There are around 7.9 billion people on this-planet. There are are around 331 million Americans. That’s just over 4% of the world population. We have even fewer of military service age. We don’t have enough people to be the world’s police. We wouldn’t, even if we added the rest of NATO. We cannot rule the world. It would be disaster to try.
We couldn’t fix Iraq or Afghanistan. We cannot fix other peoples problems. Many, like Afghanistan, mostly don’t think they need to be fixed. All rightly resent foreign meddling.
It would be nice if nations would stop meddling in other nations’ affairs, but the Assad of Syria invited the Russians. We were already involved, scope creep from Iraq.
Ukraine is on the border of NATO. They have some capability to govern themselves. The invading force is clearly in the wrong. It’s different.
I think the real problem is more...pedestrian. The other day I watched a video of some member of the US house fussing because his party was more concerned about Issue X than Issue Y.
I can only really speak for myself, and to some degree my fellow Americans. What we are mostly concerned about is how the kids are doing in school, the problems at work, am I gonna make the rent this month, and why is my wife so mad at me today? These concerns fill our day and rightly so. We have lives to lead and problems to solve. Syria is not a problem we can solve, even if we understood it. Ukraine is not a problem we can solve, even if we understood it. Hell, our leaders can't solve their own personal problems, nevermind solving the world's problems.
Now, I remember being very concerned about Syria. I had been in Jordan just a couple of years before the war started. I recall talking to people about Syria, and how Syria was becoming more western, more open. And then...
I remember also all of the argumentation around Syria. I remember arguing with my brother, him telling me that the revolutionaries in Syria are no better than the pro-Assad people. I honestly don't know if that is true or not.
But then as time goes on, we get weary. We don't know what to do and we don't know what to think and we are tired of it all. There's just too much. And for us, in our neighborhoods with our soccer (futbol) practice and our skinny lattes, none of it really computes. The other day I was talking to someone about all this and I said "What if Canada (because I live 10 minutes away from the border) decided that all of this was theirs, and they rolled in with their 1 tank (ha ha) and said 'everyone's eatin' poutine now, eh?'?" But the notion is laughable. It doesn't compute.
5 years from now there will still be trouble in Ukraine. And we'll still be arguing about it on pages like the CosmoGlob, but most of the west will say "Oh yeah, I haven't really followed that..." Not because they don't want to care. But because they haven't the capacity to care. There's too much...
Claire – next Friday, I will be marking the anniversary of my father’s death. Should I expect you to join me in lighting a candle, saying a few prayers, and shedding a few tears? I would be crazy to, right? He was not YOUR father. You don’t know me. You were never even aware of his existence.
On the other hand, I will be profoundly upset when your father passes (hopefully, in a far distant future). I greatly admire his intellect. His writings and discussions touched my life. But will my feelings match the desperate extent of your grief? Of course not. No person would expect them to.
So why are you incredulous why an average person in the United States or Western Europe would be less disturbed by a tragedy in Syria or Nigeria than the one unfolding in Ukraine? Human beings have a limited supply of mental, as well as physical, energy. We reserve most of it for ourselves, our kin, our friends, our neighbors, our compatriots. The farther the circle is drawn, the lesser the affect.
Is a person’s death in one part of the world any less regrettable than when it happens in another? The ethical answer, of course, is “No.” But what is the practical answer? We cannot grieve equally over sixty million annual deaths.
I am affected by what’s happening in Ukraine intellectually and viscerally. I spent time in Ukraine and read Ukrainian literature; I recognize the names of cities and towns mentioned in the war reportage. But even without that background, I am familiar with Ukrainian culture and people. Many folks I know and meet are of Ukrainian heritage.
I have never been to Syria or Nigeria. At most, I may have met folks from either country at some point in my life, briefly. I believe the war in Ukraine may spill into the neighboring countries - Putin’s stated imperial ambitions make it a very likely prospect indeed. The war in Syria and the terrorism in Nigeria did not appear to carry that risk. (Yes, I understand that the lack of concern over Syria may have led Putin to believe he’d encounter the same reaction concerning Ukraine, but that would have been his mistake in painting two different pictures with the same brush.)
In my mind, the simple explanation for the difference in the level of concern and outrage in the Western world regarding those situations is familiarity and proximity. Yes, from God’s perspective, the massacres in Syria match the outrages in Ukraine. But we are not gods. We are but people, affected most by what we know the best.
