[jessaustin]

Ignoring USA politics for a moment, can we admit that the current state of Syria is better for both residents and the world than the current state of Libya? I.e., that it's better not to completely destroy society, subjecting everyone who lives there to unrelenting death, violence, poverty, and slave markets?

[nl]

Err I think you have that back to front?

It's Syria that is mostly destroyed and has millions of refugees. Libya is bad but not quite as bad.

I agree with your point that there is degrees of destruction though.

[jessaustin]

Yes they both have produced lots of refugees. The Bosporus is easier to cross than the Mediterranean, so more Syrian refugees have ended up in Europe. Lots of people died and had their lives destroyed in both wars. The Syrian conflict, even though it started later than that in Libya, is at this point largely winding down except for one location in which "rebels" still remain. The recognized sovereign government maintains public order and provides life-improving services. Libya OTOH is still entirely a hellscape of violence and privation. They have regular public slave markets, etc.

You'll see occasional media content stressing the horrors of Syria, but there's never anything about Libya. That's because reporters (justifiably) fear to go there.

[nl]

I'm not trying to underplay the Libyan situation at all, but do you have any evidence that it's worse than Syria?

They both started in 2011. The Syrian conflict maybe winding down, but has started a new phase (in Syrian Kurdistan).

Syria had slave markets too.

The UNHCR data[1][2] shows a lot more refugees from Syria than Libya (don't forget Libya is often used by refugees from other parts of Africa as their outgoing port to Europe, so news reports on refugees arrivals from Libya don't mean the refugees were Libyan).

One source on the Wikipedia article claimed 1/3 of the Libyan population had fled to Tunisia. This seems non-credible: Neither Tunisia nor any refugee agency makes this claim. [3] claims "there are 2 two million Libyans abroad, mostly in Tunisia", but this is still less than half the number of Syrian refugees (over 5 million) and less than the number of registered in Turkey alone (over 3 million).

I think your "That's because reporters (justifiably) fear to go there" statement is also unfounded - in Syria journalists were targets of both ISIS and the Syrian state, and frequently murdered by either of them.

[1] https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/syria

[2] https://data2.unhcr.org/en/country/lby

[3] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2015/03/17...