Why the syrian revolution is different from the Libyian revolution

There has been mixed opinions on wether or not the western nations should intervene militarily in the Syran revolution. In this post im going to discuss why the syrian revolution is much more complex than the Libyan.

•  Syria has a lot more support



USA doesn't want to get involved militarily that is., this makes the whole situation a lot more complicated. Because if the UN does not have USA in their back its gonna get a lot harder to handle it politically.

Then you might ask yourself why is this different from libya?

The White House says the two situations can't be compared.

Libya was "a unique situation," Carney told reporters Monday. "We had large portions of the country that were out of the control of Moammar Gadhafi (and) we had an international consensus to act. We had the support of the Arab League to act in a multilateral fashion."

Second, there is "nowhere near the consensus on Syria as there is on Libya," Pletka told CNN. Syria, as opposed to Libya, stands at the heart of the Arab world. Assad has more friends and allies to call on.

Gaddafi had no friends and even his own children wanted to marginalize him. In an unprecedented move, the Arab League supported the establishment of a strictly enforced no-fly zone in Libya. In contrast, Bashar al-Assad has powerful allies inside and outside the region--starting with Iran (and, therefore, Hezbollah and Hamas). Even Vogue magazine was smitten with this family and wrote a sycophantic article about Asma Assad, "the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies" endowed with "dark-brown eyes, wavy chin-length brown hair, long neck, an energetic grace." It's hard to bomb someone like that.

But this is not saying that US isn't doing anything in syria, they have pressed that many countries freeze Syrian assets. So this leaves the Assad regime with a lot less money in the coffers. EU and Canada have already joined USA in the freeze. But countries like Russia and China refuse to join the freeze.

• Why libya, but not Syria?

While Libya's Military was ill-equipped, ill-trained and fragmented, Syria has one of the largest, best trained and best equipped armed forces in the entire middle east. It also houses one of the worlds largest paramilitary in the world. Secondly, Libya exhausted the little appetite left in the United States to engage in wars that are not justified by clear threats to its vital interests. Syrian dissidents are suffering the consequences of the long and costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the recent raid on Libya. U.S. military support for remote causes will henceforth be more limited and selective. And, as far as wars are concerned, Europe won't act without Washington. This leaves the heroic Syrian dissidents all on their own.

OIL - Everything is about the oil. Libya had a lot of oil, while Syrian has close to none. The western countries where interested in going in and capturing the oil before the region got to destabilized. Helping the Libyan revolution therefore made the western countries buddies with the new Libyan government and then they might just be a little more willing to trade oil.

This was what i had. Write your comments or questions if you have any, and i will try to answer them the best i can :)

//Mathias Stück