I understand what you're saying very well--and agree with it--but also see it as an example of question-begging. You've explained perfectly why Ukraine matters more to you, and I understand it and think it's absolutely normal, as you say. You've spent time there; you read the literature; you're familiar with the culture and people. You've never been to Syria.
But surely this isn't true of *everyone?* Wouldn't you think that in any random sample of the US population, at least (to keep things simple, let's stick to the US), the number of people who have spent time in Ukraine and the number who have spent time in Syria would be quite similar? The two countries are almost equidistant from the US. How many immigrants do we have of Ukrainian heritage? Of Syrian heritage? I would guess the median American is unlikely to have travelled to either country, but quite likely to know something about it and perhaps to know at least one or two people from Ukraine or Syria.
In some ways, I'd expect the connection to Syria to be broader, in the US, because our Arabic-speaking population is surely quite a bit bigger than our Ukrainian-speaking population. Perhaps "Arabic-speaking" should be equated more with "Russophone," in which case maybe they'd be about equal. (Let me look this up. Stay tuned ..._
OK: Wikipedia says that in 2000, "There were 892,922 Americans of full or partial Ukrainian descent ... representing 0.3% of the population." No recent figures. According to the same census, there were 142,897 Americans of Syrian decent. Yes, that's a much smaller community, perhaps that's part of it.
And perhaps Syria seemed so close to me because I was living in Turkey when the war began, and very sensitive to the impact of the war on my own neighborhood. I saw the scale of the problem as refugees began to flee over the border. I knew Assad had a massive chemical weapons stockpile. I worried about the war's potential to take down the entire neighborhood--my neighborhood. And perhaps it's just that.
"It’s not a secret that Syria is imploding. But the key thing to grasp is that it won’t stop there: There is a real possibility that this regime will take its neighbors down with it. I’m not sure that the West — which from what I can tell is now completely preoccupied with itself and its economic problems — is sufficiently grasping this."
And I wrote this in 2012:
"The risk right now to Syria’s neighbors, if it tries to help, is extreme: Assad holds the PKK card, it has huge stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. The regime is going bankrupt, at the very least there will be floods of refuges if this continues, Turkey certainly can’t absorb them. The Russians would be perfectly happy for every man, woman and child in Syria to be tortured and killed so long as nothing gets between it and its warm water base at Tartus. The French and the British will make very stern noises, but what are they going to do. UN? Useless. Arab League? Useless. GCC? Useless."
But it was also something else. I wrote this in 2016:
Look at the very first comment. I heard that so often. No matter what I said. (There are still figures in US politics willing to say that about Ukraine, but not very many.)
That's more than just, "I don't read Syrian literature," don't you think?
Claire - thank you so much for responding! I can’t imagine how busy you must be; you write more than an average person can read in a given day. I really appreciate you taking the time.
I feel your response supports my conclusion: we are affected most by what we know the best. I live in an area with so many folks of Ukrainian descent that it supports multiple Ukrainian churches and community centers; you lived in a country next to Syria, overrun by Syrian refugees and at risk from the war’s spillover.
On re-reading my comment, I see that I conflated the personal (my own reaction) with the abstract (the “reasonable person” reaction and, by extension, the reaction of a “regular Western person”).
My premise is people have diminishing levels of interest and involvement along two axes, relational (ourselves, our kin, our friends, our neighbors, our compatriots, etc.) and geographic (our home, our street, our neighborhood, our town, our region/country/etc.). The further (and farther) the object of attention, the lesser the interest and empathy it engenders; this explains the difference in invested energy between Ukraine and Syria or Nigeria.
I found more recent statistics on Ukrainian and Syrian diasporas (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_diaspora#Ukrainian_diaspora_distribution_around_the_world and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_diaspora ): There are now over one million Americans of Ukrainian descent; in Europe (subtracting Russia and Belarus) the Ukrainians number a whopping three and a half million! (before the most recent events) By contrast, with the exception of Germany (which has over 800K Syrians, most of whom are very recent and haven’t had a chance to interact with the majority of Germans, I would surmise) and, to a lesser extent, Sweden (250K, likewise), the numbers in Europe are negligible. In the US, the upper estimate is 286K. Less than half a million Americans report Nigerian ancestry.
