Questions over the west's policy towards the rebellion against Assad regime in Syria

[financeguy]

The killing fields of Syria draw little or no real fire from the West which has been pounding Libya for the past two months, scaring the living daylights out of Muammar Gaddafi's forces.

Unlike Libya, Syria has no oil. The absence of any Western military action is, therefore, goes without saying. The lack of interest in pursuing an interventionist approach to the Syrian regime's atrocities speaks volumes about the western duplicity which the apologists of the West may describe as political realism. It only proves that the principle of the right to protect or R2P is largely a political tool resorted to by western powers only if it brings some benefits to them.

In the case of Syria, the West appears to prefer the status quo. In other words its intervention in Syria comes in the form of non-intervention.

The principle that is apparently guiding the West here is that a known devil is better than an unknown angel. But the West is taking no chances. It keeps a channel open to the opposition groups also.

If the Assad regime falls and democracy is established, it is likely to change the power equation in the region. The Hezbollah, a powerful militant group which gave a good fight to Israel in 2006, will be the worst hit. If Israel were to attack Iran, many believed the Hezbollah would act as Iran's proxy in an ensuing war. But with Syria out of picture, the Hezbollah will be a sitting duck.

Probably, with this in mind, the West is playing its usual double game. The United States and other Western powers are now promoting a Syrian opposition leadership largely comprising CIA assets. Just as the people's movement in Libya has been hijacked the pro-Western stooges, the Syrian protest movement is also being hijacked. But the West's schemes are unlikely to succeed in the IT-era Arab world where the people are highly literate and know who their enemies are.

Syria in sectarian soup | Opinion

 

[Vincent Vega]

These "pro-Western stooges" have just introduced the not so Western sharia law in Libya.

 

[yolland]

I wonder if the author considers Turkey a "Western power;" they've been even more invested in "promoting" the SNC than the US and France. Also, arming would-be revolutionaries in Syria would be far harder than it was in Libya, since the army's control of the border zones is much tighter. At this point continued sporadic violence is looking a lot more likely than the emergence of an armed uprising strong enough to make significant gains against the army.