U.S. calls on Free Syrian Army not to give regime excuse for violence

[tabatha]

The United States called on Wednesday the Free Syrian Army not to give the Syrian regime excuse for violence.

“Our message to the Free Syrian Army is the same message we have been giving more broadly: that we do not want to see the situation in Syria further militarized; that we think that just plays into the regime’s hands, play their game, gives them an excuse for the violence that they are perpetrating,” said State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland in a press briefing.

“Rather, we want to see all aspects of the Syrian opposition work together and put forward a clear road map for a peaceful transition and transformation, ” she added.

Nuland also commented on the truce announced in Zabadani on the Lebanese-Syrian border, saying that what is happening in this town is “great concern about broad reporting that we have had from activists that the Syrian military brutally attacked Zabadani.” “We have seen reports of some sort of a cease-fire. We are not in a position to comment on it. It may have been an expedient in order to just stop the killing, which was quite brutal, in our reporting,” she added.

http://www.kuna.net.kw/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=2215746&language=en

[DavidDvorkin]

1. The regime needs an excuse?

They haven't so far.

[tabatha]

3. Exactly.

[Zalatix]

2. Nobody should ever fight back - it might make a hostile regime turn violent.

Uh, wait a second..........

[leveymg]

4. Kinda goes against their training

On both sides.

[tabatha]

5. Nope, the protesters started peacefully and unarmed.

They were massacred by Assad.

Would you stand by if any in your family was either jailed and tortured, or shot - just because they were demonstrating or anti-Assad?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002197104

[leveymg]

6. Nobody in their right mind protested until after they started believing the Calvary was coming.

The sound of distant bugles and airstrikes. Like in Libya. But, they didn't come.

[joshcryer]

7. They did come.

[leveymg]

8. No air strikes in Homs, or in Damascus.

I feel for them, they deserve better than their new-found "friends".

[joshcryer]

9. They take what they can get. The international community can't move forward.

Russia and China won't allow it.

So the Arab League is the best they can get.

[ellisonz]

15. I honestly don't think airstrikes are an option.

If foreign powers were to intervene, it would probably be pretty shadowy.

[tabatha]

13. " Nobody in their right mind protested until after they started believing"

Please provide the evidence for that comment.

Initially, the Syrians said they wanted no outside help.
Initially, the Syrians said they wanted no outside help.
Initially, the Syrians said they wanted no outside help.

You are simply making up pure, unadulterated BS.

And, they can probably do it without outside help - because highly trained Syriann soldiers are defecting - unlike LIbya where at the outset most Libyans did not know how to shoot.

EDIT

[tabatha]

14. for one thing, the Syrian people have not called for outside armed help.

R2P at best will be a flawed principle of moral action because it cannot be applied even-handedly. No matter what the regime in Beijing, for example, does to its own citizens, the use of outside military force to protect them is unimaginable. Who will invade China? Nonetheless, for this principle to deserve to be taken seriously, it should be applied as uniformly as possible. The situation in Syria is not the same as in Libya: for one thing, the Syrian people have not called for outside armed help. But if Assad goes on a mass killing spree (as his father did in the city of Hamma in 1982) and the Syrian dissidents do call for outside help, then what? It is likely that the Obama administration would shed its perverse solicitude for that regime. But it is inconceivable that the UN—i.e., Moscow and Beijing—would.

http://www.acus.org/new_atlanticist/responsibility-protect-sometimes

However, that has changed over time. The Syrians are now calling for help. But at the outset, when they started demonstrating, they said they wanted no outside help.

[PragmaticLiberal]

10. There's the part of me that says its not our problem. We can't police the world etc etc.

While the other part of me says let's go in and do what needs to be done.


Difficult choices....

[Zalatix]

11. I don't back any US involvement in a fight I'm not already signed up for. n/t

[PragmaticLiberal]

12. I don't necessarily agree with that position but I understand where you're coming from.

[Selatius]

16. For many Syrian Army deserters who are now rebels, they have no choice in hell of that at all.

Deserters are likely to be shot if they are captured and identified as a deserter. This isn't a regime that is known for giving fair trials to anybody, least of all to army deserters.

They knew the risks of desertion, and they took it. They could certainly try to flee the country and cross the border, but the border has become increasingly tightly sealed. Eventually, it gets to the point where they either win or die.

For the US government to say that they should not give the dictatorship of Assad more excuse to use deadly force is a little tone deaf and insulting. The last time I checked, the dictatorship fired on peaceful protesters first, and then they kept firing more, and they kept firing some more after that, and they did this until the point where soldiers got sick of shooting civilians, and that's when the first desertions began.

Against somebody like Assad, you simply cannot expect him to bargain with you to transition to a "democratic future." He doesn't want any democracy. The only power he recognizes is his own and no other.