The first comment to your 2016 missive on Syria (“I don’t care. Period.”) is crude and immoral; it is certainly contrary to Judeo-Christian ethics. We should care. Violence and injustice on any scale is an affront, a manifestation of evil. The key, in my mind, is the proportionality of response. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died to end slavery and to free Europe from the Nazis. Should the same numbers have volunteered to lay their lives for the Tutsis or the Uighurs?
So far, the worst fears of an escalation in Syria have not been realized; Aleppo did not become a household word in the US. Nevertheless, the human calamity was and continues to be awful. From the humanitarian perspective, the Western response to Syrian atrocities was inadequate. Could we have done more? Definitely. Should we have done more than we are doing for Ukraine? I’d let history be the judge.
"The first comment to your 2016 missive on Syria (“I don’t care. Period.”) is crude and immoral; it is certainly contrary to Judeo-Christian ethics. We should care. Violence and injustice on any scale is an affront, a manifestation of evil."
Thank you for saying this and saying it so clearly. You've put words on this sense of enormous indignation I've felt whenever I'm asked, "But why should I care [about someone far from me]?" I struggle to explain that we have strategic interests in x, or that such a conflict could be a threat to y, while seething inside; you've put your finger on the source of that seething perfectly: The question is indecent. I appreciate that no, we can't care about every fallen sparrow in the world; only God can do that. But saying, with pride, "I don't care!" is almost a revolt against God.
Even if we don't care, hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, so we should at least pretend we care. When the words "I don't care!" are uttered proudly, we're deep in a revolting moral climate.
So there were four aspirants to power in Syria: Assad, the Kurds, ISIS and the Moderate Rebels. Afaik the US is still involved - by supporting the Kurds in the East, and also more murkily in that area where the Jordanian, Syrian and Iraqi borders meet. The Moderate Rebels are out of favour and out of the public eye, but they turned out to be not so moderate after all - Ahrar ash Sham etc. which are al Qaida spin offs. I don't contest your assessment that Syrian lives 'matter less' than Ukrainian ones, but you could say that more broadly about Syria itself. Would the US support an Ahrar ash Sham equivalent in Ukraine in a moment of distraction? And if they did, would go so unnoticed?
At the top of your emails regularly appears "Around the world, liberal democracy is in retreat. The West is divided, and Caesarism is flourishing. Why?"
Yet here you appear to be arguing not for elected representative to follow the will of their citizens, but rather to in a Caesar-like manner, direct their populations passions into stomp on small, intra-state wars. There would seem to be a disconnect here.
I don't know what goes on with education in Europe, but here in the US we have not taught love of country (flawed as it may be as are all countries), or civic duty for a long time to our youth. Given that, it would be very hard even if we elected representative and members of the executive on a regular basis that loved the country and understood their civic duties, to get them to convince the populace to follow them.
Apr 9, 2022·edited Apr 9, 2022Liked by Claire Berlinski
There are a couple of responses I will make that I suspect Claire and the members of the Syrian opposition will not want to hear but I think are factual representations of the issues at play. One is full spectrum "interstate" conflict especially between UN Member States(where one of the states seeks to fully decapitate the other over just seeking territory) is considered really really bad as a matter of international norms and hence is actually something fairly rare. You could argue that perhaps the 1990 Iraq-Kuwait war and todays Russia-Ukraine war are two of the only examples of full spectrum interstate war since 1945. Even what Argentina did in the 1980s in the Falklands was far short of say Argentina seeking to invade Great Britain and overthrow the British govt in London by force like Saddam's Army marching on Kuwait City.
So in light of these norms I do think that no one should be surprised the US and other Western countries are responding to Russia's invasion of Ukraine like they did in 1990 towards Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in far more vigorous manner than they did compared to what was legally and politically considered a Syrian internal conflict.
To describe it in another way let's say the US DID intervene in Syria and for whatever is reason it had gone badly. Then Russia attempts something far more dangerous to the international order by invading Ukraine and because the US lets say did not have a good outcome in Syria would there now be enough public support to defend Ukraine now.
There are around 7.9 billion people on this-planet. There are are around 331 million Americans. That’s just over 4% of the world population. We have even fewer of military service age. We don’t have enough people to be the world’s police. We wouldn’t, even if we added the rest of NATO. We cannot rule the world. It would be disaster to try.
We couldn’t fix Iraq or Afghanistan. We cannot fix other peoples problems. Many, like Afghanistan, mostly don’t think they need to be fixed. All rightly resent foreign meddling.
