175. The Economist Calls for Intervention in Syria.

 

You'd never say that the editors of The Economist write heart-rending prose, but yet they can do something to hearts.

"Is it because America and Europe have tired of their own wars that they have started to turn their backs on other people's?" one asks this week in a leader.  "The number of dead in Syria has passed 30,000 and some days 250 bodies are added to the pile."

See the bodies, see them in a pile, see it growing, and growing, and growing — unless you do something?  Images.  Not as vivid as TV images, but still images.  The writer didn't have to give us that pile.  Nor what comes next, a hypothesized picture of "Syria's great cities ... ground to rubble" in a future where "the whole Middle East would choke on dust." 

He tells us that the dictator Assad's assault is against "civilians" (not "rebels") and the violence of it "breeds implacable hatred, and so the rebels [has to be "rebels" now; "civilians" doesn't fit the final verb] will fight on."  If Assad weren't so violent the rebels wouldn't fight on?  "Let's quit; he's just arresting us"?  The nouns are ticklish but that connective ("and so") is downright painful.  Painful to one accustomed to The Economist's care with cause and effect, that is.

Their care is to avoid the vague and wishful, and yet that "and so" is wishful.  So is much that is said to show that intervention is "feasible."  "It is possible" that the "mere threat" of a no-fly zone would "keep Mr. Assad's planes on the ground."  So is the word "probably" in this sentence about the behavior of other Arab countries:  "So long as there is no invading ground force (and there won't be), they will probably fall into line."  How confident that "and there won't be" is.  I think of earlier confidence: "Bombing will do the job.  Surgical strikes."

But, in light of the whole editorial, that must be a slip.  Economist caution, Economist cool, prevails.  The writer knows that "intervention is a slippery slope," that "nobody can be sure who would replace [Assad]."  He does "not call lightly for the world to undertake such a risky operation."

Maybe the coolest reason that journals can now offer for action in any region is that somebody is "destabilizing" it.  With the rest of them The Economist assumes that stability is good, and in a State Department way.  Geopolitical.  But "stability" can remain good only if you keep your eyes off of the root, "stable."  It means "firmly established, not likely to change."  Good only, then, if it's your good.  Not good if it's Torquemada's Spain or Stalin's Russia, no matter how firmly they're established.  Torquemada and Stalin have just as much claim on the word as you do, American journal writers. So we need some other word to justify going into Syria.  The Economist needs it — if it's to be superior to other journals

If the writer of the leader doesn't use the kind of words I'm looking for, the superior words, who does?  The writer in the business section.  Yes, an accountant is what I want.  Somebody able to do a cost-benefit analysis.  Makes realistic projections.  Makes sure that what goes on her page reflects what's in the real world.  Chary of images.

I see her coming over to give some instruction to this leader writer.  She's pretty severe.  "No, no.  You can’t talk about giving Syria 'a chance to re-emerge as a nation at peace with itself and its neighbours' without readiness to tell your reader when that peace was.  You say re-emerge.  Was there a time when no Sunnis had to fear an Alawite massacre, when Syria was at peace with Israel?" 

But it's the editorial's last sentence that will get her, the sentence that gives the boss (in this case the reader) what he pays an accountant for, a solid weighing up: The sooner the world intervenes the more lives can be saved.  "What figures back that up?  What experience?  Your reader is not an accountant but he can read the news.  Just today (Oct. 20, 2012), the papers tell of 'back-to-back bomb blasts in a crowded Baghdad market near a revered Shiite shrine,' and of a 'string of shootings targeting government officials' that killed at least 17 people.  On the net he can see that in the first eight months of this year 3,323 Iraqi civilians died by violence, about 1800 of them killed by suicide attacks and vehicle bombs.  Markets, shrines, children's playgrounds, pilgrim's buses, were targets.  This eleven years after an intervention for which humanitarian goals much like yours were part of the justification.  That's our experience in the real world, and the people who pay us will expect us to take it into account."