'Massacre' feared brewing in Syrian city

[UndertheOcean]

Source: CNN

(CNN) -- Syria's leading opposition movement warned Friday of an impending government "massacre" designed to crush activists in the city of Homs, which has emerged as a center of anti-regime unrest.
The Syrian National Council said military troops and vehicles had surrounded the western city and thousands of troops were manning more than 60 checkpoints just inside the city.
"These are all signs of a security crackdown operation that may reach the level of a total invasion of the city," the council said in a news release. It said that a "massive number of casualties" could occur.
"Evidence received from reports, videos and information obtained by activists on the ground in Homs indicate that the regime is paving the way to commit a massacre in order to extinguish the revolution in Homs and to discipline, by example, other Syrian cities that have joined the revolution," the council said.


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remainder at link

Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/09/world/meast/syria-unrest/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

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God help them , the sweet people of Homs.

[tabatha]

1. He is following the example of his father.

[UndertheOcean]

2. Only in 1982 there was no Tunisia , no Egypt , no Libya , no Yemen.

This will not pass.

[unkachuck]

3. I wish....

....there was something more the west could do to help support these activists, that didn't directly involve the pentagon or nato....the Syrian people just want to be free of assads' regime....

....assad's got to wondering whether a gaddafi finish is in his future....

[riderinthestorm]

4. Not this shit again! Is it Benghazi again? How many times do we have to be dragged into this

over allegations the "city is going to be massacred?"

These are INTERNAL civil wars! We should be taking many, many steps back from being the world's policemen. Libya should have made it clear that these struggles are internal and our "help" is fraught with ill fated consequences.


FWIW, I have no idea if this is going to be Libya redux, or Rwanda... I just hate that we meddle when we really have no idea about the dynamics on the ground.

Honestly, since Syria doesn't have pure, sweet crude burbling under their sands, imho they will be left to swing in the wind. You can see that there's no breathless, daily, Syrian updates by DUers intent on pushing THIS meme....

[Arctic Dave]

5. +1, well said.

[joshcryer]

6. We won't be "dragged in" to anything. Russia and China will veto any Syria actions.

Therefore your "concern" is misplaced nonsense.

And when the massacre happens you can feign outrage for us not doing something.

Or you can, more likely, STFU.

FYI Libya asked for help, and rejected occupation forces. edit: Just to be clear: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgP0Gro52c8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXt4cJV_NCI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkrSRqqgX5A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSX_--gbngw

AJE covered it live, I remember it well (I think I was late for work to see this): http://youtu.be/8f3XsD-lRyQ

[riderinthestorm]

7. Syria IS asking for our aid!! And the Arab nations! Or ANYONE to come assist

There are numerous links of the Syrian opposition begging for international aid. These are just the first few on a simple Google search....

http://www.syrianemergencytaskforce.org/2011/10/03/syria-assad-opponents-unite-ask-world-for-help/

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/12/09/syrian-opposition-asks-for-austrian-help

http://americansyrians.com/syria/post/Syrians-begging-for-foreign-intervention.aspx



Honestly, Syria IS going to undergo a slaughter, I'm sure of it since Assad is a megalomaniac sociopath and there's been a long slow tragedy already playing out there for the past months. I'm also damn sure the US will stand by and do nothing because they have no crude. And I'm sure DUers like you won't be providing long daily thread updates because there isn't crude there.

So here we have it. The US is stuck between a rock and a hard place - we intervened in Libya when the alarm bells rang in this exact same way (and ended up looking like the craven oil gluttons that we are, hypocrisy exposed - go USA!!). I'm almost certain we won't in Syria and I'm not going to lie, I honestly don't think we should. We cannot continue to be the world's policemen in messy Arab civil wars we don't understand. At least I'm honest though and put it out there. If you (and the other DUers) were faithful to your position vis a vis Libya and Syria, you'd be all over the Syria issue with daily thread updates. At least you'd demonstrate that your concern was really about mass slaughter, Arab Spring democratic uprisings blah, blah, blah instead of looking like cheerleaders for oil barons around the world.

