Quote Originally Posted by Philippus Flavius Homovallumus View Post
A number of points to understand about the Western Mindset on Syria.

1. Assad bombs his own people (Civilians) and therefore his government is Tyrannical. In Western thought there is a moral obligation to overthrow Tyrants, even Tyrannical Kings ordained by God.

2. Many have said that we should have intervened in syria earlier, particularly to destroy Assad's ability to cripple his own country's infrastructure. We should have destroyed his Air Power.

3. Against this other have said we should just leave the Syrians to it, even if we can reduce casualties we are morally obliged NOT to help a people overthrow their Tyrant, they have to do it themselves. The debate between this and point 1 is at least as old the sons of the Athenian Tyrant Peisistratos, i.e 6th century BC.

4. There is a strong argument that, having intervened in Libya, we undermined the good we had done there by refusing to support the initially peaceful Syrian uprising with practical military intervention (a No-Fly Zone) undermined the Arab belief in Western Goodwill. In the face of apparent Western "betrayal" Arabs once again concluded it was "all about oil". This weakened the faction we had supported in Libya and helped ignite a new Civil War there.

At the bottom of all of this is the Western Belief in the superiority of our Constitutional arrangements and our form of government - essentially it's a belief in our cultural superiority based on hard practical observation.
We intervened without hesitation in Libya and the place is now a dump, its people crossing over to Europe by the literal boatload. I've come to the conclusion that Muslim countries tend towards Islamism. Any liberal democracy will only be temporary before Islamism reasserts itself. Dictatorship is the longest lasting barrier to Islamism.