It would be nice if nations would stop meddling in other nations’ affairs, but the Assad of Syria invited the Russians. We were already involved, scope creep from Iraq.
Ukraine is on the border of NATO. They have some capability to govern themselves. The invading force is clearly in the wrong. It’s different.
When did Slavs join the ranks of people included in Western European white solidarity?
I think probably some time after the Second World War. Not before.
I think the real problem is more...pedestrian. The other day I watched a video of some member of the US house fussing because his party was more concerned about Issue X than Issue Y.
I can only really speak for myself, and to some degree my fellow Americans. What we are mostly concerned about is how the kids are doing in school, the problems at work, am I gonna make the rent this month, and why is my wife so mad at me today? These concerns fill our day and rightly so. We have lives to lead and problems to solve. Syria is not a problem we can solve, even if we understood it. Ukraine is not a problem we can solve, even if we understood it. Hell, our leaders can't solve their own personal problems, nevermind solving the world's problems.
Now, I remember being very concerned about Syria. I had been in Jordan just a couple of years before the war started. I recall talking to people about Syria, and how Syria was becoming more western, more open. And then...
I remember also all of the argumentation around Syria. I remember arguing with my brother, him telling me that the revolutionaries in Syria are no better than the pro-Assad people. I honestly don't know if that is true or not.
But then as time goes on, we get weary. We don't know what to do and we don't know what to think and we are tired of it all. There's just too much. And for us, in our neighborhoods with our soccer (futbol) practice and our skinny lattes, none of it really computes. The other day I was talking to someone about all this and I said "What if Canada (because I live 10 minutes away from the border) decided that all of this was theirs, and they rolled in with their 1 tank (ha ha) and said 'everyone's eatin' poutine now, eh?'?" But the notion is laughable. It doesn't compute.
5 years from now there will still be trouble in Ukraine. And we'll still be arguing about it on pages like the CosmoGlob, but most of the west will say "Oh yeah, I haven't really followed that..." Not because they don't want to care. But because they haven't the capacity to care. There's too much...
How 'bout that Charles Leclerc, by the way?
Claire – next Friday, I will be marking the anniversary of my father’s death. Should I expect you to join me in lighting a candle, saying a few prayers, and shedding a few tears? I would be crazy to, right? He was not YOUR father. You don’t know me. You were never even aware of his existence.
On the other hand, I will be profoundly upset when your father passes (hopefully, in a far distant future). I greatly admire his intellect. His writings and discussions touched my life. But will my feelings match the desperate extent of your grief? Of course not. No person would expect them to.
So why are you incredulous why an average person in the United States or Western Europe would be less disturbed by a tragedy in Syria or Nigeria than the one unfolding in Ukraine? Human beings have a limited supply of mental, as well as physical, energy. We reserve most of it for ourselves, our kin, our friends, our neighbors, our compatriots. The farther the circle is drawn, the lesser the affect.
Is a person’s death in one part of the world any less regrettable than when it happens in another? The ethical answer, of course, is “No.” But what is the practical answer? We cannot grieve equally over sixty million annual deaths.
I am affected by what’s happening in Ukraine intellectually and viscerally. I spent time in Ukraine and read Ukrainian literature; I recognize the names of cities and towns mentioned in the war reportage. But even without that background, I am familiar with Ukrainian culture and people. Many folks I know and meet are of Ukrainian heritage.
I have never been to Syria or Nigeria. At most, I may have met folks from either country at some point in my life, briefly. I believe the war in Ukraine may spill into the neighboring countries - Putin’s stated imperial ambitions make it a very likely prospect indeed. The war in Syria and the terrorism in Nigeria did not appear to carry that risk. (Yes, I understand that the lack of concern over Syria may have led Putin to believe he’d encounter the same reaction concerning Ukraine, but that would have been his mistake in painting two different pictures with the same brush.)
In my mind, the simple explanation for the difference in the level of concern and outrage in the Western world regarding those situations is familiarity and proximity. Yes, from God’s perspective, the massacres in Syria match the outrages in Ukraine. But we are not gods. We are but people, affected most by what we know the best.
Where am I going wrong? What am I missing?
I understand what you're saying very well--and agree with it--but also see it as an example of question-begging. You've explained perfectly why Ukraine matters more to you, and I understand it and think it's absolutely normal, as you say. You've spent time there; you read the literature; you're familiar with the culture and people. You've never been to Syria.
