> Firewing wrote:

> @Zarf

Islamistic nations are theocracies which trend to religious hate against other religions and minorities. That is because Saudi Arabia supports movements for islamistic revolutions and with the money come radical religious demands. In most cases the islamistic groups adept these demands to be more radical and an counter part to the ruling party/class/ethnic group. That is why the western world must contain islamistic movements.

In most of Africa rebels are fighting the government without direct western interventions. E. g. in Nigeria hundreds of christians were killed by islamists at christmas every year. Does the western world send forces to protect them? No.

That's it?  So... there's absolutely no pragmatic foreign policy goal?  Or are you saying that the religious hate against other religions and minorities results in an aggressive foreign policy?  If it's the latter, then Syria is exhibiting that same aggressive foreign policy.  If it's the former... then really, why is that enough to warrant foreign intervention?

> The Golan Heights were the key route for the Syrian armies in the Jom-Kippur war. If Israel would give the Golan back, it would be a sign of weakness. Israel is ruled by nationalists and radical jewish parties. They see the Golan heights with a diffrent view. For the nationalists it is a symbol for strength and glory of the Israeli people even when besieged from all sides. For the jewish radicals the Golan are already part of their sacred nation. Things are not that easy.

That still assumes a worldview in which Israel and Syria are mortal enemies.  You don't need a pile of land as a show of strength against someone who is your friend... otherwise, I want to invade Canada to grab Ontario!  Why?  Shits and giggles.

> The Russian ship was not stoped by NATO ships, sorry for that. The cyprian administration of the port the ship entered discovered it with luck. They were not able to control the containers.

Fair enough.

> Deserters leave their lives forever if the rebellion fails. Many protestors switch to "normal" life outside the protests (which occur mostly on Fridays). A deserter is found as late as the next morning when it is discovered that he left his army unit. They have his name, adress, the names of his family...

I'll just post this and leave it at that.  There's your number, fear of death be damned.  That article's from today. 
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/01/13/uk-syria-defections-idUKTRE80C0ST20120113

> No perfect sources but it contains some information. I would suggest you read some books about modern russia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia%E2%80%93Russia_relations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_State

Russia "supports" other nations with weapons rather than money.

> China is the coming Great power #1 and so the world is its playground.

You're generalizing here... assuming that Syria (a country with little resources except for oil, and located on the wrong side of Africa to be the most efficient oil shipping route to China) would represent some important strategic interest to the point where China would want to actively clash with the US, Europe, Arab League, etc., on the issue?  Yes, it probably represents at least some strategic interest.  However, does it represent any more of an interest than any other oil nation which would better satisfy China's needs?

> Except of Tunesia the US had great influence in all other rebellions and revolutions. The egyptian army got billions of US aid and the US talked the generals to act against Mubarak. Back door diplomacy.

But the back door diplomacy occurred in all these rebellions... Syria included: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/18/obama-assad_n_930229.html
The military aid is only indirectly related to the rebellions, because the US has been aiding Egypt for years, so it's very likely the military wished to retain its pro-US stance... which also means even a "fundamentalist" state would either needs to work with the US or lose a huge portion of its military support.
So... does that mean the US has already intervened enough to make the rebellion work?

> Nobody uses nuclear weapons in wars. That is insane. Syria is close to the "holy land". Islamists would cry "crusaders" and the whole western world has great problems. Nothing is deeper in the regional minds than the crusades when barbaric europeans crushed the islamic world.

Remember, the US does not have a no first use doctrine.  In addition, we're talking about a scenario in which one of the US' closest allies would be facing a land invasion... the threat of nuclear retaliation by the US is the only reason these countries don't produce nuclear weapons themselves (extended deterrence).  Thus, unless the US were to use nuclear weapons, the credibility of its extended deterrence doctrine with other nations (Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, NATO) would also be undermined... encouraging multiple scenarios of regional nuclear proliferation which the United States does not want.

I'm not saying we would nuke their army on day 1, by any means.  However, the only reasons nations haven't used nuclear weapons is either due to mutually assured destruction or the fact that overwhelming conventional force was enough to avoid opening the floodgates of nuclear weapons use.  Mutually assured destruction is not a factor when dealing with non-nuclear nations that aren't under a nuclear umbrella protection (as was the case with most Cold War conflicts), so the only remaining factor is conventional force effectiveness.

