Syria's civil war is theirs alone; they are acting just as the U.S. would, and has before

    I always thought the official opinion of the United States was that it was perfectly acceptable to crush a rebellion through massive military force.
    For example, when the Southern states voted to exercise their right of self-determination, our dear Northern friends came down and killed a quarter- to half-a-million of us. Then they burned everyone's houses, killed their livestock, stole anything they could and turned the South into a permanent colony of the North. No hard feelings of course -- just a detail of history.
    But now, to justify interfering in the Arab world our leaders have taken the opinion that governments don't have the right to maintain order. In Libya, we ordered Gaddafi to just leave anyone who wanted to run riot alone. When terrorist rabble attacked his troops he refused do allow it, so Obama had his family murdered, then hunted him down and had him sodomized and killed. (Please, please, please, don't let me hear another Democrat talk about George Bush "war crimes" so long as this modern-day Jack the Ripper remains in the White House.)
    Now we're after Syria. It seems that when citizens who are unhappy with the government have fired guns at soldiers the soldiers acted with poor form in firing back. What an outrage! Everyone knows these government soldiers should simply allow themselves to be killed in the name of serving NATO.
    What's going on in the Middle East? I think it's fair to say there is some civil unrest. And civil unrest is dealt with in one way and one way only: the government gets guns or tanks, points them at those causing unrest and says "stop or we'll shoot." In Syria the protesters aren't stopping and so the government is shooting.
    When civil unrest gets bad enough, it's called a civil war. Perhaps Syria has reached this point. One thing you don't do in a war is stop shooting until the other side has surrendered. We hear a lot of quack-quack-quack about how the Syrian army is shelling a couple of cities that have harbored rebels. The fact is that these cities chose to harbor rebels and are now suffering the consequences. Essentially they asked to be shelled and the Syrian government is obliging them.
    We shouldn't be taking sides in a sectarian war. The president of Syria is an Alawite, a group that makes up about 15 percent of the population. In the Middle East there are numerous semi-secret religions, the Alawi being one of them. One hundred years ago they could be described as half-Christian, half-Shia. In recent years they have moved from Christianity towards Islam. It's hard to say for sure, since they have few or no written texts, or none they care to share. Because of their minority status, Alawites have opposed Muslim extremists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which they see as a threat to themselves and to Syria's Christians.
    Syria has been aligned in recent years with Iran. We don't like Iran. Saudi Arabia and Eygpt don't like Iran, either, because Iran is Shiite and Saudi Arabia and Egypt are Sunni. So nothing would suit the Saudis more than to foment turmoil in Syria; and since we as Americans do what our Saudi masters tell us to do, we're pushing to overthrow the Syrian government, too.
    In fact, Saudi Arabia has made no secret of the fact that it is arming those who are attempting to topple the Syrian government and replace it with a radical Islamic regime. I certainly believe that the United States has had a heavy hand in creating all of the Mid-East unrest of the past several years.
    Is there any doubt what would happen if a person or group of people took up weapons and started shooting at the White House with the stated intent of overthrowing the government? I can assure you the president would not simply hand over the government. These people would be arrested if they could be easily arrested, if not they would be shot dead. And don't give me any of this nonsense about our government not killing civilians. Ever hear of Waco? Ruby Ridge? The innocent Serbian journalists murder by Wesley Clark? Muammar Gaddafi's grandchildren?
    In other words the Syrian government is acting exactly as our government would act if faced with people trying to overthrow it with force of arms.
    Every civil war ends, and when it does the people who win are heroes and those who lose are goons and traitors. I don't know which side will win in Syria, and as long as the United States doesn't get involved I don't care. It's time to resurrect the Monroe Doctrine and limit ourselves to the Americas and let Europe and the Mid-East handle their own war. It's their war and I'm willing to let them fight it.
    What's really going on is that the money interests in the U.S. are trying hard to start a regional war in the Mid-East. Saudi Arabia is apparently convinced that this war will serve its interests, as it has been doing everything it can to destabilize its neighbors.
    I said a long time ago I thought we might intentionally be trying to disrupt the Mid-East in order to hurt China, as China depends far more than we do on the Mid-East for oil. In some ways this is a brilliant cold-war-type military strategy.
    But we don't need to be doing this. The regional war we are trying to start will not serve America's long-term interests. Should we feel the need to step in and "crush" Syria and attack Iran, we will win at some cost, but we are likely to find out what terrorism really is.
    When it comes to foreign policy, don't kid yourself about Obama being better than Bush. In my opinion he is far worse. But at best it's the same people calling the shots. Everybody wants war, nobody wants peace, and our future is bleak. The good news is that Russia just stationed some peacekeepers in Syria; unlike NATO, Russia might actually bring peace.
    Just be aware of that when you hear news stories from Syria or Iran that are upsetting and make you want to commit American troops to solve the problem that you've been played. Somebody's pulling your strings and you, like many others, are playing the part of a puppet.