Military action in Syria?

Coming from our Buddhist perspective, I am curious what action, if any, you would take in Syria?

For me this is not about anger or retaliation at all....

Indeed, much of the strategy currently at play in the region was candidly described in a 2008 U.S. Army-funded RAND report, Unfolding the Future of the Long War. The report noted that "the economies of the industrialized states will continue to rely heavily on oil, thus making it a strategically important resource." As most oil will be produced in the Middle East, the U.S. has "motive for maintaining stability in and good relations with Middle Eastern states." The report further acknowledges:

"The geographic area of proven oil reserves coincides with the power base of much of the Salafi-jihadist network. This creates a linkage between oil supplies and the long war that is not easily broken or simply characterized... For the foreseeable future, world oil production growth and total output will be dominated by Persian Gulf resources... The region will therefore remain a strategic priority, and this priority will interact strongly with that of prosecuting the long war."

U.S. agitation against Syria began long before today's atrocities at least seven years ago in the context of wider operations targeting Iranian influence across the Middle East.

In 2006, a little-known State Department committee - the Iran-Syria Policy and Operations Group - was meeting weekly to "coordinate actions such as curtailing Iran's access to credit and banking institutions, organizing the sale of military equipment to Iran's neighbors and supporting forces that oppose the two regimes." U.S. officials said "the dissolution of the group was simply a bureaucratic reorganization" because of a "widespread public perception that it was designed to enact regime change."

Despite the dissolution of the group, covert action continued. In May 2007, a presidential finding revealed that Bush had authorized "nonlethal" CIA operations against Iran. Anti-Syria operations were also in full swing around this time as part of this covert programme, according to Seymour Hersh, reporting for the New Yorker. A range of U.S. government and intelligence sources told him that the Bush administration had "cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations" intended to weaken the Shi'ite Hezbollah in Lebanon. "The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria," wrote Hersh, "a byproduct" of which is "the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups" hostile to the United States and "sympathetic to al-Qaeda." He noted that "the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria," with a view to pressure him to be "more conciliatory and open to negotiations" with Israel. One faction receiving covert U.S. "political and financial support" through the Saudis was the exiled Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

A year later, Alexander Cockburn revealed that a new finding authorized covert action undermining Iran "across a huge geographical are - from Lebanon to Afghanistan", and would include support for a wide range of terrorist and military groups such as Mujahedin-e-Khalq and Jundullah in Balochistan, including al-Qaeda linked groups:

"Other elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi arabs of south west Iran. Further afield, operations against Iran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon will be stepped up, along with efforts to destabilize the Syrian regime."

It is perhaps not entirely surprising in this context that according to former French foreign minister Roland Dumas, Britain had planned covert action in Syria as early as 2009: "I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business", he told French television:

"I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer minister for foreign affairs, if I would like to participate."

Leaked emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor included notes from a meeting with Pentagon officials confirming U.S.-UK covert operations in Syria since 2011:

"After a couple hours of talking, they said without saying that SOF [Special Operations Forces] teams (presumably from U.S., UK, France, Jordan, Turkey) are already on the ground focused on recce [reconnaissance] missions and training opposition forces... I kept pressing on the question of what these SOF teams would be working toward, and whether this would lead to an eventual air campaign to give a Syrian rebel group cover. They pretty quickly distanced themselves from that idea, saying that the idea 'hypothetically' is to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns, try to break the back of the Alawite forces, elicit collapse from within... They don’t believe air intervention would happen unless there was enough media attention on a massacre, like the Gaddafi move against Benghazi. They think the U.S. would have a high tolerance for killings as long as it doesn't reach that very public stage."

"Collapsing" Assad's regime is thus a final goal, though military intervention would only be politically feasible - read domestically palatable for western populations - in the context of "a massacre" so grievous it would lead to a public outcry.
Exploring different scenarios for this trajectory, the report speculated that the U.S. may concentrate "on shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan as a way of containing Iranian power and influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf." Noting that this could actually empower al-Qaeda jihadists, the report concluded that doing so might work in western interests by focusing jihadi activity on internal sectarian rivalry rather than targeting the U.S., thus bogging down both Iranian-sponsored groups like Hezbollah and al-Qaeda affiliated networks in mutual conflict:

"One of the oddities of this long war trajectory is that it may actually reduce the al-Qaeda threat to U.S. interests in the short term. The upsurge in Shia identity and confidence seen here would certainly cause serious concern in the Salafi-jihadist community in the Muslim world, including the senior leadership of al-Qaeda. As a result, it is very likely that al-Qaeda might focus its efforts on targeting Iranian interests throughout the Middle East and Persian Gulf while simultaneously cutting back on anti-American and anti-Western operations."

The RAND document contextualised this strategy with surprisingly prescient recognition of the increasing vulnerability of the U.S.'s key allies and enemies - Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Egypt, Syria, Iran - to the converging crises of rapidly rising populations, a 'youth bulge', internal economic inequalities, political frustrations, sectarian tensions, and water shortages, all of which could destabilize these countries from within or exacerbate inter-state conflicts.

The report noted especially that Syria is among several "downstream countries that are becoming increasingly water scarce as their populations grow", increasing a risk of conflict. Drought in Syria due to climate change, impacting food prices, did indeed play a major role in sparking the 2011 uprisings. Though the RAND document fell far short of recognizing the prospect of an 'Arab Spring', it illustrates that three years before the 2011 uprisings, U.S. defense officials were alive to the region's growing instabilities, and concerned by the potential consequences for stability of Gulf oil.