.  It's no great surprise they might bomb while the area is being defended by the rebels against ISIS.  In particular the régime is always bombing civilian areas in Aleppo, and the consensus has always been that this sort of bombing confers no military advantage.  So such bombing is no reason to claim tactical air support for IS.

Some have apparently claimed, further, that the régime bombed rebel front lines, or that the lines were hit by rockets from régime positions.  These claims are just that, not reports bolstered, as is often the case, by video evidence.  Moreover they have not been investigated.  All things considered, the régime might on one occasion have given tactical air and/or artillery support for ISIS, but there's no real evidence for that.  Not exactly a smoking gun. (*)

In short, no, ISIS and the régime are not allies or anything like that.  They're not de facto allies.  They don't cooperate.  They're not allies of convenience. They don't have a common strategy or agenda. They are bitter enemies, that's all.

Does this matter?

The idea that ISIS and the régime are hand in hand may be intended as propaganda. Rebel commanders in Syria increasingly speak of ISIS-régime collusion, possibly in the hope that the US will attack Assad.  They may believe this to be a plausible strategy.  After all, most people in the West don't know enough about the fighting to contradict such claims.  Since Westerners obviously freak out about ISIS, it might seem advantageous to associate ISIS with the régime.

Maybe there's nothing wrong with propaganda, even lies or mere falsehoods, if they help destroy Assad.   But they won't be much help unless they hold up to scrutiny.  They won't.  The Syrian War gets more scrutiny, in literally millions of cell-phone videos and social media updates, than any other war in all history - maybe than in all of them put together.  Proponents of the Assad-ISIS myth might ask themselves which is more likely:  that all of the people will be fooled all of the time, or that, sooner or later, the myth-making will end up undermining the reputations of the rebels and their supporters.  Did the Russians really look better for all their conspiracy tales about the Ukraine than if they had been straightforward about their reasons of intervening?

One might also ask what myth-making will end up doing to the myth-makers.  Will they get pushed to greater and greater absurdities?  How will they extricate themselves? If ISIS and the régime are allies, mustn't the régime's most deeply involved supporters, Russia and Iran, be allies as well?  What about China, that supports Russian obstruction in the UN Security Council?  Could these nations' battles with ISIS-linked extremists on their own soil be just another charade?  If the US consistently refuses the rebels MANPADS to counter Syrian aviation, doesn't that mean the US, Syria and ISIS must all be in it together?  If the US is in league, mustn't its allies Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia be in league as well?  And if the evidence supports at least an ISIS-Assad alliance of convenience, what will the myth-makers say about the Kurds?

Behind all this, I suspect, is unwillingness to confront uncomfortable truths.  Yes, it would be nice to kill two vultures with one stone.  But nonsense won't make that happen.  While US officials may amuse themselves retweeting conspiracy messages, the US isn't going to wake up one morning saying:  "gosh! why didn't we get it?  Assad and ISIS are one!"  The US doesn't care about Syrians. It cares about radical Islamists, and only because it fears another 9-11.  It knows Assad fights them; it's not going to un-know it.  It knows that the rebels include many Islamists unpalatable to many American Christians and feminists. ('Worrying' about rebel Islamists has established itself as a discrete way of being pro-Assad.) Propaganda won't make Obama hit régime air assets and won't stop him angling for an accommodation with the régime.  As for regional powers like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, they genuinely oppose Assad for their own reasons, largely having to do with Iran.  They have their own strategy: let the Americans and Iranians do their thing, but back Islamist ground forces like Jabhat al Nusra to deal with both Assad and ISIS.  These regional powers will pay no attention to tales of an Assad-ISIS alliance.

In any case, what could the myth achieve?  ISIS' incontrovertible atrocities have already drawn such hatred on itself that alliance-with-Assad theories couldn't possibly make a big difference; indeed the hatred is probably the cause of the theories rather than the reverse.  As for Assad, his crimes are so unthinkably enormous that to associate him with ISIS is to associate him with a demonstrably less brutal party.  Propagandists might do better simply trying to persuade the regional powers to increase their efforts against Assad.  As for impressing the Americans with tall tales, that's a lost cause.