Remember, I'm talking about a theoretical worst case scenario in which Syria's conventional forces have overwhelmed conventional forces in Turkey... this may not be a likely scenario, but if that threshold were crossed, what would be the deterrent against nuclear use by the US?

> xeno syndicated wrote:

> Your assumption is that greed is the prime motivator for those who would invent something.  This is a flawed assumption.

Incorrect.

1: Refer to my giant prior post on page 1.  I actually very clearly explain how the patent system allows people who are not motivated by profit to maximize their individual utility from their inventions.  This was unanswered.

2: In the exact same way, your argument assumes that there are no inventors who are motivated by greed, which is equally flawed.  In reality, inventors are a mix of both science-driven and profit-driven inventors.  The profit-driven inventors just would not see the light of day in your scenario... meaning you lose out on a good amount of inventions.  The science-driven inventors, assuming cost of invention is not a factor, will still have a place in both worlds, so evaluating their motivations in this equation is really moot (except for when we do factor in cost of invention, which I explained in that previous post... in which patent law is once again favored).

the world ended.

> Firewing wrote:

> Syria is no fundamentalist regime, instead it relys on the support of religious minorities like the christians:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,800450,00.html

The Assad regime is under attack and relys even more on the army. In the opposite the armys' influence relys on the Assad regime. So a cooperation with everyone who would support the rule of Assad is welcome.

> Your checklist is strange, but let me try:
The US is a aggressive regime:
Ruled by rich people only.
Monroe Doctrine locked the Americas as US backyard
Support for terrorists: torture in Iraq/abuses in Afganistan/Guantanamo/killing of Bin Laden without trial...
Anti-european rhetoric (see rep. campaign statements)
tons of nuclear weapons
aggressive foreign policy
...

Okay, then... exactly what is it we're worried about from a "fundamentalist" state that makes them so much worse than the Assad regime, then?  Do we just not like Islamic nations?  Or is there some pragmatic reason we're worried?  Because in terms of pragmatic concerns... even if Assad is not running a fundamentalist regime, he practices enough external actions to where he is no better than the worst of "fundamentalist" regimes in the Middle East.  Unless you have some actual way we can determine whether a nation is fundamentalist or not... something that actually represents a reason why we need to reject that type of state, your use of the term is vacuous in this whole post.

> Libya showed that democracies go to war very fast. Western governments were eager to throw in their military might without long discussions at home.

The civil war (when the serious fighting was going on, not just protesters) in Libya was going on for almost a month before NATO intervened.  How long do you need to discuss?

> The Golan heights are of strategic importance for Israel. The area is rough and has been heavily fortified by the Israelis in the past 40 years, so Israel has no real interest to give it back.

But why are the Golan Heights strategic?  The region is a strong land barrier, but it's surrounded by only 3 nations: Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.  Both Lebanon and Jordan have very good relations with Israel (aside from Israel's incursion into Lebanon to remove Hezbollah organizations hiding in the country), and both have alternative access points into Israel.  The only nation the Golan Heights is necessary to protect against... is Syria.  So if a circumstance existed where Syria offered the recognition of Israel, peaceful coexistence, etc., in exchange for the Golan Heights... there wouldn't be a reason Israel would need to value the Golan Heights anyway, because the only enemy the fortress was built to protect against just signed a peace agreement.

> The russian ship is free again with all munitions on board.

Fair enough.  That being said, we're not in a state where NATO would be preventing weapons from entering the country anyway.  Remember,

> The rebels in Syria say everything to gain support. There are only a few soldiers who dare to leave service, because deserters are executed. Protesters may go to work after the rebellion failed, deserters not.

Um... Syria is shooting protesters, yet protesters continue to go out on the streets.  There is nothing unique about the deserter situation... everyone standing against the government is risking their lives.

> Russia and China drew a red line with their decisions. Western sanctions are ok, because their companies have to leave and our (russian and chinese) companies may step in. China has no problems with cruel regimes, as hsows their support e. g. in africa.

Russia supported for strategic reasons: Armenia, Belarus and Iran, maybe Syria. China supports North Korea.

