DemonDeac3D
Member
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/08/obama-must-do-something-tangible-for-syria/?hpt=hp_c1
I feel like I have to agree with this. Thoughts?
I feel like I have to agree with this. Thoughts?
Can someone explain China and Russia's stance? Are they concerned about something or is just the usual blind anti-West position?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16984219Afterwards, one of the FSA fighters showed me a video he had filmed in December.
They had ambushed a convoy of armoured vehicles. Eight of the security forces were killed, 11 captured. The video showed the prisoners, in camouflage uniform, lined up facing a wall.
Some were still bleeding after the battle. Their arms were raised.
One turned to the camera, looking petrified. The man who'd taken the pictures said that despite their army uniforms, their ID cards showed they were Shabiha (or ghosts) - the hated government paramilitary force.
"We killed them," he told me.
"You killed your prisoners?"
"Yes, of course. They were executed later. That is the policy for Shabiha."
These were Sunni Shabiha, he added; the only Alawite had escaped.
I checked with an officer. While soldiers were released, he said, members of the Shabiha were "executed" after a hearing before a panel of FSA military judges.
To explain, they showed me a film taken from the mobile phone of a captured Shabiha. Prisoners lay face down on the ground, hands tied behind their backs. One-by-one, their heads were cut off.
The man wielding the knife said, tauntingly, to the first: "This is for freedom."
As his victim's neck opened, he went on: "This is for our martyrs. And this is for collaborating with Israel."
"The American people are friends of liberty everywhere but custodians only of our own."
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is saying Syria is not at all like libya. First we don't who we'd be arming as there are many factions. Many have different goals.
Next, when the Libyan uprising got startted they almost immediately had major bases of operations in Benghazzi an d throughout eastern Libya.
Another reason is that the Syrians have a modern and integrated air defense system which Libya didn't have.
Once again it's good to have professionals and adults running the military for a change versus being led by a bunch of idelogical chicken hawk yahoos.
Two journalists killed in Homs today.
Libya and Syria aren't even remotely similar. Libya was an isolated rogue state headed by a gangster with no more friends. Syria is a strategically-positioned Gulf state with superpower friends. We need to acknowledge the reality of spheres of influence, however distasteful, or we can never expect anyone to honor ours. We have to first work for approval of any intervention through the Arab League and UN--as we did in Libya, by the way--and if we can't get it, we sit the conflict out.
Coldly analytically, Syria simple isn't worth pissing off China and Russia.