The worst thing we do is give military training to jihadists, which are undoubtedly present - if not prominent - among the Syrian rebels. One good student can go on to teach thousands of others.

Our foreign policy is always run by the most naive, short sighted idiots possible.

Mind as well just cut out the middle men and bomb the Empire State building.

"which is apparently why we are training only some selected groups out of the country"

And its entirely unforseeable that they could share that knowledge with their Al Queda allies. Or that even the "good" groups will be infiltrated by Al Queda - which we know happend in Afghanistan all the time.

Because we can't see past our noses. We have to be that stupid. Always.

And of course, taking a a hard stance against Al Queda - you can either ally with them or you can ally with us but we never allow both - is somehow wrong too. Even thought its common sense.

Lastly, its obviously the job the US government to worry about Syria.

"In short we're screwed."

If we do help them, Syrians will mostly dislike us and (righfully) give the credit to the people who actually fought and bled during the war.

If we don't help them, Syrians will mostly dislike us and still give credit to the people who actually fought.

That's not to say that we can't help or reduce the suffering but from a "how the US is perceived in Syria" standpoint it makes zero difference.

The issue is really to help Al Queda or not. Easy choice. The people we have running things go out of their way to be foolish on this one.

"but this is the dilemma we face as the world's top superpower. Either way, people hate us.

#14 | Posted by cbob at 2013-02-28 03:45 PM | Reply | Flag:"

That's what makes the decision incredibly easy: Go the path where you don't strengthen Al Queda.

If it was "help Al Queda in the short term but weaken them in the long term by changing the image of the US in Syria to a positive one", then we'd have a real dilemna.

We all know that this isn't the choice. So the correct course of action is incredibly easy to deduce.

"Governments bombing their civilians with air strikes and missiles anywhere in the world is important, countries from Russia to Britain and many Arab nations being all onboard with his action."

If everyone jumped off a bridge, I'd still say jumping off bridges is stupid. In this case, if everyone else wants to help Al Queda, I'm still saying that helping Al-Queda is stupid.

"It's not like a strong Syrian dictatorship in alliance with Iran should mean anything to us."

Iran: Oooga-Boooga

Al Queda, when left to their own devices, attacks us. Iran does not.

"Ah, if only the world were as simple as some people want it to be."

Yes, everything is so complex that we can't help but aid the only entity in the world that regularly attacks us.

That's such an intelligent position to take and not ridiculous at all.

"It's easy if the world is black and white to you. But of course the world is more gray than that. That's why presidents don't have an easy job. The gray stuff always gets in the way."

Well, this is a bit of strawman as I have never said the world is black and white. You're attacking me as being overly simplistic in a dishonest fashion rather than sticking to what I did say on this issue when you say this. Grow up. You're not more sophisticated than me. You're not a deeper thinker. I'm not impressed by your grandstanding.

Some issues, however, are relatively easy to figure out. "Should we ever help Al Queda" is clearly one of them. The answer has to be "No". If we send that message now, then maybe people reject Al Queda's help in favor of our help in the future. And then we can help people without endangering ourselves. Wouldn't that be nice?

And let's not pretend that the US gets involved every time "people are being slaughtered right in front of us either". That is clearly untrue. And its common knowledge that this is untrue I'm not going to provide examples.

"If we do nothing, al Qaeda will likely continue to gain ground against Assad anyway. Then when Assad is ousted or killed, al Qaeda looks like heroes to the rebels, gains more allies and grows ever stronger, and becomes more of a threat to us."

This is where your argument falls apart and is clearly nonsensical. If we help Al Queda topple Assad, Al Queda will still get all the credit and still become more popular in Syria. So you're presenting false consequences here. Regardless of what we do, Al Queda is going to get all the credit. The only difference between inaction and action as far as Al Queda is concerned is whether Al Queda receives our training and knowledge for use against us in the future. And whether we go further into debt to facilitate it.

I will concede that our involvement would probably shorten the conflict and save Syrian lives. But that is likely at at the expense of American lives down the road. And its unethical for American politicians who campaigned on the premise that they were going to act in the US's best interests to then put the lives of Syrians above Americans. So step down off the soapbox and give the holier than though routine a rest.

"And I would argue that this doesn't come down to "do we help al Qaeda or do we not help al Qaeda," because the rebels and al Qaeda are not entirely the same group of people.

#24 | Posted by cbob at 2013-02-28 06:03 PM | Reply | Flag:"

Not every Syrian rebel is Al Queda but they are intertwined to the extent that we are incapable of telling who is and who is not a career jihadist. Can't we learn anything from past mistakes like those made in Afghanistan and Libya? We lack the connections and knowledge based to weed out the bad apples when we start training and arming people. Why continue as if that isn't true?

"And I never said that we did. I'm just saying a lot of people feel like we should get involved in situations like this one for moral reasons.

#25 | Posted by cbob at 2013-02-28 06:06 PM | Reply | Flag:"

For the amount of money that we spend on "humanitarian" campaigns that involve violence and bombing people (Libya, Serbia, etc) or just arming others (what we've already done in Syria through proxies), how many hungry people could we feed?

I distrust the humanitarian motives behind stuff like this because there are much easier ways to be a humanitarian that are much more cost effective and don't involve killing anyone or flooding a violent region of the world with more weapons.

"We'd see the same type of violence by the government in the USA or UK if there was a rebellion to overthrow the government."

We bomb civilians all the time to get to our enemies. We'd bomb Syrian civilians in a heartbeat if it meant getting to a high value target.

Hell, we bombed Libyan civilians in Tripoli to stop Khadaffi from bombing Libyan civilians in Benghazi.

"When Syria is no longer an Iranian puppet, we can thank Hillary, Obama, and Corky.

#37 | Posted by Corky at 2013-03-01 10:09 AM | Reply | Flag:"

But what will they become?

Most revolutions replace one bad guy with another.

That's another reason to mind our own business. Do we really want "credit" for whatever comes next?