[karajorma]

See, in other words you're basically saying we should arm people who use chemical weapons.

Basically this was a conflict we shouldn't have gotten into in the first place, went about getting into it in a completely ****ed up way when we did, ended up supporting a side who completely hates us and now you're suggesting we bomb both sides as if that won't some how result in an even bigger cluster**** than we've already got.

Every move the west has done in this Syrian conflict has been wrong so far. There comes a time when you've got to learn to stop sticking your dick in the wasps nest.

[docfu]

War is hell.

Any questions?

[Bobboau]

yes, one. is hell profitable?

[BloodEagle]

If you sell air conditioners, Hell yes!

[Bobboau]

oh, and apparently we are after regime change now

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324577304579054973488682120.html

[MP-Ryan]

See, in other words you're basically saying we should arm people who use chemical weapons.

Basically this was a conflict we shouldn't have gotten into in the first place, went about getting into it in a completely ****ed up way when we did, ended up supporting a side who completely hates us and now you're suggesting we bomb both sides as if that won't some how result in an even bigger cluster**** than we've already got.

Every move the west has done in this Syrian conflict has been wrong so far. There comes a time when you've got to learn to stop sticking your dick in the wasps nest.

The whole reason the West got involved in the Syria conflict to begin with is because Assad started turning government troops on civilian protestors.  So unless you favour the Rwandan approach to wholesale slaughter of civilians by government-backed forces, I'm not sure how you think this thing could have gone better without putting a UN-backed force in-country which Russia and China were not about to let happen.

To recap:
-Assad's regime turned military-grade weapons on civilian protestors and rebels alike.
-The rebels, who militarily protected civilian protestors from Assad, were losing badly because Russia continued to arm Assad.
-The UN Security Council was rendered useless.
-The West (NATO), despite being mindful of the consequences, proceeded to arm the rebels.
-Conflict continued; refugees fled away from Damascus and near or into neighboring countries.
-Four chemical weapons attacks over an 8 month period; intel shows use by both rebels and government forces.
-Most recent chemical attack hits Damascus, a mere stone's throw from the border of a neighboring country that just happens to be the one Syria and Iran's governments most hate in the entire region, a sentiment in which they are also joined by the extremist factions among the rebel forces.
-Despite numerous diplomatic overtures and threats, no change in policy or mission of Assad's forces.

So, options:
1.  Do nothing.  Allow wholesale civilian slaughter like Rwanda.  Make it abundantly clear the UN Security Council has failed its mandate, and allow Assad to commit mass murder with impunity.
2.  Invade.  This option dismissed out of hand.
3.  Back rebels so long as Russia backs Assad, despite knowing these are not people we want forming a replacement government.
4.  Keep trying at already-failed diplomacy.  See also option 1.
5*  If chemical weapons attacks occur:
  a.  Do nothing.  Hope for the best.  No consequences for either side.
  b.  Military strikes to deter future attacks.

Appeasement-style diplomacy with an aggressive, determined opponent has never worked.  The "Do nothing" options look very appealing, right up until you expand the consequences.  Granted, doing nothing could lead to nothing more than wholesale slaughter of civilians.  The citizens of most Western democracies have ignored such trivialities in the past, naturally.  The trouble is that the probability of conflict expansion in the short term as the rebel forces get increasingly desperate and it is demonstrated that there are no consequences to chemical weapons use is much higher than with intervention.

I feel like we're going in circles.  It is possible - and utterly pragmatic - to acknowledge the screwups in Western policy historically and still recognize that short-term strikes against the conflicting forces in Syria are the best of the available options we have if we care about civilian death toll and chemical weapons detterrence.  If you can ignore both of those issues as minor matters, then I suppose the best course of action is to do nothing, but I have a great, big, gigantic problem with any democracy that purports to protect human rights and can allow civilian murder and CBRNE weapons use on civilians to go unchecked, which is precisely what doing nothing or further 'diplomacy' does so long as the Russians and Chinese aren't engaged.  And they show no signs of engaging.

