Leave it to Jacek, Arthur and the Socialist Revolution media to dig up something vicious, hateful and deceitful to say about the US no matter what is actually happening. When Haiti was hit by an earthquake and the US was in the vanguard helping with massive aid, all they could find to talk about was colonial misdeeds of a century ago. But freedom fighters are troublemakers and deserve to be crushed. Let's hear it for the dictators of the world, they have nothing to lose but their chains!    

Talking to ghosts now, Kim? Arthur left your company over three months ago. Stop hallucinating.

Poor Russia.

Assad takes a page out of Russia's book in his war against rebels

Assad's strategy of bombing cities, indiscriminate massacres, population expulsions and gaining territory mirrors that of his greatest foreign supporter's war against Chechnya.

The tantalizing videos that Syrian citizens have been uploading to the internet, the reports of bombings on crowded living quarters in the city of Homs, the attack on the southern city of Dar’a, the large numbers of dead civilians, currently over sixty (twenty of whom died after the Syrian army disconnected the electricity to the quarter where the local hospital happens to be), are a testimony to Assad’s strategy that comes less than a day after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s visit to Damascus.

If there is one thing Assad learned from the Russians, it is the way in which they fought their war in Chechnya. A full-on campaign against rebels, bombing cities, indiscriminate massacres, population expulsions and finally gaining control of territory. This is the kind of warfare Assad is now deploying against the city of Homs, a key city and the third largest in Syria. A victory for Assad there, according to the Syrian regime, will bring about a turnaround they have been looking for.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/assad-takes-a-page-out-of-russia-s-book-in-his-war-against-rebels-1.411789

Ragardless of what Israel may be telling the US to do, it's very likely that

Intervention in Syria Is Morally Justified—and Completely Impractical

This is a contribution to ‘What Should the United States Do About Syria?: A TNR Symposium.’

In trying to think through what outsiders should do to stop the killing in Syria, the only unambiguous issue is the moral one. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is perpetrating crimes against humanity upon his own people. The “responsibility to protect,” unanimously adopted at the U.N. in 2005, stipulates that when states fail to protect their own citizens from mass atrocities, other states have an affirmative responsibility to act. Only a gross cynic—say, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov—could argue that Assad has not triggered this international obligation. An intervention would be morally justified, just as it was in Libya.

So far, therefore, I agree with Leon Wieseltier, who argues for such an intervention. But this is not a classroom; and calls for action have to clear both a prudential hurdle and a practical one. ...

http://www.tnr.com/article/world/100615/syria-symposium-intervention-arab-league

That qualifier is missing from the following Foreign Affairs account:

Right, Putin lost a lot of money in the Libya deal.

Russia just seems to be less altruistic than the United States whose charitable expenses in Libya were as follows:

According to the Pentagon, that was the cost to U.S. taxpayers for Muammar el-Qaddafi's head: $1.1 billion through September, the latest figure just out of the Defense Department. ...

The final totals will take some time to add up, and still do not include the State Department, CIA, and other agencies involved or other NATO and participating countries. Vice President Joe Biden said that the U.S. "spent $2 billion total and didn't lose a single life."  (http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/10/for-the-us-war-against-qaddafi-cost-relatively-little-11-billion/247133/)

Compared to such a bill on the US third simultaneous front alone, Russia does seem to be poor...

But, hey, can we all be rich and famous?

And Qaddafi was such a nice guy. His people will miss him.

A few more nice guys to go:

Should keep this thread busy throughout another Spring.

So you're in favor of keeping all police states in power? Or just those hostile to the West?