On 2013-09-05, at 10:11 PM, Dennis Redmond wrote:
> The fact is that the Assad regime -- a brutal Alawite
> dictatorship -- has killed 100,000 of its own citizens, blasted Homs,
> Aleppo, Daraa, suburban Damascus, and hundreds of smaller cities and towns
> into smithereens, turned 2 million Syrians into refugees, and murdered
> hundreds of women and children with chemical weapons:
>
> That qualifies for measured UN intervention in my book (not occupation, but
> airstrikes to take out regime aircraft and missiles).
>
> As far as endgames go, some history: (1) Syria is not Afghanistan....
This is all true. But this doesn't warrant direct intervention by the armed forces of imperialist states in civil wars - in our time, by the US acting on its own or under the thinly disguised cover of the UN, NATO, or a "coalition of the willing".
Which is not to say that revolutionary and national liberation movements should not seek advanced weapons from any quarter for use against counter-revolutionary armies. This would allow such movements, rather than foreign powers, to take control of the battlefield. If not for the Western embargo on arms shipments to leftist forces in Republican Spain in the 30's, for example, the fascist-led Spanish right would have not likely prevailed.
While I'm against the intervention of the US military in the Syrian civil war, I would support the provision of advanced anti-aircraft and anti-tank weaponry to the secular revolutionary militias which would strengthen them both against regime and rival Islamist fighters.
This is not happening, however, ostensibly because the Obama administration doesn't want such advanced weaponry to "fall into the wrong hands". But even if there were no perceived threat to US interests from al-Nusra and other Islamist groups, I suspect the US would be equally unwilling to tilt the military balance in favour of radicalizing secular forces on the ground because they could in power pose as much or more of a threat than the Islamists to its interests in the region. The preferred US strategy instead is to use overwhelming military power, in concert with diplomatic manoeuvring, to replace the Assad regime with a broader coalition incorporating the most reliable pro-Western liberal representatives from the opposition which would, among other things, disarm the militias.
There is no evidence that the missile strikes would stop the bloodletting in Syria. The US high command has already indicated they would not. Instead, the attacks are as likely to spread the conflict across the region, while strengthening the regime at the expense of the opposition, with secular and Islamist nationalists joining it in defence of Syria's territorial integrity against foreign aggression. It seems this is already beginning to happen:
See: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/09/syria-rebels-us-strike.html#ixzz2e5E8apwI
On the secular revolutionary opposition (h/t Louis Proyect):
http://forusa.org/blogs/mohja-kahf/syria-its-still-revolution-my-friends/12398