[MP-Ryan]

oh, and apparently we are after regime change now

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324577304579054973488682120.html

That certainly wasn't inspiring reading, I'll grant you that.  This is the somewhat-troubling part:

he Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a resolution Wednesday saying a goal of U.S. policy will be to "change the momentum on the battlefield'' in Syria's civil war and speed a negotiated removal of Mr. Assad.

[karajorma]

The whole reason the West got involved in the Syria conflict to begin with is because Assad started turning government troops on civilian protestors.

The whole reason the West got involved in Syria is because we were arrogant enough to think we could carry on the whole Arab Spring thing there. The West has never given enough of a stuff about brown people dying to bother with anything beyond a token protest unless there is something else going on.

[MP-Ryan]

The whole reason the West got involved in the Syria conflict to begin with is because Assad started turning government troops on civilian protestors.

The whole reason the West got involved in Syria is because we were arrogant enough to think we could carry on the whole Arab Spring thing there. The West has never given enough of a stuff about brown people dying to bother with anything beyond a token protest unless there is something else going on.

No, the Arab Spring is what led to the civilian murders.  Without that crucial factor, Western intervention would not have occurred in Syria, just like it didn't occur in Tunisia or [for the most part] Egypt.  Western military intervention to support the Arab Spring movement has only occurred in places where governments have turned their military firepower on the civilian population, as in Libya and Syria.

That was also a great way of avoiding the broader point, which was the contingencies and options available and their likely consequences.  You've done an admirable job of maintaining that no intervention in Syria right now is the correct course without acknowledging the consequences of that position or the reason that staying out was not the original course of action in the first place.  In this last post, you picked out the first line to avoid addressing the rest.

So I am going to pose the question:  are you willing to accept the known price of civilian deaths (documented in 2011 prior to rebel arming) and high probability further chemical weapon use (attacks have ramped up in the last 8 months as stakes have increased and become increasingly likely with added desperation in the rebel faction) that will occur if the West ceases arming the rebels and does not strike into Syria as the price that must be paid by staying out?

I am not.  Hence why I support limited action in Syria.  The Western governments of the world - and the paralyzed UN Security Council - have been complicit in too many mass murders for too long because they basically didn't give a ****, and their populations were too wrapped up in the latest celebrity gossip to pay attention to death tolls in countries they couldn't find on a labelled map.  You're right that the West generally has not historically given a **** about 'brown people dying.'  It's high time that changed, and in a place where the conspiracy-minded can't point to oil politics as the primary motivation.

[Luis Dias]

Are you suggesting Egypt didn't turn its military against its people?

Come on. The only reason Egypt is somehow in a blind spot of western media regarding "interventions" ever since Arab Spring started is because the Egypt military is one of the greatest custumers of USA's weapons industry.

So I am going to pose the question:  are you willing to accept the known price of civilian deaths (documented in 2011 prior to rebel arming) and high probability further chemical weapon use (attacks have ramped up in the last 8 months as stakes have increased and become increasingly likely with added desperation in the rebel faction) that will occur if the West ceases arming the rebels and does not strike into Syria as the price that must be paid by staying out?

This is begging the question. You have no evidence that the intervention will achieve any of those objectives better than doing nothing. Yes, I can see rebels being slaughtered, but at least if the war is ended the civilian casualties end right there. A lot more oppression will probably start, but at least mass killings will end. To say that intervention "will save lives" is probably the most naive argument to intervene I've been exposed to, as it is also a complete unfalsifiable argument.

If anything, the best way to end casualties right now would be to end any support to the rebels, CIA calling the sheiks on Saudi Arabia ordering them to stop the ****, tell any allied rebel to back the **** off and leave the country if they care about their own lives. The US could do this tomorrow and the war would end in a week. This is the most "humanitarian" solution.

But of course the problem is *not* humanitarian. This term, "humanitarian" is just an excuse to wage a proxy war between the US and Saudi Arabia against Assad, Tehran and Russia over the control of the ME.

[MP-Ryan]

Are you suggesting Egypt didn't turn its military against its people?

Come on. The only reason Egypt is somehow in a blind spot of western media regarding "interventions" ever since Arab Spring started is because the Egypt military is one of the greatest custumers of USA's weapons industry.

The Egyptian military did not turn on civilian protestors during the ousting of Mubarak.  In point of fact, it regularly intervened to protect civilian protestors.

