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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Why we should support the Syrian opposition, in spite of everything we know
2012-02-04
Good op-ed piece by Joshua Stanton, the proprietor of One Free Korea, the go-to blog about North Korea and oppression in general. He has a more positive view on the events in Libya than I have and credits NATO with engendering more goodwill than I've seen, but I'd like Mr. Stanton to be right about this.

There is no question that, as Mr. Stanton says,
...the Assad family's legacy has been decades of poverty, oppression, torture, massacres, sectarian oligarchy, and the conjuring of pathological hatred for a neighbor that has repeatedly inflicted humiliating defeats on the Syrian Army.

Mr. Stanton advocates rapid development of close links with the Syrian opposition both to put an end to the civil war there and to keep Syria from turning to a Muslim Brotherhood-like organization to fill the gap in Syrian society. As with Libya, I'm not that optimistic -- once Pencilneck is gone, my bet is that the Syrian people will turn to militant Islam, not western liberalism, just as the Egyptians, Libyans, and Tunisians have done. In the end, the culture is Islamic, and in times of terrible turmoil people return to the culture they know.

But the best course for now is precisely what Mr. Stanton suggests, if only to end the suffering of the Syrian people and to keep the Middle East from exploding.
Posted by:Steve White

#8  TW, please explain sometime. I don't know enough to understand why not. Surely Juices are better than what they've got?
Posted by: RandomJD   2012-02-04 23:53  

#7  AlanC, do you really think the Syrian Christians would happily live under the governance of Juices, any more than Egyptian Copts would?
Posted by: trailing wife   2012-02-04 18:36  

#6  Yes, support the Syrian opposition. Then the Syrian government. Then the opposition. Then ...
Posted by: Shimble Guelph5793   2012-02-04 12:48  

#5  Works for me, Alan.
Posted by: Barbara   2012-02-04 10:06  

#4  How about the Israelis make a trade. Bring the Christians, Druze and so forth to the West Bank and Gaza and send all the Paleos to Syria.
Posted by: AlanC   2012-02-04 09:58  

#3  Secret Master, AH yes, Ditto. Egyptians and Libyans will suffer for years. Iran and Lebanon haven't turned out that well. There was a plan to promote instability in this area of the world. This allows for so much mischief. Brings back memories of the Shaw. I'm inclined to listen to the Russians on this. They are closer to this and want to keep their ally. That means a stable country. Many will leave this country or die because of one thing or another if Assad is deposed. Look at Egypt falling apart now. Western in many ways now appears to be lost.
Posted by: Dale   2012-02-04 08:40  

#2  HeÂ’s wrong.

As I've said previously, we should not get involved in Syria. Frankly, if I *had* to pick a side in SyriaÂ’s internal strife, I would pick Assad.

Yep: I said it. I would pick Pencil Neck over the so-called Syrian opposition, which is quickly turning into a typical fundamentalist Sunni movement that is pitting itself against everybody else in the country (Kurds, Christians, Shia, Druze, Alawis, etc.). They’ve shown even less pro-democratic leanings than the Muslim Brotherhood. If the opposition wins, you can expect the butchery, displacement, and oppression on a mass scale – possibly even something along the lines of the Holocaust or the Armenian Genocide. If Assad wins, things suck for the Sunni but remain basically the same. He doesn’t want to wipe out millions of them. Hell, he’s been working on forcing his own people (the Alawi) into becoming pseudo-Sunni for years for Pan Arabist purposes. He’ll kill a few thousand as examples, but that’s it.

Syria has a population of 23 million people. Roughly 9 million of them arenÂ’t Sunni, and arenÂ’t supporting the opposition. WhatÂ’s going to happen to them under a new, fundamentalist Sunni government? Not hard to figure out, is it?

From Wikipedia:

A striking feature of religious life in Syria is the geographic distribution of the religious minorities. Most Christians live in Damascus and Aleppo, although significant numbers live in Al-Hasakah Province in northeastern Syria, Tartous and Latakia. Nearly 90 percent of the Alawis live in Al-Ladhiqiyah Province in the rural areas of the Jabal an Nusayriyah; they constitute over 80 percent of the rural population of the province. The Jabal al-Arab/Jabal al-Druze, a rugged and mountainous region in the southwest of the country, is more than 90 percent Druze inhabited; some 120 villages are exclusively so. The Twelvers Shia's are concentrated between Homs and Aleppo; they constitute nearly 15 percent of Hamah Province. The Ismaili Shia's are concentrated in the Salamiyah region of Hamah Province; approximately 10,000 more inhabit the mountains of Al Ladhiqiyah Province. Most of the remaining Shia live in the region of Aleppo. The Jewish community is also centered in the Aleppo area, as are the Yazidis, many of whom inhabit the Jabal Siman and about half of whom live in the vicinity of Amuda in the al-Jazirah.

Charming, actually - and doomed if the opposition wins. WeÂ’ve seen that in Egypt already.
Posted by: Secret Master   2012-02-04 02:31  

#1  Hate to sound cynical, but sometimes it seems that inflicted suffering on people in the Middle East is the only way to keep it from exploding. Without that, they tend to band together & go a-jihading.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2012-02-04 00:29  

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