But surely this isn't true of *everyone?* Wouldn't you think that in any random sample of the US population, at least (to keep things simple, let's stick to the US), the number of people who have spent time in Ukraine and the number who have spent time in Syria would be quite similar? The two countries are almost equidistant from the US. How many immigrants do we have of Ukrainian heritage? Of Syrian heritage? I would guess the median American is unlikely to have travelled to either country, but quite likely to know something about it and perhaps to know at least one or two people from Ukraine or Syria.
In some ways, I'd expect the connection to Syria to be broader, in the US, because our Arabic-speaking population is surely quite a bit bigger than our Ukrainian-speaking population. Perhaps "Arabic-speaking" should be equated more with "Russophone," in which case maybe they'd be about equal. (Let me look this up. Stay tuned ..._
OK: Wikipedia says that in 2000, "There were 892,922 Americans of full or partial Ukrainian descent ... representing 0.3% of the population." No recent figures. According to the same census, there were 142,897 Americans of Syrian decent. Yes, that's a much smaller community, perhaps that's part of it.
And perhaps Syria seemed so close to me because I was living in Turkey when the war began, and very sensitive to the impact of the war on my own neighborhood. I saw the scale of the problem as refugees began to flee over the border. I knew Assad had a massive chemical weapons stockpile. I worried about the war's potential to take down the entire neighborhood--my neighborhood. And perhaps it's just that.
I wrote this in 2011:
https://ricochet.com/205380/archives/when-syria-explodes/
"It’s not a secret that Syria is imploding. But the key thing to grasp is that it won’t stop there: There is a real possibility that this regime will take its neighbors down with it. I’m not sure that the West — which from what I can tell is now completely preoccupied with itself and its economic problems — is sufficiently grasping this."
And I wrote this in 2012:
"The risk right now to Syria’s neighbors, if it tries to help, is extreme: Assad holds the PKK card, it has huge stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. The regime is going bankrupt, at the very least there will be floods of refuges if this continues, Turkey certainly can’t absorb them. The Russians would be perfectly happy for every man, woman and child in Syria to be tortured and killed so long as nothing gets between it and its warm water base at Tartus. The French and the British will make very stern noises, but what are they going to do. UN? Useless. Arab League? Useless. GCC? Useless."
But it was also something else. I wrote this in 2016:
https://ricochet.com/314939/archives/yes-syria-can-get-worse/
Look at the very first comment. I heard that so often. No matter what I said. (There are still figures in US politics willing to say that about Ukraine, but not very many.)
That's more than just, "I don't read Syrian literature," don't you think?
Claire - thank you so much for responding! I can’t imagine how busy you must be; you write more than an average person can read in a given day. I really appreciate you taking the time.
I feel your response supports my conclusion: we are affected most by what we know the best. I live in an area with so many folks of Ukrainian descent that it supports multiple Ukrainian churches and community centers; you lived in a country next to Syria, overrun by Syrian refugees and at risk from the war’s spillover.
On re-reading my comment, I see that I conflated the personal (my own reaction) with the abstract (the “reasonable person” reaction and, by extension, the reaction of a “regular Western person”).
My premise is people have diminishing levels of interest and involvement along two axes, relational (ourselves, our kin, our friends, our neighbors, our compatriots, etc.) and geographic (our home, our street, our neighborhood, our town, our region/country/etc.). The further (and farther) the object of attention, the lesser the interest and empathy it engenders; this explains the difference in invested energy between Ukraine and Syria or Nigeria.
I would posit that Europeans are more sensitive to other Europeans than citizens of other continents. The same, albeit to a lesser extent, should be expected of Americans of European ancestry, which number close to 200 million, according to the American Community Survey (https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?t=Ancestry&d=ACS%205-Year%20Estimates%20Detailed%20Tables&tid=ACSDT5Y2020.B04006 ).
I found more recent statistics on Ukrainian and Syrian diasporas (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_diaspora#Ukrainian_diaspora_distribution_around_the_world and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_diaspora ): There are now over one million Americans of Ukrainian descent; in Europe (subtracting Russia and Belarus) the Ukrainians number a whopping three and a half million! (before the most recent events) By contrast, with the exception of Germany (which has over 800K Syrians, most of whom are very recent and haven’t had a chance to interact with the majority of Germans, I would surmise) and, to a lesser extent, Sweden (250K, likewise), the numbers in Europe are negligible. In the US, the upper estimate is 286K. Less than half a million Americans report Nigerian ancestry.
