Americans should avoid Syrian intervention

‘Tis the season for saber rattling, as statesmen and politicians eye the Syrian situation with delicate cross hairs.

Syria’s civil war sparked in 2011 on the heels of the Arab Spring, a “Twitter Revolution” that foundered shortly after crossing the imaginary lines of her borders.

Syria has been gripped with the tides of attack and counter-attack; harsh crack-downs by loyalist government forces have been met with the brutal retaliation by rebel factions.

In early 2012, hackers broke into Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad’s personal email using an imbecilic password pulled from a Mel Brooks movie; “1234.” What did the leaked emails reveal? Sheherazad Ja’afari, Syria’s press attaché at the United Nations, coached Assad through talking points prior to his bizarre interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters.

“Don’t talk reform. American’s won’t care, or understand that,” one e-mail said. The email further advised that the Syrian president talk about mistakes and blame his own police.

“American psyche can be easily manipulated when they hear that there are ‘mistakes’ done and now we are ‘fixing it.’” Ja’afari’s comments illustrate an interesting critique of American apathy, but it is an understatement.

In May, TIME’s Aryn Baker released an exclusive video of a Syrian rebel engaging in cannibalism. The video highlighted the symbolic gesture of a militant leader eating the heart of a dead Syrian soldier. The gory account is second only to the sickening footage of deposed Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, being sodomized with a knife. In light of displays of actual human rights violations, a segment on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” couched the issue.

During his interview with Baker, anchor Wolf Blitzer was more interested in discussing TIME’s cover story; Angelina Jolie’s voluntary mastectomy. His prerogative was pejorative.

Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry said with urgency that evidence of a chemical attack by the Syrian government was “undeniable,” but we heard similar rhetoric over a decade ago.

A recent Reuters poll shows that any U.S. military involvement in Syria is more unpopular than the current congress approval rating. We have seen this movie before, and the script has already skipped to calling for an “exit-strategy.”

Syrian atrocities are nothing new; so perhaps America should sit this one out, at least until we finish our current war.