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"he's extremely popular" Oh right. So what's with all those people who want him to stop being in charge so much that there's been a civil war raging for years?

• dmichulke 10y ago
  It's not a "civil war" just because you have units of opposing factions operating in the same country. The problem with the "rebels" is that they are not considered better, I assume because of their secondary motives (fundamentalism, Sharia law, ...) [1] Also, some of the factions seem to be heavily influenced / supported by foreign powers [2] Taken together, every war is somewhere on a scale between "civil war" and "ordinary war" and just calling it a "civil war" doesn't mean it's necessarily one. Of course, since war is unpopular, all interventionist democracies would like you to believe that it's a civil war and they're not meddling at all. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aleppo_(2012%E2%80%9316)#Rebels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aleppo_(2012%E2%80%9... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Syria#War.2C_2011.E2.80.9316 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Syria#War.2C...
• saiya-jin 10y ago
  large segment of society you describe can still be 10% of it (random number). ie if 10% of Switzerland decided to overthrow their democratically elected government, you would have 700,000 'terrorists' immediately, most with their mandatory military weapons stored at home. but, we speak about Switzerland. don't forget many in middle east conflicts are mercenaries or volunteers from all over the world