Newly minted President Joe Biden carried out his first drone strike in Syria Feb. 27, sparking renewed debate over the legitimacy of American intervention abroad. While the American foreign presence has been admittedly spotty, this drone strike was combated by the Democratic Party’s leftmost wing with little to back it up.
Biden has been noted for his restraint in much of the interventionist discourse in the last 15 years or so, even suggesting to former President Barack Obama that the U.S. should not have carried out the strike that ultimately killed Osama bin Laden, citing uncertainty of the intelligence’s accuracy. On March 4, Biden showed restraint once again as The Independent reported that the president halted a strike at the last second upon learning of “a woman and children” at the site of the proposed attack. While it is indeed a sad reflection on the state of war that this is a victory rather than an obvious strategy, it is good to know that the weapons of war are in more temperate hands once again.
However, antagonism toward Biden’s first strike is puzzling. The strike only killed armed non-Syrian combatants who were backed by an adversarial nation, Iran, in a reciprocal strike after they had attacked one of our bases in the area. No foreign policy expert contends that the strike will push us to the brink of another war. Even the most dovish members of Congress acknowledge the problems with an American retreat from the Middle Eastern theater, which would allow our adversaries to exert considerable control over the area, halting any progress made by our allies, such as the Kurds, who do give their support. Even Sen. Bernie Sanders, the kingmaker and heartthrob of such doves, said in a 2019 Tweet: “I condemn Trump’s reckless decision to abandon our Kurdish allies…”
On the same day as Biden’s strike, Russia released footage of their targeting and bombing of a hospital in Aleppo, which appears to confirm the suspicion that they have been purposefully targeting hospitals. The Russians, along with the Iranians, who still execute gay people, and the Chinese, who are currently committing a genocide of the Uyghurs in their own provinces, are the hegemonic alternative to an American-based attempt to stabilize the region. Make no mistake: an American retreat does not mean that the region will be free to try and stabilize itself; another power will come to fill the void and it will be vastly more brutal.
The drone program offers a better alternative to boots-on-the-ground, being demonstrably better in terms of getting the right combatants and avoiding civilians, but, while we must recognize its imperfections and work tirelessly to improve the accuracy of our strikes and the amount that we use them, we must still antagonize those who wish to see our power in the region minimized, or risk the consequences of amoral, authoritarian regimes in the area who are unresponsive to even its own citizenry. The American system is by no means perfect, but it is receptive and it is accountable to its people. We must remain firm in our support of our allies and in their defense against our enemies or the ramifications will be devastating for decades to come.
Photo from Flickr
