Canada is expelling Syria Diplomat following the Houla massacre

John Baird, Canada foreign minister announced today.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/05/29/pol-baird-syria-diplomats.html

It's time the world act against syria barbarism.

 

Why? Hell, if we do act against it, they'll just say we did it for some ulterior motive.

They can all kill each other for all I care. With a few exceptions, the Middle East is mostly a hornet's nest not worth dealing with.

 

I wasn't implying that we should intervene directly. I was calling for other to do the same thing, that is isolate syria diplomatically.

 

We could do that, but I doubt it would accomplish much. Besides, it's not like we haven't sided with dictators for our own self-interests.

 

that settles it for me. when Canada gets that annoyed, it's time to be annoyed. they are the cooler heads that should prevail (but seldom do).

 

we have no self interest in maintaining the status quo in Syria.

and i'm not just saying that to see if WMDs stamped "made in Iraq" turn up.

 

I don't think we have much self-interest in Syria to begin with. We should keep an eye on them, but I don't know if we should actually get involved.

The way I see it, if they remain in turmoil, they'll be too busy attacking each other to funnel much arms to Hezbollah.

 

For anyone that thought the world changed in the 21st century, this is a bloody reminder, it was and continues to be around intersts and money,


Assad isn't afraid of slaying his ppl in front of the inspectors and he is right, no one will ever stop him because they need him, remember this when your children grow up and the denial of these massacres will be perfected, the world knew (*)(*)(*)(*) well and did nothing.

 

i don't think boots on the ground or air support would be needed. there was something on a ticker yesterday about approving arms transfers to the rebels from our Arab allies.

 

Here's the problem. There are multiple massacres that occur within a given year. Sub-Saharan Africa seems to be a breeding ground for them, and yet, there's rarely much done about them.

The same was true of Burma not too long ago.

There's just so much going on at any given time that it's impossible to police it all.

 

The thing that worries me is what has happened with other situations. Gaddafi wasn't a nice guy, but it's questionable if his successors will be any better. The same is true for Egypt and Tunisia.

So, basically, we don't know if the rebels are any better than Al-Assad.

 

i don't see how they could be worse? if a leader targets his own civilians, i don't see how he would have any reservations about targeting the civilians of other countries.

 

It sends the message that we aren't approving their actions. While it doesn't amount to boots on the ground, expelling diplomats is the last step before declaring war to a country. I know, I know.. We are Canadian with a small army and no heavy lifting capability of our own. But modern wars can be fought without the use of actual weapons.

For exemple: http://www.international.gc.ca/sanctions/syria-syrie.aspx?lang=eng&view=d

 

There are atrocities when both sides are to blame but in this incident its clear that the regime slays its citizens to remain in power, the resistance didnt start for months after Assad sent Tanks, he throws the bodies in the streets. im sure he would pike their heads if their werent camera's around,

If it was my call I would create a "safe" area inside Syria, create an autonomy for those that resist Assad, let his followers stay in Damascus and those that flee from his tyranny live under NATO protection.

 

That's the issue though. Until the conflict spreads to other countries, it's effectively Syria's problem, not the rest of the world's.

Ideally, interventionism is aimed at just containing conflicts. For example, we didn't get involved with the Bosnia conflict until it became clear that it was spreading. Before that, it was hard to justify intervention.

 

come on! you know we'd loan you some.

 

Well, if nothing else, this is better than war. I could support various diplomatic means of dealing with this, but I really don't want us in yet another conflict militarily.

 

It may come to that. It's hard to say.

Still, I just hope that, if Assad gets overthrown, his successors don't end up like the ones in Libya right now.

 

The issues with Syria do seem complex, but how does expelling one diplomat help anything?

A nice headline but i doubt anything more will be done. Just a change in personnal in the syrian embassy.

 

How on earth would you create this "safe" area? Who's going to protect it from Assad's troops?

 

NATO by the force of military, air cover, tanks, ofc there will be fighting involved but the object will be protecting the Syrians that live in that area - not overthrowing Assad, who knows, maybe he loves himself so much that he will learn to live with that.

 

First of all, don't people know there is a Russian naval base in Syria? Off and on throught these massacres they've had naval groups there.

This factor dominates the international aspects of the situation in Syria. Miliary strikes against Syria just aren't happening unless the Russians can be convinced that they aren't going to lose that base, and that may be hard if not impossible to do at this point.

We live in a highly interconnected world. The US in particular, being highly dependant on oil imports and with a multitude of allies in the region that we are treaty bound to protect, stands to lose much as a consequence of just ignoring problems over there.

And of course in this modern era distance matters ever so much less than it used to, and anybody can more or less attack anybody else on the planet should they want to.

But it is a hornets nest, and the enemy of my enemy generally also wants to eliminate the non-muslims, so things are complicated.

I think we either need to play this one very soft and try to gain a little moral high ground in the world while letting Russia pick up the black eye if we're lucky the country might be split and spend its time and resources having a perpetual sunni/shiite smackdown isntead of bothering us, or try and arrange for a sweet deal for Russia regading that naval base so we can play it hard and try to break Iran's grip on that corner of the middle east.

 

For the time being, we definitely have a lot of oil dependency from the Middle East. That's something we really need to change though. (Granted, I realize that's a discussion for another thread.)

 

You can expect most, if not all, of the US/Zionist bloc to act the same way- even though the United Nations observers estimate that the Syrian shelling accounted for less than 20% of the casualties. Who killed the others ? Who cares ? Expelling diplomats is an attempt to deligitimize the freely elected Syrian government. I hope that those conspiring in this area are heavilly outnumbered by those who do not.
Do I support Assad ? No, but his regime is legitimate. Without international law we are ALL screwed- no matter what examples they set in Tel Aviv , Washington and London.

Yep, the AIPAC club are going for it. Orders from Tel Aviv, via Washington.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diploma...n-diplomats-following-houla-massacre-1.433160

 

you are hilarious!