Let’s Invade the Middle East

BY JOE LENOFF

I don’t want drones or tomahawk missiles. I want American boots on the ground. Well, sandals anyway. I want American flags waving high and proud, but I want them on top of school buildings and hospitals, not tanks and jets. I want humanitarian aid. I want USAID to invade the Middle East.

There is so much in flux in the Syrian crisis, so let’s act where we are most likely to affect the most positive change. The Syrian diaspora now extends into every neighboring Muslim country and desperately needs our help in finding the basics of food, water, and shelter. We can and should do more though. We should help them build schools and farms and businesses, and we must not allow them to wallow in refugee camps any longer. We have a chance to put America on the right side of Middle Eastern history again. These two million refugees will either look to America as the country that helped them in their time of need or as a heartless hegemon. The choice is ours.

The humanitarian argument for aid is an easy one. Syrians, scared for their lives, have been forced to flee their homes. The only shelter they could find were patchy tent cities in foreign countries. Now, however, with winter approaching, even that small bit of security could elude them. The UN High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) simply doesn’t have the money to support two-million plus people. Unless we are willing to witness a humanitarian disaster, the United States must help support these refugees.

America has already given over one billion dollars to the Syrian refugees through USAID, making us the single largest contributor of humanitarian assistance. We should be proud of that. We can now either rest on our laurels, say “good enough,” and turn away, or we can realize that there is more to do. Let’s define the United States as a force for good in the Middle East, not so-called “imperialism”. Let’s help our allies in Turkey and Jordan cope with their new population. Let’s keep Lebanon from descending into another civil war. Let’s give the refugees more books to read, more farms to plow, and more businesses to grow. Let’s help ourselves by helping others.

Where do we start?

We should start in Jordan. As Jeffrey Goldberg writes in The Atlantic, King Abdullah is “the region’s most pro-American Arab leader.” He is a bastion of stability in a turbulent region, acting as both a liberalizer and a modernizer, and he provides a peaceful border for Israel.

America certainly does not – wink – use his intelligence services – wink. All in all, he is good for America, and America should be good to him.

King Abdullah has been in trouble recently, though. In the wake of the Arab Spring, there were mass riots calling for his abdication. His people were angry that, like in most Arab countries, youth unemployment was around 25 percent. After King Abdullah agreed to cut oil subsidies in return for a loan from the IMF, protests slammed Amman. Jordanian Prime Minister al-Khasawneh was forced to resign, prompting new elections for parliament. These elections were boycotted by the most conservative and powerful political parties (a mild term for a group that includes the Muslim Brotherhood), calling into question the entire election. In 2012, Abdullah Ensour took over the premiership in a nation no longer rioting, but still simmering with revolutionary rage.

In 2011, in the middle of all of this, the Syrian crisis broke out and refugees started pouring into Jordan. The Za’atri refugee camp in the north is home to 150,000 Syrians, making it the 4th largest “city” in Jordan. Put another way, an economically weak and politically suspect government got an influx of poor, jobless, and hungry people so large that all but three places in the country are dwarfed by it.

Today, an already stretched royal purse is being ripped apart at the seams trying to keep them happy and healthy, but the refugees are still stagnant. They have no avenues for success, no ability to contribute to the economy in any way but as dependents. This is certainly not a situation we want to see our ally go through unaided.

The Syrian refugees are in a sad state of affairs, but not one bereft of opportunities for the United States. Jordan merits primacy because of their strategic importance and humanitarian desperation, but all across the Middle East there are people who need us, and from whom we can benefit in the long term. I say again, let’s help ourselves by helping others.