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(*)  In over two months since this was written, there hasn't been so much as a single allegation of SAA artillery support for ISIS.

Sam Harris on Christian and Islamic Morality: Wrong on Both Counts

Rather proudly, Sam Harris offers up an email exchange with Noam Chomsky about morality, Islam and the West.  (Perhaps Harris isn't aware that Chomsky very tolerantly will exchange emails with almost anyone.)  In it are gems like this:

Any systematic approach to ethics, or to understanding the necessary underpinnings of a civil society, will find many Muslims standing eye deep in the red barbarity of the fourteenth century.

Civilized folks of course are not like these many Muslims.  They inhabit "contemporary democracies".  Others may speculate what this is code for.  Suffice it to say that

There is no moral equivalence between the kind of force civilized democracies project in the world, warts and all, and the internecine violence that is perpetrated by Muslim militants, or indeed by Muslim governments.

Long story short, Muslim barbarians kill innocents, and we're better than that for two reasons.

First, we feel just terrible about it, which yer many-Muslims don't.  We deplore deliberate crimes like My Lai, and regret the odd bit of criminal negligence:

What are the chances that Iraqi soldiers would have wept upon killing a carload of American civilians at a checkpoint unnecessarily?

Second, the bad stuff we don't feel quite as terrible about is just collateral damage, of which Harris says:

Nothing in Chomsky’s account acknowledges the difference between intending to kill a child, because of the effect you hope to produce on its parents (we call this “terrorism”), and inadvertently killing a child in an attempt to capture or kill an avowed child murderer (we call this “collateral damage”). In both cases a child has died, and in both cases it is a tragedy. But the ethical status of the perpetrators, be they individuals or states, could hardly be more distinct.

Chomsky might object that to knowingly place the life of a child in jeopardy is unacceptable in any case, but clearly this is not a principle we can follow. The makers of roller coasters know, for instance, that despite rigorous safety precautions, sometime, somewhere, a child will be killed by one of their contraptions. Makers of automobiles know this as well. So do makers of hockey sticks, baseball bats, plastic bags, swimming pools, chain-link fences, or nearly anything else that could conceivably contribute to the death of a child. There is a reason we do not refer to the inevitable deaths of children on our ski slopes as “skiing atrocities.” But you would not know this from reading Chomsky. For him, intentions do not seem to matter. Body count is all.

In his reference to a 'systematic approach to ethics', we find Harris considering himself a philosopher.  It's one of the things he calls himself on his web site.  Rest assured that this claim is almost as offensive to philosophers as his claim about Muslims is, presumably, to Muslims.

A philosopher, at least one minimally competent in ethics, will agree (*) to what follows.

First, pace Harris, (may we say) Western morality, indeed Christian morality, is quite capable of establishing the moral equivalence between intentional acts of, for short, terror, and the sort of collateral damage that has become a Western habit.  Harris' version of Christian morality would be in tatters after one minute in the confessional of a Jesuit-trained priest.

Second, push come to shove, if any morality is stuck in the 14th Century, it is Western and Christian morality.  'Systematic' ethics has another view, and it is the view of many whom Harris considers barbaric.  If there is a gap, not only between Islam and the West, but between anyone who doesn't like getting bombed and the West, an understanding of this fact might help bridge it.

Collateral Damage and Christian morality

Harris has at least one point which is not actually bad but irrelevant.  Yes, even manufacturing plastic bags will eventually contribute to the death of a child.  But that's ok, I think Harris says, because the killing isn't intended.

Two things about that.  First, it's not ok; we don't think children should be exposed to dangerous products.  But second, this isn't comparable the collateral damage inflicted by bombs.

The difference has to do with causality, a complicated matter.  Roughly, manufacturing a plastic bag is a necessary condition of a child being killed.  So is the existence of water on earth: necessary conditions are very far from qualifying as causes.  We consider certain sets of necessary conditions a background to the causal events which, in conjunction with these conditions, produce what we call an effect. (Poignantly this approach to causality is brilliantly systematized by Judea Pearl, the father of Daniel Pearl, victim of terror in Pakistan.)

