(September 17, 2015 at 6:47 pm)Minimalist Wrote: C/L this is an impossibly complex problem and Syria is only part of it. There are waves of refugees from Libya and the Horn of Africa not to mention sub-saharan Africa who are mainly economic refugees although "peace" in those countries can be tenuous at best.
To a certain extent the west does have some culpability because we do encourage the rebels by pretending that the "government" is always bad and the "rebels" are always good. Well, this is not fucking Star Wars and Hollywood horseshit has no place in realistic discussions of actual problems. No government tolerates rebellion, including our own...in case anyone forgot the Civil War or the earlier Shays and Whiskey Rebellions. I think it might have been Rand Paul who pointed out that whenever we have conspired in or actively replaced a secular arab dictator the result has been worse for the nations involved, not better: Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Yemen. We pretended that the Arab Spring was a flowering of "democracy" but you can't give democracy to people who think it means that they get to kill their adversaries.
I have no solution for this. The European Union has created an impossible scenario for itself. They hold out the hope of refuge but then can't make it happen and they risk serious political repercussion on the home front which will put an end to the "refuge" real fast. Europe has less than a stellar record of dealing with minorities throughout history. Some of that is religion-related but a lot is simply nationalism. And before the US starts acting all high and mighty and pretends, as we normally do, that things are black or white we need to remember that we have signally failed to solve the black/white issue here.
I don't know. Some problems do not have solutions.
One thing is for sure and that is tens of thousands of babies and old people will soon die in strange lands far from home in the harsh European winter. We are definitely seeing a major human tragedy unfold before our very eyes because of the crimes against humanity committed by our national leaders. The pictures of the dead that we will see in the coming months will be truly heart-wrenching. May the soon-to-be dead have quick merciful deaths. There will be a lot of mass graves throughout the land.
