Am I a bad liberal/Democrat because I'm torn on the Syria issue?

[TreasonousBastard]

16. The "bad" ones are the doctrinaire ones who have all the answers...

and are never wrong-- in their own minds.

I posted a few days ago about Quaker angst over nonviolence and how it is so difficult for us to put our faith and convictions into action in the real world. Needless to say, that thread sank like a stone.

I see things in the world that revolt me, and not just in the Middle East. Gangs running Ecuador, blood diamonds, white slavery, female genital mutilation, Janjaweed in Sudan, the calls for revenge and death from it seems every quarter... it goes on.

The list seems endless and there is that part of me that cannot stand by and watch any more than I can stand by and watch a woman raped in the subway or an old man mugged in a parking lot.

But I am personally powerless, and even if I had God-like powers to end the misery, who's to say the cure would not be worse than the disease? Look at Iraq today and tell me the average Iraqi is better off than before we got rid of Saddam.

With Syria, Assad shows no inclination toward civilized behavior, but the revolutionary groups will happily throw out their present truce and kill each other off to gain power when Assad finally goes. The bloodshed could then be incredible.

Unfortunately, we tend to assist revolutions when it is in our political or commercial interest to do so, further complicating an already complicated situation. Even something as simple as food for the starving becomes politicized and often held up at the ports by rival factions.

In this world, confusion isn't such a bad thing. There are problems we can't solve, but can only muddle through.