I wouldn't blame the West for the Arab spring though, that was an organic, local movement. NATO bears some blame for what's happening in Libya since they did side with the rebels (though I think if you want to calculate blame you should compare the current situation with what would have happened if NATO had not intervened, which still would have involved a lot of casualties). But Syria? The West's support of the rebel movements has been token at best, and actual military support has been devoted almost entirely to ISIS and ISIS-aligned fighters.
The Syrian government would not have lost control of the situation if it wasn't for Western support of the insurrection, Western bombings of infrastructure, and droves of Western armaments - ATGMs especially - that enabled the survival of the insurrection,
The material support was absolutely not token, at all.
There are also literal US troops in Syria that are used purely to prevent the Syrian government from taking control of land in Syria.
These are also in strategic places used to cut off land trading routes to Syria and cause economic pain to the government via military means, in the hopes that the government would fall.
Also, the US government actually did bomb the Syrian military multiple times.
So no, the US is actually at war in every single sense of the world against the Syrian government, and without the US government and it's allies there would be no civil war in Syria past a year or two of unrest. Not anywhere even near 400 000 deaths.
I strongly disagree with your assessment that, without Western funding for the rebels the government forces would have resumed control within a couple years, for a variety of reasons. The rebels made significant territorial gains before Western involvement, and the large number of factions that emerged is a solid demonstration that Assad was unable to control the population. The usage of artillery, air strikes, and chemical attacks on civilian targets greatly strengthened the resolve of the rebels. Repeatedly refusing to take actions to improve the humanitarian situation, along with draconian treatment of rebels and suspected rebels, ensured that the population would not yield to government forces without a long and protracted fight.
It should be noted the large degree of foreign involvement in this war. You've got Hezbollah and Iranian-backed militia groups working alongside the Syria government forces. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar provided bases, training, and equipment to the free Syrian army. Turkey has even mounted offensives into northeast Syria. There's Kurdish forces, some funded by Kurdish nationalist elements. There's jihadist groups such as the al Nusra front and ISIL which took advantage of the power vacuum to grow in power and influence. Foreign fighters from throughout the middle east (and throughout the world) flocked to the region to join various factions. Russia has deployed troops to assist the Syrian government and is regularly striking Syrian opposition targets. And, of course, funding and training from several Western nations. None of the above was at the behest of the US, these are actions taken by different countries and groups in service of their own foreign policy goals and ideologies. It seems odd to place the blame squarely at the feet of the US when so many competing interests were involved, especially when others intervened significantly more.
And things changed significantly with the emergence of ISIL, their invasion of Iraq, and numerous terrorist attacks around the world. The US was absolutely correct in providing support to Iraq and building a coalition to stop their territorial gains and mount a counter offensive. I think expecting the US to remain neutral in such a conflict is unreasonable. It was necessary to push them back into Syria, and to take steps to make sure they could not regain ground in western Syria. And while the Syrian and Russian governments might complain about this, the fact is that the region is far outside of their area of control.
I think that blaming everything on the US belittles the decisions and actions or local groups, and groups around the world.
The funding and training by other Western nations was entirely contingent on US support. The US did the delivery, and operated the physical bases that allowed for training.
As for foreign support, except for US-led support, all of it was to support Assad.
Whats more, even at the very beginning the US limited Russia's support of Assad by threat of military intervention.
As for the rest, if you think it is tenable for a fractured force of over twenty different factions without an access to weapons, training or funding to persist more than a few months against a modern army, you are simply wrong. Insurgency would have been possible, but not holding territory.
In any case, the non-jihadist non-Kurdish independent (which were amenable to limited autonomy since the beginning) forces basically dissipated within a year with the fall of the Free Syrian Army in 2012. Your theory that the revolt would have been protracted and last for years without international support is completely absurd, because it was almost completely destroyed, leaving only the YPG and the Jihadists, within a year until US support returned.
Indeed, the successor of the FSA, the SMC, was explicitly backed by the US-led coalition from its very founding.
I'm not belittling the actions or decisions of local groups in anyway. I speak Arabic myself, and have friends that lived in Syria at the time. The movement was not sustainable at all, and was much, much, much less bloody until the Western weapons fell into the hands of Jihadists.
I never asked the US to remain neutral in a conflict against terrorism. If they wish to do so, they could have joined it with the accord of the Syrian Government instead of waging war against it and indirectly (and directly) supplying the terrorists.
