Whether or not a movement is primarily violent or nonviolent, what is important is whether it employs strategies and tactics that can maximize its chances of success. A reply to Nader Hashemi.
Military intervention, as regrettable and complicated as it may be, is the only way to stop Assad’s killing machine. This is what most Syrians are demanding from the international community. If we truly believe in the right to self-determination, then we are morally obligated to listen to them.
The manner in which the Syrian crisis has been addressed by western polities signals a shift, at least for now, in how acts of war are deliberated by those governments considering military intervention. But how significant is this? There is both some good and bad news in this regard.
Grasping at vague notions of Kosovo as a ‘good war’ may be expedient - any precedent will do in a pinch. But this comparison is inaccurate and dangerously misleading.
The war in Syria is illegal. If a criminal had poisoned someone, our concern would be how to protect the public from future poisonings and how to arrest the criminal and bring him (or her) before a court of law. And civil society needs to be directly involved in the talks.
The United States's military preparations, and Israel's growing involvement, reveal the momentum to a dangerous escalation in the middle east.
Neither ending the bloodshed nor preventing the further use of weapons of mass destruction in Syria is served by military intervention. Amidst speculation over the US-UK special relationship, the Iranian reaction points a way forward.
The best way to “punish” the Syrian regime is to enable the popular uprising to break it, not to bomb the country.
Regardless of how ‘surgical’ strikes are claimed to be, military action is a blunt instrument that, in this case, is on the table merely because of a poverty of alternatives.
Part One of a two-part analysis of the geopolitical sectarian dynamics and possible fall-out of military intervention in Syria. Read Part Two here.
Western readers need to understand why some Syrians support, while others oppose, a military intervention in their country.
Genocide is both taking on new forms in the era of democratic revolution and exposing the defective reactions of western states, says Martin Shaw.