The Egyptian military has recently fired on protestors which it claims attacked military forces protecting the areas when Morsi was held.  That claim is shaky.

Regardless, the Egyptian military did not mount a coordinated campaign of attacks on civilian demonstrators like those which occurred in both Libya and Syria.

This is begging the question. You have no evidence that the intervention will achieve any of those objectives better than doing nothing. Yes, I can see rebels being slaughtered, but at least if the war is ended the civilian casualties end right there. A lot more oppression will probably start, but at least mass killings will end. To say that intervention "will save lives" is probably the most naive argument to intervene I've been exposed to, as it is also a complete unfalsifiable argument.

If anything, the best way to end casualties right now would be to end any support to the rebels, CIA calling the sheiks on Saudi Arabia ordering them to stop the ****, tell any allied rebel to back the **** off and leave the country if they care about their own lives. The US could do this tomorrow and the war would end in a week. This is the most "humanitarian" solution.

But of course the problem is *not* humanitarian. This term, "humanitarian" is just an excuse to wage a proxy war between the US and Saudi Arabia against Assad, Tehran and Russia over the control of the ME.

The known consequence of ceasing support, not intervening, and not punishing chemical weapons use is the destruction of the rebel forces by Assad, and the killing of any civilian protestors still seeking regime change.  That's what started in 2011, and Assad's policy has not shifted and has if anything hardened.  Stop support today and there will be thousands of addition casualties, the majority of them civilians.

The precise consequences of intervention are unknown.  Intervention should be - and is being - designed to minimize loss of life and maximize the effect on both sides willingness to use chemical weapons and attack civilians.

Given the choice between known mass slaughter and intervention designed to mitigate it without precisely-known consequences, I will pick intervention every. single. time.  I refuse to believe - based on military and geopolitical history in the twentieth century - that sitting back and allowing the mass murder of civilians and rebel forces alike, with the added bonus of increasing liklihood of further chemical weapons attacks, is the best or most desirable option we have at our disposal.  Too many lessons from the last hundred years are available to us to consider doing nothing as a viable option.  I'm not that surprised that the cynicism level among the general populace who aren't deeply interested in history and instead use Iraq/Afghanistan as their broken barometer supports doing nothing, but I'm a little surprised that you and kara, educated as you are, fall in among them.

[Lorric]

Military intervention scares me. It feels like a gamble. It could make the situation better or a lot worse.

[MP-Ryan]

Military intervention scares me. It feels like a gamble. It could make the situation better or a lot worse.

There is nothing quite like posting a series of fairly sophisticated summaries that analyze a complex situation and getting a one-line opinion supported by absolutely nothing in response.  This is not helpful in the discussion.

The gamble here is between a known severe consequence, and an unknown consequence that may or may not be severe.  To put this in very simple terms:

You see a bus driving straight for you, unable to swerve.  If you continue to do what you're currently doing, you will be hit and severely injured by the bus.  If you jump out of the way, you might get hit by another car going much faster and killed.  You might just bump into another person.  You might fall off the road, down a bank, and break most of the bones in your body.  Or you might just get out of the way of the bus.  You don't know.  What you do know is that the consequences of changing the situation are probably going to be much less dire than just standing there and getting run over by the bus.

Syria is the bus.  The West is you.  Russia and China are taking turns giving the bus driver directions.  The car is the law of unintended consequences. (and yes, this is not a perfect analogy).

[Luis Dias]

The known consequence of ceasing support, not intervening, and not punishing chemical weapons use is the destruction of the rebel forces by Assad, and the killing of any civilian protestors still seeking regime change.  That's what started in 2011, and Assad's policy has not shifted and has if anything hardened.  Stop support today and there will be thousands of addition casualties, the majority of them civilians.

Yes, but there won't be further 100.000 casualties.

I am increasingly of the opinion that this war should end as fast as possible. And the fastest way we can achieve this is to stop arming the rebels and take all the anti-Assad mercenaries out of there. The second fastest way is to burn Assad to the ground. But this will only achieve the end of a war to start another one, between the muslim brothers and the rest of the nations (as if it's this simple! It's obviously not, since there are too many heterogeneous groups), pushing this country to an even worse mud than it is now.

