Britain pledges $800,000 to Syria opposition to topple Assad regime

[chimitos]

$800,000 isn't very much when you look at the grand scale, but it's still more then the front-page let on.
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[GarrettFox]

[QUOTE=Ownederd;35361851]Yeah, and a Sunni extremist Islamist government that'll back a US/Israel incursion into Iran is much better than a reactionary dictatorship that provides basic services and needs to all of her citizens.[/QUOTE]

By this logic it makes far more sense to dial up the imperialism and launch a full scale invasion followed by setting up a regional government and declaring them a protectorate.

Basically your solution is to have everyone wallow in mediocrity for all time. Never striving for something better because it might create something worse.

[prooboo]

[QUOTE=GunFox;35361685]Nobody is suggesting that the world wouldn't be better without every nation being almost completely self interested, but that isn't going to change any time in the foreseeable future.

What we can do is try to root for the lesser of two evils. Generally speaking, an airbase in Syria and increased freedom for its people is likely the lesser evil when compared to artillery pieces being used to shell civilian residential areas.[/QUOTE]

Necessity doesn't make self interest right. The argument here is whether or not the opposition is really democratic or if they'll end up exactly like Egypt. The argument here is also, are we really doing this for Syria or are we doing this to add another country to our sphere of influence (South America, Cuba (Pre-Castro), Iraq (2003), Kuwait, Vietnam, Korea.) Whenever we only have our own interests at heart, even if we see ourselves as doing a "necessary evil", We end up installing dictators like Ngo Dinh Diem, Syngman Rhee, or supporting rebel factions with their own interests at heart (Taliban/Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the Contras in South America, our own current puppet government in Iraq/Afghanistan), or destabilizing the entire country and provoking insurgent violence (Iraqi criminal insurgents, Afghani/Latin American drug cartels, Viet Cong, Korean insurgents, or any other "terrorist" cell in the middle east/eastern Europe. Historically, US involvement in conflicts that don't have anything to do with us results in a bloodier conflict.

Besides this, the idea that the US has some sort of responsibility as the world's policeman is on par with "The White Man's Burden", meaning that we believe we have to civilize a "savage" country, give them freedom, democracy, capitalism, McDonalds and all that jazz (Iraq), when economically and politically, those countries rely too much on a tribal/communitarian means of production to be ready for a centralized US-backed government to be recognized as legitimate over their local religious leader and their own deity. These countries don't have enough of a national identity as much as they have a racial or religious identity, so us coming along and trying to unite several races/religious sects (that historically hate each other and kill each other when in close proximity with each other) is a futile attempt to force a country into a political system that they are not economically, culturally, or infrastructurally able to support or willing to recognize.

[editline]30th March 2012[/editline]

[QUOTE=GunFox;35362474]By this logic it makes far more sense to dial up the imperialism and launch a full scale invasion followed by setting up a regional government and declaring them a protectorate.

Basically your solution is to have everyone wallow in mediocrity for all time. Never striving for something better because it might create something worse.[/QUOTE]

Democracy and freedom were only possible with increased infrastructure and better means of production. The ability to not have to worry day-to-day about whether or not you'll have a meal to eat allowed people to leave the community and engage in trade, challenge their local government, and unify a large group of people with like-minded economic interests under a banner of the freedom to explore those interests without any hindrance by the church, the tribal leader, or some other religious figure that claims supremacy to the common man. A country like (great example here) is still very heavily tribal, and a country like Iraq is still incredibly discriminatory against the various ethnicities and races inside the Persian area/Arabian peninsula. Trying to unify people who don't want to be unified doesn't work, and any effort we try will result in tribal warfare, ethnic cleansing, or mass insurgency against the people trying to make them get along (that's us)

[Ownederd]

[QUOTE=GunFox;35362474]By this logic it makes far more sense to dial up the imperialism and launch a full scale invasion followed by setting up a regional government and declaring them a protectorate.

Basically your solution is to have everyone wallow in mediocrity for all time. Never striving for something better because it might create something worse.[/QUOTE]

I support the working classes of Syria. The working class, the revolutionary class, has not truly benefited from the new regimes set up in the revolutions of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya (the military junta of Egypt, the bourgeoisie "democratic" state of Tunisia, and the divided, civil-war stuck Libyan Islamist theocracy all are anti-proletariat). Class consciousness will not be achieved in Syria if the opposition implants a bourgeoisie republic or a Sunni Islamist theocracy. NATO would most likely support either one because they both allow them to set their sights on Iran. A bourgie republic established in Syria would surely allow the bourgie of the West to sweep in like vultures and further oppress the working class. The workers of Syria, within the uprising, are building their own movement, and they must be supported (not the bourgeoisie or Islamists).

We have to analyze the world from a scientific point of view, and we can easily see how the situation unfolds from a materialist conception of history (I highly recommend you study dialectic materialism, it changes the way in which one sees the world). It's liberal idealism to look at the situation in Syria from a narrow minded liberal point of view, and to support imperialism. But, it's scientific to look at it from a materialist point of view. The ruling classes of all the world are motivated by capital. Even countries like Cuba and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea are state-capitalist under the false guise of socialism. Under certain material conditions imperialism emerges, and under certain material conditions the Ba'athist use their army in the way in which they do. Assad does not have his army kill people just because he's a big wolf, but because he's surrounded by internal and external enemies. The capitalist west (US) does not enter Syria because they feel bad about civilians being killed, they enter because of certain material conditions - and that is the desire for capital.