Manufacturing a plastic bag, and its very existence, are background conditions to what sometimes causes the death of a child, that is, leaving a young child unattended around, say, dry cleaning bags.  The making of the bag is part of an environment; that alone never kills a child.  It takes some act of negligence, a later addition to that environment, to produce the death.  Dropping a bomb and killing an innocent is like leaving the child unattended; it too involves neglect.  We know the bombs can kill children, we know the children are around; we know they are defenceless; we know our bombs don't just hit what, in our infantile slang, we call "the bad guys".  All this belongs to the background or environment of the air strike.  The background conditions, alone, don't kill the child.  It takes the act of dropping a bomb to do that.

So no, the moral difference between collateral damage and terror is not, as Harris suggests, a matter of intention.  Intentions may matter, but not like that.  Whatever the intention, dropping the bomb, like setting off a terrorist bomb, plays the foreground causal role that manufacturing the plastic bag does not.

But does intention matter all the same?   Does it make the two sorts of actions morally distinctive?

The key consideration here is that we're not talking about mere collateral damage.   Such damage comes in two varieties, expected and unexpected. Unexpected collateral damage would occur, for instance, if a destroyer sunk in a naval battle was found to have been transporting civilian refugees. Expected collateral damage occurs when air strikes are called down on an enemy who doesn't operate in nicely isolated battlefields but in or near populated areas. In these cases the attackers fully expect to harm civilians. Is inflicting expected collateral damage better than terrorism?

When Harris appeals to intentions, he is invoking something like what in Christian casuistry is called the doctrine of double effect.  For example: a doctor operates on a woman and knowingly causes the death of her unborn child. For some, that's not sinful because the death of the child was intended only as an undesired consequence of the operation, not as its purpose. But those who inflict expected collateral damage are not like the doctor. Both high-level and tactical decisions to bomb are not made to attain some imminent, urgent goal, like saving a mother's life. The attackers' decision normally stems from concern, not for the lives of others, but for the lives of the attackers themselves.  That's why civilized nations prefer bombing to sending in ground troops, much less ground troops who take great risks to ensure civilians go unharmed. The doctor is concerned for another's life, not his own.

But suppose the attackers do want to save lives other than their own. Still their situation is not like the doctor's. If the doctor spares the child, he assures the death of the mother, and vice versa. He's not, in any practical sense, calculating risks. He is faced with a simple, stark decision, a choice between certainties. He is doing the only thing he can to avert the immediate and certain death of the woman lying before him.

The decision to use air strikes, on the other hand, is usually a choice involving many alternatives. Some mean a slower advance, some are less certain, some more expensive, some riskier - but they're there, and they introduce uncertainties. These uncertainties are not to be compared with the doctor's, whose decision is normally informed by scientific evidence. The decision-makers cannot confidently assert that air strikes are the best way to minimize the slaughter of innocents, or even the attackers' losses. In practice military men use air power largely because they fear that otherwise they'll take considerably more casualties, and because they'd rather not test unproven alternatives.

At no level, then, is the use of strategic or tactical air attacks simply a desperate measure to spare civilian lives. By no stretch of the imagination can our situation be confused with the doctor's. The doctrine of the double effect has questionable authority, but even unquestioned it does little to raise expected collateral damage above terror.

Indeed Harris' appeal to intentions is not an example of Christian morality but of its decline and corruption.  Christian moralists, real ones, examine the intentions and motives of actions with merciless precision.  They would not for a moment let someone off with the lame excuse that they meant well.  They would point out all the alternatives ignored, all the hasty assumptions, all the self-serving prejudices underlying those assumptions, all the weaknesses of character that went along with the conveniently sloppy decision-making.  They would  deliver a verdict of self-deception, willful ignorance, insolent posturing, cowardice and, most likely, mortal sin.