The third one is the one which is being prepared now. A slow burn of Assad. It's the solution that will bring more and more suffering to everyone.

The precise consequences of intervention are unknown.  Intervention should be - and is being - designed to minimize loss of life and maximize the effect on both sides willingness to use chemical weapons and attack civilians.

Doesn't matter. One child dead, that's the one who will be shown to the TV cameras as proof that the US is the devil incarnate. As if either side of the conflict didn't hate the US already. They do. They always did. Syria's past history is not without US interference. And somehow there are still people who really believe that this intervention will be regarded by some Syrians as "humanitarian intervention"?

Pure bollocks. Anyone who is in hell for that long has left those kinds of ideological naivetés a long long time ago. They know it's about oil. They know it's about the control of the ME.


The *ONLY* acceptable argument in my eyes about any kind of intervention in Syria is the maintenance of the Chemical Weapons Taboo. And for this, every side should be "punished". By this I mean the US or NATO or whatever should drop the humanitarian bull**** speech and just with the utmost cruel pragmatism ever just state "We will not allow this taboo to be so easily broken, we will destroy this production of CW for the sake of our defense. We cannot allow crazy dictators thinking this is a good idea, we cannot allow random mercenaries having access to this technology", Then bomb the hell out of every single military building suspect of creating or harboring these weapons, bomb every single rebel cell that is suspect of carrying these bombs. Did we kill some cell that hadn't? Tough luck, we have to be sure.


I rather have this kind of cruel pragmatism, the same kind of pragmatism that launched the bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima than all the disgusting blablablas about "humanitarian" reasons for Syria that the US is now propagandizing.

  I refuse to believe - based on military and geopolitical history in the twentieth century - that sitting back and allowing the mass murder of civilians and rebel forces alike, with the added bonus of increasing liklihood of further chemical weapons attacks, is the best or most desirable option we have at our disposal.

The real problem is that we haven't done "nothing". Had we done so, Syria would have been what Iran was some years ago. A sad sad situation but nowhere ****ing near the ****stain that it is now. Instead, the CIA backed Saudi Arabia to get weapons into Syria's rebel factions, Al Quaeda, etc., prolonging the suffering and escalating the madness. And you know, I am not against that kind of backstabbing and cover ops by fiat, but if you are willing to start the bloodshed that we now see there at least they should have taken ****ing responsibility before it was too damn late, as it now appears.

Too many lessons from the last hundred years are available to us to consider doing nothing as a viable option.  I'm not that surprised that the cynicism level among the general populace who aren't deeply interested in history and instead use Iraq/Afghanistan as their broken barometer supports doing nothing, but I'm a little surprised that you and kara, educated as you are, fall in among them.

Well, count me among whomever group you feel inclined to. However, if you think I'll accept gladly a situation where a party (the US) fuels the conflict and the bloodshed till its boiling point and then proclaim "there's nothing we can do but intervene, just look at them going! We have to go, it's the only human thing to do!", then think again. I'm not buying that ****, nor should you either.

[Lorric]

Ryan, I am not informed enough to jump into this discussion with you and the rest, but I am interested and have been watching from the sidelines.

I can't give you what you want. I just wanted to post how it makes me feel. Think of me as somewhere inbetween the man on the street who either doesn't care or doesn't have the time or understanding to look at the situation and you who both cares and has a good understanding of all the things at play. You've seen before that I don't understand international politics very well.

I guess I kind of hoped you'd make me feel better about the whole thing since you're pushing for military intervention, and military intervention looks to be around the corner, and I know that Iraq and Afghanistan are not the best of comparisons, but to me, they show a high level of incompetance, and I see nothing to give me any hope that incompetance won't be repeated and we won't end up with another nation with the blood of tens of thousands on the West's hands that hates our guts and another breeding ground for terrorists. And that's before we consider what these other big players in the game might do.

Heh. Yes, I was going to have things to say about the analogy.

[MP-Ryan]

Yes, but there won't be further 100.000 casualties.

How many further civilian deaths is too many?  100,000?  10,000?  1,000?  100?  10?  Just 1?

