Indeed. I’m thinking back to 2002 where someone might say: “As bad as Saddam Hussein is, he isn’t a threat to the US” and someone like Der Trihs coming along and labeling that person pro-Saddam.
Yeah, this is pegging out my industrial strength irony meter…it’s got an alarm on it with a slight Scots accent saying ‘she’ll blow, captain!’ when it gets this high.
I agree with you…we shouldn’t get involved either way. It’s not our fight, and basically when we DO get involved we make big messes. Who’s winning? I’d have to say that the longer Assad manages to stay in power the stronger his position is going to become, and so far he’s managed to hang on longer than some predicted. The big losers are, of course, the Syrian people…I think that, regardless of who wins they are going to lose, and they are certainly paying a large price for it.
Better the devil you know than the one yopu don’t. This has always been the West’s dilemma in dealing with the muslim world-you have a choice between a bad rulers and another bad ruler.
The part that kind of blows my mind about anyone here being called pro-Assad, is that I haven’t heard anyone calling for us to help him. He’s a bastard, I’m sure he knows it himself. That’s why no one is offering help to him. All I’ve seen here so far are people that aren’t sure they want to help arm the folks who are fighting him. Perhaps that’s assisting Assad in the “all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing” sense, but that’s pretty weak to be calling it support.
There are situations where it’s not our fight, but we could get involved and it come out as a net positive for both ourselves and the people we are helping. This isn’t a situation where there is a clear path to that. Sometimes self interest has to rule the day.
Even though our inaction will make our position with the successor government weaker if Assad does fall, there appears to be a good chance that Syria after Assad might look like 20th century Lebanon for awhile. If the most likely outcomes at the moment are either more Assad, or something similar to the Lebanese Civil War; we want nothing to do with this war.
ETA: Nitpick: Sec of Defense, and yeah that makes this interesting in the Chinese proverb sense, huh?
The tragedy is NOT confined to Syria, due in part to the refugee crisis (for example, 20% of the population of Lebanon is now “Syrian refugee without adequate food/water/housing/protection from crime”). Some rebel groups are spreading violence outside Syria’s border too, as you’ve mentioned. It’s a regional issue now.
A fanatic Islamic group is not the one and only option if Assad falls. There are many different flavors of opposition, including peaceful and secular groups – unfortunately we only hear about the most violent/radical ones.
Rather than comparing the Syria crisis to Bush’s debacles, I think we should be comparing it to the Bosnian war, or even Rwanda. The arguments you make above are similar to arguments made by most Americans when Clinton wanted to intervene in Bosnia. He did so, it helped to resolve the crisis, and Eastern Europe is a MUCH better place for it.
We refrained from intervening in Rwanda (like we’re refraining from Syrian now) in part because of an earlier interventionist fiasco in Somalia (as we’re blaming Bush’s fiascos now), with the result being a prolonged humanitarian crisis that we ignored. “Meddling in the internal affairs of other countries” is absolutely something we should do, if the circumstances call for it, because it sometimes does make things better.
Serious question for those with some knowledge of the situation - I know that the Assad family, while they ran an avowedly “secular” regime, drew much support from the Alawite minority that makes up something like 12% of the population and are considered “heretics” by the fundie Sunni Islamic types. Presumably, if the Syrian government falls, the outlook for these people is going to be grim.
Is this part of what makes the conflict there so bitter?
If so, it creates particular problems for US intervention. It would be a major humiliation if the US intervened on behalf of the rebels, only to watch as the rebels engaged in some sort of pogrom against the Alawites.
Good point-if we intervene, we will wind up taking sides-and there are enough sides in Syria to guarantee that we will become “the bad guys”…in about a week.The sunnis hatethe Shia, who hate the Christians, who hate the Alawites, who hate the Druse. Any intervention wopuld cost the US many lives, billions of $$, and any goodwill we have left. STAY OUT!
I saw some indications published that there are plans among the Alawite minority to migrate to the north of the country, consolidate and secede if Assad falls.
You a prophet? In the Middle East, you never know. It may be that he goes down. Or he hangs on, suppresses the rebellion and stays in power until he dies and his son takes over. AFAIK, and I read up a lot on this stuff, Alawites are very solidly behind Assad (the threat of a massacre is a powerful incentive), and since he and his father have been in power for quite a while, a lot of resources, military, financial, and industrial, are concentrated in Alawi hands. So I wouldn’t count them out that quickly.
You can’t do that much damage to that much of a country’s physical and social infrastructure and convert it back to a functional concern. Alawites are too few to do it on their own, in the context they’d be facing.
And the irony of all this is that before independence, there was an Alawite movement wanting an independent Alawite State centred around Lakatia, but this was objected too by their sunni landlords, who promptly manipulated them into supporting Arab nationalist causes.
