Syria has been making big headlines as of late with news of its civil war worsening.
Once thought of as an isolated, unique situation, the Syrian government have been subject to the ire of many countries that want to intervene in the ongoing humanitarian crisis.
After the White House announced its arming of the Syrian rebels, it is clear that the previously internal civil war in Syria will now transform into a globally sponsored conflict.
With the United States backing the rebels militarily and Russia expressing support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, it appears that the Syrian conflict has turned into a proxy war.
Many Americans are divided on whether to support the Syrian rebels.
Because of the failures of the 2003 Iraq War, many Americans have taken an isolationist approach to war.
The basic belief among isolationists is that the U.S. should stay neutral in global conflicts, namely Syria.
To those who say that the situations in Iraq and Syria are the same, think again.
Each conflict situation, however similar they may appear, is fundamentally different from the other.
The circumstances that led to start of the Syrian conflict involved competing internal powers that were looking to depose Assad.
The factors that led to the war in Iraq, however, were completely different.
Reasons for the U.S. invasion of Iraq included the widespread concern that then-President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Unlike Syria, the U.S. has a long and complicated history with Iraq.
Many can remember famous moments like when then-Special Envoy to the Middle East Donald Rumsfeld famously shook Hussein’s hand on December 20, 1983.
Over the last three decades, the political turbulence between Iraq and the U.S. has led to two U.S. coalition forces occupying Iraq.
The first U.S. occupation in 1991 was a result of Iraq illegally invading its tiny neighbor, Kuwait.
The second and more infamous U.S. occupation of Iraq took place in 2003 following claims that the Iraqi government owned weapons of mass destruction and harbored members of al-Qaeda.
While Hussein committed many atrocities as president, it is important to realize that some of those committed atrocities were done with weapons sold by the U.S.
The tragic irony is that by the time the U.S. invaded Iraq for a second time in 2003, Hussein had already consolidated power and provided stability in the country.
Removing Hussein from power only served to destabilize Iraq, resulting in competing Shia and Sunni factions.
How is the situation in Syria different?
Syria’s current administration came to be a result of Hafez al-Assad’s rise to power in the early 1970s.
A controversial and divisive figure, Hafez al-Assad handed control of Syria to his son, Bashar, when he died in 2000.
The transition in power also resulted in the hand-over of a legacy of human rights abuses.
Originally seen as a reformer, Bashar al-Assad quickly demonstrated his desire to rule with an iron fist, which manifested itself during the brutal crackdown of the Arab Spring protests.
The Syrian civil war started as a result of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal and malicious crackdowns.
After two years of fighting between Bashar al-Assad and the rebels, more than 90,000 Syrians have died.
While death tolls should not be used to draw direct comparisons between the situations in Iraq and Syria, the numbers show how devastating the immediate humanitarian crisis in Syria really is.
Whereas Iraq had already been stable for a decade, Syria’s breakdown came as a result of political instability, leading to this violent crisis.
Without a prominent, legitimate ruler, insurrections will continue to affect the Syrian population.
Doing nothing will only serve to draw out the length of the crisis.
Decisive action must be taken in order to prevent a humanitarian disaster on the scale of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, which saw millions of deaths and the extended suffering of the Cambodian people.
The people of Syria are fighting so that they can have a voice in their government.
The sooner proper aid and support can be delivered to rebels, the better. Syria needs to be stabilized as quickly as possible.
In order to help Syria emerge from the Arab Spring as a democratic country, the Syrian rebels must be armed to end this crisis before it becomes a humanitarian disaster.
Nicolas Rodriguez is a senior political science major and an assistant opinions editor at the Daily 49er.