The first comment to your 2016 missive on Syria (“I don’t care. Period.”) is crude and immoral; it is certainly contrary to Judeo-Christian ethics. We should care. Violence and injustice on any scale is an affront, a manifestation of evil. The key, in my mind, is the proportionality of response. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died to end slavery and to free Europe from the Nazis. Should the same numbers have volunteered to lay their lives for the Tutsis or the Uighurs?
So far, the worst fears of an escalation in Syria have not been realized; Aleppo did not become a household word in the US. Nevertheless, the human calamity was and continues to be awful. From the humanitarian perspective, the Western response to Syrian atrocities was inadequate. Could we have done more? Definitely. Should we have done more than we are doing for Ukraine? I’d let history be the judge.
"The first comment to your 2016 missive on Syria (“I don’t care. Period.”) is crude and immoral; it is certainly contrary to Judeo-Christian ethics. We should care. Violence and injustice on any scale is an affront, a manifestation of evil."
Thank you for saying this and saying it so clearly. You've put words on this sense of enormous indignation I've felt whenever I'm asked, "But why should I care [about someone far from me]?" I struggle to explain that we have strategic interests in x, or that such a conflict could be a threat to y, while seething inside; you've put your finger on the source of that seething perfectly: The question is indecent. I appreciate that no, we can't care about every fallen sparrow in the world; only God can do that. But saying, with pride, "I don't care!" is almost a revolt against God.
Even if we don't care, hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, so we should at least pretend we care. When the words "I don't care!" are uttered proudly, we're deep in a revolting moral climate.
So there were four aspirants to power in Syria: Assad, the Kurds, ISIS and the Moderate Rebels. Afaik the US is still involved - by supporting the Kurds in the East, and also more murkily in that area where the Jordanian, Syrian and Iraqi borders meet. The Moderate Rebels are out of favour and out of the public eye, but they turned out to be not so moderate after all - Ahrar ash Sham etc. which are al Qaida spin offs. I don't contest your assessment that Syrian lives 'matter less' than Ukrainian ones, but you could say that more broadly about Syria itself. Would the US support an Ahrar ash Sham equivalent in Ukraine in a moment of distraction? And if they did, would go so unnoticed?
At the top of your emails regularly appears "Around the world, liberal democracy is in retreat. The West is divided, and Caesarism is flourishing. Why?"
Yet here you appear to be arguing not for elected representative to follow the will of their citizens, but rather to in a Caesar-like manner, direct their populations passions into stomp on small, intra-state wars. There would seem to be a disconnect here.
I don't know what goes on with education in Europe, but here in the US we have not taught love of country (flawed as it may be as are all countries), or civic duty for a long time to our youth. Given that, it would be very hard even if we elected representative and members of the executive on a regular basis that loved the country and understood their civic duties, to get them to convince the populace to follow them.
I tend to agree with Tim Smyth.
I will also add back in 1990 the world was captivated by Saddam's invasion of Kuwait perhaps even more than the current Russian invasion of Ukraine.
There are a couple of responses I will make that I suspect Claire and the members of the Syrian opposition will not want to hear but I think are factual representations of the issues at play. One is full spectrum "interstate" conflict especially between UN Member States(where one of the states seeks to fully decapitate the other over just seeking territory) is considered really really bad as a matter of international norms and hence is actually something fairly rare. You could argue that perhaps the 1990 Iraq-Kuwait war and todays Russia-Ukraine war are two of the only examples of full spectrum interstate war since 1945. Even what Argentina did in the 1980s in the Falklands was far short of say Argentina seeking to invade Great Britain and overthrow the British govt in London by force like Saddam's Army marching on Kuwait City.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLouBOqeD0U
So in light of these norms I do think that no one should be surprised the US and other Western countries are responding to Russia's invasion of Ukraine like they did in 1990 towards Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in far more vigorous manner than they did compared to what was legally and politically considered a Syrian internal conflict.
To describe it in another way let's say the US DID intervene in Syria and for whatever is reason it had gone badly. Then Russia attempts something far more dangerous to the international order by invading Ukraine and because the US lets say did not have a good outcome in Syria would there now be enough public support to defend Ukraine now.