The Unit of Caring

The U.S. government bombed Syrian government forces again today, in light of which I want to elaborate on why I opposed the original strike. The original strike was a retaliation for chemical weapons, which is a pretty good reason and seems to lend itself to a pretty restricted scope: we will bomb them only if they massacre civilians in a blatant and horrible way. 

But I think there’s a threshold effect, where after we’ve bombed Syrian government forces once then the next time we do it is less remarkable and less likely to stir up attention or fuss or resistance, even if it’s also less defensible, less restricted in scope, and higher-casualties than the last one.

So when we bomb over something like chemical weapons, I think we are also making it easier politically to bomb again later over some smaller cause. I think we have torn down the ‘no let’s not bomb Syria’ wall and replaced it with ‘let’s not bomb Syria too much or in a way that further entangles us’ wall and I think it was very predictable that the result would be more bombings with less cause.

And this is why I think the original strike was wrong, no matter how good the cause, because the original one was the only one where there’d even be a debate about whether it was wise or not to be involved in Syria. Now it’s become a background fact of foreign policy that sometimes we bomb Syria. And I expect it gets worse from there.

• 18 May 2017
• #antiwar#violence cw
• 68