Something seriously has to be done about this. Assad is just buying time and killing more people every day (1,000 since April 2). Now he's asking for written guarantees that the opposition will lay down arms and that other countries won't arm the opposition anymore, another stalling tactic. Even Russia is losing patience. This is all out murder of civilians, and the fact that nobody is stepping in and doing anything, besides Saudi Arabia (weapons) and the US (communications) is shameful. This guy's actions are exponentially worse than Gaddafi, Ben Ali, and Mubarak, yet he continues to get more time to kill his own people.
I was in Syria in March of last year when the protests first started. Here's a short 4-minute video I made of the pro-regime demonstrators in Damascus (the first 30 seconds are from an unrelated protest in Beirut, Lebanon). <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/21889433" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
Good idea to start this thread, "da1". I'm a bit ashamed I didn't do so myself, but seriously... Syria is going through some seriously terrible stuff right now at the hands of Assad. It's amazing how most Americans don't even think something is happening there right now. So sad. I remember seeing on some [foreign] news channel that something like 200 people were killed in the last 3 days alone. And this thread doesn't have to be about solutions. The Syrian people, at the least, deserve attention for what they're going through.
I have a friend stuck over there, dual citizen- embassy says there's nothing they can do- can't leave until he's 18. I'm surprised the US hasn't taken a more pro-active stance against Syria. It seems Assad (Iran's last real ally) is a bigger threat to US interests than Gaddafi. Is it because of the upcoming election? Is it because our allies (Israel, Turkey, Jordan) are afraid of a flood of refugees?
Which is why I think they would be afraid of Assad falling, thousands of Arabs coming in without official documents from the government or anything.
Key fact: syrian government must be us-friendly otherwise war with iran is significantly more difficult.
I feel for the Syrian people, they deserve a secular free government just like everyone else in the world. No more bully pulpit bull**** like most of the middle east countries have. DD
What can you do when a country claims to be fighting terrorists? We claim that all the time to justify what we do. No doubt al Qaeda is in that mix somewhere. We don't even know how Libya is going to look. By helping, we could actually be hurting ourselves in the future by creating new safe havens for real terrorists and creating new Islamist states to deal with. It's horrible all those people are dying. They might as well call it a civil war. But, who is to say we should do something about it with Russia and China blocking the UN resolution that would provide the greenlight for acting. As far as I'm concerned, they have all this blood on their hands protecting their ally.
Wow thats a pretty low turnout if thats all the support the maniac cough, cough i mean assad has then god help him once his D-day comes and it will come.History has proven all dictators will fall, soon the maniacs and the head of the Snake in Iran will fall to. In 2009 the People of Iran rose up bravely and the US pretty much ignored them and now the same thing is happening.
They're not. Gaddafi in the last 10 years has been more friendly to the US than either Assad. Syria and Libya are very different situations. There was almost unanimous political will to do something about Libya and there was also a rebel stronghold / base of operations in Benghazi. Those situations don't exist in Syria so any action would be much difficult. People act like the US can largely act unilaterally but we have seen what happens when the US does so and it isn't good. I can understand why the Obama admin. isn't moving fast on this. It is terrible for the people of Syria and I hope some sort of global will can be found to address it.
So was Saddam, Mubarak, Ben Ali and etc... Dosent change the facts they were draculian type dictators.
On one hand you have Iran, Iraq,China and Russia not budging on their continues support to the death for Assad and then Saudi, Qatar, France, US, Britan, Turkey supporting the opposition which will soon turn into pumping light and heavy weapons to the opposition. The result is that eventually Assad will fall because he dosent have the majority of support, but it will be deadly and might endup killing 100,000 people in the long run before the regime falls.
I feel for the Syrian people, brutalized by the Assad regime, father and son, for many decades. The majority of the country is being ruled by an Alawite dictatorship (a off-shoot of the Shia branch of the Muslim religion. in Syria, over 70% are Sunni), the Alawites making up about 15% of the population. This is far from the only time the regime has attempted to crush a popular rebellion. The late elder Assad killed far more of "his" citizens than his son has managed up until now. Of course, give the son time. He's working hard to catch up. A revolt among Sunnis started in the mid-'70's, and in 1982 Assad devastated Hama with his army, killing anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 civilians. Thousands more disappeared. Tens of thousands either fled the country, or were tossed out. Those last were probably the lucky ones. In other words, this has been going on for a very long time. While it's appealing to consider sending a couple of carrier battle groups, and a couple of Marine assault groups off the Syrian coast and deliver a "leave, or else" message, we simply can't take those actions whenever the spirit moves us, in my opinion. As brutal as the Assad regime is, there are other regimes in less well known countries that would "qualify" for our intervention, if qualifying means killing and injurying thousands of your own people. Should we just go after them while we're at it? I thought the Europeans should lead an intervention in Libya. To my surprise, they did, and while we did a lot of heavy lifting behind the scenes, that worked out pretty well. I'd prefer to see them take the lead here. We need to take a step back from fighting wars overseas and catch our breath. We need to give our people in uniform a chance to recover from multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm not opposed to protecting our interests with our armed forces, if need be, but this isn't the place or the time to do it. I'll add that Syria is no Libya, either. Population density is over 300 per square mile. The military is far more powerful. It would be difficult to go in and defeat the regime. We certainly could crush them should it be necessary, but I would rather see us support the opposition covertly, while publically pushing for a diplomatic solution, although a diplomatic solution seems remote right now. No matter how you slice it, the situation sucks.
