General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Your Ignorance is not as Good; Or, You Don't Know Fuck-All About Syria [View all]free0352
(9 posts)... which means I know a lot more than most people at the State Department, and three cities off the top of my head are Alepo, Homs and Damascus. And once upon a time I worked for in the military so I worked for the Department of Defense.
Good enough for you>
1.) Al'Qaeda is presumably bad.
2.) Many of the rebels fighting the Assad Regime are members of Al'Qaeda.
Conclusion: bombings damaging to the Syrian Regime (or worse regime change on the ground) help Al'Qaeda.
3.) Helping Al'Qaeda is presumably a bad thing.
What if these Al'Qaeda backed rebels actually win? Would they not gain access to the very WMD possessed by the Syrian Regime? Whom do you think would be more judicious in the use of nerve gas, Assad or Al'Qaeda? If Al'Qaeda were to use nerve gas taken from a toppled Assad Regime; would not the US have to go into Syria and root out that network... with ground troops if necessary? Perhaps this is the plan long term?
I make no claim that Assad is a nice guy. He's not. He's horrible. But so are these so called "rebels." Just because they are fighting a totalitarian dictatorship doesn't by default make them "the good guys." From what I see, there are no good guys in this. This isn't a Hollywood action movie with clear cut villains and protagonists. This is the real world where often both players in the game are dirt bags. If a bad guy must win, I vote the bad guy who has never attacked America win, vs the bad guys who killed 3000 Americans on 9-11 (Al'Qaeda.) This would seem to be common sense, even if you've never spent a day at the State Department or knew where to find Ar-Raqqah on a map.