The slacktivist superman ponders a Syrian intervention.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Today’s story is about Bob, the slacker superman from these old threads. Bob has the powers of a post-Crisis Kryptonian, with no kryptonite factor he knows of. He’s the only known super in his world. Though he’ll rescue disaster victims, stop in-progress terrorist attacks, and intervene in other such emergencies, he refuses to wear a costume, intervene in geo-politics, or fight crime.

One day, while at his favorite coffeeshop (splitting his attention between reading White Butterfly and watching Lolo Jones compete in a track meet a thousand miles away), Bob finds someone placing an extra-large redeye on his table. Looking up, he sees an insanely attractive, vaguely familiar, and seemingly Middle-Eastern woman smiling at him.

“I didn’t pay for that,” Bob says.

“And I did,” the IAVFSMEW replies. “My name is Yalda–and you’re Bob X, aren’t you? The superhero?”

“It’s Bob Exeter, and I’m not a superhero. Anyway–”

“Of course you’re a superhero…when you choose to be. I was on that cruise liner you saved in the Mediterranean last month. The ship was sinking, but you picked it up with your bare hands and carried us all to safety. I want to thank you, and if you wish–”

“Hold it right there. You’re, like, the hottest woman I’ve seen in a year–and I have telescopic x-ray vision–but I don’t date people I rescue. Just never ends well, particularly when they’re obviously stalking me. So thanks for the coffee, but–”

“Just give me two minutes, I beg you,” Yalda says, helping herself to a seat. “I’m not here to offer you romance … not unless you insist. I’m here to ask you to please be the superhero we both know you can be. Just for an afternoon, and just for my homeland–for Syria.”

“What do you mean?”

“Please don’t be obtuse, X. It does not become you. The civil war in my country has gone on for years now, and the butcher Ḥafiz al-Assad has slaughtered tens of thousands of my countrymen–and neither the United Nations or the United States does anything. Now I do not say that the typical American should be blamed for their government’s inaction–but you are not the typical American. You’re a demigod; every despot on this planet exists at your sufferance. I’m asking you to stop suffering just one–”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Please let me finish. It’s eleven a.m. Chicago time. You could fly to Damascus, dispatch Assad, disarm the Syrian military, and be back here loafing by sunset. Now I know you are not evil or callous or jingoistic. You saved hundreds of thousands of lives in Japan, Haiti, and Mumbai. How is the rape of my country any different? Tell me what I must do to persuade you to intervene, and I will do it.”

“Here’s the thing–” Bob begins.

And that’s where the hypothetical ends and the responses begin. What should Bob say to Yalda? Do you want him to go curb-stomp Assad? If not, why should he forbear?

2

“–they are all just going to kill each other anyway, no matter who is in charge. Each religious group wants to persecute/exterminate another group, and so on and so on until the end of Time. Fuck 'em.”

3

We look like losers if we do nothing. We look like assholes if we intervene. Lets all agree that it’s magically worse to kill people with chemical weapons than with artillery or small arms, and while we wait for Assad to cross that line we look like this (note the imposition of the no-fly zone at the beginning of the clip).

4

OK, you’ve got your superman. X-ray vision, heat vision, super-speed, invulnerability, the whole works.

So why should he focus on Syria? Why not just spend a week flying around the Earth at super-speed, disabling any weapon more deadly than a machete?

And when he’s done with that, we put him to work as a clean source of power for the world. :smiley:

5

Considering that Hafiz al-Assad has been dead for thirteen years now, I suppose the main question is whether Bob X’s powers include time travel.

6

Bob finds himself in essentially the same position as the real-world US government. Either one could easily topple Assad and his regime, albeit using slightly different means. Neither one, however, could control the chaos that would result, and Syria would probably just end up with another despot, just as bad as Assad.

7

“… because deposing the despotic ruler and disbanding his army totally brought peace to Iraq. No, thanks.”

8

“Of course we know this guy is a bad dude, and there’s no way to know what might happen next. But sometimes you just have to roll the dice and see what happens. After all, when I take out a thug or mob boss in the US, nobody raises objections that I’m just clearing the way for that criminal’s rivals to grow stronger.”

