" I want to enable them to choose themselves, as Egypt has done, or Tunisia. That is what I want. My arguments before may have made this stance cloudy, but I want them to be able to choose their government. If they want Islamic extremists, let them vote in Islamic extremists for all I care"

And bourgeois elections with competing millionaires is how people can voice their opinions, right? Nevermind that the pro-Assad rallies dwarf anything the opposition can cobble together with CIA money.

"One side is not at fault there, as in most cases. I never like putting the blame on one party"

But your whole argument is that early intervention prevents civil war. It's clearly the case that interventions *cause* civil war. Had it not been the CIA training & funding Islamists in Libya, there would have been no crisis in Libya. Ditto the whole of the Middle East.

"I think the argument that because America has done bad things in the past it shouldn't try and do good things in the future is a ridiculous one. I have no idea why it keeps being brought up."

How many more times must the interventionists use the "but this time it's different" line on us, when the pattern keeps repeating itself over and over again? How many times must we fall for these faux humanitarian crocodile tears when we know for a fact that you humanitarians are why we have these crises to begin with?

Sigh.
Robots should rule the world. At least they can be trusted to be rational.

"Long live Assad. Long livSyria! Down with Al Qaeda. Down with US imperialism!

Libya was an African paradise before your Al Qaeda friends swept to power. But you've never met an intervention you didn't like."

Lol this guy is drunk.


Anyway, there is a distinction that need to be made in this debate.

A) What people are saying SHOULD be done
B) What people are saying can/will be done

(A) is for the UN to authorize a peacekeeping force.
(B) is for to the Arab League to authorize some military muscles such as NATO to get in there - shakier legal ground but still something. Though this is still unlikely.

Even more likely and even more pragmatic and possible is arming the rebels, lesser of evils though that is.

"and possible is arming the rebels, lesser of evils though that is."

I wish I could say you were drunk. No, I guess that's you visit African countries, scouting them for bombings.

*and scouting Islamist rebels whom you want to arm and unleash on civilian populations.

Like I said, lesser of evils. I'm no fan of pouring guns into anywhere. But if no one will fight killers like Assad's goons except some poorly armed resistors, then we should at least allow them to die for their freedom.

And stop whining about Islamists. People are so fucking scared of anything with the word "Islam" in it. Be they Islamists, be they racist, nothing excuses what Assad's men are doing to them, and that is why the principle goal would be to counter-attack him.

If no one will pony up the cajones to keep the peace, then the war needs to be won to put an end to it.

The very last option, just so you don't doubt my sincerity, short of arming the rebels, would be to suppress the rebels to bring peace back to the country, but that is a very shitty option for a lot of reasons, shittier, yes, than the already-shitty option of handing out guns to the rebels.

"Assad's goons except some poorly armed resistors"

"Poorly armed". I love how suicide bombers and armed thugs are "poorly armed resistors" but a government defending itself from foreign intervention is full of "goons". "Goons" that the overwhelming majority of the population supports. The Free Syrian Army is just a bunch of Salafist putschists who are using their shiny new weapons and western funding to bring themselves to power to destroy religious and ethnic minorities in the country.

" People are so fucking scared of anything with the word "Islam" in it. Be they Islamists, be they racist, nothing excuses what Assad's men are doing to them"

Nothing excuses the rebel thugs doing what they are doing, including Assad not being an example of Swiss democracy. And the rebels being Islamists matters, considering the current government is a secular, progressive regime and its replacement aims to a fundamentalist shithole. Why you, a supposed progressive, is willing to glibly look away when rebels want to turn social policy for women and minorities back 100 years is beyond me.

intervening would be the worst thing ever.

1 reason: Russia
Russia has veto'd every single UN sanction against Syria
Russia has moved 2 carriers into a Syrian port
Russia has more soldiers in Syria then any other country outside the old soviet union.
Russia has threatened war at anyone who wants to intervene in Syria

Given that the country with the 3rd largest army and largest nuclear stockpile is demanding we don't intervene, I think its in our best interest to listen

You all have gone off on different tangents. I'm not talking about economic equality or anything like that. I'm talking about lives and wars. That is what Syria is about. I'm trying to, in short, explain structural realism IR theory to you all. In particular, offensive realism (which just means that I'm a pessimist about humanity, that's all). Mearsheimer and Wohlforth are two authors on the subject to help you learn more.

One of the many points they theorize is that wars between great powers and wars between states in general are less frequent in a unipolar system. A single global hegemon does this by getting rid of the anarchy that pervades the international system. To do this, a global hegemon must have some line that states should not cross and keep them in order. To me, that line should be declaring war on another country, not listening to the wishes of its citizens (a la Ivory Coast last year) or massacring its own citizens. We haven't acted in all of these situations, but we have acted enough. I bet you all don't know we prevented a fucking war between India and Pakistan after the Mumbai attacks. I only know because my professor is a military adviser over in Afghanistan and graduated from the National Defense Intelligence College. They were about to initiate a pre-planned operation and had already mobilized their units. So given that knowledge, how many other conflicts have been avoided due to U.S. (or more appropriately, NATO) influence? There were the Taiwan Straights incident in 1995 I think that prevented a war between Taiwan and China, the Balkans in a (messy) attempt to stop a war.

