Thanks Danielle,

Actually I think that not only are there worse forces at work that the US in the Syrian Crisis: paradoxically there are also worse forces at work than the Syrian regime's: al-Qa'ida, for one, and its rival (why, is where it loses me) Muslim Brotherhood. And maybe many other weird and wonderful interests as well working their ghastly magic.

At the risk of pontificating - no, what the hell, I'll pontificate - Syria seems to be at the centre of a range of conflicting ideologies -every religious group against others, secular groups against religious, nationalist-fascist ideologies against religious ideologies (i.e. Arabist vs Islamist), liberal-democratic vs 'progressivist'-Marxist vs fascist-nationalist, Christian (Orthodox vs Maronite vs whatever) vs Druse vs Sunni vs Shi'ite vs Alawite.

Not to mention more long-standing disputes, tribe against tribe, valley against valley, town against country, left-handers vs right-handers, people with surnames starting with A-K versus those with surnames starting with L-Z, 'neighbour' against 'neighbour', everybody against witches, or so it seems.

And every 'neighbouring' power and its dog wants to ship in arms and fighters to keep the whole pot simmering. Including the US, Russia and China. This is nowhere as simple as Libya was.

Some problems don't have solutions, although eventually, after an enormous amount of blood-letting, and a war of attrition of all against all, somebody will crawl out of the ruins to claim victory. For a time.

No, the US is a bit-player in this one, Arjay. The ball is totally, dreadfully, in the court of the Syrian people and their 'neighbours'.

Loudmouth,

You sum it up very well.

It's a caldron.

Just to add to the volatility Iran and Saudi Arabia seem to be squaring off against each other in Syria.

The conflict shows signs of spilling over into Lebanon where there have already been skirmishes between Alawites and Sunnis.

The big winners are probably the Israelis. The more focused Israel's neighbours are on slaughtering each other the fewer resources they are able to devote to killing Jews.

The big loser could be Hizbollah. Will this Shia grouping be able to impose its will on the Sunnis and Christians and Druze if Iran and Syria are no longer in a position to keep it supplied with weaponry?

The possible weakening of Hizbollah is, of course, is another plus for Israel.

But I still want to know why Australia or any other Western country should get involved in this mess??

stevenlmeyer,

Yes, any intervention by Australia et al will only make things worse. As you and loudmouth have pointed out the situation is a mess of competing interests. Whether this is going to be a short term or indefinite conflict is anyone's guess. I suspect the latter.

Depending upon the outcome,it could result in great embarrassment for Australia if we became involved.

I am becoming exceedingly perplexed and conflicted over the whole of the middle east situation, and am trying very hard not to become a racist/religious bigot in trying to make sense of the whole convoluted mess.

I believe in live and let live, and in being a good neighbour, though I'm not too keen on turning the other cheek (if someone wants to harm me, then I'm going to retaliate in kind, albeit perhaps reluctantly). But the middle east seems to be almost a no-holds-barred, dog-eat-dog mess of hatred and counter-hatred, and completely alien to any sense of justice and decency.

On one hand innocents are gunned down or blown up, as opposing political forces go at each other - the 'for the people' mob against the 'nationalists', the haves vs have-nots, or one religious faction against another.

Then we see inflamed, manic groups going bananas over the burning of the Koran, a cartoon, or a woman without headscarf - as religious fervour and hysteria obviates sanity and any sense of tolerance or common decency. What is at the base of such strenuous emotions? Brainwashing is my guess, mass hysteria/delusion manufactured by some evil, demonic, deluded and self-interested religious fanatics (though they may consider themselves righteous and enlightened). There should be no place in free society for such bigotry, such evil.

We have some narrow minded sects in the West, but they are mostly about brotherly love, and certainly don't avow, let alone pursue, murder or beating of non-believers. If someone burns the bible, who's going to go on a rampage? Most of us will be more offended by the burning of the flag.

In Iraq things are going back to business as usual - dog eat dog. And in Afghanistan dog continues to turn on the hand that feeds.

Much as I may have compassion for the downtrodden in Syria, I don't know who to trust anymore. One thing I do know, is that I don't want any of this fanatical rubbish coming to Ausralia.

'... the middle east seems to be almost a no-holds-barred, dog-eat-dog mess of hatred and counter-hatred, and completely alien to any sense of justice and decency.'

Oh, really? The last 100 years or so don't leave the West smelling like a rose. WWI & II, the Russian revolution, the Cold War, the partition of Europe, the arms race, Vietnam, Korea, Northern Ireland, Chile, the Latin-American juntas, apartheid in South Africa, the break-up of Yugoslavia, the War on Terror. Not much 'justice and decency' in all of that. I doubt if we can find a single year over the last century in which the West has not been embroiled in some kind of catastrophic war somewhere on the planet.

Hi Killarney,

You might be right, but so what ? Where does that get the people of Syria ? This is 2012, not 1171 or 1453 or 1648, or even 1914.

Do the people of Syria have to go through all the idiot struggles that Europeans have gone through over the past thousand years ?

Do we stand back and 'support' the people of Syria by advising them that they might have to take that long before they can thrash out all of the idiot wrinkles of political evolution ?

And after another thousand years, seize, once and for all (well, more or less), democracy, the rule of the majority with its safeguards for the protection of minority rights, which people in most 'Western' 'democracies' now - more or less - take for granted ?

How to accelerate the process from tribalism to democracy - this is the task for Syrians, and for everybody else in the Middle East. Unless somebody has devised a superior system to democracy, with all its faults, then democracy in Middle Eastern countries is what we should be struggling for.

When people there can understand the need to separate 'church' and state, when they can understand that Arab = Iranian = Kurd = Turk = everybody else, and that consideration of everybody else's opinion is as valid as one's own, that women's opinion is as valued as men's, and that the only way to resolve a difference of opinion is to put it to a vote in which the majority wins, with safeguards for minorities, then little progress will occur.

Until this happens, I'll focus on my roses and Osmanthuses and the world can go to buggery.

Joe