Happened to have a link on the Russia stuff?  I'm trying to find it online... but can't seem to find anything (in particular, because I've noticed that most of Russia's foreign aid seems to go to international organizations, directed through the organizations to countries, rather than directly managed like US aid)...

As for China, that's somewhat different because North Korea is so close to China.  I'll agree that China is attempting to create its own regional sphere of influence in East Asia.  However, to say that Chinese foreign policy in East Asia is the same as its foreign policy in the Middle East is equivalent to saying the Monroe Doctrine applied to Eurasia since it also applied to South America.

> In Tunesia the Islamists rule now, outcome unkonwn. Egypts seem to have voted for Islamists. Yemen is on the brink for civil war because of the many armed factions and tribes there. Syria is in state of civil war. Foreign interference may lead to a direct involvement of Iran and the Hizbolla in Lebanon. The whole region is a powder-keg, ready to explode. Libya was nice, because the coalition mostly relied on air strikes, while there was an ocean between both sides in the conflict. Syria and Iran have a direct border to turkey, a NATO member. At least turkey would call for NATO forces to protect its borders against Syria and Iran.

Hold up... even if each of these nations becomes a fundamentalist nation, they prove the argument I was exhibiting through the examples: That popular uprisings without US intervention can still succeed in overthrowing the government in power.  Whether or not the state becomes a fundamentalist state is determined as a product of the organizations within each individual nation (for example, Egypt really had only one non-government political organization, the Muslim Brotherhood... so no wonder they are crossing the line there).

And as for the problem of foreign intervention, the one difference is that Syria has isolated almost every ally it had as a result of the uprisings... at most, Syria could hope to have allies in Iran and Hezbollah... and either of those nations mounting a ground offensive against a NATO ally would fundamentally change the way NATO would respond... not to mention the fact that, worst case scenario, the US houses tactical nuclear weapons in Turkey for use in the country's defense... it's somewhat farfetched to think that a non-nuclear nation would risk a direct land invasion of a nuclear-armed power.

> Clinton needed a distraction of the impeachment. He wanted to show strength while he was indeed very weak. What is better than bombing a small nation to surrender? Flint has a point here. Obama may go to war if his campaign runs bad.

And that is... exactly my point!  There is no reason to assert that just because an election is occurring, the US wouldn't intervene militarily in a nation... especially when there is another issue (such as the economy) from which the incumbent would want a distraction.

I actually just lost a post I was just about to post, after about 3 hours of typing... so I'm going to try and be more brief, so as to avoid driving myself insane.

> Firewing wrote:

> @ Zarf

A) A dictatorship can be corrupted, because it needs control by the army over the people. Wars weaken the army grip on the people and may, e. g. if the war develops badly, try uprisings. Also are dictators, if not utterly insane, more predictable than democratic parties under pressure by its own population. Israel still controls the Golan area of Syria. A democratic government would be under pressure to gain it back, even with war. As the arabic revolutions shows, dictators acted secular, but are now repaced by islamistic parties. It is still unknown what the future will bring. In Egypt at the southern border of Israel the Islamists show open support for a more aggressive stand against Israel. Under Mubarak rule Egypt promoted peace and signed the first peace treaty with Israel.

1: Corruption generally only occurs among nations with at least some existing relations with one another.  Syria and Israel have no official relations, so you don't have the interaction that would allow that corruption to be fermented.
2: In general, dictators use the existence of foreign threats to justify the dictatorships... for Syria, that threat is Israel.  Cooperation with Israel would undermine that justification.
3: Israel has historically offered a number of Land for Peace agreements with Jordan, Egypt, and the PLO.  Syria, however, never gained such an agreement with Israel.  The empirical evidence would indicate that in 40 years of relations with the Ba'athist regime, Israel has not been able to negotiate a similar agreement with the dictatorship... all things being equal, that's a pretty good sign that a final peace just ain't happening.
4: Syria IS that fundamentalist regime you're mentioning as the worst case scenario.
Belief in pan-Arabism... check.
Support for terrorists... check.
Anti-Israeli rhetoric... check.
Nuclear weapons development... check (Israel bombed a Syrian nuclear reactor about 5 years ago).