So maybe applying the theory isn't as clean-cut as I'd like, but there needs to be someone to whom heads of state are held accountable when they won't listen to their people, and the UN isn't cutting it at the moment.

"a secular, progressive regime:

You make me laugh so hard, Putin. If my progressive you mean oppressive, then yes. His father killed 10,000 people and now his son will kill another 10,000 at least.

@Fasces - Iran threatened war if we put another carrier in the Persian Gulf. The world is in a state of anarchy. You can never tell what someone is going to do, so you have to base everything off of intentions and capabilities. Therefore, I say Russia is bluffing. They won't go to war with us. Not over something this small.

" Iran threatened war if we put another carrier in the Persian Gulf."
Yes because Iran is a super power that is actually a threat to the security of the USA, it is totally on par with a threat from Russia.

So Putin, at the risk of doing what I usually do with you and getting really narrowly focused (it is usually necessary to focus your turgid rhetoric):

-Forget who it is in Syria - they are just faceless people for a moment.

-Is it OK in any universe, the action Assad's government is taking against its people?

I'm talking about gunning down protestors and people going to funerals of those people and people protesting being shot down for protesting. That stuff. It basically doesn't even matter what they were protesting in the first place - all that matters is that Assad has made himself into an obvious war criminal.

Again, the A/B dichotomy - I'm not realistically envisioning anyone arresting him at this stage, nor a peacekeeping force, but can you really deny that Assad is not being a good person - Assad does not deserve to be in charge of Syria.

Whether you think his sect or party still should, or whether the rebels should, or whatever your views on the US or the EU or the UN or Russia are not things I'm interested in hearing.

That's my main problem with you, Putin. You get so tied up in your ideological positions that you actually forget that people who are on your side of the fence can be wrong. It always comes back to that. Your defense is "but the people on your side are pigs and human scum and how can you ever support them."

But the difference between me and you is that I am not sitting here extolling the virtues of George Bush or Monsanto or David Cameron or the Libyan rebels. Meaning I am not saying that they are "good," you, however, seem to be implying that they are evil. And that is what makes you look like an ass. Same with North Korea.

There is no such thing as good and evil people. There are such things are good and evil actions - and you need to own up to it when people are doing some horrible bullshit. Such as Assad. We can discuss the merits of intervention and the merits of the protestors and rebels separately, I want your opinion on the morality of Assad's action in response to the originally peaceful protests.

Odd that Mearsheimer claims to simultaneously believe in Hegemonic Stability Theory while also suggesting at the end of the cold war that we would be entering a very dangerous period in his article Back to the Future.

Also, the British Empire was never greater than between the two world wars, so how does that work? Why didn't hegemony prevent the rise of Germany from the ashes of WWI?

" I want your opinion on the morality of Assad's action in response to the originally peaceful protests."

The protests were never peaceful. Stop regurgitating the same tired rhetoric of your NATO masters. Every single intervention you keep advocating for is built on a pack of lies. The pattern is the same every single time. Invent atrocities. Overlook and ignore the atrocities of the rebels. Condemn the government for doing anything to restore order. Claim the defenders of Assad/Gaddafi are looking at the world through a black & white prism when it's you and your ilk who are portraying Assad & Gaddafi as another Hitler that must be removed by any means necessary. I'm tired of your fucking hypocrisy.

Britian peaked in the 1800s, they weren't strong in the interwar period, they were collapsing.

"Assad does not deserve to be in charge of Syria."

You don't deserve to be a citizen who gets to visit developing countries. You're advocating on behalf of goons, bandits and war criminals, all in the guise of 'humanitarian intervention'. You're engaging in the villification of a regime that has done more for religious minorities and regional stability than any government in the entirety of the fucking Middle East. When Iraqi Christians were fleeing for their lives after our glorious humanitarian intervention there, *Syria* under Assad came to their fucking rescue. When Israel was busy destroying Lebanon in the 1980s, *Syria* came to its rescue. Naturally as soon as Syria left, Israel did the same shit again.

Syria under Assad has been a pillar of progress and stability. If destroyed, the whole region will be engulfed in murderous flames. And that's exactly what liberal interventionists want. They want more victims and more interventions.

Putin, I don't know if you knew this, but NATO does not want to intervene.

No one is inventing a story in order to intervene, because no army wants to intervene.

So I don't see how your conspiracy theory works this time around. Maybe you're still thinking of Libya.

Assad/Gaddafi are not other Hitlers. Indeed even Hitler was not a Hitler. Let me try to spell it out to you a bit more clearly: the only black and white thing is that you have to do what you can against wrongdoing - Assad's recent wrongdoing is atrocious - nothing is being done; something should.

That doesn't make Assad the devil. That doesn't make NATO God's Holy Army. Indeed that shit has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Again, both of those last two paragraphs, while true, are not relevant. They have to do with other things Assad has done.

