And those KKK members think "Fuck Obama"
Not just the Klan, but racists and bigots in general, oppose this president on account of his complexion.
In general? The CIA has done nothing in your interest (I'm assuming you're American)?
and the US business interests"
In general also? There is no such thing as "responsible business"?
So Sunnis are OK, just not radicals?
I'll have to side with Assad.
You endorse the shelling of civilian enclaves? And how do you reconcile such a view with any atrocities you blame on the US/CIA/business interests? You think Assad doesn't have his own version of the CIA, or of business interests?
I understand Marxist. What is a Leninist?
The Alawites of Syria have long been oppressed, brutalized, and murdered by the majority Sunnis.
When was the last incident of Sunni brutality on an Alawite, for any reason other than reprisal for atrocities by Assad? When was the last time Alawites were oppressed?
I don't trust this movement.
Would you, if they were operating under the Red flag? Other than your proprietary political views, what gives a people the right to self-determination without having to be subjected to the "trust" question? (Yet you trust the man who committed mass murder of civilians.)
My conception of liberty doesn't include the liberty for religious extremists to murder minorities
Religious extremists operate within the US (or any free world country). So do we need to put the tanks on the streets in the US and lock down all areas designated "extremist"? (And who would determine that? The CIA?)
people on the international stage have already recognized the movement as the foreign-backed sham it is
Compare what you're saying to the foreign-backed (esp. Iran/Iraq) Assad regime, shelling civilian Syrians. How does your issue even match up to this in severity, scope and duration?
How free and legitimate are American elections
Have you ever been denied the right to vote? (Wherever you live. Or: what Americans can't vote?)
Syria has had one of the lowest crime rates in the world.
Syria has one of the least credible government reporting services in the world. If you believe them, then I have a bridge for sale.
and has been one of the safest countries in the Middle East for ages now.
Ages? Besides the ongoing civil war, you just got through claiming the Alawites are being targeted for violence. And places like Hama have been the site of massacres for decades. Syria has been sponsoring global terrorism. You call that safe?
So why did the United States support Saddam Hussein and Fulgencio Batista
Hussein was probably not your enemy when he was sending Scud missiles into Iran (I'm following your remarks on extremists and theocracy). So when did you first discover he wasn't your friend? Now, using that same logic, when would you have befriended Batista - when he embraced Communism and the unions? And when would have disavowed him - when he was in cahoots with the Mafia and sugar magnates? You mean, like Kennedy did, in 1960:
Fulgencio Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in seven years ... and he turned Democratic Cuba into a complete police state—destroying every individual liberty. Yet our aid to his regime, and the ineptness of our policies, enabled Batista to invoke the name of the United States in support of his reign of terror. Administration spokesmen publicly praised Batista—hailed him as a staunch ally and a good friend—at a time when Batista was murdering thousands, destroying the last vestiges of freedom, and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the Cuban people, and we failed to press for free elections.
-JFK, 1960
Imagine making that kind of criticism of a sitting politburo while running for office in the era of Lenin. Or: over an open mike in Syria.
Christian minority in Syria would have a lot less to fear for their safety if they hadn't spent decades supporting a nasty, brutal dictatorship
What gives you the moral high ground to criticize them?
The fact that neither I, nor my Government, is supporting mass murderer in Syria.
Dictatorship is inherently bad. It violates the fundamental right of political self-determination.
You mean, the same way the US backing foreign regimes does the same thing ?
You put that in the present tense. What are some places where US intervention is violating the right of political self-determination? What lessons have been learned, and how were these applied in the US response to the Arab Spring?
A dictatorship of the working class is not bad. Dictatorship means control of power
You earlier complained of something unfair about elections. Here you're willing to surrender that right altogether. Looks like a contradiction.
I trust Russia a hell of a lot more any day of the week.
To do what? Russia has no dirty laundry? They weren't messing around in Cuba, or Syria, or Iraq/Afghanistan? Or any other place we were? Plus the entire East bloc. Russia committed no atrocities in any of satellites? Or against its own people? Of course you did put that in the present tense. So in what ways has Russia rehabilitated itself from its atrocities which the US has not done?
I never said Assad was pure or innocent; only, that he was a better choice than the Muslim Brotherhood and Sharia Law.
So far, neither of those groups/ideologies is known for committing the scale of atrocity committed by Assad. How is that better? How is Sharia Law worse than Leninism?
I can trust the intentions of nations like Switzerland more, who don't have a history of corruption and hypocrisy
Hah! I bet the Swiss would get a kick out of hearing that everything is copacetic on their home front. Talk about big money! And there's their own version of the
KKK.
The Alawites have been murdered and massacred for years. Before Hafez Al-Assad, it was they who lived in fear.
You mean during the Batista administration? How about catching up with - I don't know - the 1980s (e.g. Hama)?
I can point out [Russia's] successes without saying "Hey, let's return to an exact copy of Stalin's Russia"
So the variants that existed later were what - more humane? When was that?
I'm not on the side of the US war machine. I'm not on the side of the people who brutalized the Third world.
Presumably most of the Soviet Union's victims were 2nd-word countries, but in nearly every case the US involvement was collateral to Soviet incursion or intervention of some kind. The difference is, in comparison, the Soviet war machine has a legacy of
serious war crimes.
I can't tell if you [sg] are trolling or serious when you defend imperialism.
Who said anything about imperialism? Is the US interest in Syria influenced by sugar cane growers? What's the connection?
do you realize how chauvinistic and even Nazi-ish some of your posts defending imperialism and "might makes right"
That's odd - so far Assad is the only one who fits that description. What gives?