[fineman]

The right answer? Kill Assad and help the people take back Syria. We should have done it three years ago before much of the moderate resistance was killed but it still needs doing.

And as for your Israel jab, they're better to the Palestinians than the Arab states in the area are. And none of the Israelis I've talked to seem to have inherently racist beliefs but many of the recently middle-eastern Arabs do. (About the Palestinians.)

[Ygg2]

Right? Just like killing Saddam and Gadafi stabilized the region. I'm sure nothing bad would happen. It's not like something worse than Al Quaida can happen again.

Europe fully deserves the migrant crisis. It went into Middle East guns blazing, and expects to come out of it unscathed.

[fineman]

Cutting and running does not work. We're still in Germany and Japan 70+ years later and we'll have to have that kind of roadmap if we plan to help in the middle east.

And help we must. We can't sit back and watch madmen kill millions, even if doing so would spite our idiot leaders (on all sides) who caused it in the first place.

[ufmace]

If done at the right time, it would have at least had a chance of transitioning to a somewhat more democratic form of government. As opposed to what actually happened when we did nothing, which is Islamic extremists being the main supporters of the resistance, versus the Russian and Iranian backed Assad. Assad believes that the West will grudgingly back him against ISIS extremists, and not so much against secular rebels, so naturally he turned the bulk of his guns against the secular rebels. With nobody supporting them and everybody against them, of course their presence and influence dwindled to nothing.

I mostly agree with fineman, except that I think it's too late for backing secular resistance to have much of a point. Just like Iraq, we left them high and dry when they needed us, and so now the only chance of having any significant influence is a direct invasion, which nobody has much stomach for anymore.

I'd summarize as grow up already. The fingers of Islamist and totalitarian interference are already all over this conflict, and have been for decades. The West keeping out of it only guarantees that one or the other will win and any chance of secular democracy will lose.

[jacquesm]

You realize I hope that you are condemning the migrants to the crisis as well. And they're the ones losing big time, Europe not so much.