There are very few lines which the Syrian regime hasn't crossed.
5: There are natural inhibitions against democracies going to war.  There's the fact that the voting population has much more to lose in warfare than the government (it's the people which lose relatives and homes in warfare much more than the regime in question).

B) I have just read in an german news article that an russian ship with course Syria was boarded by international control ships for Libanon. The ship was full off munitions.
Russia wants to show that it is still a great power. In Libya the western coalition got an UN security council agreement for bombing Gaddafi out of control. Gaddafi was an ally of russia and never imagined that this would happen when they agreed, this won't happen again soon. While the zones of influence of the US and europe in northern africa and the middle east grows, the russian positions grow weak. Russia has no interest to lose more consumers of russian weapons, some of the last manufactured goods Russia exports.

The article you cite also gives me the justification for my argument... the fact that the international community was able to be intercepted without incident would prove that the international community can control the region and exclude arms shipments such as the Russian arms shipment in order to prevent undesirable shipments from entering the country.

Not to mention... remember, the military is beginning to turn against the government.  So... who's firing the guns the Russians would be shipping?

C) Without an UN security council agreement no foreign intervention will happen. At some point the rebels in Syria will surrender their hopes. China will wait until than. They have no interest in a success of the arab revolutions, because they fear uprisings in China when people realize that even cruel governments can be replaced if the people are willing to throw their lives away to achieve it. Like Russia the Chinese see their influence weakening and they want to stop that process.

There is no argument here.  This is just assertion of your argument.  Why?  Why would the rebles surrender their hopes when the military... that's the people with the guns... is starting to turn on their government?  This was exactly what happened in Egypt... if anything, this should spur the local movements.

D) There are offical sanctions and inoffical trades. Iran has oil and connections to other governments. The president of Iran just travels through south america meeting many leaders of states. Friendly handshakes and consultations about the aggressive USA and economic cooperations. The naval actions by Iran distracted a US carrier group. A serious threat may bound more forces. I mentioned Russia before. The nuclear technology in Iran is in many areas from Russia. The sanctions by the US and the EU may hit, but there are still Russia and China with lots of Dollars and goodwill to show the West their limits in Asia.

1: Oil doesn't cut it.  Iran is a gasoline importer (they require foreign nations to actually refine petroleum into gasoline).  Recent EU sanctions have targeted that sector, making it more and more difficult for Iran to sustain its own demand for oil.  That's one thing we forget about... Iran sees the same type of gas prices crisis the rest of the world incurs, or at least could be subject to such.  Anyway, Iran attempts to mitigate this problem by subsidizing its domestic gasoline (so the government is footing part of the bill for each gallon of gasoline a consumer buys).  This means, though, that every sanction, especially those against the Iranian gasoline sector, directly cut into Iran's budget... forcing Iran to make the same budgetary concerns the rest of the world needs to determine.
2: If China or Russia really wanted to prop up Iran, they would have vetoed one of the 4 different UN resolutions establishing sanctions against Iran.  They haven't done so.  Best empirical disproving of your argument.
3: In recent history, do you have any example of a nation which China or Russia propped up with foreign aid solely for the purpose of expanding their sphere of influence... i.e., not because they wanted access to key resources?  That's just not something they do anymore since about the Cold War... it's just not economically efficient.

E&F) As Libya has shown, without the US a operation is hopeless. Even "small" commitments are commitments and that means war. The europeans have other problems with the Euro now. Israel has no interest for war. The Arabian league is seperated. Only if the US leads a coalition into war the syrian rebels may have a chance.
Syria is worse than Iran, because it is seperated in many tribes and religions. Iran, as former Persia, is a grown nation. Syria was drawn on a map after the First World War. That is why some parts of the population are uprising and some parts support Assad. It would be easily like a second Iraq. Even if the western coalition would overthrow the Assad regime a long time of occupation would follow. As iraq shows, the result would be chaos after the occupation would end.

1: What about Egypt, Tunisia, or Yemen, where their rulers stepped aside, even after the governments were willing to cross the line and begin attacking the population?  What about the dozen or so nations which have seen substantial democratic reforms?  Libya is the exception, not the norm, to that rule.
2: You still haven't answered why nobody would want to commit to the conflict.  We're not talking about an Iraq or Afghanistan war.  The total bill on the war in Libya cost the US less than $900 million.  Relative to the US budget, that's an amazing deal.
3: Why wouldn't the US go to war during an election season?  Hell, NATO bombed Serbia during the Clinton impeachment proceedings, a similar referendum on the presidency.

