The downsides of bombing Syria

3. It is far from clear that an airstrike intervention will improve the situation on the ground for Syrian civilians. Past U.S. actions have provoked reactions from supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and the threatened intervention likely will as well. Every time the U.S. has stepped up its activities in Syria, other countries—particularly Russia and Iran—have blunted the impact by increasing their support for Assad. This dynamic of punch-counterpunch is precisely why civil wars with foreign sponsors are longer and more brutal.

4. Unless we are willing to stay and help rebuild, there is no guarantee that life will be better for the Syrian people even if we succeed in ridding Syria of Assad. Bombs from above have the power to destroy, but not to rebuild. The most recent such humanitarian intervention—the NATO intervention in Libya in 2011 in which the U.S. participated—has not achieved what many hoped. After NATO intervened, local forces killed the country’s leader, Muammar Gaddafi, and his government fell to pieces. The result was chaos and disorder. Even though the action was Security Council-approved, there was little international appetite to help rebuild the country. Post-Gaddafi Libya remains torn by civil war and has become a breeding ground for the Islamic State.