The known number of civilian deaths from non-intervention (and worse, cessation of support) is always higher than the possible number of civilian casualties by maintaining rebel support and intervening.

I am increasingly of the opinion that this war should end as fast as possible. And the fastest way we can achieve this is to stop arming the rebels and take all the anti-Assad mercenaries out of there. The second fastest way is to burn Assad to the ground. But this will only achieve the end of a war to start another one, between the muslim brothers and the rest of the nations (as if it's this simple! It's obviously not, since there are too many heterogeneous groups), pushing this country to an even worse mud than it is now.

The third one is the one which is being prepared now. A slow burn of Assad. It's the solution that will bring more and more suffering to everyone.

OK, so to stop the war we let the Syrian government commit mass murder.  Sounds reasonable.  Except Rwanda and Sbrenica established precedent that it isn't actually reasonable at all.  Nevermind those pesky Geneva Conventions.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if the UN could actually take measures to address its core mission?

Doesn't matter. One child dead, that's the one who will be shown to the TV cameras as proof that the US is the devil incarnate. As if either side of the conflict didn't hate the US already. They do. They always did. Syria's past history is not without US interference. And somehow there are still people who really believe that this intervention will be regarded by some Syrians as "humanitarian intervention"?

Pure bollocks. Anyone who is in hell for that long has left those kinds of ideological naivetés a long long time ago. They know it's about oil. They know it's about the control of the ME.

Doesn't matter.  The objective is not to be liked, the objective is to prevent mass civilian deaths and prevent further chemical weapons use.

The *ONLY* acceptable argument in my eyes about any kind of intervention in Syria is the maintenance of the Chemical Weapons Taboo. And for this, every side should be "punished". By this I mean the US or NATO or whatever should drop the humanitarian bull**** speech and just with the utmost cruel pragmatism ever just state "We will not allow this taboo to be so easily broken, we will destroy this production of CW for the sake of our defense. We cannot allow crazy dictators thinking this is a good idea, we cannot allow random mercenaries having access to this technology", Then bomb the hell out of every single military building suspect of creating or harboring these weapons, bomb every single rebel cell that is suspect of carrying these bombs. Did we kill some cell that hadn't? Tough luck, we have to be sure.

I rather have this kind of cruel pragmatism, the same kind of pragmatism that launched the bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima than all the disgusting blablablas about "humanitarian" reasons for Syria that the US is now propagandizing.

Finally we agree.  I've been saying exactly this for a number of pages now.

The real problem is that we haven't done "nothing". Had we done so, Syria would have been what Iran was some years ago. A sad sad situation but nowhere ****ing near the ****stain that it is now. Instead, the CIA backed Saudi Arabia to get weapons into Syria's rebel factions, Al Quaeda, etc., prolonging the suffering and escalating the madness. And you know, I am not against that kind of backstabbing and cover ops by fiat, but if you are willing to start the bloodshed that we now see there at least they should have taken ****ing responsibility before it was too damn late, as it now appears.

Well, count me among whomever group you feel inclined to. However, if you think I'll accept gladly a situation where a party (the US) fuels the conflict and the bloodshed till its boiling point and then proclaim "there's nothing we can do but intervene, just look at them going! We have to go, it's the only human thing to do!", then think again. I'm not buying that ****, nor should you either.

Principles about "who started it" are great until CBRNE weapons start flying and civilians start dying much more rapidly.  At that point pragmatism has to win out.  I don't absolve the historical mess in Syria - I'm saying that what's happening now is not something that can be safely ignored due to what happened in the past.

I guess I kind of hoped you'd make me feel better about the whole thing since you're pushing for military intervention, and military intervention looks to be around the corner, and I know that Iraq and Afghanistan are not the best of comparisons, but to me, they show a high level of incompetance, and I see nothing to give me any hope that incompetance won't be repeated and we won't end up with another nation with the blood of tens of thousands on the West's hands that hates our guts and another breeding ground for terrorists. And that's before we consider what these other big players in the game might do.

