Syria

[Husar]

But supporting Assad is supporting Hitler because Putin supports Assad and Putin is Hitler.

[Fragony]

Interesting stuff.

[put apoligies here for making fun of me when I was saying that the arab spring would become an islamic winter] <-- there

[Pannonian]

Why should it be our responsibility to help them, when it seems every successful revolution in the Muslim countries tends to go religious fundie afterwards? And if we want to test our kit, why not look for another opportunity where we might actually profit from intervention?

Why does it go religious fundie?

Usually because the alternative presented is the "Great Satan".

If we made a point of smacking Dictators around when they get like this we would be more popular.

Both the Syrians and the Iranians before them voiced feelings of being "abandoned" when they protested in favour of Western-ish ideals of at least a less-oppressive government and more freedom of expression. We ignore them, we won't give them arms or funds, and as a result they turn to the Islamic militias.

We should have blockaded Assad, prevented new munitions getting to him from Russia or elsewhere and out politicians should, at the least, be constantly screaming in the UN about his Air Force, which could at least be interdicted. You wouldn't even need to send aircraft - a couple of Dauntless class destroyers sat off the coast could destroy aircraft as they launched.

The Last 50-75 years policy of supporting "strongmen" so long as they enforced a veneer of Western society and wore suits has been an abject failure. It gave us the Shah in Iran, Saddam Hussain, two Assads...

It's time for a new strategy - one that involves the use of surgical force against a regime that turns guns on the populace.

Yeah, right.

[Husar]

I see no reason to doubt Bush' sincerity when he stated that he wanted to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq. I think he really did believe that a US-led removal of Saddam would usher in a new era of freedom, democracy and friendliness towards the US. I see no reason to attach sinister motives to any of the persons in the administration. Simple incompetence is more than enough to explain it. They had a completely utopian view of of the real world works. This also explains Rumsfeld's idea of "doing it on the cheap". He didn't put in the required amount of troops simply because he believed things would go much easier. A swift attack, remove Saddam and the population would transform into a democracy grateful for US assistance.

Does that also explain why they admitted to lying about the reasons for the war?

I have absolutely no problem with ambiguity in the sense that there was possibly a mix of what you say and actually more sinister reasons.
Sometimes these more sinister reasons also lead to something "good" of course, like more personal wealth, fame or what have you.

That someone who spent millions on ruthless political campaigning to get into a position of power is only out there for flowers and world peace given the history of the US sounds almost naive...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

If the West made it a principle to intervene, even with just punitive strikes, then the Arabs would not be asking "why Libya and not Syria".

After Lybia the Syrians certainly expected help.

Why would they want to emulate us when we're such arbitrary arseholes.

[Montmorency]

Surely the more arbitrary path is to go to war simply because war is a thing that we've done in the past.