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Syria getting bad

This is ridiculous.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...vene-in-syria-unrest-clinton-says-on-cbs.html

Clinton says there will be no intervention in Syria because Assad is a "reformer".

OK so you don't want to intervene militarily. That's fine. But don't go calling a guy who killed US troops in Iraq and sponsors terror against regional allies a "reformer". That's weak.

Mubarak was told to leave "yesterday". Mubarak never paid a cent to terrorists. Assad did and gets called a reformer. Is the administration still laboring under the delusion that it can "drive a wedge" between Syria and Hezbollah? Or turn them away from Iran? Or get them to sign a peace agreement with Israel?
 
Virus said:
After supporting Ghaddafi, Hugo Chavez now praises the terrorist-sponsoring Basshar Assad as a "humanist" and "brother". Says America is behind the protests.
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Well, when you consider how quick the Shrub was to throw his support behind the coup that almost overthrew Chavez, I could hardly consider his belief that we are behind the troubles in Syria to be at all ill-founded.
 
I think the opposition to the regime is pretty much grass roots.
No need for foreign intervention.

However, it is not unthinkable that the opposition is helped along a bit.

that could come from Western countries, but also from powerful Sunni countries like SA.

Syria's rulers are Shia, the population is majority Sunni.
Syria is allied to Iran and a major supporter of a Shia militia (Hezbollah) that has taken over Southern Lebanon.

Syria and Hezbollah are the most likely forces behind the assassination of the Sunni Lebanese prime minister and scores of other politicians whose murder didn't really register in the Western media.

My guess is that a lot of Sunni countries would like to see the back of Syria's regime.
 
All I know about that immediate area is the the Iranians were starting to warm up to us until the Shrub started grabbing his crotch and talking smack at them from a country right on their borders. So they went into a panic and elected a raving maniac as president, figuring that they had to prepare to defend themselves from us.

To see us position ourselves along another large segment of their borders would probably make a few of them even less willing to listen to reason.

It would proabably also make life a bit more dangerous for any of the remaining moderates who want to see improved relations with the USA.
 
An ugly side of the Arab spring. There is a knee-jerk reaction to dismiss as lies any attempt by Middle Eastern governments to say they haven't ordered the use of lethal force, or they are not sure who has been firing or why, as nothing more than lies. Even when it is plainly not in the interests of these governments to act in such a provocative way.

For reasons that I am unsure of, the international media seems to be confirming that at least in one Syrian town, there might be something in what the government is saying:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/snipers...mediterranean-resort-town-20110328-1cchd.html

The scenic port city of Latakia on Syria's Mediterranean coast is being terrorised by snipers on rooftops and gangs of young men armed with knives and clubs.

.....
"My daughter and her husband were walking down the street near the Khaled ibn Walid mosque here in our town when she was wounded in the knee by a sniper. Her left leg has been amputated," said a woman at her daughter's bedside in the city's state-run hospital.

Monzer Baghdad, who heads the hospital, said the injury was the result of a "high calibre bullet".

Authorities have raised the alarm over snipers in the city and residents expressed similar fears.

"Despite the arrival of security forces, snipers are still hiding out on rooftops of a pharmacy and a building near a college, but the military has been able to stop them," said one witness.
....
A 32-year-old shop owner said armed gangs of thieves had also begun to surface in the city which has a confessionally mixed population of around 450,000.

"Twenty robbers arrived on Saturday at midday with sticks and knives. They burned two police vans as well as billboards and destroyed telephone booths with their batons," he said.

The man, who like his townsfolk requested his name be withheld for his own safety, said the gang had tried to storm the headquarters of Syriatel, a mobile phone company owned by a cousin of President Bashar al-Assad, but were unable to break the locks.

The entrance to the building, which also contains medical clinics, had clearly been tampered with.

"It took a good 10 minutes before the police and military intervened and even then they did not seem to want to use force," the shop owner said.

Unidentified gunmen staged a drive-by shooting at the state-run hospital in the early hours yesterday, residents said.
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leftysergeant said:
All I know about that immediate area is the the Iranians were starting to warm up to us until the Shrub started grabbing his crotch and talking smack at them from a country right on their borders. So they went into a panic and elected a raving maniac as president, figuring that they had to prepare to defend themselves from us.

To see us position ourselves along another large segment of their borders would probably make a few of them even less willing to listen to reason.