> ~Wornstrum~ wrote:

> "Egypt would prove you wrong empirically, where the military turned out to be the final organization determining who retains power..."

So the military is in a position to determine who retains power? How is this not related to my first point above?

Because the point I was attempting to dispute was...

"Now to get to my point (sorry for the roundabout way I took), but like in Libya, I see the military shifting sides as a means to actually maintain their already existing power. I do not expect much to change in Libya due to the "high ranking" military officers that shifted sides when power shifted, and I still expect very little change now. The same goes with any military dictatorship, so if the military in Syria do transparently shift sides to oppose the government, I think the impact would be minimal on Hezbollah due to the military still retaining their power."

Specifically, the "there will be very little change now" portion is what I would indict.  From there, it depends on your definition of "change."  Egypt transformed from a lifetime dictatorship with sham elections once in a while to what could become a real democracy, with the democratic agenda backed by the military that was previously backing the dictator.  In terms of government operations... that is change!

> I understand your point, and I do agree that not all military organisations are interested in persuing power, but in a place where the military protects a totalitarian government in return for the militaries own protection, I think you should be weary of lasting change when the military begins to change sides (simply because they will be protecting their own interests).

I'd be wary, except that, historically, democracies are extremely useful for the specific goals apolitical militaries have in mind.
A: The need for the military to police the civilian population is much easier, allowing the military to focus its resources on... the military goals.
B: The political wing  creates a forum for people to correct such issues as economic or social problems, issues which are relatively divorced from military goals, but which can critically threaten military goals if the political side cannot manage the issues correctly.
C: Internationally, democracies just get less military pressure than dictators, in part because nations like the US believe democratic rulers are more accountable to international reprisal than dictators.

Remember, the military will only protect the political as long as the political is useful to the military in protection.  The protests prove that the political side is unable to provide the necessary protection to the military for the military to retain its alliance with the political... and considering many of these are pro-democratic movements, Syria included, the type of political organization which would protect the military in these specific circumstances would be a democratic political wing.

Yeah... regime is doomed.  Syria is held together by the military, so once the military loses faith in the leader, the government really has nothing to sustain its power, perhaps aside from paramilitary operations, such as Hezbollah, which the government has supported in Lebanon.  That being said, Syria's government obviously is going to go the way of Qadaffi.

What follows it?  No way in hell you can answer that question.  Personally, I lean toward the optimistic side, with the warning that Syria has held a strong religious fundamentalist faction due to the government's been supporting them.

That being said, I want to remind everyone that where Syria goes, Lebanon could easily follow.  Lebanon's government is controlled by Hezbollah, which is primarily financed by Syria and Iran.  With Iran's economy faltering from increasing international sanctions and Syria falling to political pressure domestically, the organization controlling Lebanon will increasingly falter, allowing the Lebanese people to retake their government in time, possibly after foreign "support" (I put that in parentheses because the most likely scenario for something like this would probably be Israel looking for a reason to topple Hezbollah in Lebanon like they tried to do in 2005).

> Justinian I wrote:

> National Defense wins. I will no longer post on forums.

*votes to reelect Obama*

And if the Dems call your bluff?

Xeno... you're aware of the giant pile of patent reforms designed to prevent exactly that... passed and signed last year, correct?  Even if you're correct, you're judging it based on an old patent system which has been utterly overhauled.

Not to mention... that's not an indictment of the concept of patents.  That means you are simply indicting the current patent law system, i.e., reforms would solve that problem, as opposed to throwing out the whole system.

> The Yell wrote:

> They won't even promise to repeal Obamacare, in fact the Republican House funded it and will fund it again, and they are already saying that if they don't have the White House , the House, and 60 votes in the Senate they can't touch it.  And if the public doesn't give them that dictatorial power immediately then  they can never repeal it ever.  There is no point to a professional association of career politicians that just wants to defeat Democrats, and they can't hold it togetehr.  They already failed in 2005-2006.

So... how are they supposed to legally repeal the law if not by the legally required amount of votes to actually repeal the law?