By Matthew PuleoThe United States is often somewhere on the global conflict stage. Currently, there is a looming question on if America should take a role in the Syrian Civil War. The simple answer is it should take no role. It’s not necessary for the United States to be involved in another country’s war Within the last six decades, we have taken on quite a role as the World Police through various counter-communism conflicts from the 1960s through to the 1990s, notably in the Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion, counter-Soviet influence wars in Korea and Vietnam and support of the Contras in Nicaragua, as well as the War on Terror which has been largely futile. It simply does not make any logical sense to drag ourselves into another unnecessary conflict that will only garner more hatred for us and our country in the Middle East, worsen relations between the U.S. and Russia, waste thousands of lives and throw away billions of dollars. While Syria does contain valuable stores of oil that we have previously purchased, sanctions against the importation of Syrian petroleum products have been in place since August of 2011 in response to the start of the civil war. The increase in domestic oil production coupled with the United States being customer to numerous other oil-producing countries ensures that U.S. sanctions against Syria will not result in an oil crisis. Involving ourselves in Syria’s own civil war would have been akin to Italy fighting in our civil war.
The primary argument for the U.S. involvement in Syria is the fact that the Assad regime is committing large-scale human right atrocities and we must lead the charge against this. There is no denying that the actions carried out by Assad are horrific and that the U.S. does not support those actions in any way, shape or form. However, evil typically finds a way to survive, regardless of the actions of the good guys. If America so chose, we could bring out a full-scale invasion and truly topple Assad. However, this strategy has been tried that with other foreign terror governments , such as the Taliban, and the results have nearly always been the same; America topples the human-rights-violating government and attempts to institute a democratic system which doesn’t work, and then the entire region is engulfed in instability and in-fighting for years in a power struggle. We have also seen this in the results of the Vietnam War. Although North Vietnam has now united the nation and begun to transform into a 21st century country, much of the nation remained third-world and impoverished for twenty years after the conflict ended. As much as what Assad does to his citizens horrifies the global community, we simply cannot allow ourselves to get dragged into another pointless exercise in global interventionism. Much like the failed intervention conflicts of Korea and Vietnam, taking a large role in the Syrian conflict would be another waste of American lives and tax dollars. United States oil interests in the region are the secondary reason people give for supporting involvement in Syria. Domestic oil production has been on the overall rise in the last decade and is projected to continue that rise in the future. This combined with our existing relations with oil-producing nations means that sanctioning Syria due to the civil war will have minimal to no effect on the United States. According to the U.S. EIA (United States Energy Information Administration), America was producing 5,003 barrel of oil per day in August of 2008. That number has now more than doubled to 10,964 as of July 2018. Additionally, estimates claim that the U.S. could be producing as many as 14 million barrels per day by 2020. To further this point, preliminary September reports from the Energy Department have shown that America has moved ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia for the top oil-producing country in the world. All factors considered, it would be a foolish and wasteful move to take a role in the Syrian civil war. Despite the terrible acts Syria’s citizens are being subjected to, it would be a waste of money and American lives, and we really don’t have much interest in the area to the point that it’s worth defending. America has gotten itself involved in too many unnecessary conflicts over the years and has paid the price with our fallen soldiers. The easy - and only - answer to the question of our involvement in Syria is a resounding no.
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Elena Caputo
Hi! My name is Elena, and I'm a senior at Wilson and one of the Editors of the Editorial section. If you have any questions or ideas or if you want to write, email me at [email protected]! Olivia MonosHello! My name is Olivia and I'm a junior this year, and one of the editors of the Editorial section! I'm really excited to write for the Paw Print again this year!
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