It would proabably also make life a bit more dangerous for any of the remaining moderates who want to see improved relations with the USA.
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That is so way off base. You still think the Iranian elections aren't a sham for starters.
 
leftysergeant said:
Well, when you consider how quick the Shrub was to throw his support behind the coup that almost overthrew Chavez, I could hardly consider his belief that we are behind the troubles in Syria to be at all ill-founded.
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It's a shame he wasn't overthrown. His fantasy of an oil-subsidized socialist dictatorship is ruining the country. And he's still a dumbass for promoting conspiracy theories and supporting fascist megalomaniacs.
 
Virus said:
That is so way off base. You still think the Iranian elections aren't a sham for starters.
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I have seen no proof that Ahmadinejad did not come to power legitimately. Whether or not he actually won the last time is quite another matter.

But the presence of an enemy on their borders would not weaken his position greatly, and would give him some shadow of legitimacy in cracking down even more harshly on dissidents.

I also have to question whether Lebanon or Iraq would be totally compliant with our request to use their countries as a staging area for operations against Assad.

How the UN would feel about our going in uninvited is yet another matter.

There is a rudimentary authority in place to ask for our help in Libya. There is none in Syria. It is a rat hole to be avoided at all costs unless and until the Syrian army starts acting out outside its own borders.
 
leftysergeant said:
I have seen no proof that Ahmadinejad did not come to power legitimately. Whether or not he actually won the last time is quite another matter.

But the presence of an enemy on their borders would not weaken his position greatly, and would give him some shadow of legitimacy in cracking down even more harshly on dissidents.

I also have to question whether Lebanon or Iraq would be totally compliant with our request to use their countries as a staging area for operations against Assad.

How the UN would feel about our going in uninvited is yet another matter.

There is a rudimentary authority in place to ask for our help in Libya. There is none in Syria. It is a rat hole to be avoided at all costs unless and until the Syrian army starts acting out outside its own borders.
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I said I understood if America didn't want to get involved militarily, but I disagreed with calling a state-sponsor of terror who sent jihadis to kill US troops a reformer. That's a weak profile to present to the region.
 
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Virus said:
I said I understood if America didn't want to get involved militarily, but I disagreed with calling a state-sponsor of terror who sent jihadis to kill US troops a reformer. That's a weak profile to present to the region.
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Then what are we supposed to do, other than to just ignore Assad? You have not addessed any of what I said with other than GOP talking points. There really is nothing we could do short of military action or massive, hard-to-conceal covert ops, so it is best that we just leave it to the career diplomats to do what little need be done by us.
 
Virus said:
It's a shame he wasn't overthrown. His fantasy of an oil-subsidized socialist dictatorship is ruining the country. And he's still a dumbass for promoting conspiracy theories and supporting fascist megalomaniacs.
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History suggests that it is unwise to wish for the sucessful overthrowing of democracticaly elected leaders in south ammerica. You tend to start getting them and well Chavez launched one of those attempts back int he 90s.
 
Virus said:
OK so you don't want to intervene militarily. That's fine. But don't go calling a guy who killed US troops in Iraq and sponsors terror against regional allies a "reformer". That's weak.
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Depends what you think "reformer" means. In any case that is the term used by people from Congress who at least nominaly do have some say in the matter.

Mubarak was told to leave "yesterday". Mubarak never paid a cent to terrorists.
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Mubarak was told to leave only when failing to do so have become politicaly impossible.


Assad did and gets called a reformer. Is the administration still laboring under the delusion that it can "drive a wedge" between Syria and Hezbollah? Or turn them away from Iran? Or get them to sign a peace agreement with Israel?
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Again "reformer" is congress's term. I'd say the US administration is currently working on the basis that the syrian protestors cannot win which is not an entirely unreasonable conclusion to reach.
 
geni said:
History suggests that it is unwise to wish for the sucessful overthrowing of democracticaly elected leaders in south ammerica. You tend to start getting them and well Chavez launched one of those attempts back int he 90s.
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Actually Communism lost so it wasn't unwise.
 
Virus said:
Actually Communism lost so it wasn't unwise.
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I don't recall any communist south american states attempting to anex british territory.

It might argued be the disappearances and general oppression and the odd WMD program were rather a high price to pay for keeping in check a threat of questionable validity but that would require you to actualy care about south americans.
 
geni said:
History suggests that it is unwise to wish for the sucessful overthrowing of democracticaly elected leaders in south ammerica. You tend to start getting them and well Chavez launched one of those attempts back int he 90s.
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Venezuela has no free press (among other things), which is essential if a country wants to call itself a democracy IMHO. So I take issue with your claim that Chavez was democratically elected.
 
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