When NATO intervened in the Libyan conflict by enforcing a no-fly zone and providing air support for the revolutionary armies, there was a large segment of the left and the anti-war movement that cried bloody murder.
They said it was deji vu all over again. They predicted that the air strikes were just a prelude to NATO boots on the ground and they hit the streets to demand "NATO out of Libya", "US hands off Libya" and so on. They were "The Anti-Interventionists" and Libya today is an example of what happened when they failed, when their demands were ignored, and the world intervened to stop a dictator from using military power to slaughter his own people in spite of them.
That is why they don't hesitate to trash Libya today at every opportunity.
Syria today, on the other hand, is and example of how things worked out when the anti-interventionists have largely gotten what they have demanded.
I have seen more than one anti-war protest in Los Angeles last year where the banner was raised high "Hands off Syria!." That hasn't just been a popular demand on the Left, it has been the policy of the president and the major world powers, except of course those powers that support Assad, but then the anti-interventionist didn't mean for "Hands off Syria" to apply to them.
Nor did "Hands off Syria" mean they were protesting Obama's use of his "veto" to interdict the flow of heavy weapons and life-saving MANPADS to Assad's opposition, because they also opposed arming the opposition.
So unless you subscribe to one of those weird conspiracy theories that sees the whole Arab Spring as a western orchestrated destabilization campaign and the Syrian revolution as a CIA operation being run by invisible agents, it must he conceded that the anti-interventionists have pretty much had it their way to this point.
They demanded that the Syrian people and their well armed and backed dictator be allowed to work things out on their own with no "no fly zone" and no military support or even weapons for the people fighting the dictator. There has been some financial support and even some weapons that have violated the anti-interventionist prohibition, but certainly, nothing like we saw in Libya, where their demands were largely ignored.
This doesn't mean that the anti-interventionist have more 'clout' now than they had before, it just means that, in the case of Syria, they have been loudly demanding what the imperialists were planning to do anyway.
Supporting popular rebellions is not something they normally do. Libya was an exceptional case for very exceptional reasons that I have already covered in great detail elsewhere. With Syria, they are again running true-to-form, pretending to support democratic change while doing everything they can to undermine it, and now they have the anti-interventionists tailing behind them.
History is proving the anti-interventionists correct in at least one respect.
The anti-interventionists said that if the opposition to the Assad regime was actually that strong, they would be able to win without any NATO or UN intervention. That is being proved true.
But the anti-interventionists never counted the cost. Their demand was for themselves, it was never about what was best for Syria or its people.
This tragic mess that is Syria today, along with its incredible loss of human lives and human history in the past year, and all the regional problems stemming from this international "let it be" policy, is the anti-interventionists' masterpiece.
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