9

“I’m sorry, but I can’t. If I help you out then where do I stop? There are countless ruthless dictators in the world and I can’t stop them all. Well, I can, but you don’t really want that. Take Chile for example. They were under a brutal dictator, but that dictator was put in power by the U.S., so if I would have toppled him then I would have had to topple the U.S., and no one wants that. Really, the only way I can help everyone is if I become supreme ruler of the world. Hmm…that doesn’t sound like a bad idea. I’ll be right back…”

10

“…if I, personally, intervene in wars with big players fighting each other, if only by proxy, the big players will, to quote Shakespeare, start freaking the fuck out. The powerful guys in big fancy palaces are going to start worrying, with various degrees of justification, about the security of their hides, and probably start targeting me, or even my country. Maybe they wouldn’t succeed—and anything short of a nuclear barrage to my face, they probably wouldn’t—but it’d be more of a bloody mess than I’m really prepared to deal with right now. I’m sorry.”

Alternately;

"I’m deliberately letting the two sides batter each other down—mostly so the rebels can keep drawing in and burning up Islamist foreign fighters and weapons, especially from Iraq and Libya, ‘bleeding them white.’ I’ll intervene when both are close to collapse, and thus too weak to cause trouble after the war is over.

For that part, I’m thinking of blowing up a Syrian chemical weapons depot with my heat vision from a distance, making it look like an accident or rebel sabotage, and then making a big show of flying in and destroying the big cloud of nerve gas once everyone’s gotten good and panicked, and then announcing that I feel compelled to intervene in the war to prevent further horror like this in the future. I figure news footage of a few thousand gas casualties lying dead in the streets will get world opinion safely in my corner…'probably about 10,000 should do the trick. 20,000, on the outside."

11

If Bob says the second one out loud, doesn’t he also have to toss Yalda into orbit?

12

Nailed it in the first reply.

13

The ultimate endgame in these scenarios (and some comic books have explored this) is superheros taking over the world and running things. They eliminate wars and crime and poverty.

The problem that occurs is asking on what basis they derive their Authority (pun intended). Bob Exeter (or Superman or Ultraman or Apollo) may be the most powerful man on Earth but there’s no claim that he’s the wisest. If he takes over solely because he’s strong enough to do so, how does that make him any different from any other dictator? Why assume that a world run by Superman would be better than a world run by Lex Luthor?

14

Eh, she’s kinda cute…and thereby photogenic. She can be his new puppet rule—uh, head of the People’s Provisional Government. :smiley:

15

On a side note, it’s very depressing to see how common it is for people to view the Middle East as a haven of zealots who are going to murder themselves into oblivion anyways, so it isn’t worth paying attention to it. If the same standard and prejudice were used in scenarios about superheroes attempting to stop the spread of AIDS in Africa, similar broad-brush statements would be denounced.

I don’t think there’s much hope for humanity if nobody says anything when others seek to rationalize away human tragedy because “those people aren’t like us,” or similar sentiments.

16

What could Superman do to stop AIDS in Africa?

17

…doesn’t he know at least one guy with a shrink ray?

Technically, he and the Flash could use that on themselves, and zip around the continent fighting HIV…manually. By punching it to death.

18

“Those people” have been killing each other over religious differences for centuries. They aren’t going to stop in the foreseeable future. Whichever side “wins” this round will kickstart the cycle by “avenging” wrongs inflicted by the losers…who will, in turn, eventually become the winners again, and take their own vengeance. Repeat ad nauseum.

19

If Bob simply used his x-ray vision to identify all the meaningful weapons in the world, and used his heat vision to disarm them all (as I’ve proposed), how exactly would a despot rule?

While such a scenario is certainly possible after Bob disarms all of the world’s weapons per my proposal, it’s hardly a necessary consequence.

Again, I think my scenario dodges this bullet, since there’s nothing to fire bullets with anymore. (Getting rid of all the actual bullets takes even Superman a while longer.) He can simply say, “look, I’ve gotten rid of all the weapons, which means nobody can be a dictator anymore. You’ll have to work things out without them.”

And maybe he could take one small asteroid, put it in orbit between the Earth and the sun, and then crunch it so that it formed a thin asteroid belt that deflected just enough sunlight to reduce mean global temperature by 2 degrees Celsius, and buy us some time to deal with global warming.

He can fix a great deal of our problems without becoming a despot.

20

Then people will use rocks. Supes is also a slacker, remember? He isn’t going to work that hard.

All guns and bullets? What about cops?