The Spanish Civil War Meets Syria

In the spring of 2012, a State Department consultant sat at a bar on Capitol Hill watching a baseball game. Across the bar, a young, boisterous American woman solicited funds, so she claimed, for the rebels in Syria. The consultant had served in USAID under the Bush Administration and had been to Syria just before revolution swept the Arab world. When she finally got round to him, he spoke deliberately: "I don't think you've been to Syria. I don't think you know that there are Christians there. And I don't think you understand what's going on there.” A year later, the calls for intervention are not limited to dilettantes on the Hill, as pundits and policymakers proffer unsubstantiated and flimsy pretexts for intervention in yet another Middle Eastern conflict beyond America’s control.