Syria

[Seamus Fermanagh]

About time we stayed out of other countries. It only leads to our lads dying pointlessly.

...and lasses now as well, let's not be sexist.

[Major Robert Dump]

We should totally intervene because I heard he has so much mustard gas that when we take it over we can use it to pay for the war itself. I love mustard, especially on hot dogs and biscuits, sign me up for 5 bottles.

Also we should do it for Israel, in gratitude for all the things they have done for us, like bagels and Natalie Portman.

[Brenus]

The frenzied interventionism that characterized the Western foreign policy of the last decade is an almost natural extension of the "right of interference" concept developed by Kouchner in the 80s-90s. I must say that I was seduced by the idea. I participated in a symposium at the University of Law of Aix en Provence to discuss it.
This is only later, confronted with the problem(s) in Yugoslavia that I began to doubt. I saw live how the 'good' were chosen, and the 'baddies' referred to the mob. The reality is that the “right” of intervention is neither more nor less than the direct heir of the gunboat policy.
To mention only the French examples, we invaded and colonized Congo to free the slaves (noble cause if it was), the Viet Nam to protect the Catholic minorities oppressed by the Emperor of Annam, and finally a large part of Africa to free the peoples of their tyrants and replace it with an administration that will sell the workforce to mining and forestry companies (In short). I will add the expedition to Mexico by Napoleon III for non-repayment of debt (Cyprus should beware) and regime change. The only result will be the battle of Camerón, who will become one of the Founder Myth of the Foreign Legion. So, we can say that, as early as the 19th century, we had the instruments, models, to justify our intervention:
- Human Rights,
- Minorities Right,
- Democratization and Regime Change,
- Higher interests of the nation.

The example of Syria and Assad follows the pattern already in use. No one questions why some people choose to support a dictator or a tyrant. Because the answer would be that others (the goods) want to kill them, as they did in the past. The Alawis (not considered as Muslims) are allied with those who protected them from their killers, as the Assyro-Chaldeans teamed up to Saddam. Less dramatic but just as real, the Jewish and Protestant France communities are fundamentally Republican because they were more than abused by the monarchy.
How we refer to the good, ignoring the recent past, leads to a race to the media popularity by lynching, and win the one with the best communication. The counterpart of this process is the 'demonization' of the 'baddies '. This will be well reinforced by Judeo-Christian morality, in which the victim is always perceived as innocent, and therefore the villain an abject executioner without real legitimate claims... And to be sure of our good right, in an exercise in self-justification, we create a court such as The Hague, version modernized of the 'white man's burden ".