Obama and Clinton MUST begin to formulate a coherent foreign policy answer to these situations. Imho, Assad is a FAR worse tyrant than Gaddafi but let's not confuse ourselves for one moment that when or if we approach Syria it will be with any semblance of long term strategy. This is my over arching exasperation with our uneven and blatantly hypocritical interventions.

[pampango]

8. Juan Cole: Why a No-Fly Zone won’t Work in Syria

Most important, a no-fly zone is not a practical response to the Baath government’s repression. On Friday, troops just shot into the crowds. Unlike Qaddafi, Bashar al-Assad is not bombing his cities with jets from the air. Nor are helicopter gunships or tank units central to the coercive abilities of the Syrian state. Syrian geography is complex, and plinking tanks from the air is not an option in Syria.

There is no Arab League resolution urging intervention in Syria. There is no United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing war. In the absence of a UNSC resolution, any attack on Syria would be considered an act of aggression and could open US politicians and military men to prosecution in international courts.

Russia and China are against Western intervention, which dooms any condemnatory resolution at the UN security council. In international law since 1945, especially in the UN charter, the only grounds for going to war are self-defense or as a result of a UNSC resolution. Neither obtains in Syria and any foreign intervention would therefore be illegal, and the pilots could be tried in international courts.

It breaks my heart to say all this. The youth of Syria is being cold-bloodedly shot down by army snipers. You wish there was a way to stop it. But there isn’t. There isn’t a practical set of military tactics outsiders could deploy effectively in this situation. There is no international framework of legality for an intervention.

But it should be remembered that the political wing of the Syrian opposition in any case does not want such an intervention, and that most Syrians are determined to go it alone. They want to do what the Tunisians and Egyptians did. They should be given a chance, since that would be the best outcome possible.

http://www.juancole.com/2011/10/why-a-no-fly-zone-wont-work-in-syria.html

There US and NATO would not have intervened in Libya without a UN authorization and won't do so in Syria without it. Russia and China are preventing the UN from doing so much as condemn the Syrian government. That has bad consequences for the Syrian people, but it does not justify individual countries or regional groups deciding to intervene on their own.

Unless you support unilateral intervention, it is Russia and China that are preventing any international action on behalf of Syrians. That they are treating Syria differently than they did Libya because of oil, is something that those two countries would probably deny.

[riderinthestorm]

9. Thanks for weighing in

There are those people in the US and international community who DO support unilateral intervention (the DU Libya thread supporters for example).

My alarm is that the EXACT same verbage is being used as an emotional lever AGAIN to justify intervention (a whole city is going to be massacred). Its manipulative. We do not understand the consequences of our actions in these areas. We have no coherent foreign policy at all. It's a mess. An expensive mess. We need to step back and assess what we really can and should be doing. Joe Biden states we "only" spent $2 billion dollars in Libya! 2 fucking billion dollars! We need that money here in the US (as a bottom line) but beyond that, we shouldn't just be throwing billions of dollars around in the ME without a fuller understanding imho.

And I agree 100% with your last sentence so I'll repeat it again...
"That they are treating Syria differently than they did Libya because of oil, is something that those two countries would probably deny."

[AndyTiedye]

12. You Are Forgetting Russia

Russia will veto any action by the UN against Syria (which was not the case with Libya)
AND they are supporting Assad militarily. There really isn't much we can do.

[joshcryer]

13. Unfortunately, the only way to help that way is with UN approval, and China and Russia won't...

...allow it to happen, full stop. Period.

I didn't say Syria didn't ask for help, I was responding to a poster that was pretending that we went into Libya against their wishes.

[hack89]

11. Turkey is much more likely to get "dragged into" this mess.

I would bet on a Turkish intervention - that's what the Saudis want.

[UndertheOcean]

10. Rueters - West warns Syria against storming rebel city

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/10/us-syria-idUSTRE7B90F520111210

excerpt

"France is extremely concerned about information of a massive military operation being prepared by Syrian security authorities against the city of Homs," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said, echoing concerns raised in Washington, London and neighboring Turkey.

"France warns the Syrian government and will hold the Syrian authorities responsible for any action against the population.

"The entire international community must mobilize itself to save the Syrian people," Valero added in a statement.

On Friday, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman said: "It is extremely concerning that in places like Homs we have huge number of reports that they are preparing something large-scale.