Quote Originally Posted by CrowBat View Post
Yup, exactly like in Libya, right?

Ah no: 'even more so in Syria', because 'Syria was always a nation of crazy terrorists' - or so we've been taught in the last 60 years...?
I haven't seen anyone teach such a thing. Syria is not "a nation of crazy terrorists", but a Syrian civil war with active Western intervention would be an irresistible and accessible magnet for crazy terrorists from anywhere else. It would also provide a convenient and attractive target for the crazy terrorists, distracting them fromn their current obliging practice of killing each other, and would provide an enhanced incentive for attacks on the homeland of whoever's intervening.

Certainly the Syrian Civil War will attract its share of crazies even without Western involvement, and certainly those crazies and their future activities are a problem, but any argument that intervention would have prevented, rather than exacerbated, that problem would be extraordinarily speculative.

I can't see any basis at all for a claim that the Syrian Civil War is a consequence of American or Western actions and therefore an American or Western "responsibility". Herr Fuchs wrote aptly elsewhere:

I noticed again and again that in anglophone political discussions some people make up responsibilities, obligations and rights on the fly, trying to assert authority out of thin air. They invent a duty/obligation/responsibility when they want something particular done yet lack the arguments or evidence to support their opinion. They invent a right when they don't want something particular done.
Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
once again at a massive human cost to the very people the US is supposed to be protecting.
Who exactly is the US "supposed to be protecting" in Syria?