If you don't think so, ask yourself what are, after all, the intentions of pilots or strategists who inflict expected collateral damage.  Imagine something similar in civilian life, and consider the legal notion of intentional murder.  Suppose you intend to kill me by running me over as I stand in line for a movie.  You are driving a Hummer; you are quite sure you will kill some of those next to me as well: they are literally collateral damage. A lawyer friend informs me, emphatically, that you will have committed homicide against all those killed; you are taken to have intended their death. Even if you were acquitted of murdering me - perhaps because I had abused you, severely, for years - you will be guilty of killing those next to me. Their deaths were intended and therefore are inexcusable in law. That you were very reluctant to kill them would be no excuse either.

Who lives in the 14th Century?

So the morality of intention is quite capable of establishing the moral equivalence of civilized and barbaric slaughter of innocents.  (Remember the three million killed in Vietnam if you think that civilized slaughter is less consequential.)  But what of the notion that 'many Muslims', because they apparently ignore intentions and don't excuse civilized collateral damage, are stuck in the 14th Century?

Exactly the opposite is the case.  The morality of intention, as we have seen, is Christian. In Christianity everything - that is, salvation - depends on the condition of your soul.  Contemporary, 'systematic' moral philosophy, beginning in the 18th Century, typically assigns a subordinate role to intentions:  they may help to determine the goodness or badness of the agent, but not the rightness or wrongness of the act.  That's determined by the act's effect: roughly, whether it makes the world better or worse.

The 'many Muslims' Harris regards as barbaric are said to ignore intentions.  If so, particularly when in the West arm-waving about good intentions is thought enough to dismiss the most horrible damage to innocent human flesh, this alleged barbarism may involve a more mature attitude to moral responsibility.  Indeed when faced with big problems of unintentional damage in civilian life, for example the damage inflicted by faulty products, the law takes a similar tack.  It resorts of notions of "strict liability", where guilt and innocence are judged entirely in terms of acts and effects; intentions play no role at all.  If this reduces the suffering of the barbarian inflicted by the civilized, maybe it's not such a bad idea.

Harris and 'many non-Muslims' are not moralists, they are apologists.  They find in good intentions an advantage afforded by Christian morality, an excuse.  And it's not that they refuse to assume the heavy burden of Christian morality, which looks deeply into intentions and very rarely finds them genuinely good.  No, it's that they aren't even aware the burden exists.  For that there is no excuse from any perspective.

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 (*)  How do I know?  The arguments here were made at a philosophy conference.  The audience turned out to include, somewhat to my dismay, a whole bunch of Israeli philosophers, who I expected to take offence at my claim that contemporary style air strikes and terrorism were, in many cases, morally indistinguishable.  Their reaction?  Sure, they said.  They were kind of bored.

Five reasons why arms control is a dubious cause.

1.  The project supposes structures that aren't really there.  The world is not a nation state.  A nation can effectively prevent citizens from possessing machine guns - sometimes at least.   That might be a good thing.   But the world cannot prevent all nations from possessing horrible weapons of one sort of another.   The most that can happen is that some nations prevent other nations from possessing certain types of arms.   That's a dubious achievement.  It often creates a strategic imbalance.  There's no evidence that, in general, strategic imbalances  are a good thing.

2.  There is great effort expended to prevent "non-state actors" from possessing certain weapons, particularly 'advanced' weapons.  However at times it is morally imperative that non-state actors possess such weapons, because they are engaged in desperate defensive struggles against monstrous governments.  This was the case in Syria, where arms control aficionados triumphantly uncovered rebel arms channels and gloated over every unveiled MANPADS.  It is unclear whether their efforts actually did substantial harm.  That hardly makes their 'achievement' more defensible.

3.  Arms control campaigners make much of their success in 'banning' cluster munitions and mines.  Mines and cluster munitions are objectionable weapons in a very particular sense:  they lie around for decades and kill or maim innocents long after a conflict is over.  Clearing efforts have rightly  attracted admiring attention.  But these efforts have nothing to do with arms control.  As for the bans,  they are of very dubious value given the virtual impossibility of enforcement and the failure of major nations to ratify the treaty.  Non-signatories who produce cluster munitions include Brazil, China, Egypt, Greece, South Korea, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, and Turkey, India, Iran, North Korea, Singapore, Israel, Russia, and the US.  This doesn't even include non-signatories who stockpile but, they say, have never used the weapons:  Estonia, Finland, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Argentina, Bahrain, Belarus, Cuba, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Mongolia, Oman, Qatar, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.  Those who insist that cluster munitions are "internationally outlawed" apparently have difficulties with the meanings of "internationally" and "outlawed".  The record on land mines is comparable.

