Comment by philipkglass | Hacker News Reader

Comment by philipkglass | Hacker News Reader

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I've been following the Syrian Civil War for the last 5 years. The null hypothesis: every faction has done horrible things. That's what happens in war. It would be an exceptional civil war indeed if the central government (or any other faction of significance) did not commit atrocities. I understand not wanting one's country to be involved in the war. I don't want my country to intervene in the SCW either. I don't understand the resistance to recognizing the horrible things done in Syria (by the central government or otherwise).

Is the idea that if the Syrian government commits atrocities then Western powers have to intervene in the war? So to prevent a probably-disastrous intervention people need to deny that the Syrian government commits atrocities? I don't think that is a logical chain of reasoning, if that is indeed what is going on. There are all sorts of horrors in the world where additional intervention by outside powers is likely to be worse than inaction. It doesn't mean that we should pretend that the horrors don't exist.

There's a false equivalency here: Only one side is barrel bombing people indiscriminately, torturing people by the tens of thousands, and systematically exterminating an entire group of people.

You're right, no war is without war crimes, but the Assad regime has given up on appearances and is simply playing for keeps. They're beyond the point of no return, they're going to end up like North Korea in terms of diplomatic ties, if they survive this rebellion.

> There's a false equivalency here: Only one side is barrel bombing people indiscriminately, torturing people by the tens of thousands, and systematically exterminating an entire group of people.

That seems blatantly false to me. The Assad regime is certainly guilty of all the things on your list, but ISIS are also murdering and torturing people by the tens of thousands and systematically exterminating entire groups of people (has everyone already forgotten about the Yazidis, if nothing else?). Insofar as differences in scale exist, they seem to exist only because ISIS doesn't have the capacity to kill as many people as they'd like. Both groups have institutionalized horrific violence as a matter of policy.

Syrian civil war has much more than just these two actors.

That's absolutely true, I merely mentioned the most obvious counterexample in terms of deliberate atrocities. Most of the other actors are also guilty of deliberate human rights violations on a fairly massive scale, but I thought my simple counterpoint was quite sufficient to rebut the parent.

Precisely. ISIS is actually far less of a factor in the overall shape of Syria than they are in Iraq.

You won't find me defending the crimes of the Syrian government. (Or of anyone else in the war!) But I think that there's a danger of letting your perfectly justified moral outrage distort your ability to predict. I do not think that the Syrian government will be as isolated as North Korea after the war. It's not as isolated as North Korea now and outrage will fade further after the war. I predict that there will be less diplomatic pressure on the government after the war. The EU and neighboring states will be more interested in stopping/reversing refugee flows than in punishing the Syrian government for wartime atrocities. Any stability will be considered good stability.

I predict that Assad, like most heads of state, will never be held accountable for his government's crimes. I do not even see how an outside force could bring him to justice without subjecting the Syrian people to even more misery.

The Allies, Axis, and Comintern all committed atrocities in WWII... but atrocities are not a binary state. The firebombing of Dresden doesn't match up to the Final Solution, for example, and not just in scale - the latter was a formal ongoing policy by the government in charge, not 'soldiers run amok against their training'.

It is good, however, to remind any hawk that atrocities are committed by all sides. If you're advocating for war at any time, you must also accept that your own side is going to engage in atrocities to some degree.

> It would be an exceptional civil war indeed if the central government (or any other faction of significance) did not commit atrocities.

It does not have to be that way. Look at what's going on in the Donbass. It is war, it is happening in a densely populated area. Both sides make heavy of the artillery.

But the death count is like x100 times less.

Because they're not willingly trying to kill as many civilians.

(I agree with the rest of your points though)

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