He could be absolutely the most decent freedom loving person ever - maybe he even laid down his coat so some poor minority woman could avoid walking in mud. Doesn't matter. Right action does not mitigate wrong action.

i.e. if I shoot your mother in the head because she said she didn't like my manners, it doesn't matter if I donate my entire savings to your family - I still did something wrong and deserve punishment if any sense of justice is to exist.

"They want more victims and more interventions." Are you implying interventionists like me actually want more wars to intervene in? What the hell is wrong with you lol "interventionist-industrial complex herp derp."

If your theory was correct the Pentagon would be raring to go. They are not, as I said.

"Britian peaked in the 1800s, they weren't strong in the interwar period, they were collapsing."

Britain just ate up a large number of colonies belonging to its enemies while its nearest imperial rivals suffered terribly in terms of military deaths & infrastructure destruction. The size of its empire was never larger than the 1920s and the gap between Britain & its European rivals was never larger than after that war.

"Again, both of those last two paragraphs, while true, are not relevant"

These last two paragraphs are your last two not mine, the ones about Syria's protection of minorities.

"Doesn't matter. Right action does not mitigate wrong action."

Yes, yes, Assad is supposed to sit there with his thumb up his ass as the rebels you want to arm destroy the country. Even then you'll still invent some reason to call for intervention.

"Are you implying interventionists like me actually want more wars to intervene in?"

I've yet to see a place where you didn't have the same tired excuses for intervention. You're more of a warmonger than Invictus.

Yes, Thucy, we all get that you don't care if a Salafist regime comes to power and annihilates religious minorities, because all that matters is that Assad didn't treat a bunch of suicide bombing thugs with kid gloves.

The only way you can even comprehend Thucy's usual bullshit argument for intervention is if you treat every scenario like a moral vacuum devoid of any context whatsoever. All that matters is he thinks Assad is being bad, so we get to ignore everything else including the predictable consequences of intervention.

Putin, while I'll admit that I haven't read much of Mearsheimer, my source is "International Relations Theories: Disciplines and Diversity" Chapter 4, starting on page 85 (I don't really expect you to look it up, but I just wanted to let you know I'm not bullshitting my reference).

@Fasces - you are underestimating the capabilities of Iran. Our military doesn't worry so much about Russia anymore because Russia doesn't threaten us. Iran has significant Anit-Acces, Area Denial weapons systems. In 1995 (I think) the U.S. Navy held a drill pitting a carrier group against an asymmetric military force of hundreds of small attack boats such as Iran has. In that drill, "Iran" won. The Persian Gulf is too shallow for our subs to operate in effectively. Iran just took down one of our drones. For more info, read "Why AirSea Battle" by Andrew Krepinevich, published by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments

Oh, and the British Empire question is an interesting one (just read an article on this). You see, after World War 1, the western powers took on a defensive realist stance. That is, in WW1, Germany sustained so many casualties and was unable to advance for so long that they assumed that in military technologies defense had the advantage. They thus felt secure staying behind their fortifications. Defensive realism, going along the theories of Kenneth Waltz, maintains that nations judge threats on 4 areas: Aggregate Power (which the West was equal to Germany in), Proximity, Offensive Capability (which they believed Germany did not have), and Offensive Intentions (which they underestimated in Hitler). Thus balancing of power is encouraged and aggression is discouraged. Indeed if France had stationed a tank division in the Ardennes in 1940, things might have been very different on the western front (not saying France wouldn't have fallen, but Germany would have gotten a much bloodier nose).

"Yes, yes, Assad is supposed to sit there with his thumb up his ass as the rebels you want to arm destroy the country."

I only think they should be armed because countries like Russia are preventing legitimate peacekeeping. AKs versus tanks is simply not a fair fight. If Assad had not begun gunning them down, I would not think they should be armed. There was no need to arm the protestors in Egypt.

" Even then you'll still invent some reason to call for intervention."

No I won't. I wasn't calling for it before now, and there are lots of places where I am not calling for it. From a realistic (B) standpoint I am calling for it nowhere but here, because I know the world has little stomach for this kind of thing. From an idealistic (A) standpoint I am still only calling for it in a few places. Certainly more places not than are in need of it.

"All that matters is he thinks Assad is being bad, so we get to ignore everything else including the predictable consequences of intervention."

Not at all. This sort of thing should be managed and if the victorious rebels start dicking around you bring them to justice too. Same goes for Libya - if they start, I dunno, gunning down protestors, well you put a stop to it.

There is a difference between keeping order and enforcing justice and just murdering people to try to get them to back down from ousting you.

Meh, Mearsheimer is a walking contradiction. He wrote, along with Walt, whose balance of threats theory you just described but attributed to Waltz, the single best article against the Iraq intervention well before the war began (in which he argues that Hussein could be contained very easily). He is an odd for an offensive realist because he has warned against military intervention more often than not.

Hegemonic Stability Theory can't explain WWII because it fails to adequately take into account war fatigue after system-wide wars. War fatigue more than anything else accounts for peace after major wars, not unipolarity, bipolarity, etc.

I mean Europe post-Napoleonic wars was a multi-polar world but pretty stable and peaceful. It seems like every kind of system has produced peace & stability, since the bipolar Cold War was also called "peaceful & stable" by realists.