4.  The focus on certain impressively nasty weapons is myopic.  Denied one means, cruel adversaries will find another.  Even if the ban were effective, nations and non-state actors would move to comparably awful devices:  in Syria, the régime uses barrel bombs, far too crude ever to eliminate.  Lacking land mines, the Islamic State has started manufacturing IEDs on an industrial scale.    Nation-states will always possess atrocious weaponry and they will invariably develop new horrors if the old ones are no longer considered acceptable.  Non-state actors do not need fancy weapons and will always have no trouble obtaining the basic tools of their trade, assault rifles, machine guns, mortars, rockets and other cheap, multi-purpose, easily portable devices.  Indeed some of the most awful atrocities in recent memory have been perpetrated with fire, chlorine gas, knives, machetes and clubs.  The idea that you are going to make the world a better place by tracking who has which MANPADS or who is developing what advanced missiles or who is shipping tanks to whom...  that's a non-starter.

5.  Arms control fanatics don't get that their verbal even-handedness doesn't undo the biased tilt of their efforts.  They often condemn, evenhandedly, arms proliferation of any sort, anywhere, whether in the developed world or in the conflict zones of Africa and the Middle East.   But there is not the slightest, tiniest chance that arms control efforts will blunt the impressive capacity of advanced nations to maim and kill innocent civilians, usually from safe distances - when drones are involved, with utter impunity.  The victims are consigned to irrelevance as 'collateral damage', with no prospect that the 'international community' will punish the perpetrators.  The only possible net effect of arms control measures is to increase the already enormous military dominance of great powers over small ones.  Arms control ideology rests on the tacit premise that this must be desirable.

One thing is certain:  making the dominant military powers even more dominant has so far done no good.  To the minimal extent that arms control has affected, for example, the Syrian régime, it hasn't cramped its reign of terror.  Indeed not a single monstrous ruler has ever come close to curtailing his atrocities because arms control "wonks" get nerdy about his supply chain.  Tyrants can always find the means to torture and kill.  Arms control efforts, if successful, do consistently deprive non-state actors of the means to resist their state opponents.  Sometimes this is desirable, sometimes an outrage.  It is dogma, not morality, to deny this.

Enough about "jihadis"!

We read how young Muslims in the West, indeed from all over the world, depart on jihad in Syria.  There they will join 'jihadis'.   'Jihadis' in Syria are examined and classified with an entomological precision that discovers myriad species of this genus.   The entomology is supplemented with a great deal of psychology intended to explain the pathologies and mental deficiencies that allow this plague to grow and flourish.    It's as if the whole process takes place in a realm devoid of normal (let alone decent) human beings.

Yet these people who go to Syria join with others there who have one thing in common.  Like Syrian Christians, atheists, secularist, and liberals, they fight the régime of Bashar al Assad.   So in one respect they are a lot better than all the analysts and patronizing commentators,  a lot more decent than the many millions of Westerners who, push come to shove, side with a regime which they themselves recognize as evil.   These millions, if they do not support Assad directly, favor attacking only his enemies and leaving him in peace.   Oddly enough the experts, pundits and 'world leaders' have never explained why this is less of a crime against humanity than the very worst work of the 'jihadis'.

But don't the 'jihadis' include, at least, ISIS?  No doubt by now some earnest declaration that ISIS is indescribably horrible and brutal is overdue.  Yet in the current political climate, the repugnance at ISIS is itself repugnant.

