Quote Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube View Post
So... "topple the dictator and see what happens?"

I appreciate your righteous indignation because I feel the same way, but what you just typed here could have been taken straight out of a staunch "stay the course" type's mouth in the early years of the Iraq war. You're outraged at the treatment of the Syrian people, and feel something should be done, but in spite of all evidence pointing to this being a situation that will be incredibly difficult to resolve without escalating the bloodshed considerably (whether immediately or over time with some dumb protracted war--Syria shares a border with Iraq, after all) you don't actually offer any contingencies of any kind in that plan, which means its a bad plan.

And, speaking of lessons we should have learned in the last ten years, you shouldn't go to war with a bad plan.

And, even more importantly than all of that, even with a very limited engagement we still put our 'stamp' on a cause without knowing a whole lot about it. Every time we do this it backfires--even something as simple as supplying arms. Al Qaeda should be a case in point here, but I guess a lot of people are still refusing to acknowledge that we truly enabled the Jihad in the first place, back when the Sovs were invading Afghanistan.


We need to stop creating problems. Especially when times are hard at home.
No, cut the head off the snake, leave the regime in place. Assad can't move, he'll lose face and his generals will kill him. If he flees his generals can come to the table. Hardly perfect, but it has a good chance of stopping the violence.