I'm blaming the US squarely because she, and her allies which operated through the US, are the only source of armament for the opposition and the Jihadists, and knew very well that Democracy was completely impossible in Syria at the time since the very beginning, but instead saw an opportunity to pursue geopolitical interests at the cost of hundreds of thousands of deaths, yet again.
Your attempt to deflect the blame by accusing entities that never facilitated the Civil War at all of "doing it too", denying the clear pattern of US involvement in the rebel and jihadi elements of the Civil War is frankly disgusting.
From 400 000 to 600 000 people died in a Civil War that, even at the very beginning, never even had a majority amongst the rebels of support for a secular democracy, and that was prolonged 7 years past the functional collapse of the rebels - which were then swiftly reorganized under the watchful eye of the US - is denial of a horrible atrocity done for literally no possible benefit - which was clear from the very beginning to anyone that made even a cursory attempt at an independent reading of the situation.
And by the way, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey were solidly allied with the US in military matters in the large majority of the conflict. Qatar never actually put boots on the ground, by the way.
The Turkish invasion itself was only ever possible because Kurdish control over NES allowed Turkey to invoke the Asana accords signed by Turkey and Syria that allowed them to invade. Note that I wholeheartedly support the Kurdish cause and identify very strongly with their politics, but I cannot let that influence my analysis here. The Kurdish forces whose presence made the Turkish invasion possible are only there because of US boots on the ground that are intended as tripwire forces, which prevent Russian and Syrian forces of taking control of that territory - either peacefully in exchange for limited autonomy, or through force, the first option being significantly more likely due to Russian pressure to allow this.
No matter where you analyze the cause of the ridiculous prolongement of the war, you almost invariably find that the US is a blocker in the process of removing them.
I'm not trying to defend the Syrian Government either. I deeply dislike them. But there was, realistically, absolutely no way for a stable alternative to exist at the time of the revolution. Popular support for a preferable government was never in the absolute majority, and the inevitable conclusion of the Civil War was either a victory by Assad or something even worse - in both cases at an incredibly high cost.
This was explained and predicted to me by my father and Syrian friends all the way back in 2011, and while I did not agree at the time, in retrospect its clear that this was correct and I'm convinced the US knew as much too.
It's not just governmental foreign policies, it's about the overall mentality, of both the government and people.
The parent thread I was responding written "I guess Thailand is due for a revolution".
There would surely be many people trying to convince Thai people "your government is evil, go overthrow it". Maybe sometimes to an extreme like "burn the parliament and everything will get better".
To be "supportive" over the Internet is almost too easy, especially if it's not someone's home country it's easier to said than done because they don't need to take consequences. Yell at your boss and you'll be at risk of losing the job, but it won't hurt to encourage foreigners to go for the rebel path.
The protests in Tunisia started because an unemployed young man burned himself to death. In Syria it was because the secret police abducted a few teenagers for making some graffiti, and tore out their fingernails. In both cases, ordinary people were fed up. These things happen in corrupt and oppressive regimes, but blaming the west is really condescending. The people over there made their own choices for their own reasons.
For a better perspective, flip the scenario around on a Western country. Black people have legitimate grievances with how they're treated by police in the US. "Ordinary people were fed up." If moves were made for a revolution to overthrow the US government, you would be ok with foreign countries' people encouraging and helping this revolution take place? After all, "The people over there made their own choices for their own reasons."
I’m absolutely ok with the west helping these people in their struggle for autonomy against oppression. I’m just saying they’re not puppets to westerners who are driving their agenda.
+1. People can have their own revolutions without it being caused by 'the West'. That's definitely noble savage territory when people say that only the West is capable of creating the problems of the world.
Of course it is true that NATO, EU, the US, Russia, and China are engaged there and are part of the landscape but that's part of strategic power plays more than Westernism.
The Arab Spring was partially catalyzed by the leak of the US State Department cables to Wikileaks. I think it's fair to claim the US has some responsibility in the set of causes (there's a reason State Department correspondence is private).
It turns out that while sunlight is a great disinfectant, it also sometimes starts unintended fires.
The cable leaks sparked outrage because the US Tunisian embassy was reporting back to the State Department the Tunisian President was corrupt and self-dealing. If the US has some responsibility for the Tunisian revolution, it's a distant 4th: behind the President of Tunisia, the people of Tunisia, and Wikileaks for leaking the cables (and I'd put Wikileaks way, way below the others)
