Syria, to intervene or not to intervene, a vexing question

[dbroussa]

There are two exremely interesting aspects of the debate over what action the US and the rest of the world should take in regards to Syria's use of NBC weapons against their own citizens.  The first is that, as we saw from 1999 to 2003 the politics of intervention for most politicians is purely a matter of who is in power at the time.  In 1999,

Comments

[jordan179]

There are three main problems with intervention:

(1) Obama has failed to give even a single just cause for war against Syria. (Several such causes exist, but Obama hasn't mentioned any of them). The Syrian state using chemical weapons against Syrian rebels in Syria is not a just cause for war. (And no, this problem doesn't go away if you term it "not a war" -- reality doesn't change when one changes the terms of reference).

(2) The planned intervention will probably be inadequate to force any policy change on the Syrians, and almost certainly inadequate to overthrow Assad's regime. Thus, it will anger Assad -- possibly resulting in retaliation against our people, property or national territory -- but fail to deter him.

Finally,

(3) The rebels in question are Al Qaeda affiliates. Why are we going to war in defense of AL-QAEDA?

I agree with some caveats

[dbroussa]

On number (1), the President has not given much in the way of reasons. The International Law around the use of chemical weapons even internally only is pretty clear, but he has just sort of meandered into this without articulating a coherent reason. I disagree that the use of chemical weapons is a cause for war. The use of type I chemical weapons is clearly prohibited by the Geneva Protocol

[moonsinger]

Not to mention there is apparently proof that the Iraqi chemical weapons were sent to Syria all along, and the media decided to show its partisanship towards the Democratic party and not report the truth. Just saw some interesting articles about that.