Quote Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla View Post
This isn't just a "power play", it has taken months for the number of military personnel defecting to become even a blip on the radar - the general populace has started using lethal force because the Assad-loyal forces will kill them even if they don't. I said this with Libya as well, when the doctors, students, lawyers and footballers pick up guns you know its bad because it means ordinary people have decided the choice is not live or die.... its die fighting or die on your knees.

Given that they will die if someone does not knock out Assad's heavy weapons (as in Libya) intervention is not unreasonable. All we really did in Libya was level the playing field, it then quickly became clear Gadaffi had little actual support left outside of his mercenaries and clients, and I don't think there's any doubt he was bussing in Africans to be mercs, some of them have even admitted so.
More propaganda, and more repetition of the same lies that have been disproved over and over again in the past in regard to Libya. There are approximately one million people in the city of Homs alone. Do you honestly believe they'll all be killed if government forces restore control over the area? Of course not. As with any of these rebellions, only the ringleaders and their most ardent and open supporters are at any real risk - apart from those who become collateral damage between the two factions.

Even if one accepts that the international community is right to intervene during genuine genocidal activity, it is most definitely not the West's responsibility (or right) to play bodyguard for the Muslim Brotherhood or any other local rabble rousers. Standing up against a Middle Eastern government is brave, but comes with certain known risks. And apart from that, the actual level of popular support, and even Sunni popular support, for this movement is indefinite at best. To claim this is the government versus the people instead of the government versus a particular group of historically rebellious people is dubious indeed.

The WW2 comparison is laughable. That Britain was not willing to tolerate an expansionist Nazi Germany just across the channel and everything that would entail has absolutely no bearing on the Syrian situation.