White House rebuffed Clinton-Petraeus plan to arm Syrian rebels: report

[JackRiddler]

57. Wrong question, wrong time.

Funny how people don't ask that all the years that the arms were flowing to the Gulf (many of which are now flowing on to Syria from the Gulf States), or to Saddam before the '91 war. The alternative is indeed not to intervene and to press for a peace conference. Many people will die pointlessly in either scenario. There are a dozen other wars right now in which the US is not intervening. Interventions almost always cause more problems than they solve. It sucks but the world would have been a better place if the great powers could have reined themselves in generally the last few decades. Anything that justifies the great power war machines and makes them think "intervention is effective" is a long-run bane on humanity, because in the end it will lead to the next Vietnam, the next Algeria, the next Iraq. And because it justifies the epic waste of the military industrial complex. The alternative is for the US to stop exporting arms -- do it by pressing for an international ban. Only the one who controls 2/3 of the market currently can lead.