PETER HITCHENS: We set Syria ablaze... Now we're hurling in explosives

[rastaone]

Imagine this: newspapers and broadcasters in China suddenly start to denounce the British Government.
They call it a ‘regime’. They say that its treatment of its Muslim minority is cruel and unjust.
Soon, their views are echoed by the Chinese foreign minister, who in a speech at the United Nations says that Britain’s treatment of its minorities is a disgrace, and calls for sanctions against this country.



The Chinese ambassador turns up as an ‘observer’ at an Islamist demonstration in Birmingham.

Some protesters are injured. Carefully-edited footage of the occasion is shown on global TV stations, in which the police are made to look brutal and the provocations against them are not shown.
Soon after this, armed attacks are made on police stations and on Army barracks. People begin to notice the presence in British cities of foreign-looking men, sometimes armed.

Within a matter of months, the country is plunged into a civil war. A place known for stability, order and prosperity descends with amazing speed into a violent, rubble-strewn chaos, complete with refugees, plumes of oily smoke and soup-kitchens.
The bewildered inhabitants shrug with hopeless bafflement when they read foreign accounts of events, encouraging the rebels, even though nobody really knows who they are. They just long for the fighting to be over.

All the time, foreign media report in a wholly one-sided way, credulously trumpeting British Government ‘atrocities’ without verification. And then all the major countries in the world agree to permit the direct supply of weapons to the rebels.

Absurd? Wait and see. Something quite like this actually happened on a small scale in Northern Ireland, where American individuals helped buy guns and bombs for the IRA, and the US government put huge pressure on us to give in to the terrorists.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2334411/PETER-HITCHENS-We-set-Syria-ablaze--Now-hurling-explosives.html#ixzz2V70v6jgf
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[newmember]

1. Not a good analogy

The Syrian government did torture political prisoners , it made women 2nd class citizens

[rastaone]

2. Nitpicker Ey?

Then think of Jim Crow America instead. We had lynching, treated minorities like 2nd class citizens, would you still think its OK if China tried to start a destructive civil war in America?

Btw where the hell are you getting this info about Syria govt torturing political prisoner and stuff about women being 2nd class citizens. I dont really doubt it because I have read somewhere that Syria hosted CIA black prisons and muslim in general treated women as 2nd class citizens but Syria for one is very secular just like Libya and if anything I'd say Syria women had it better than most women in the other middle east countries.

[newmember]

3. Man , I don't think we should be involved at all in this mess....

Women’s and Girls’ Rights

Syria’s constitution guarantees gender equality, and many women are active in public life. However personal status laws and the penal code contain provisions that discriminate against women and girls, particularly in marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance. While the penal code no longer fully exonerates perpetrators of so-called honor crimes, it still gives judges options for reduced sentences if a crime was committed with “honorable” intent. The nationality law of 1969 prevents Syrian women married to foreign spouses the right to pass on their citizenship to their children or spouses.




They are still not equal to men in many respects even though they can hold public office.
It wasn't like the Saudis treat women but women should have exactly the rights all men have.


Human rights developments in Syria
For over two decades Amnesty International has documented and campaigned on a range of serious human rights violations in Syria, including the arbitrary detention of political opponents, the long-term detention of prisoners of conscience, torture and ill-treatment, and political killings

[rastaone]

6. Not going to say am surprised

But the article is not trying to claim Syria is an idyllic democratic state. Its just trying to say that outsiders set fire to a not so perfect house and instead of trying to help put it out, they are doing everything in their power to keep it going and tries to get the reader to imagine what if would look like if someone else did it to us.

I think it is quite a good article especially for western readers to imagine for the first time what it would feel for someone else to plunge their not so perfect countries into mayhem and destruction

[newmember]

9. My opinion Bashar Hafez al-Assad thought that the U.S and president Obama

was going to side with him on the rebellion.

He didn't expect Washington to be calling for him to step down.
Or to be labeled a criminal government by the U.S and Obama publicly

[rastaone]

13. You're right

There is a speech of Qaddafi in one Arab league meeting on YT. In the speech, Qaddafi was warning the members about the dangerous precedent set by the illegal Iraq invasion and was chastising them for going along with it.

