Left and Right Call for Escalation in Syria By Ivan Eland

The Independent Institute - http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=3400

Left and Right Call for Escalation in Syria

By Ivan Eland
| Posted: Thu. August 16, 2012 For some time, Sen. John McCain and the Wilsonian neoconservatives have been beating the drum to escalate the U.S. intervention in Syria. Now, from the other side of the political spectrum, the Wilsonian progressives are calling for the same solution. The hawks on the left and right abhor each other on most policy issues, but in foreign policy they are both imperialist to the core. To not appear as naive as they actually are, neoconservatives dress up their imperial “democracy promotion at gunpoint” preferences with peacock-strutting red, white, and blue American exceptionalism and repeated references to vague “U.S. interests” or “American vital interests.” Their leftist co-travelers mask their imperial mindset under the banner of “humanitarian protection of lives using military power.” To save Syrian lives, William Perry and Madeleine Albright, secretaries of defense and state, respectively, under President Bill Clinton, advocate U.S. military intervention without putting forces on the ground. In Perry’s case, he specifically advocates establishing a no-fly zone over northern Syria as a sanctuary for Syrian rebels.
Hawkish progressives, such as former Obama administration official Anne-Marie Slaughter and columnist Nicholas Kristof, advocate providing heavier anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons and maybe U.S. air cover to rebel commanders who pledge to avoid sectarian killings and protect civilians. Most of the progressives seem to be using the “low cost” (read: few or no American casualties) model of “overthrow from the air” that caused Moammar Gadhafi’s demise in Libya.
Underneath all the humanitarian rhetoric, the muscular left seems to believe that the Assad government’s downfall is only a matter of time and that the longer the war goes on the more it will have adverse spillover effects in the region (read: the more it will affect Israel). Also, the argument is made that if the United States doesn’t jump into the Syrian civil war with both feet, it won’t have any influence in post-Assad Syria (again, to better protect Israel).