Syria under Bashir Assad (closed end 2014)

[CrowBat]

...There seems to be some confusion here between fact and opinion....

Cut the ****, really. There's no 'confusion'. You're putting words into my mouth and turning and twisting my argumentation as it suits you.

Namely, it's something like one year ago that I told you: NO, there is NO point in USA launching an intervention in Syria. It's MUCH TOO LATE.

Can you compute and get that into your mind?

Or are you just unable to understand what you read, i.e. prefer to ignore what I wrote?

Namely, all I'm telling you (and all the ones thinking like you) all the time is: STOP MEDDLING THERE. Hands off Syria. Do not mix into that affair.

Though keep in mind: that includes 'stop preventing others from aiding insurgency' - too.

Like so many other people with similar standpoints, you have no trace of an idea what's going on there, and - worst of all - you don't know how to care about consequences of what you're doing (so much so, one should forbide such characters to get involved into foreign politics).

From your standpoint (and with 'your' I mean you and everybody else thinking the way you do), the only thing 'interesting' about Syria is whether there's AQ there or not. I say, yes, there is AQ there, and it is there because nothing was done against it when there was time to do something (and there was plenty of time, and even more opportunity). Whichever way, it doesn't matter any more. You decided not to do anything about it when there was time and opportunity, you decided that this is so because there was no 'pressing/vital national interest' to do so - and now INDEED, it's not your business any more.

...You may perhaps have noticed that US involvement in the domestic conflicts of other nations is typically not greeted with joy or perceived as support for democracy....

And? Why are the USA then curbing support from other parties for the insurgency? If it's 'a bad idea' to mix there, then why mix at all?

Why insist on 'we're not going to get involved', but then get involved in a fashion that is only protracting the war, which is only providing Iran with more opportunity to bolster the regime, and therefore results in increasing the suffering and destruction of the population?

Of course it is. That's not because of any lack of the US "doing something to rebuild the country", it's because building a nation and installing democracy were never realistic goals from the start.... The lesson to take away from Afghanistan is that "armed nation building" is a fool's game and any intervention that has a chance of forcing the US into a nation building role should be avoided like the plague.

Hehe: thanks! Yes, they were no goals (neither 'realistic goals' nor any other kind).

Why did the USA got involved then? For what 'goal'? A pay-back for Vietnam - at the cost of bolstering Islamist regime in Pakistan, enabling it to make a nuclear bomb, and impose a Wahhabist regime in Afghanistan...? Because you can't think about consequences of what you're doing...?

And furthermore: along that line, what is then the goal of ongoing US involvement in Syria? Enabling the regime to survive, enabling Iranians to take over the country, or enabling the Wahhabists to impose their regime? Doing the same like Assad did through creating an 'extremist Islamist oppostion/cum Jihad', by turning Syria into what the USA are preaching all the time that Syria is, namely a 'terrorist empire' and ally of that supposed 'axis of evil'...?

And what's the lesson? Let me guess: you'll never come to the idea to conclude that the lesson is that if you mix without sober thinking about consequences, and especially while having no clue about what's going on, all the BS you caused is going to get back to you like a 'boomerang' - though one consisting of a truck-load of bricks (or hijacked airliners flown into your skyscrapers)....?

I would call Libya a qualified success, in that the two primary goals of the intervention were achieved: the dictator fell and the US was not dragged into taking responsibility for the aftermath. Whether that could have been repeated in Syria is another question altogether: Syria is not Libya and would have been a far more complicated target for intervention....

And now you're back to telling jokes...

Just a page or so back, you explained that such an intervention in Syria would be contraproductive because presence of US troops in Syria (something nobody sane has ever demanded) would make Syria a sort of magnet for all possible Jihadists.

When asked if Syria didn't became a magnet for Jihadists already without US military presence (or precisely because there was no intervention on time so to prevent such a development, like there was in Libya), you decided to ignore that question - because you realized that was a wrong idea. And after realizing that was a wrong idea now you come back to explain for 27th time that 'Syria is not Libya' - while having proven yourself as having no clue about Syria, first and foremost (so, if you have no clue: how can you draw any comparisons?) - and then rush to get back to your off-topic dogma, namely 'Tom wants a US intervention in Syria', no matter how much is that based on little else but your imagination.

What are you going to insinuate as next - and why?

...you'll need to demonstrate what vital or at least pressing US interests are/were at stake..

Sigh... here we go again: NONE. There are neither vital nor pressing interests for the USA in Syria.

Thanks. Then do us all a favour and GET TO HELL OUT OF THERE, PRONTO.

For the sake of Syrians - and anybody with at least two sane brain cells left around: forget about that country, act like you've never heard about it (shouldn't be a problem, should it?), PLEASE.