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[Anslol]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/26/world/meast/syria-civil-war/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Opinions? Personally, I think America needs to stay the hell away. We have way too much shit to worry about here at home. Shit that needs to take priority over international problems. We are not the world police.

What do you think?

[Steffanie Saissore]

I went with 'no' on the poll...though to be honest, this is a situation that is rather complicated.  Ideally, the UN should be stepping in, but with Russia refusing to budge, I'm not sure what can be done...neither side here is innocent and that is the big stumbling block.

Also, I'm not convinced that the rebels are any better for the area.  Whichever way you look at it, Syria is a bad situation for anyone looking to just go in and attempt to stop the conflict.

[Anslol]

I went with 'no' on the poll...though to be honest, this is a situation that is rather complicated.  Ideally, the UN should be stepping in, but with Russia refusing to budge, I'm not sure what can be done...neither side here is innocent and that is the big stumbling block.

Also, I'm not convinced that the rebels are any better for the area.  Whichever way you look at it, Syria is a bad situation for anyone looking to just go in and attempt to stop the conflict.

Bingo. So why should we? Why is it our job? There is no right or wrong side here, like you said. It's just bad. All bad. We should stay faaaar away from this crap and tend to our own house....even though United Tech just signed a $1 billion deal with the Pentagon to make 39 more F-35 engines (Batch #6)....

[Silas Vitalia]

The 100,000 or so exploded into pieces and gassed to death civilians.... men, women, children, and babies, are certainly excited we might stick this one out.

When Russia and Iran oppose an international action, it can generally be assumed we should probably be doing the opposite of what they want.


And the UN is such a ridiculous joke at this point.

[Silas Vitalia]

What i find tragically hilarious about this awful, awful thing is that up until now the killing of thousand and thousands and thousands of people is barely a blip on our radar, until they change the format of the killing.

Exploding 100,000 people with bullets, bombs, etc? Super fine! Have at it!

Kill a few hundred with a 'bad' weapon? AWW HELL NAWW

[Stitcher]

The existence of such a thing as a UN security council veto defeats the purpose of that council even existing. It is literally the most counter-productive thing they could possibly have. The fact that five nations have said veto, one of which is fucking RUSSIA, means that I lack the imagination to produce a descriptive hyperbole for how stupid that is which wouldn't be an understatement.

How the fuck hard is it to just have a "simple majority" rule?

[Silas Vitalia]

The existence of such a thing as a UN security council veto defeats the purpose of that council even existing. It is literally the most counter-productive thing they could possibly have. The fact that five nations have said veto, one of which is fucking RUSSIA, means that I lack the imagination to produce a descriptive hyperbole for how stupid that is which wouldn't be an understatement.

How the fuck hard is it to just have a "simple majority" rule?

So much this.

I find the entire organization loses any and all credibility when permanent and other members can openly support all sorts of awful things and stop corrective actions.  the US has been on the wrong side of this a few times, but I'll throw up the lovely entire bloc of shit-head countries that continue to do things like support Assad or similar against that record any day. 

[Louella Dougans]

which of the xenophobic, theocratic, cannibal, groups is proposed to be the replacement for Assad ?

"Do Something in Syria!". but what? All the options are terrible!

[Silas Vitalia]

which of the xenophobic, theocratic, cannibal, groups is proposed to be the replacement for Assad ?

"Do Something in Syria!". but what? All the options are terrible!

Quite right, extremely problematic and difficult.  Which is ironic because the more secular rebels used to be in control and we could have worked with them much more easily.   


I think it might look something like the US / EU allies doing a no-fly zone and limited airstrikes while supporting local rebel allies like Turkey etc doing more of the on-the-ground assistance.

[Lyn Farel]

Bleh. Conflicts of interest hidden behind noble ideals as always.

[Victoria Stecker]

Pretty much a clusterfuck. There really aren't good options, just varying degrees of terrible. I saw an interesting analysis of Syria's moves and they way they'd used the chemical weapons threat to essentially earn carte blanc to kill people. It went something like this:

They've got chemical weapons, and everyone knows it. About the same time that they're getting a lot of heat for massacring people, they make a statement about securing those weapons against the rebels, never using them against their own people, but possibly against an outside force. So now everyone is talking about the chemical weapons and how it would be a "red line" blah blah blah... meanwhile Syria can keep killing people via conventional weapons and no one will bat an eye.

They also did some clever things like releasing a bunch of islamist terrorists from prison so that they could join and discredit the opposition.

If the international community was going to do anything about Al-Assad, they needed to do it over a year ago, when the opposition was still mostly free of Al Qaeda and associated terrorists. At this point, I'm not sure that any of the options involving outside intervention are actually better than just sitting back and letting it burn for a generation (or three) until they decide to stop killing each other.

[Katrina Oniseki]

Unless there's an international treaty that requires us to step in, you can safely assume I don't support direct military intervention.

[Silas Vitalia]

"Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere." right?

But yea its always awful and complicated. 

Do I want Syrian civilians dying to these assholes? No.  Do I want a bunch of 18 year old Americans over there dying to protect them? Not really, no. 

[Alain Colcer]

which of the xenophobic, theocratic, cannibal, groups is proposed to be the replacement for Assad ?

"Do Something in Syria!". but what? All the options are terrible!

As a foreigner not directly affected by US policy (that is, im not in US soil), the above applies perfectly.

The white hats want to do the "right" thing, the problem is .....its a naive proposition.

[Nmaro Makari]

The point of no return was 1 year ago. It s far too late now. We will do more harm than good. The "tomahawk" option at a pinch would do in the right circumstances. But right now the whole thing is toxic. The best we can do is contain the conflict, provide aid to refugees, track and limit interference by external interests. Not clean, but best solution available.

Also, Lyn, I think more than a single sentence is a fair courtesy to other readers on a topic like this.