[fineman]

The right answer? Kill Assad and help the people take back Syria. We should have done it three years ago before much of the moderate resistance was killed but it still needs doing.

And as for your Israel jab, they're better to the Palestinians than the Arab states in the area are. And none of the Israelis I've talked to seem to have inherently racist beliefs but many of the recently middle-eastern Arabs do. (About the Palestinians.)

[Ygg2]

Right? Just like killing Saddam and Gadafi stabilized the region. I'm sure nothing bad would happen. It's not like something worse than Al Quaida can happen again.

Europe fully deserves the migrant crisis. It went into Middle East guns blazing, and expects to come out of it unscathed.

[fineman]

Cutting and running does not work. We're still in Germany and Japan 70+ years later and we'll have to have that kind of roadmap if we plan to help in the middle east.

And help we must. We can't sit back and watch madmen kill millions, even if doing so would spite our idiot leaders (on all sides) who caused it in the first place.

[webXL]

Germany and Japan have tolerant and compatible cultures, and "world opinion" was controlled by the Allies. I don't think it's possible to shape "world opinion" anymore. The Koran doesn't permit any kind of integration and tolerance. Western "nation building" (rebuilding) is perceived as an attack on that religion. My own libertarian bent tells me that it's at least an unjust attack on their way of life, how alien that might be to Westerners.

[fineman]

An unjust attack on whose way of life? The girls being sold into slavery? The boys forced to fight or die? Those simply murdered?

I'm pretty sure the other 99.9% are hostages, and not half as committed to the bullshit as you think, except in stockholm-syndrome ways. Soon after they weren't being killed for not being fervent, they'd be as non-religious as we are.

[webXL]

You think our occupation would prevent those things? I supported the Iraq invasion initially, and had some hope for the surge, but these wars are literally controlled by the news media, because every time a bomb goes off in the wrong place or a soldier shoots a kid for whatever reason, we get more tentative, and our troops lose support for their mission, then a new president comes a long to capitalize. I was wrong. 9/11 jaded and naive about that part of the world. Just cut our losses. Our government has bigger, more understandable, fish to fry.

[fineman]

Sorry, but "just cut our losses" isn't acceptable to me when people are being murdered. This is the Nazi murder of Jews/etc of our time and it's everyone's obligation to handle it better.

Bush caused most of this current ISIS problem by lying about WMDs. At that point, we're the bad guys invading on a lie. It made us afraid of and hostile towards the Iraqis which caused the Abu Ghraib treatment, etc. He didn't make the terrorists but he provided them with their recruiting propaganda, made an ideal nest, and let them crawl in. It sucks, but we've got an uphill slog because we elected someone who was fine with murdering people on a lie.

[ufmace]

If done at the right time, it would have at least had a chance of transitioning to a somewhat more democratic form of government. As opposed to what actually happened when we did nothing, which is Islamic extremists being the main supporters of the resistance, versus the Russian and Iranian backed Assad. Assad believes that the West will grudgingly back him against ISIS extremists, and not so much against secular rebels, so naturally he turned the bulk of his guns against the secular rebels. With nobody supporting them and everybody against them, of course their presence and influence dwindled to nothing.

I mostly agree with fineman, except that I think it's too late for backing secular resistance to have much of a point. Just like Iraq, we left them high and dry when they needed us, and so now the only chance of having any significant influence is a direct invasion, which nobody has much stomach for anymore.

I'd summarize as grow up already. The fingers of Islamist and totalitarian interference are already all over this conflict, and have been for decades. The West keeping out of it only guarantees that one or the other will win and any chance of secular democracy will lose.

[toyg]

> when we did nothing

"We" didn't do "nothing". Countries like France, Israel, US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia spent years destabilising Assad and funding those "opposition groups" that eventually started the civil war. Syria originally was a USSR satellite with ambitions of regional hegemony (they basically ruled Lebanon and deeply influenced Jordan), so they had to be beaten into submission. However, there was never a real plan to get involved on the ground, that was just a huge bluff; Assad and Putin saw right through it. "We" (and French elites above all) did way too much already, and it's high time we stopped.

> The fingers of Islamist and totalitarian interference are already all over this conflict

That's really rich. "Our" best ally in the region is an absolutist monarchy running an Islamist totalitarian regime, the US just sold them a new crapload of weapons... nobody gives a shit about that stuff. What "we" care about is that the "right" totalitarian mofo is in charge, like in Egypt. Everything else is theatre and propaganda.

The real solution is less weapons and more diplomacy. Get the interested parties in a room and throw away the key until they come up with a shared plan. The US/Russia agreement is a first step in that direction, next it's for Saudi, Turkey and Iran to work out an agreeable compromise and pull their weight in the right direction. Otherwise, until countries like Turkey and Saudi keep buying IS oil and selling them weapons, you can invade a thousand times and achieve nothing except increasing shareholder value in the defence sector.

[Ygg2]

> "Our" best ally in the region is an absolutist monarchy running an Islamist totalitarian regime

Reminds me of that Adam Curtis documentary Bitter Lake[1]. I wonder if Oil Countries are the real reason these terrorist keep appearing again and again.

I bet the moment world gets rid of oil, is the day Islamic terrorist stop appearing.

[1] http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hdcji

[jacquesm]

They're not 'the real reason' but it is definitely a contributing reason. The people doing the most to get us out of this mess are working on electric cars.

