4 June 2012 Syria ‘bout that

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/31/the-case-against-intervention-in-syria/?hpt=hp_bn2

“The case against intervention in Syria

In Syria, the brutal regime of Bashar Assad is testing the proposition that repression works. The massacre of civilians in Houla is only the latest example of what appears to be a strategy of making no concessions and using maximum force. To the Assad regime's way of thinking, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi erred by hesitating, emboldening the opposition and sowing doubts among their supporters. So far, Assad's strategy has worked. Kofi Annan's mission, which appears to be based on the idea that Assad will negotiate his own departure, seems utterly doomed. The U.S., the Western world, indeed the civilized world, should attempt instead to dislodge the Assad regime. Is there a smart way to do it?

Watch more in the video above, read more from Fareed Zakaria at TIME andcheck out past TIME columns.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/world/middleeast/romney-condemns-obamas-syria-policy.html

Romney Calls for Action on Syria, but His Party Is Divided

By MARK LANDLER

Published: May 29, 2012 

WASHINGTON — The massacre of more than 100 civilians, many of them children, in Syria over the weekend has presented Mitt Romney with a new opportunity to sound a familiar theme: that President Obama’s foreign policy is feckless and lacking in courage.

Cassi Creek:         Yet another Arab country suffers under the thumb of a government, which holds power because of tribalism, religious oppression, and the remnants of the Cold War proxy system that allows its dictator to murder thousands of citizens while neither the Western powers nor the Arab nations are willing to affect a military solution. 

          The Arab states will advance religious and cultural reasons for ignoring the terminal status of another holdover from the demise of the Ottoman Empire after WWI. 

          Russia and Iran still want client states in the region and will hide behind that plan of inaction.  They will be willing to live with nearly any outcome that allows them to maintain terrorist associates in the region. 

          The Obama plan for the U.S. is to avoid intervention and the very real chance of being caught in a religion-based, tribal-driven civil war.  The rest of the Western world seems to agree. At the surface level, with the Obama plans. 

          Which brings us to the GOP/teavangelist position.  By definition, that plank in their platform must diametrically oppose whatever the Obama position becomes.  So, we find their pundits, professional politicians, and demagogues demanding full-bore military intervention in Syria.  It matters not that Syria’s “rebels” are ill defined at best, and undefined for the most.  The teavanagelists want to pump weapons into the region, into the hands of a society still best defined by religious fundamentalism and tribal loyalties.  The teavangelists will demand that the religious freedom of the Syrian opposition be protected, until they realize that they large influx of Syrian refugees that they have helped creates is going to bring their religion with them to their new home in America. 

          At that time, I predict a rapidly developing resurgence of anti-Islamic behavior spawned by the same people now screaming at Obama for not sending armed support to Syria.