You seem to forget this little thing:

http://imperialconflict.com/forum/viewt … ?id=187395

Key word: threat.

The aging thing.

One word: Israel.

Even if Assad survives his civil war with his power intact, he'll come out of it as a conventionally armed power threatened by a paranoid nuclear neighbor with a much more modernized conventional force that has empirically had no problem bombing nearby countries and letting the rest of the world pick up the pieces after the fact.  So Assad might stay in power, but he'll have to be a much more mellow Assad, particularly in the international arena.

Not to mention that your argument assumes international law is equivalent to domestic law.  There's an obvious difference in that the Boston bomber is pretty much at the mercy of the US government.  In contrast, power politics matters in international law.  Sure, we could have sought to topple Assad if we wanted to.  But then that whole Russia thing would come into play...

Finally, remember that the objective of the bombings was never to knock Assad out of power.  Even Obama said their goals were simply to target Assad's chemical weapons stockpiles.  So absent diplomacy, the end goal of the military strike would have been the same as if the diplomatic route was successfully pursued (assuming everyone plays honestly... granted, not guaranteed).

So yeah, as far as international law goes, this is justice being carried out.

EDIT: Okay, in retrospect, that was much more than "one word."

That is the best justification ever for an ignore!

That argument is entirely tautological.

We reject the possibility that the United States is acting in a manner to spread democracy promotion because there's a reputation for the United States acting in its own interests.  There's a reputation for the United States acting in its own interests because we reject the possibility the United States is acting in a manner to spread democracy promotion.

Reputation is just a question of outside perception of a nation.  It has nothing to do with what the nation is actually doing.  If I give $1.00 to a homeless person, it's just as likely someone could say "Oh, that's a generous person" as they could  say "You cheapskate, you could have afforded more."  I'm not doubting that there's a growing skepticism with the US.  Hell, a little skepticism is probably healthy.  However, just because someone has a particular reputation, it doesn't define what they do.  It's just that... a reputation.

The flag of Equatorial Guinea! 

Okay, perfect.  So we're on the same page.  Though I do admit, we must admit at least some irony to the sentiment that in order to preserve the fundamentals of a democratic society, an aspect that at first looks entirely democratic (the right to vote) must be overruled.  It looks like a compromise.  It feels like a compromise.  Don't get me wrong, I agree with you here.  However, it illustrates a point: you can't examine aspects of a democracy in a vacuum.  You have to take the larger context in consideration.

With regards to Egypt, here's the issue, though.  What happens when, at the time of the vote, the people didn't realize the vote was a vote to eliminate elections?

The military was well aware that at the time of the first elections that the only non-Mubarak political organization in Egypt was the Muslim Brotherhood, a known Islamist organization.  The fundamental fear was that if the Muslim Brotherhood won the election, a transition to an Iran-esque government would ensue (where even if a democratic process existed, a non-democratic legal system would take priority).

And there was at least one REALLY good example of just that:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/world … egypt.html

"CAIRO — Egyptian judges rebelled Saturday against an edict by President Mohamed Morsi exempting his decrees from judicial review until ratification of a constitution, denouncing it as a bid for unchecked power and calling for a judges’ strike.

The condemnation came from an array of organizations. The Supreme Council of the Judiciary called the decree “an unprecedented attack on judicial independence” and urged the president to rescind it. A major association of judges, the Judges Club, called for a strike by courts across Egypt. The leader of the national lawyers’ association endorsed the call."

So yes, the election in question was exactly what you said would be undemocratic.  It involved a situation in which one choice involved across-the-board removal of fundamental rights inherent in a democracy.

However, even if you don't like that argument, there's a VERY strong secondary point to say that the military coup is democracy in action.  I know, this argument sounds ridiculous stupid, but you'll have to hear me out!  Very brief recap of Egyptian politics the past few years:

Mubarak sits in power.  Egypt has significant economic and other difficulties.  People en masse protest Mubarak's rule.  Mubarak is overthrown.

New government comes to power.  A year goes by, and the economy has, if anything, worsened.  People en masse protest AGAIN!  And, once again, the military kicks the guy out.

Notice the pattern?  Neither coup involved a military spontaneously saying "screw it, let's axe this guy!"  They both only occurred after protests gaining worldwide notoriety.  Gee...  national government only conducting major political actions after a massive portion of the population demands change in the direction taken.  That sounds ridiculously democratic, even without the formality of a vote.