Accept right now that whatever the West does in Syria, at the end of the conflict Syria will NOT have a government friendly to Western interests and Syrians in power will likely continue to hate Western countries.  The West doesn't win anything by intervening.  Nobody knows this better than every political leader in NATO, Obama being chief among them.  Western democracies will never be publicly perceived as doing the "right thing" in Syria as far as international opinion goes, nevermind the opinions of a majority of their citizens.

That is not an excuse to sit back and watch mass murder and chemical weapons deployment.

The intelligence and security establishments in NATO countries are being paid to make it abundantly clear to their political masters how potentially bad the situation in Syria is right now.  That is why Obama wants to act.  That is why the French want to act.  That is why David Cameron wanted to act.  That is why the Canadian PM is pledging support of the American effort (as Canada doesn't have the correct type of military assets for this type of action).  That is also why the Senate FRC in the US has authorized action.  Furthermore, it's why the political bodies - who do not receive these briefings - do not support action.  If every British MP received the same information Cameron does, Britain would be right behind the Americans, French, and Canadians on this issue.  They don't.  Most of them know very, very little about what is going on in Syria today. (On a related note, holy **** am I tired of countries selecting uneducated common-elected morons to set their foreign policy.  It's not much better than foreign-policy by referendum).

Chemical weapons use cannot be allowed to go unpunished, chemical weapons use on civilians doubly-so.  The consequences of allowing it to go on unchecked do not bear thinking about.

[Luis Dias]

Yes, but there won't be further 100.000 casualties.

How many further civilian deaths is too many?  100,000?  10,000?  1,000?  100?  10?  Just 1?

The known number of civilian deaths from non-intervention (and worse, cessation of support) is always higher than the possible number of civilian casualties by maintaining rebel support and intervening.

You don't know this, and I can ask the same rethorical question back and we are in the same spot. With an unanswerable question. Unless of course what is on the table is a full scale war to the end. I don't think this was on the table.

OK, so to stop the war we let the Syrian government commit mass murder.  Sounds reasonable.  Except Rwanda and Sbrenica established precedent that it isn't actually reasonable at all.  Nevermind those pesky Geneva Conventions.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if the UN could actually take measures to address its core mission?

Hmpf. I don't think this solution is possible anymore. What I *do* think is that if Assad wasn't fought by US armed rebels and thus the escalation wouldn't happen, then such mass murders wouldn't have happened as well. All comparisons with the Sbrenica and Rwanda massacres are also *yet* unjustified. From the legal standpoint, it is clear that the rebels engaged in a war against its government, they should not expect from it flowers and roses.

Finally we agree.  I've been saying exactly this for a number of pages now.

Ok, I want to jump at this so we at least divide what unites us from what separates us. I think the taboo on the CWs requires a response of some kind, a strong response. Here we agree. Where we probably disagree is in what response it should be, since it is not so clear that Assad is the one to blame here.

Now where we really disagree is with the notion that we should do this from the "humanitarian" standpoint. I think that cat's long out of the bag now. To still pretend we have any remnant of humanitarian interest in that hellhole would be an exercise of hypocrisy from the western powers that I couldn't suffer too much without vomiting. Even if the call is pragmatic and not ideological (OK, they might not love us, but we will still do what's best for them, even if they don't).

The intelligence and security establishments in NATO countries are being paid to make it abundantly clear to their political masters how potentially bad the situation in Syria is right now.  That is why Obama wants to act.  That is why the French want to act.  That is why David Cameron wanted to act.  That is why the Canadian PM is pledging support of the American effort (as Canada doesn't have the correct type of military assets for this type of action).  That is also why the Senate FRC in the US has authorized action.  Furthermore, it's why the political bodies - who do not receive these briefings - do not support action.  If every British MP received the same information Cameron does, Britain would be right behind the Americans, French, and Canadians on this issue.  They don't.  Most of them know very, very little about what is going on in Syria today. (On a related note, holy **** am I tired of countries selecting uneducated common-elected morons to set their foreign policy.  It's not much better than foreign-policy by referendum).

You speak as if embebbed with an omniscient outlook on why anyone here is doing what they are doing or not doing. I am not so sure of many things here, including the trust I should have about the intelligence these people have regarding what is the dangers on the ME. These are the same assholes that didn't bat an eye before requesting Saudi Arabia to help the rebels in Syria, knowing damn well that much of that help involved bringing in Al-Quaeda into the fold.