But during the part where Qaddafi saying "this sort of invasion could happen to any of you", you could see Assad just laughing his ass off. They all thought Qaddafi was crazy but look at Assad now.

[HiPointDem]

4. so does the us government. so has every government.

[newmember]

5. Switzerland

[HiPointDem]

7. don't kid yourself

http://www.humanrights.ch/en/Switzerland/Internal-Affairs/Punishment/Detention/idart_4174-content.html

[newmember]

10. you are destroying my dream

[HiPointDem]

11. it needs to die

[HiPointDem]

12. bullshit on the "*made* women 2nd class citizens".

Government policies over the past 10 years have encouraged women's education, participation in the work force, and use of family-planning services. Reflecting the government's efforts, women's literacy increased from 48 percent in 1990 to 74 percent in 2002; 29.2 percent of women are economically active; and 45.8 percent of married women now use contraception.

Date of Women's Suffrage: 1949 (to vote), 1953 (restrictions lifted)

http://www.refworld.org/docid/47387b70c.html


women's rights is just a club used by the big powers to justify their own crimes against humanity.

[newmember]

14. Not bullshit

Personal status laws in Syria are not equal to men's

http://orientelux.com/?p=112


Syria and Personal Status Law

July 8, 2009


Last week President of the Syrian People’s Assembly Mahmoud Abrash canceled the draft legislation for a new set of laws governing Personal Status in Syria, ordering the Justice Ministry to rewrite the bill. While conservative religious leaders figured prominently in the drafting of the bill, after a copy of the proposed law began circulating in late May reformers and advocates of women’s rights vocally agitated against it.

In Syria, as in other countries, Personal Status Law governs procedures and individual rights on issues such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, and custody. The present Syrian Personal Status Law, adopted in 1953 and amended in 1975, is essentially codified Hanafi Sharia law with some qualifications for Druzes, Christians, and Jews. Unsurprisingly, it discriminates against women in a number of ways. For example, under the current law, pending a judge’s discretion, a girl as young as 13 can be married. On matters of custody, a mother has the right to custody of a girl until the age of 11 and a boy until the age of 9. However, this formal safeguard is in practice contravened by a stipulation that allows the father to assume custody regardless of age if the mother is declared unfit to raise the children. Clearly legal protection for women and children does not currently go far enough. Therefore, one would expect that a new Personal Status Law would address these problems and enjoy broad support from women’s rights organizations and reformers.

Unfortunately, the recently rejected draft proposal fell far short of improving women’s rights and even took some steps backwards. A full text of the draft in Arabic can be found here and below are a few remarks and translated excerpts.

First, the draft failed to guarantee either a woman’s right to freedom of movement, receive education, or to work, leaving each of these decisions to her male guardian. Thus, on these important issues for women, and particularly young women and divorcees, the status quo is reaffirmed.

Second, one of the most problematic issues for girls in Syria today is the issue of a girl’s consent to marriage and the minimum age. The current law certainly does not go far enough on these matters and what little protection exists is only loosely enforced

[HiPointDem]

15. using 'made' implies they were something other than second-class before the current regime

took power. the fact is, the current regime has *liberalized* women's rights, not degraded them.

besides which, i didn't realize we were allowed to make war on regimes that don't have the 'correct' marriage and inheritance rights.

when did that take effect?

DEAD PEOPLE DON'T HAVE RIGHTS.

[newmember]

16. Same thing made , kept , because Assad had the power to change it but decided not to

You want to argue semantics now , I'm too tired for that.

And where did you get the impression I agree with Obamas war in Syria?
Or any of Obamas wars

[HiPointDem]

17. the fact is, it is *not* the same; assad has liberalized.

[newmember]

18. Women are still considered 2nd class and not equal to men in Syria under Assad

Fact



You were mistaken to call bullshit on my post...no big deal

[HiPointDem]

19. he didn't 'make' them 2nd-class. & that has meaning only through a first-world lens.

[FarCenter]

8. It is sort of a rerun of the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88

It appears that we would be happy to see another million or so die in a Muslim on Muslim war.

Indeed it is likely that the death toll could well exceed that if the Sunnis win and liquidate the Alawite, Christian, Druze, and other heretical populations of Syria.