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Exactly. We should have learned this by what's happened with Iraq and Egypt.
Or go back and look at Iran, the liberals wanted the Shah taken out and he was and freedom ended there.
The last thing anyone should gullibly believe is that these countries have anything like a real group pushing for democracy. They are Muslims, they do not believe in freedom of speech, freedom of religion, or any kind of freedom, it's one dictator being replaced by a worse dictator.
Shah was taken out by Iranians, not by those evil American liberals, and there was no freedom under Shah, or after him.
The people of Syria stand by their gov't and Assad, the rebels are foreigners sent in to destabilize this country, and institute regime change.
I belong to some 30 political forums, and every one of them has a poster spouting this garbage. Explain how "the people of syria stand by assad" when almost two million of them left the country into refugee camps, the ruling mafia gang has robbed the country blind, and over 70% of the country is not alawite.
The sunni conscripts in the army are not trusted by the regime and are held in the barracks without their weapons, and because they won't fight for assad two brigades of imported hezbollah thugs had to be brought in to fight the rebels, even with air superiority, heavy weapons like tanks, near infinite re-supply of material from russia and iran and they still can't put down this rebellion after almost 3 years.
Sorry, but spewing nonsense from a soapbox making ludicrous claims does not make them any more true than if you passed it like gas from your bum.
Shah was taken out by Iranians, not by those evil American liberals, and there was no freedom under Shah, or after him.
Uh, not quite. Life under the shah, as long as you did not seek political power, was relatively benign compared to the horrorshow it has been under the current islamic fascist disaster.
Uh, not quite. Life under the shah, as long as you did not seek political power, was relatively benign compared to the horrorshow it has been under the current islamic fascist disaster.
The Iranians saw him as a corrupt, greedy and brutal dictator, and overthrew him.
"it's not our problem" or "we shouldn't fight someone else's wars"
Sounds like fine advice to me. Indeed, it's not our problem unless we kick the beehive and make it our problem, at which point these things have a tendency to become bigger problems than we had anticipated.
Perhaps you remember our intervention in Lebanon in from August 1982 to February 1984. Perhaps it was well-intended (some dispute that), but what, if anything, did it solve in Lebanon itself? We lost 265 soldiers there, shelled some hostile factions, and then left. Lebanon was at war before we were there, and Lebanon was at war afterwards. France lost 89 soldiers; they made just as little difference as we did. Even Israel - which borders Lebanon - decided it wasn't doing much good to take and hold Lebanese land. They lost 657 soldiers in a year before finally deciding to secure their frontier and take a quieter approach inside of Lebanon itself.
That's what tends to happen in complex, multi-factional civil wars. Syria is currently undergoing that type of war. It's not a matter of Assad's military up against a united rebel coalition - it's the military and local militias against a bunch of different rebel factions, some of which fight each other just as much as they fight the Assad-linked forces. If you think the US can neatly solve that cataclysm, I'm afraid you should look back at the history of similar wars.
Just look at Syria's neighbor Iraq - America intervened there en masse for nine years. And what is Iraq's current condition? Why, it's back on the verge of a civil war:
More than 215 people have been killed in five days of bloody violence that began with clashes between security forces and protesters in the north on Tuesday and have sent tensions soaring.
Would the fall of Assad suddenly erase all of Syria's ethno-sectarian divisions? If Assad falls, does that mean there are no more Alawites, no more Christians, no more Druze, no more Kurds, no more Shia? Everyone will just happily accept the leadership of the heavily-Sunni rebels, assuming that the rebels can apportion the leadership amongst themselves in the first place without their own internal civil war?
How likely do you really think that would be? Because that's what the US would face if it tried to "intervene" in Syria.
Sounds like fine advice to me. Indeed, it's not our problem unless we kick the beehive and make it our problem, at which point these things have a tendency to become bigger problems than we had anticipated.
It's actually terrible advice, and every time america tried to put its head in the sand for an extended period of isolation, it led to worse problems (world wars I and II, for example) down the road. If the US just pulls back from the mideast and asia, and allows a hegemonistic, imperialist iran and china to start waging war and gobbling up their smaller neighbors, we'll have a far worse problem than you can imagine in a few years.
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Perhaps you remember our intervention in Lebanon in from August 1982 to February 1984. Perhaps it was well-intended (some dispute that), but what, if anything, did it solve in Lebanon itself? We lost 265 soldiers there, shelled some hostile factions, and then left. Lebanon was at war before we were there, and Lebanon was at war afterwards. France lost 89 soldiers; they made just as little difference as we did. Even Israel - which borders Lebanon - decided it wasn't doing much good to take and hold Lebanese land. They lost 657 soldiers in a year before finally deciding to secure their frontier and take a quieter approach inside of Lebanon itself.