The pundits and ordinary moralists who rage against ISIS aren't merely indulging in hypocrisy or inconsistency, as when someone condemns, say, the colonial record of Spain but not of England.  They have actually thrown in their lot with Assad.  They have expressed, not some opinions about something over and done with, but rather their preference for a living, breathing monster.   They have delivered a blank cheque to the greatest evil they could find.  They inhabit democracies, where it is assumed that opinions matter, so that their preferences must be supposed to have some effect on policy.   The wave of disgust over ISIS encourages the West to continue its tacit cooperation with Assad.

To be clear, this effect is not diminished by 'even-handed', verbal indignation about the Syrian régime.  (The French actually get praised for practicing this at a national level.)   It couldn't be clearer that the West is determined to fight ISIS from as much safety as possible, because it couldn't be clearer that that's what Western electorates want.   "Keeping our brave young men and women safe" requires using every anti-ISIS force available.  It means not only using Iran, Assad's chief backer, but also Assad himself, who is given free reign to bomb civilians and is rewarded by the occasional 'allied' air strike in support of his battles with ISIS, for example in Deir Ezzor.  So if you get all horrified about both ISIS and Assad, the net effect is to bolster support for Assad.

But forget the public and consider the decision-makers, as well as the top-level political scientists (like Stephen Walt and Zbigniew Brzezinski), think tankers and columnists.  They all help to determine and reflect the Obama administration's view, which must be understood to suppose that acting against Assad is, well, adolescent.  So, he castrates children a bit, ties prisoners to dead bodies a bit, pokes out eyes a bit and so on.  We are encouraged to grow up and get over it, so we can see the political realities, the strategic necessities, the real-world choices that occupy the minds of grown-up political animals.  Why then is it not even more immature to go on about the lesser crimes of IS?   Cynicism and hyper-realism may be rationally defensible, but not if it is selective.  So I won't declare how I really do utterly deplore what ISIS does.   Better to suggest that genuine realism requires a grown-up attitude about 'jihadis'.

Jihadis are people.  Many are not 'foreigners' - odd how xenophobic bigotry becomes a hallmark of decency when commenting on Syria.  These human beings took up arms long before some Islamic guy said something that might or might not be Islamic.  In Syria, they emerged from the struggle against the Syrian régime.

The story has been told many times. The Syrian revolution began as something the West could like.  Largely middle class liberals, plus at worst some radical leftists and lower-class urbanites, mounted huge peaceful demonstrations.  When the demonstrators discovered that dignified or joyous protests, no matter how courageous, could not really stand up to artillery fire and machine guns, some resorted to armed struggle.  Assad succeeded, if not in turning the whole conflict sectarian, at least in recruiting sectarian gangs to commit unspeakable atrocities against whole areas containing rebel elements.  As the armed revolutionaries were forced to set up operations outside the large cities, the whole country suffered these attacks.

The composition of the armed rebellion changed.  The nice Western types weren't able to protect the population against Assad.  The attacks had to be countered.   The expanded resistance could come only from the long-suppressed forces that had resisted and plotted against the Assad régime for decades - the Muslim Brotherhood and many new, small, fighting units, all Islamists.  Many of these fighters embraced the very conservative ethos of the countryside from which they came.  They grew, not because primarily because naughty Arabs financed them, but because in costly, heroic operations, they captured weapons from the enemy.  And from all over the world, Islamist governments and individuals felt compelled to help.

Well, the West was having none of that.   These folks were not for freedom and democracy, but for a thoroughly Islamic state.   Yet the Syrians, even the secular liberals and certainly even the most moderate Islamists, were indeed having some of that.  They were fighting side by side with these 'extremists' and were not about to treat them as enemies.  They might even let some arms go their way.

From then on, unbeknownst even to itself,  the West definitively abandoned even the secular liberals, who from then on would receive only a conscience-salving dribble of support.  These rebels just couldn't be trusted.  From then on it literally did not matter what Assad did, how spectacularly he broke every constraint associated with civilization.   The West wouldn't permit his overthrow because to do so would inevitably empower Islamists, including extreme Islamists.  That's what mattered.

