I excerpted these three paragraphs, but read the entire article. (I have always liked Atkins with whom I share concerns about poverty and a certain lack of interest for civil libertarian issues, but I think he postulates clearly where we stand, stuck between two positions that are both really bad and unable, for political and international reasons, to find a different way.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-world-has-failed-syria-by.html
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So quite predictably, most of the places where people power overwhelmed the dictators, the second most powerful organized element of society, the religious conservative Islamists, stepped in to take their place. In Egypt, the military brutally took power back. So much for people power.
In Libya, Syria and Bahrain, the dictators wouldn't go so quietly. Massacres ensued. Greater massacres were promised. Liberals in the West told themselves that if they closed their eyes, did nothing and murmured phrases like "blowback," the bloodshed would not be on their hands. Conservatives in the West couldn't wait to drop a bunch of bombs, show the world how big and tough they were hiding behind their keyboards and drones, and install a new set of puppet regimes. Almost no one was thinking through how to solve this problem long term.
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And so we stand on the brink in Syria. The dictator is massacring his own people. It may or may not be that the latest gas attack atrocity was committed by Assad, but that's almost irrelevant. Western doves want to do nothing and watch the bloodshed continue. Western hawks want to drop lots of bombs, probably making the situation worse and opening the door for Islamists to take power--at which point they'll push for more drone attacks.
But it also begs the question: what can be done?
Let me add Atkins's post from yesterday, which is also quite interesting.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/john-mccain-itching-to-lob-more-bombs.html
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