5 quick links on the Syria conflict ( From Marketwatch August 27 2013)

Marketwatch ^ | August 27, 2013, 9:08 AM

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

As the conflict in Syria begins to unsettle markets, here

[Dick Bachert]

This might help you understand that there COULD be a peaceful resolution to this mess. It helped me.

Perhaps a peaceful outcome IS possible if we can keep obozo and the Western Military/Industrial Complex out of the process.
If left to their “druthers”, we’ll soon be launching ordnance into Syria in support of the WRONG FOLKS!
db
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Perhaps THE—major unexplored angle regarding Syria is that the regime, for all its nastiness, represents and defends a sectarian minority there that faces certain violence and possible “religicide” if the Sunni jihadist opposition were to take control.

The Alawis of Syria, a heterodox offshoot of Shi`ism which comprises about 10-12% of Syria’s population, were deemed apostates as far back as the 14th c. by the (in)famous Sunni cleric Ibn Taymiyah (as I wrote about here). This death penalty for them has been resurrected by clerics guiding the likes of Jabhat al-Nusra, the most lethal (and second in size to the Free Syrian Army) opposition group which is fighting to re-establish the caliphate and has no tolerance for Alawis.

The al-Asad regime’s use of chemical weapons (assuming it’s true) is horrific and indefensible under current international law (as least as recognized by Western powers); but insofar as al-Asad and the Damascus government is seen as defending Alawis, as well as Christians, from almost-certain Sunni jihadist slaughter, many in Syria don’t view usage of such weapons as so indefensible.

Instead of indiscriminately launching cruise missiles into Syria, the administration might be better off working with Russia and other powers to re-create the Syria that existed under the French Mandate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:French_Mandate_for_Syria_and_the_Lebanon_map_en.svg)—wherein the Alawis, Druze and Sunnis each had a territorial piece of the pie—and concomitantly persuading the Alawi regime and as many of its folks as possible to relocated to a state centered in Latakia, as well as giving the Syrian Kurds an autonomous region in the northeastern “jazira” (peninsula).

Many guest commentators (esp. on FNC) seem to favor taking out the al-Asad Alawi regime in order to strike a blow at Iran; but one needs to recall why Damascus and Tehran are allied—because no Sunni Arab countries would have much to do with Syria after Hafiz al-Asad and the Alawis took complete power in the early 1970s, and so the elder al-Asad cleverly passed his sect off as Shi`i—even getting the Lebanese Twelver Shi`i cleric Musa al-Sadr to issue a fatwa labeling Alawis as Shi`is before he disappeared in Libya. IF the Alawis were to get support and assurances of safety from a major powers besides Iran, I think it entirely possible they would go quietly into their enclaves around Latakia.

Timothy R. Furnish, PhD