Long story short, the moderates wilted; the extremists got more extreme; and the very most extreme understandably struck out not only against Assad, but against any rebels in any way associated with the criminal complacency of the West.  ISIS, which began as a not entirely insane resistance movement against the US and its stooges in Iraq, deteriorated into what it is today.  In other words, ISIS became a disaster because, as the analysts never tired of telling us, we had to beware of the 'jihadis' in Syria.

Suppose the West hadn't been so wary.   Suppose, two or three years ago, the West had been able to accept that the cause of secular liberalism in Syria was lost, but had nonetheless devoted whole-hearted, extensive, military support to the rebels, including the Islamists'.  Part of that scenario isn't speculation but a certainty.  Assad would be gone.  Equally certain, some sort of Islamist régime would have replaced him.

Then there are uncertainties - would there be sectarian slaughter?  would Syria become some hotbed of terrorism spawning attacks on the West?  The realization of these risks provoked an irrational response in the West, parallel to its panic about Islamists.  Normally if you're preoccupied with a risk, you consider how to address it.   In this case that would mean considering how to strengthen moderate (though largely Islamist) forces.   Given the West's virtually unlimited capacity for strengthening forces, this hardly seems impossible, even difficult.  But the West, instead, treated Islamist extremism, unlike the secularist extremism of Assad, as something too icky to manage.   As so often with irrational responses, this only brought much more of the feared outcome.   As the Syrian revolution faltered, extreme Islamism flourished.

The inability to accept an Islamist future for Syria lies at the heart of Western support for Assad.  It began by licensing his atrocities.   It continued and continues by assuring that Western support for Assad opponents remains trivial in comparison to what Iran and Russia provide to the régime.  And today it is ratified by indiscriminate fussing about jihad and jihadis.

Here is where the hysteria about young people going on jihad to Syria gets nasty.  It yokes a stampede of patronizing outrage to the destruction of the Syrian revolution.  No distinction is made between going to fight with the revolution's radical-Islamist ally, Jabhat al Nusra, and its far more extreme enemy, IS.  Yet the difference could hardly be more important.

ISIS aside, Jabhat al Nusra is by far the most successful opponent of Assad.  It's now a bit unusual even to hear it named; it has become "Syria's- al-Qaeda" affiliate, a perfectly accurate and entirely misleading description.  Jabhat-al-Nusra is, to put it mildly, socially conservative.  It's kind of against freedom and democracy.  It commits some atrocities and mounts some attacks on anti-Assad forces, for various localized reasons.  That's to say it's not one bit worse that any Western-backed force or indeed than the West itself.   A beheading from 5000 feet - absolutely inevitable and expected "collateral damage" - is just as brutal as a beheading at ground level.  It's also more 'senseless' and 'arbitrary'.

Yet the very same analysts and policy makers who want us to grow up about Western and Assadist atrocities insist on an infantile approach to Jabhat al Nusra.  On other occasions and in a different mood, they tell us that "Al Qaeda affiliate" doesn't imply even vaguely serious efforts to hurt Western targets.  But suppose otherwise.  For the last 8000 years or so, and as recently as World War II, political decision-makers have made alliances with parties who, in other circumstances, would want or even will want them dead.  Sometimes these decision-makers have found, like the British, French and Germans, that the alliances can even extinguish murderous inclinations.  And for the last 8000 years, realists have understood that sometimes people talk trash, make threats that aren't to be taken seriously.

Recently all this accumulated knowledge has been effaced by an obsession with keeping appearances - especially within democracies.  What will people think, how will they vote, if we associate with people who might hurt us in the future, or people who have said bad things about us?   To allow such fears to steer policy is, very simply, to let quite small domestic policy concerns trump often quite large foreign ones.  After all, elections almost always turn on domestic, not foreign concerns.

No doubt realism will continue to drive Syria policy - very likely selective realism.  If the West wants to consign the Syrian people to hell for the sake of appearances, so be it.  The damage to Western interests won't be incalculable.   Even if ferocious Islamists conquered the whole Middle East, oil would continue to flow and business would likely be much as usual.  Less certain is whether the West can do well once its reputation as a cowardly and treacherous is firmly cemented.   No one can calculate that risk.  The only certainty is that foggy moralizing about jihadis won't reduce it.