Topic: Syrian Civil War Now Center of the New Cold War

[Mooning Freddy]

After over a year of fighting, the civil war in Syria reaches a stalemate as the war intensifies and no side manages to get the upper hand.

The rebels' abilities have been overestimated by the West as they fail to take hold of major cities and hardly succeed in holding the areas of the country that they've taken over. Atrocities have been, and are being committed by both sides of the conflict. Assad's forces poison, torture, and kill families of rebels and defectors; The more radical factions among the rebels release videos in which they kill prisoner soldiers and desecrate bodies.

But the worst is that the foreign intervention is getting wider. Assad is assisted by massive forces of Lebanese Hezbollah fighters and fighters from Iran. The rebels are supported by Sunni states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. However, most of the citizens remain on Assad's side, either because of the fear of the government's rage or probably more because they fear his downfall would drive the country to chaos. The West has called Assad to step down and allow the government to negotiate terms for its replacement. That would be the best option; It could spare a greater violence and pave the way for restoring order.

But Assad obviously refuses. Of course he does; Those of you who know a little about Syria know that the country had been ruled for decades by the Alawites, a tiny religious faction, despised by a majority of Muslims, that by way of military coup took control of the country.  Assad is not fighting for his power; He's fighting for his life and the honor of his faction. His downfall would be the downfall of the Alawites, so he'd fight until his final breath.

Hezbollah's entrance into the war is something which Israel find hard to tolerate. Israel maintains a careful neutrality towards the conflict, but now that Hezbollah, Israel's sworn enemy in the last three decades, steps in, the danger is that it would take advantage of Assad's weakness to drag some of his advanced Russian weaponry into Lebanon. Hezbollah has a good reason to put as much effort as they can in defending Assad: alongside Iran, he's the greatest sponsor of the Shiite Lebanese organization. I should not mention that Hezbollah is not too popular in Lebanon, especially among the country's Suns and Christians. Assad's downfall would drastically weaken them.

Israel now threatens Assad that any attempt to transfer advanced arms to "irresponsible hands" would not be tolerated. The press says that Israel already attacked some storage units of armaments that Assad planned to give Hezbollah.The greatest irony of the situation is that even though Israel's liberals support the popular revolt in hope of democratization in Syria, realists know that it's much more likely that Assad's downfall would create anarchy in Syria, and horrible battles of powers similar to what happened Iraq after Saddam's downfall. The realists know that anarchy in Syria would drastically increase the security threats on Israel from radical and terrorist organizations within the country. Israel is "torn between Scylla and Charybdis". Its sworn enemies fight alongside Assad, but if he falls, things could get worse.

And then there's Russia. Despite the efforts of Israel and the West to prevent the Russians from selling Assad their advanced systems, they're bent on doing it anyway. It's not just about money; It's about status. The Russian refuse to do what America tells them to do. It's the new cold war; Not as freezing as the first one, yet New Russia would do anything to reclaim its status as superpower. Even if it means assisting real bastards.

So this is how poor Syria becomes the center of conflict not only between rival Muslim factions, but also between rival Mideastern states, agents of global jihad, and rival superpowers.
Popular revolt against a despot? Like Zack De La Rocha said, Freedom? Yeah, right! 

[Ratty]

We've had politicians in America trying to drag us into this fight for a long time on the side of the rebels. Saying that we have to support the "freedom fighters" just like the "freedom fighters" we supported in Afghanistan against the Russians in the 80s, which turned out great. (/sarcasm'ing as hard as I can.) Most Americans seem to just be apathetic and unconcerned, tired of going bankrupt from our politicians' attempts to police the world. Of course the political line that we have to support the rebels out of some moral obligation is bull as I would hope most people realize. Whoever is "right" or "wrong" in this conflict they'd be better off if foreign powers would keep out of it, though as you say Freddy, that's not going to happen. Another case of a rebellion being turned into a proxy war like Vietnam and so many others.

[Shiroi Koumori]

War is a good booster for the economy.
And I'm sure those old politicians have not forgotten that when the US joined WW2, the revenues and jobs generated helped the country get out of the Great Depression.

[VladCT]

War is a good booster for the economy.
And I'm sure those old politicians have not forgotten that when the US joined WW2, the revenues and jobs generated helped the country get out of the Great Depression.

So...you want to give war a chance?

[Ratty]

War is a good booster for the economy.
And I'm sure those old politicians have not forgotten that when the US joined WW2, the revenues and jobs generated helped the country get out of the Great Depression.

The global economy is built in part upon violence and exploitation, this is true. If all wars and the arms trade ended tomorrow it would probably lead to a worse depression than the one we're in now. However to say that war is inherently good for jobs/the economy is not really true either. Take the War in Iraq for example, it was started on false pretenses and accomplished nothing for the American people. It made no strategic sense, it has been aptly compared to America invading China after Pearl Harbor. This same war has costed American tax payers Billions of dollars. (Trillions by some estimates http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090302200.html) Helping turn our national surplus in 2000 into record debt. This is to say nothing of the thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of civilians who have lost their lives for what?

WW2 was a different era, it sent off the unemployed men to fight (many of them never came back, freeing up their jobs) while driving up demand and building infrastructure for a manufacturing boom. It also helped America by destroying the economies/manufacturing sectors of most of the rest of the developed world, which took decades to recover. Which was a major contributing factor to America's prosperity and political dominance in the latter half of the twentieth century. But like I said, it was a unique situation.

[Shiroi Koumori]

I wrote the words of the old politicians in my previous post.
I know they still believe that they need war.

But personally, I don't want it. The global political situation nowadays is pretty tense. We are near the tipping point and with nukes and other tactical weapons, I don't think there will be an Earth left.

As for the war on Iraq. I believe there are some people who benefitted from it, ahem Bush.