[Bobboau]

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-12/arab-league-suspends-syria-shelling-kills-16-people-in-yemen.html

[LHN91]

I always find the comments below these types of articles to be perhaps more interesting than the article itself.

[Dragon]

Well, what I don't get is why these people didn't rebelled like Libyans. This should have started long ago, conditions in a lot of poor Arab countries are horrible and dictators aren't doing anything to change that. Hopefully, Assad meet the same end to Kadaffi.

[Mongoose]

I think the immediate difference with Syria is that its opposition movement didn't have any sort of defined leadership, as the Libyan rebels did.  Word is that the Arab League would like to aid in the development of such a leadership group now, so it'll be interesting to see where things go.

[Bobboau]

well, if they want to pull a Libya they are going to have to take control of a major city, for a week or two at least, and they are going to have to have some sort of replacement government waiting, and they are going to have to convince the west that they will be better than their current leader. on top of all that Assad does not have the baggage Gaddafi had with the west, so it might be a hard sell, especially with Libya forming a sharia based new government and sabre rattling towards Iran.

[stinkyFeet]

Just to put things in perspective, a quick look at wikipedia shows:
Libya had a population of 6.4 million and an army of around 50,000 troops
Syria  has a population of 20 million and an army of around 300,000 troops

The death toll from Libya is probably around 30,000. Nobody wants what happened in Libya to happen in Syria. Well, they may, but, well, excrement impacting ventalation apperatus.

[NGTM-1R]

I think the immediate difference with Syria is that its opposition movement didn't have any sort of defined leadership, as the Libyan rebels did.

Most of the commentary I've seen suggests the barrier to full-scale rebellion is that the Syrian opposition just can't get their hands on any significant quantity of guns to rebel with.

[Bobboau]

so then they need to do what the Libyans did, raid a few military bases.

[Aardwolf]

U.S. President Barack Obama in a statement said the Arab League’s action yesterday shows “the increasing diplomatic isolation of a regime that has systematically violated human rights.”

Now let's see the UN do that to the United States.

[NGTM-1R]

so then they need to do what the Libyans did, raid a few military bases.

The Libyans actually had major units of their army defect. Syria has not.

[Bobboau]

so, like I said, they need to do what Libya did.

[NGTM-1R]

so, like I said, they need to do what Libya did.

How the frak do you raid a military base when the military is in it and hostile and you have no guns?

[Bobboau]

The Libyans actually had major units of their army defect.

do what the Libyans did.

[Scotty]

What they Libyans "did" is get lucky with who within the country would support them.

That's not something you can just "do" to get your revolution started.

[redsniper]

Better to be lucky than good...

[stinkyFeet]

What's happening in Syria, actually the whole middle east, is actually very interesting to me.

I think there are a lot of factors that would make Syria a lot harder of a place to have a revolution. It's not just needing to raid a military base or getting guns. Those are all just symptoms of much more fundamental problems.

The main one I see is that Assad isn't as stupid as Gaddafi was, at least beyond choosing to stay in power in the first place. He's killed lots of people and is torturing more, a selfish person wouldn't want to stand in his way. Also, if the few people who have deserted made a stand against him right now, even with weapons, they would be crushed.

What the opposition does have in it's favor is the obviousness of how evil Assad is, international support, and the rapidly collapsing economy as sanctions take effect. I don't know how these things can be used, though. I think that if the revolution was larger, it would gain the critical mass needed when people think they could succeed.

I think the question is, how can this extremely rare and promising situation be turned to topple Assad. Simply waiting for things to get unbearable for the population is one option. I think I'm overlooking something about how other countries could pressure for change though.

[Luis Dias]

"how other countries...."

Hey, it's called "invasion". Read reference iraq circa 2003.

[MP-Ryan]

A lot of people are missing the significance of the Arab League's actions here.  We're talking about a body that has been historically useless - no meaningful contributions to foreign policy or stability in the region, no recognition of human rights, and complete non-interference on behalf of the citizenry of member states.  All of that has changed in a week, and it's interesting that its Qatar leading the charge.

Fascinating bit of history happening right now.  Economic sanctions are already on the table, negotiation and consultation is in progress with the Syrian opposition, and frankly it looks like they're pissed off enough to actually contemplate use of force against Assad if Syria doesn't stop murdering civilians.

Of course, all of this is against the regional political background, and has a lot to do with the internal politics of Islamic groups - i.e. Shiites vs Sunnis, and their relative distributions.

[achtung]

Qatar is the most progressive country in the league. It's no surprise that they are the ones leading the charge.

Watching Russia push to protect its economic ties with the Assad regime is interesting. I looked at a write up of Russia's investment in Syria, and it is quite large.

[Bobboau]

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-11-17/middleeast/world_meast_syria-unrest_1_local-coordination-committees-idlib-andrew-tabler?_s=PM:MIDDLEEAST

What have we here?