America’s Syrian Civil War

By Ron Paul

​As Syria descends into full-scale civil war, with more than a thousand people killed in just the last few days, it may be a good time to remember the phrase, “Assad must go.” That was the slogan the regime-changers rolled out some 14 years ago during the “Arab Spring” that was supposed to usher liberal democracies into power throughout the region.

From Tunisia to Egypt to Libya and on to Syria, the plan was to remake the Middle East according to the will of Washington’s “master planners.” The State Department, the media, the Pentagon, and the think tanks fed by the military-industrial complex were all enthusiastically on-board the program because making war and overthrowing governments is their bread and butter.

If the United States pursued a foreign policy of non-interventionism as laid out by our Founders the massive “national security state” would cease to exist. We would return to being a republic and they would have to return to honest work.

Instead, a determined effort that took nearly 14 years finally produced the “regime change” in Syria last December that the neocons wanted. Assad did finally go – to exile in Russia – but as is always the case with US-directed regime change, his replacement was even worse. Imagine all those years fighting the “war on terror” and then cheering when a branch of al-Qaeda takes power in Syria. Yet that’s exactly what happened, with President Trump going so far as to praise Syria’s self-appointed president as, “a tough guy, a fighter, with a very strong background.”

Assad, like Libya’s Gaddafi and the others targeted for “regime change,” was no saint. But as with Libya, we are seeing the chaos unleashed by US intervention in Syria is making the country far worse than before. Libya has remained in chaos and civil war for the past decade, with no future for its people. That seems to be what is in store for Syria as well. The new, unelected regime has slaughtered Alawites and Christians from nearly day one, and last week turned its guns on the Druze minority. A country of many different faiths and ethnic groups has been ripped apart, probably for good.

Those pushing regime change all these years called us “Assad apologists” when we cautioned against intervention. We should not expect an apology now that their regime change has achieved the opposite of what they promised.

The failed Soviet Union demonstrated that central planning never works. Centrally-planned economies produce luxury for the elites and poverty for everyone else. Yet the US foreign policy establishment believes it can centrally plan the government, economy, and even religion of countries thousands of miles away and about which it knows nothing. Once again we can see how wrong they are and what destruction their actions cause.

Syria’s descent into mayhem and violence is another tragic reminder that Washington’s neocons are very good at undermining and overthrowing governments abroad that refuse to “play ball” according to DC rules, but when it comes to actually bringing anything of value from the chaos they create they are hopelessly incompetent. In Syria the damage is done, and future generations will continue to suffer from the cruel folly of those convinced they know how to run everyone else’s lives.