[karajorma]

The known number of civilian deaths from non-intervention (and worse, cessation of support) is always higher than the possible number of civilian casualties by maintaining rebel support and intervening.

I think this line highlights the difference in our opinions. There is no way you can know this. In fact I'll go so far as to say you're flat out wrong about it. Had the West not intervened in 2011 this situation would be over already and the casualty figures would have been lower.

But let's say that the West does intervene? How is that going to make the situation in Syria any better?

1) Let's say we do a limited number of target strikes on sites we know have chemical weapons. This is what I suspect the UK wanted to do (and maybe the US too). Assad's military would be largely undamaged, the rebels military would be largely undamaged, the war would go on exactly as it did before the use of chemical weapons. So basically very little difference in the civilian casualties. This is why I posted that Oatmeal cartoon. People get upset about the use of chemical weapons but once they are only using conventional weapons, no one gives a ****.

2) We do what Luis posted. We take out every site that might have chemical weapons. Now either we get the same as scenario 1), we damage Assad sufficiently that he slowly loses power (meaning a prolonged war with lots of civilian casualties but one he is certain to ultimately lose) or we go too far and cripple Assad (he has a larger military and therefore more to bomb) and we hand the rebels and easy victory. The last one is the only one that immediately stops the killing of civilians by Assad's forces. But as we all know, that's not going to be the end of it. Either we end up with very hardline Muslims in charge, determined to turn Syria into another Taliban era Afghanistan, or we end up with a civil war.

So let me ask a question. You're backing military intervention, but what is your endgame? Paint me a scenario where this doesn't end up with the Syrian people in a worse situation than they currently are in.

What the West should have done was leave the **** alone. But if you want to talk about pragmatism, here's the pragmatic solution. You say "Assad has used chemical weapons, the rebels have used chemical weapons, that's a wash." And you make a clear threat that the next side to use them is the one that gets wiped out. It's not humanitarian, but nothing the West has been doing has been humanitarian. It's exactly the same effect as taking out a limited number of CW sites, but without the chance of ****ing it up.

[Lorric]

Ryan, thanks for the answer.

So I guess when this is over no matter what happens, a whole lot more people are going to think we're scum than did before. I imagine it will also be harder to get support for another war, whatever the reason behind it.
So what response are you advocating? Go in, smash both sides and get out? Peacekeeper operations? Or both? And any of these still don't end the conflict, though I suppose they might reduce it's intensity, is that what you want? I've never been able to tell what you want the end result to be, we can't have a favourable regime, so what do you want? Assad? rebels? Third party X?

I am puzzled by your faith in the people in charge to handle this with any competancy. With the spectacular failure of Iraq (yeah we're going there again, but it's the same people in charge) the intelligence agancies who made the colossal phantom WMD blunder, and the mess that was made of the invasion. And this will be another make-it-up-as-you-go-along campaign. Where does your faith come from?

[JCDNWarrior]

The entire situation with Syria has absolutely nothing to do with humanitarian means, the USA and UN don't give a **** about Syrians or anyone else for that matter nor lose sleep over the destabilization and destruction of another sovereign nation and I'm honestly surprised any supporter of intervention can still play pretend to have the moral high ground in such a matter. The USA has no legal basis for intervention nor even any shred of presentable evidence regarding this sham of a 'red line' being crossed by CW use by the Syrians, not that it matters in the least in regards to wanting boots on the ground.

Intervention will mean many more deaths, many more civilians displaced, many more homes destroyed, many more communities fractured, many more ancient churches, synagogues and mosques destroyed, many more artifacts of history destroyed or lost (Remember Baghdad? As a fan of history that's something that annoys me greatly) and all of this potentially leads to greater social and religious conflict across the world in the future as fallout from the war in Syria, not to mention huge damages to the entire world economy, not to mention the bigger elephant in the room: world war 3.

That's as simple as I can put it without going into rant/essay mode, I've already spent way too much time trying to be completely politically correct and self-censoring myself regarding this topic. Take it or leave it, I've said my words on the topic.