Syria: Haven't we been here before?

With the gruesome pictures emerging from Homs, again the international call for intervention is heard. Why are we not doing something? Once again, we may have already done too much...

Here's an excellent blog about the history of the West in Syria from Adam Curtis. Great read and supported with a lot of great footage!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/06/the_baby_and_t...

THE BABY AND THE BAATH WAYER

What is happening in Syria feels like one of the last gasps of the age of the military dictators. An old way of running the world is still desperately trying to cling to power, but the underlying feeling in the west is that somehow Assad's archaic and cruel military rule will inevitably collapse and Syrians will move forward into a democratic age.

That may, or may not, happen, but what is extraordinary is that we have been here before. Between 1947 and 1949 an odd group of idealists and hard realists in the American government set out to intervene in Syria. Their aim was to liberate the Syrian people from a corrupt autocratic elite - and allow true democracy to flourish. They did this because they were convinced that "the Syrian people are naturally democratic" and that all that was neccessary was to get rid of the elites - and a new world of "peace and progress" would inevitably emerge.

What resulted was a disaster, and the consequences of that disaster then led, through a weird series of bloody twists and turns, to the rise to power of the Assad family and the widescale repression in Syria today.

I thought I would tell that story.

read more here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/06/the_baby_and_t...