[tareqak]

I do not see why there is such a strong desire to install secular democracies willy-nilly all over the world. Yes, we know that it is the best form of government, but the people living in these countries on the ground do not. I just do not think the majority of people there are ready for it.

A secular democracy requires some kind of enlightenment on the part of the people, and usually this enlightenment happens after a great sacrifice has been made (something on the level of a war of independence) or through the slow and steady movement towards universal suffrage by way of representation.

All that ends up happening when you give democracy to a population that is not ready for it are strongmen who vote themselves additional executive power through legislative hook or crook leading all the problems that a secular democracy is supposed to prevent.

Whether or not the West gets involved, one side will win or lose guaranteed. Trying to pick the least evil from the outside is an exercise in gambler's ruin.

[Sideloader]

Who are the ostensibly secular rebels? Every rebel group seems to have propaganda videos on YouTube except the 'secular' ones. Call me sceptical. The only secular group we know of for sure is the Syrian National Army but Assad is their leader and he has been labeled Official Bad Guy Who Must Go. (Just prior to the war HRC said she considers the Assads "close friends".) Hmmm.... Former US pal Sadaam (secular despot) and the secular despot Gadaffi had "to go" too and look what that did.

At any rate, the 'secular' fighters are now more often called 'moderate' rebels. Hell, Al Queda (fighting in Syria as the Al-Nusra Front) is moderate compared to Daesh. Since 2012 they and other 'moderate' Islamist groups received funding and weapons from the US, UK, France, Israel, the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia. Many of the arms ended up in Daesh's hands anyway. One doesn't hear a lot about the, at one point much lauded, Free Syrian Army except that many in their ranks have defected to Daesh.

The stuff I mentioned above is as close to factual as it gets in this chaotic war. The information comes from so-called reliable media sources with supporting documents provided. This doesn't guarantee absolute truth of course.

It's interesting how almost every person has strong opinions about the clusterfuck unfolding in Syria/Iraq and the role Daesh plays in it, but very few of those people actually have enough trustworthy information to make an informed opinion. The fog of war and the spread of disinformation, and just plain old misinformation, is as relevant here as in any other war.

It doesn't help that Senator McCain advocated supplying Daesh with weapons to shoot down Russian fighter aircraft and even had his picture taken posing with Daesh. The US and its allies and lackeys have a rich history supporting and arming extremely vile regimes and insurgent groups when it serves their interests.

The West provided the fertile soil from which Daesh sprouted and now the chickens have come to roost. Big time.

[ufmace]

Might be a bit late to reply, but FWIW and IMHO, any moderate/secular rebel groups are essentially gone at this point.

In any type of rebellion, or any other organization for that matter, the views of the group will naturally change over time to be more in line with whatever the source of funding and resources wants them to be. Let a couple of years go by with the West providing essentially no support, and all of the support coming from the Gulf Arab states with a history of exporting extremism, and naturally any moderate groups and moderate elements in less moderate groups will wither and fade away, and the extremist elements will come to the front. The more time goes by, the harder it is to find any actual moderation to back.

Whatever moderate and secular-leaning elements there may have been at the beginning, they've long since withered and died, and there isn't much of anybody good left to back, aside from the Kurds. We have the Iranian-Russian aligned Assad regime, versus the ISIS extremists so out there that even Al-Quada is fighting them. I don't see much in the way of good options now, honestly.

It might have been different if we had backed groups heavily from the start and gotten that view-shifting effect working in our favor. Of course, it also might not have. And it's hard to fault the American people for not wanting to get deeply involved in another messy Middle-Eastern war. But if you care about spreading democracy and liberal western values, this is pretty much the worst thing to do.

[jacquesm]

You realize I hope that you are condemning the migrants to the crisis as well. And they're the ones losing big time, Europe not so much.

[Ygg2]

I guess in a way I am, but I do feel sympathy for them losing their homes/loved ones in this whole fiasco. I'm mad this whole thing is happening tbh.

But EU is IMO losing just as much. The borders are being redrawn between states, there is palpable tension between EU members(Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia). And weren't abolition of state borders and prevention of another Hitler the motivation behind EU? If so, its failing apart (not a syntax error, figure of speech).

[jacquesm]

We're totally on the same page here. Which is one of the reasons why I'm advocating restraint and attacking root causes rather than perceived symptoms. That will only worsen things (and quickly so).

> And weren't abolition of state borders and prevention of another Hitler the motivation behind EU?

That never was openly stated afaik but it would seem to be that the architects of the EU had as one of their main driving forces the fact that they wanted to re-structure the EU in such a way to avoid another war. The problem with their approach is that they did many things without sufficient buy-in of the residents and on top of that started out by setting up all kinds of irrational schemes inside the EU to funnel money to their pet special interests. If they could have waited a few decades with tricks like that it probably would have worked a lot better.

The major issue that I see with a really unified EU is that the divergence of cultures within the EU is enormous, much more so than say the Americas, where a strong federal government was the result of a large group of people uniting behind a single good cause. And even then - in spite of that much more homogeneous culture - they had to have it out in a civil war to beat the remainder into submission (and that war was a war of ideology as much as it was a war over money and power).

> If so, its failing apart (not a syntax error, figure of speech).

Unfortunately, yes, it looks that way. The Euro is quite fragile, the intra-communion tension at record high levels since the previous world-war.

Separatists may get emboldened by all this, the refugees are so much kindling on a fire that is already smoldering. It will take some really smart people with the long view to repair this.