Granted, a new election would have been preferred, but that's impractical.  First, it would have required government sanction to fund and conduct.  Guess who controls government.  Yep, that's right... the guy everyone wanted to oust. 

Second, they take time... time Egypt didn't have.  Their problems involve pretty big crises, primarily economic.

http://www.dw.de/egypt-gripped-by-unemp … a-16825597
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/egypt/unemployment-rate
(First link is a nice simple article, second is just unemployment data)

...13% unemployment, investors ditching a country dependent on foreign investment, and central bank reserves of dollars being cut in half just to work on stabilizing the currency... that's not something a people can just deal with until an election.

And before you say "they're just looking for a good front man," they had one!  Mubarak and the military were working together for 20 years!  How many marriages last even half that long?  In an issue of civil-military relations, the civil side rarely has the ability to prevent the military from pushing the politician aside and taking over, which is  why the most successful dictators first generally try to eliminate any possible military opponents (think Stalin) or give the military concessions to ensure loyalty (North Korea's policy of giving the military food supplies first).  So if the military actually wanted to seize power... that would have been the easiest thing ever.

Third, a hypothetical question!  Which do you think would be more bloody?

A: The current situation
B: One in which the people, frustrated with a government unwilling to cede power and a military unwilling to intervene politically again, were forced to take matters into their own hands?

I don't have to endorse every action of a government to recognize if they're trying to do the right thing or not.  I can endorse efforts by the military to conduct a democratic transition, favoring a President NOT interested in removing checks and balances, while at the same time condemning individual actions conducted.  Moreover, I'm willing to bet that since the US and Egyptian military have had good relations since Egypt and Israel signed their peace treaty, it's much easier for the US to negotiate with the Egyptian military from a position of friendship than to destroy 20 years of relations over actions being conducted in what are obviously dire circumstances in the nation's history.

Finally, a general political note.  How do you expect the US to exert change in another society toward a more democratic society without recognizing that transition periods are shitty?  Remember, the US transition to our modern democracy involved decades of slavery, an utterly brutal civil war, and a follow-on period during which a large segment of the population was outright discouraged from voting through various political processes, or through outright voter intimidation via the Klu Klux Klan.  France's transition to democracy involved the outright execution of a royal family, resulting in the establishment of a ruler who declared himself emperor and proceeded to ransack Europe.  Germany's transition to democracy was halted with the Reichstag fire, allowing one political party to seize power and begin one of the darkest eras in human history.

The point is, democracy is a complicated process.  Just telling 20 million people "Hey, you have the right to vote now" doesn't do any good.  Democracy isn't a thing you put on or take off.  Structurally, it requires a number of policies, such as freedom of the press, to make it work (case in point: Russia has elections, sure.  However, the government controls the airwaves, so no opposition candidate's going to get the time of day for advertising).

More important, democracy's a mindset.  It's an understanding of many things by the people.  For example, democracy requires an understanding by the party in power that, following loss during an election, it's better to give up power to the rightful victor, reorganize, and wait for the next opportunity to win, than it is to hold on to power and continue working toward the goals in question.  Most Western citizens tend to take the act of giving up political power for granted.  Outside democracies, it's almost unheard of for a government official to say "Hey, I realize none of you like me, so I'm going to go home and play golf now, despite the fact that I control the military and could easily quash you all!"

A mindset isn't an easy thing for any people to just adopt, particularly when that mindset runs counter to centuries of history.  Remember, for the US to overcome a fundamental hurdle in ensuring all the people of its nation had the right to vote, the US had to kill 72,000 people in its own civil war, culminating in an endgame where the military burned entire towns controlled by the opposition wherever they went, followed by an occupation of the southern half of the country by the military.

Long story short, you can't expect the Egyptian government to instantly become a democratic paradise.  That's naive.  It's going to take time, not just to stabilize Egypt, but to establish the institutions, political organizations, rights, and understandings inherent in a democratic society.  There are absolutely going to be hurdles, and times where the government will screw up.  This is probably one of them.  However, that in itself isn't a reason to dismiss the transition outright.  Rather, it's an opportunity to use the democratic system the nation is trying to foster, and the relations it has built as a result, to ensure that such occurrences don't happen again.

I think BeoWolfe's reply would fit into Flint's "please wait until at least 2 liberals reply" thing.  ^_^

Turn it into a first person shooter! 

A gun?