The Orientalist Conspiracies of the Wrong-Headed #SyriaHoax
It didn’t take long.
As President Trump launched a bombardment of a Syrian air base reputed to have hosted the chemical warriors of Monday’s heinous sarin gas attack, the conspiracy world went into high gear.
They always do when the United States does just about anything. That in and of itself is worth noting.
The attack shocked the Alt-Right more than the Russians and Syrians (who were at least warned) — Reddit’s infamous /r/The_Donald went into full purge mode, and nary a post on the attack survived the moderator’s deletes. /r/Conspiracy ate itself alive as comments declaring the end of the TrumpTrain got upvoted to sky high karma. /r/Conspiratard had a field day.
The Left too also stirred with conspiracy. Both Left and Right had a common thread: that the people of Syria are unable to do anything unless their outside masters tell them. It’s proof that Orientalism is still deeply embedded in the minds of Western media, citizens, and politicians.
So here they are, the wrong-headed Orientalist conspiracy peddling of both Left and Right so far.
- Trump bombed Syria to boost flagging approval ratings/distract from Russia investigation
This is the Democratic Left’s favorite on Facebook. It’s a story with echoes in the Clinton years, when Bill was accused of the same offense as he bombed Saddam’s Iraq during the Monica Lewinsky meltdown. The movie Wag the Dog took it from fringe to “common sense” — we are to now believe all presidents kill foreigners to boost approval ratings.
It’s also somewhat likely. Trump knows how the media works; he knows war sells. Hitting Syria, starting his own little war, could — and in some ways did — make him look “presidential.”
That being said, there’s a fatal flaw: Trump responded to an event. He did not manufacture the casus belli as George W. Bush’s administration did before the Iraq invasion.
So while Trump almost certainly knew a bombardment might give him good press, it is not evidence of dastardly conspiracy, just brute political opportunism. That would be Trump’s MO anyway.
2. Putin is “wagging the Trump dog” to protect his asset
This one is a variation on the more likely theory above: that Putin, feeling his precious Trump plant is about to be outed by a Congressional investigation, manufactured the whole event to give Trump a boost at home. In this line of thinking, Putin ordered the chemical attack; Trump then warned Russia of his retaliation so the cruise missile strike could be effectively meaningless.
This is considerably less likely. There is little evidence that Putin controlled or sought to control Trump, just a great deal of evidence that he was seeking to help anyone but Hillary, who he despised (and who would have been a more formidable adversary).
That being said, this one leaves out Bashar al-Assad, who not only started the civil war but benefits the most from it. Why would Assad do Putin’s bidding? This presumes that Putin is a master and Assad a puppet: Putin is Assad’s arms dealer, and Assad has told Putin “no” before. Putin once tried to remove Assad from power, and it didn’t work.
3. The chemical attack was anyone but Assad
Already spread by Ron Paul-style conspiracy theorists, this one pins itself on a CIA/Islamic State/Saudi-allied rebel story that says that anyone but Assad gassed those civilians.
Some will posit that the chemicals were planted; others, including the Kremlin, have said a traditional airstrike unleashed a fiendish warehouse of terrorist chemicals.
The problem? All on the ground sources indicate it was sarin. Sarin is no simpleton’s WMD — it requires specialized centers to house and keep potent. The rebels do not have that power; the Assad regime does.
It’s possible, but super unlikely, that Assad bombed his own secret storage, since his military forces are anything but professional. We know the UN suspected that Assad did not completely disarm after the 2013 deal that was supposed to destroy his supply. We also know they never did quite prove it.
Yet the “Assad blowing up his own stash” is extraordinary special pleading. It implies that Assad is a righteous warrior only accidentally barrel bombing schools. But Assad is a butcher: his behavior is precisely like Caesar’s in Gaul. He seeks to create wildernesses and call them peace. That is a critical reason why half of Syria’s population is displaced, and why up to half a million Syrians are dead. The regime itself is driving much of the violence, and benefits from as much death as possible.
4. The “Deep State” tricked hapless Trump
A favorite of the Ben Garrison-style Alt-Rightists, in this version the “Deep State” — which doesn’t exist in the United States — has finally outfoxed the god-emperor. The first problem is that America doesn’t have a Deep State — Deep States are conspiracies of actors, not interests. They require unified groups of people who do more than just notice the same evidence and come up with the same conclusion.
Deep States also require corrupt and inept states to survive, or else they are discovered. Egypt qualifies; Turkey used to. But the U.S. does not.
Thus this is asking people to believe that President Trump is either too stupid to outwit the mythical Deep State spooks (which is oddly unflattering, considering the Alt-Right’s sycophantic treatment of him), or that the president is now a part of the Deep State itself. Considering he is the head of the executive branch, it’s odd to think that he would never one day come to the exact same conclusions about America’s geopolitical situation as every other president before him.
The problem with all the #SyriaHoax conspiracies? They’re too complicated explanations for a brutish situation.
Remember that Assad gassed before and got away with it; remember that Assad has brutalized his own population for years and gotten away with that, too. He has survived the Arab League, the United Nations, the United States, Turkey, the Gulf Cooperation Council, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and Israel. Why wouldn’t he think that, especially under a presumably isolationist Trump, he could gas attack to gain some cheap ground?
Moreover, Assad’s military forces are incredibly weak: Der Spiegel reports them as less than 6,000. Gas attacks are an effective way to help a relatively well-supplied but outnumbered army.
After all, Assad has leveled Homs, Aleppo, and parts of Damascus. Have we forgotten that too? He gassed 1,200 people in August 2013 — and he got away with it, despite Obama’s red line. The question is not why would Assad use sarin. It’s why wouldn’t he?
Assad is also a totalitarian tyrant in a region that produces truly brutal leaders. Have we forgotten that Saddam gassed the Kurds and the Iranians? That Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sisi began his presidency by butchering the Muslim Brotherhood? That Turkey’s Erdogan has been happy to dip his hands in Kurdish blood? Have we forgotten that in current Middle Eastern geopolitics, political murder by any means is normal?
Instead, #SyriaHoax would have us give power to anyone but the people and leadership in Syria. It implies Syrians are CIA or FSB-controlled children, and not individuals capable of their own decisions. It is a disturbingly Orientalist worldview no matter how you slice it.
