The costs of American inaction in Syria continue to pile up. Not only is a Syria-Turkey war growing more likely, but so is the likelihood of further radicalization among the rebels. That, at any rate, is a warning that is coming from rebel commanders themselves and they should know. The latest evidence is this New York Times article, which paraphrases one rebel leader as follows:
The Syrian people are being radicalized by a combination of a grinding conflict and their belief that they have been abandoned by a watching world.
If the West continues to turn its back on Syria’s suffering, he said, Syrians will turn their backs in return, and this may imperil Western interests and security at one of the crossroads of the Middle East.
That is a warning we should take seriously. In Libya, we intervened to oust a dictator and even though we have not eradicated the danger from anti-American groups (witness the slaying of our ambassador), the regime in Tripoli is notably pro-Western. If in Syria we do nothing, and Assad gets toppled anyway, what kind of regime will emerge in his wake? Whatever its nature, one can practically guarantee that it will be less friendly to American interests than a regime that were to emerge after an American-led intervention against Assad.
We're so silly. We didn't fork over enough American money, so NOW they they are going to hate us. n nWe're doing so well in LIbya. They'll be installing sharia shortly, but they do love us, truly. n nAs if.
Besides, its time for Syria to be chopped up into constituent ethnic states, erasing the colonial dog's breakfast of a state that did nothing but export terror and genocidal incitement for decades, while claiming the Golan. n nLooking at it purely selfishly, anything that weakens Syria and its claim on the Golan is a good thing for the Jews. n nIt would take no more than 3 minutes flat for Hillary, Valerie, Susan, and the Obama puppet to start demanding Israel turn over the Golan to whatever new group of thugs we would have installed there, in order to 'strengthen' them with their people and show American love. n nLet them chop each other up with kitchen knives (apparently a favorite vendetta weapon in Syria) till they tire themselves out. With any luck, it will take a hundred years or so. We just have to take away any sharp sticks they can aim outside their border. And plans for that are afoot already, no doubt. n nBut Max, your heart is in the right place. n n
Since when is a New York Times article evidence for anything, except lying and agenda pushing?
Why cite any source that paraphrases an unnamed "rebel leader"? nIn other sources, I was glad to read that Qatar and the Saudis are NOT supplying certain weapons to the 'rebels' because of America's concerns as to where those weapons might really go. nIn other sources, which detail various of the rebel factions, i.e., warlords, seems as if sectarian revenge is the prime motivator. nMax Boot: please stop the drumbeats on Syria. nMore innocents have been murdered in Mexico's drug wars. nThree internal wars in Sudan – where are the cries for a NFZ in the Nuba?
This is more evidence of why the best outcome is no outcome. Let them slowly grind up and slaughter one another to the last one standing. Let it be Iran's Vietnam. Let them use chemical weapons on each other as long as it's only each other.
I say let them kill each other. And what about the rest of the "world" that is watching. How come the rebels don't turn their anger against Russia, which still assists Assad, or China? And the sooner the Turks erase one of the phony post-WWI borders, the better.
Maybe America could match its financial aid to Israel by opening a formal military attache office as part of the new United States embassy in Jerusalem. Then the United States, on the ground, could coordinate military policy with Israel in the capital of Israel. Imagine that, the United States unambiguously backing Israel as an ally and ending all this perpetual claptrap about Islamic values, sensitivities, and spontaneous combustion whenever somebody, somewhere, puts out a satire of their superdooper Prophet. Just maybe, American policy being anchored in an island of stability in a region of inflamed fanaticism might be more cost-effective than trying to figure out which sharia compliant armed faction to support when ungovernable Muslim polities implode.
Instead of Mr. Goodbar, we can have our operatives scour the Middle East for Ahmed Stuart Mill. Worked out so well in Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt, didn't it? n nPeople who dote on the Chalabis and MEKs of the world don't have a lot of credibility. n nIf we stay out, one thing is certain. Our boys won't be flown back from Damascus in boxes for nothing.
You've been outed as a Jew hater. I would bet nobody cares what you think. n n
Since Obama is going after the Morsi's, the Muslim Brotherhoods, and the friendly Talibans of the world you should be in on Max's program–don't worry, as with Libya, the Jew haters will come out on top, or at least with their machine guns and RPGs intact. The Administration is perfectly happy to support Ahmed Mohammed Achmud. You do realize that the present Zionist Israel-first program is to put a halt to Team Obama's International Sharia Regime foreign policy. n nOr did you, as well as Max, not get the memo?
So, if we don't back the Syrian Sunni scum they'll no be pro-western. n nHow could Syrian Sunni or any other Sunni scum be "pro-western"? Being pro-western means being pro-civilization and in this regard all Moslems are disqualified. Those who used to think that the Turks and Pakistanis were moving in a civilizing direction had the rug pulled out from under them! n nLet the war continue, let the Arab killing Arab cycle go on and on and on. Let the world watch and see what the Arab is capable of and draw conclusions.
Who is right, Fahrid Ghadry and Max Boot or Daniel Pipes? Historical prognostication is a perilous enterprise. Boot points to Libya, now pro-Western due to British, French and U.S. intervention. Pipes would point to Egypt where he once lived to learn the opposite lesson: the U.S. did not intervene militarily, but its political support helped oust Mubarak, and this in turn empowered the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi's early moves give reason for pessimism, not optimism, about Egypt's future. Even President Obama who supported Mubarak's ouster now says Egypt, while not an enemy, is no longer an ally.
Ultimately, the key variable in the intervention calculus is Tehran. Does the U.S. gain more if it intervenes to help the arguably Islamist-tainted Free Syrian Army oust Assad, and thereby transect Iran's crucial aorta in the Middle East, or lose more if Assad is ousted and a new FSA-led Syrian regime emerges? n nTo ask the question is to answe it. The prospect of isolating Tehran is too important to pass up. It deprives Iran of a crucial front against Israel, leaving only Hisbullah as its proxy along a much smaller border. And given Syria's multi-ethnic makeup, and in particular, its more educated, large Christian minority; its secular government and the fact that Islam is not an official state religion; and the relative strength of non-Islamist and even pro-democracy, anti-Islamist groups, U.S. interests fall on the side of intervention. n nAs Max Boot argues, whatever the nature of the regime to emerge, it will be friendlier if the U.S. midwife's its birth, and likely more hostile if we don't.