Syria under Bashir Assad (closed end 2014)

[omarali50]

OK, i know this is a fantasy, but what if the US did nothing? And said "we dont want to do anything in the future either until everyone (and that means EVERYONE on the UNSC if nowhere else) gets on their knees (really, literally on their knees) and begs us to please come and sort out the place because no one else can".
Forget about the Syrian people (whose sufferings will be legendary), what harm will come to the US?
Not a rhetorical question. I am curious to know what the harm of "inaction" and "weak leadership" is supposed to be?

[davidbfpo]

This was the Moderator's Note at start of thread August 2012: The developing situation in Syria is an important strategic issue and SWC has been watching closely. We simply cannot observe only, so this new thread has been started to discuss what is happening now, not what might have happened if there had been external, coercive intervention.

The discussion on the previous thread 'Syria: a civil war' was vibrant for a long time, with over six hundred posts; alas the standard of the exchange repeatedly required Moderator action and it was closed a few days ago.

Link to previous thread:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ad.php?t=12821 (Ended)

A few minutes ago I merged the recent stand-alone thread 'Syria: has a 'red line' been crossed?' into this thread, as the situation is gathering pace and it appears something will happen. Maybe even a 'small war'. If so a new thread will undoubtedly appear.

[davidbfpo]

The title is taken from a column by James Fallows in The Atlantic. In effect he asks Americans and those in power to ponder upon:

In the face of evil we should do something, except when the something would likely make a bad situation worse.

Link:http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...-syria/279086/

In the UK little mention has been made of the Kosovo air campaign in 1999, unlike what appears via my Twitter feed from the USA. Perhaps PM David Cameron will "sing the same tune" on Thursday, as Parliament has been recalled to debate what next.

Fallows cites a linked article that looks at Kosovo, which has a telling passage:

That the NATO alliance of 780 million people eventually prevailed over Serbia, a country of ten million with a gross domestic product equal to two-thirds that of Fairfax County, Virginia, is hardly a precedent to celebrate, particularly since it proved so spectacularly that the marriage of coercive diplomacy to limited precision bombardment is a colossal failure.

From:http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/...the-crosshair/

[Wyatt]

I doubt we really care about chemical weapons use. HE has and will kill many more than any type of gas use at the end of the day. We only need this as a pretext for doing whatever it is we feel like doing.

I personally think intervention is a naive idea and from a selfish perspective, Id rather not fight in mopp gear.

[omarali50]

Tangential to the main issue: I am now old enough to start to notice another interesting pattern. Whenever the US is about to start some damn fool war somewhere, in MY neighborhood, the social media of the day (drawing room conversations in the good old days, now electronic social media) start to accumulate a certain pre-apocalyptic buzz by the day before the bombing. At first its the usual suspects (Tariq Ali fans, damn fools, other fringe elements) but then a lot of reasonably sane people start to think the sky is falling. Seeing it start up again with this Syria thing, I wrote this comment to someone on facebook
The real irony is that nothing new will happen soon enough to make anyone happy (though in the proverbial long run, the enlightenment is always winning). Amrika will waste money and goodwill and kill some people (and get blamed for killing many more) but there will no more Vietnams. Russian and Chinese spokesmen will make some cutting (and popular) remarks. Syrians will die in large numbers from all sorts of causes but very few Americans and even fewer Israelis will die, which will disappoint many people. Surrounding countries will be destabilized but no grand revolutionary victory for the forces of al-Islam or Maoism-Leninism will follow. Dreams of apocalypse and hidden imams will remain dreams. Tariq Ali's soirees will remain popular on college campuses (and his script will remain unchanged and out of touch). Aad sach, jugaad sach. Hai bhi sach, Nanak, hosi bhi sach (from Guru Nanak, paraphrase: truth is the beginning and the end. Nanak, truth is now and truth is all there will be tomorrow).