Syria – the wisdom of restraint
Sometimes it is braver to do nothing; more courageous for a politician to admit openly that he cannot save the day than it is for him to call for immediate action. Too many of our leaders are too quick to cry ‘something must be done’, without worrying about whether that something will make things better or worse.
Which is why William Hague deserves credit this week for stating clearly and firmly that Britain cannot and will not intervene in Syria. The Foreign Secretary was rightly criticised in the early days of the Arab Spring for being slow to grasp the gravity of the situation, but this week he has been quick off the mark and admirably candid. Military intervention is ‘not a remote possibility’, he said, ‘even if we were in favour of that, which we’re not’. This is of course a practical reality as well as a political judgment: Britain and America are overstretched abroad and broke at home. All is not going entirely according to plan in Libya. But Hague’s statement is also a refreshing admission of the intense complexity of the situation in Syria and the deadly importance of not pandering to popular outrage and of avoiding facile promises.
All decent people must deplore President Assad’s brutal repression of the protestors in Hama and the ongoing murder of civilians and children. But to treat this as a simple battle of evil against good is to be worryingly naive. As this magazine has reported, the Muslim Brotherhood — the worm in the rose of revolution — is seeking to turn the uprising to its own advantage. Tunisia provides an object lesson. As the country prepares for the first elections in its history, secular liberal Tunisians are growing ever more anxious.
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