You're bringing this up strengthens my case nicely. Had Reagan not cut and ran, and hammered both iran and hezbollah for these terrorist attacks, many analysts believe that the US would have not faced the volume of terrorism it did through the 80s and 90s leading up to 9/11. By giving the impression that if you use a terrorist attack and bloody the US' nose a little, since they are cowards they will run from the fight - exactly what Reagan in 82 and Clinton in 98 did. It's also why it was so important for Bush II to go into Afghanistan to wipe out the Taliban/al qaeda there, to show the islamic filth terrorists that the US deterrent needs to be respected again. The Russians have it right - crush the terrorists and deal with them and their supporters as harshly as possible, and the terrorism will stop.
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That's what tends to happen in complex, multi-factional civil wars. Syria is currently undergoing that type of war. It's not a matter of Assad's military up against a united rebel coalition - it's the military and local militias against a bunch of different rebel factions, some of which fight each other just as much as they fight the Assad-linked forces. If you think the US can neatly solve that cataclysm, I'm afraid you should look back at the history of similar wars. Would the fall of Assad suddenly erase all of Syria's ethno-sectarian divisions? If Assad falls, does that mean there are no more Alawites, no more Christians, no more Druze, no more Kurds, no more Shia? Everyone will just happily accept the leadership of the heavily-Sunni rebels, assuming that the rebels can apportion the leadership amongst themselves in the first place without their own internal civil war?
Anything that keeps assad in power is bad, and if this war leads to a breakup of the country along sectarian lines, as it likely will in iraq (makes me sick to actually publicly agree with Biden, but even a broken clock is right twice a day), then that's fine. Lots of small regional states of homogenous populations are less of a threat to other actors in the region. Each group will enjoy something rarely found in arab muslim-majority nations, self-rule, sovereignty and self-determination.
So I guess to the far left, international law and treaties mean nothing - the rules/laws are just whatever they feel is applicable
But if you are going to complain about the use of something as relatively harmless as white phosphorous, are you complaining about the far more dangerous illegal iranian nuclear weapons program?
Funny how so many of the same far leftists rail against the US for using them - but want to give a pass to the iranians for their program.
Apparently, it is not a principled stand against WMD - it's whatever is anti-Western / anti-American / anti-Israel that be screamed about, even if the hilarious inconsistencies are obvious to all.
I belong to some 30 political forums, and every one of them has a poster spouting this garbage. Explain how "the people of syria stand by assad" when almost two million of them left the country into refugee camps, the ruling mafia gang has robbed the country blind, and over 70% of the country is not alawite.
The sunni conscripts in the army are not trusted by the regime and are held in the barracks without their weapons, and because they won't fight for assad two brigades of imported hezbollah thugs had to be brought in to fight the rebels, even with air superiority, heavy weapons like tanks, near infinite re-supply of material from russia and iran and they still can't put down this rebellion after almost 3 years.
Sorry, but spewing nonsense from a soapbox making ludicrous claims does not make them any more true than if you passed it like gas from your bum.
You are posting the propoganda. The Syrian people are escaping the murderous foreign rebels that we are supplying to take over this country. They aren't winning, so that is why our gov't is getting more vocal about intervening. The Syrian gov't win is a win for the people of that country. Assad was willing to negotiate a peaceful resolution, but that is not acceptable to us. We want control.
It's actually terrible advice, and every time america tried to put its head in the sand for an extended period of isolation, it led to worse problems (world wars I and II, for example)
Aside from the pointlessness of the WWI intervention, Syria is simply not comparable to a global-scale war involving the world's biggest economies. Not even close. If the US were to get involved, it would be a "war of choice." And we've seen where those can lead.
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Had Reagan not cut and ran, and hammered both iran and hezbollah for these terrorist attacks, many analysts believe that the US would have not faced the volume of terrorism it did through the 80s and 90s leading up to 9/11.
You may, indeed, believe that. I certainly do not. This is like arguing that you should stop a blender by jamming your fist in there until the bones choke up the motor. Hey, I guess it might even "work" if you try hard enough...
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The Russians have it right - crush the terrorists and deal with them and their supporters as harshly as possible, and the terrorism will stop.
And you want to do that by ousting Assad's secular-leaning regime and replacing it with a motley faction of rebels and religious extremists?
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Lots of small regional states of homogenous populations are less of a threat to other actors in the region.
If Lebanon or Afghanistan are guides, you don't simply get a neat separation of statelets; you get more civil war. You'd also have to think of the secondary effects, such as a "liberated" eastern Syria providing a large base of operations for militants to assault the Shia-led government of Iraq, thus setting off a regional war rather than just a civil war. This has already happened to some extent.
No thanks. You seem really enthusiastic about plunging into a gruesome multifactional civil war, but still haven't answered the key questions - to what end? Why? To whose benefit?
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