But hey, Eisenhower tried to wake up we (the people) when he talked about the dangers of the military-industrial complex.
This is probably where Eisenhower learned the dangers of the 'military industrial complex', because the US was actually opposed to intervention in Iran until Eisenhower came to power and changed that position (on the advice of Winston Churchill)
So let's assume the US is victorious and Assad gone. And now? A lot of Syrian fractions, deprived of their common enemy, and a lot of them are extremists. I'm sure very few of them would be okay with an international occupying force.
What I'm missing in all the news is even a hint that the journalists are willing and/or capable of looking at motives. We are always told about this or that attack, and how many children died - never mentioning that if the table were turned it would just be the children of the other group(s) that would die (but the media could just stop reporting about them, the news articles are way too inconsistent in whom they are reporting about and whom not, that alone is a significant selection bias).
I have yet to see any article that tells us (in believable terms and not just superficially) what "Assad" (meaning more than just the one guy) actually wants. I only read that he and Putin are bombing hospitals and children. The German leading magazine and news source "Der Spiegel", where I get most of my daily news, is especially bad. They've had 2-4 such Syria articles on the front page every single day for a while now, without giving any actual (deeper) information or a (thorough) look at the alternatives. And then they wonder about the apathy among the readers? They enable the forum only under every 10th or so of those articles, and each time they do the tone is highly skeptical, not of any one party in the conflict, but about how we are informed and the lack of actually clear and good alternatives.
It's this level of analysis that is completely absent from news sources. In the UK there is a perpetual debate about immigration that cuts across party lines. I'd love to see some attempts at analysis of the various factions and what their motivations stem from. It occasionally gets touched upon but it's usually relegated the extended segments in the late news.
Give people context and background. Educate them to look behind the surface. Maybe we would then stop obsessing about the precise turn of phrase used by politicians as it has very little relationship to what's actually going on. Then maybe we can start thinking about having a functioning democracy.
This is a President's prerrogative. Why is US preventing this to happen?
On the other hand nobody has anything worthwhile to say really, including myself, since we know next to nothing. I just wish that at the very least people become more conscious of when they know nothing and merely regurgitate the sound bites they've heard often enough to have memorized and internalized them.
Another issue with the shallow feel-bad event-based stories is that they are much more easily manipulated than actual deep analysis of the background behind conflicts.
He talks as if the action against Syria is because Assad is a brutal military dictator. The reality is that the US wants Assad gone because he is an ally to Russia/Iran who can exert control over Lebanon, and he is blocking a gas pipeline from Qatar to EU that would weaken Russia.
The simple solution for there to be peace in Syria is for the US to get out. Stop sponsoring terrorists (yes, the "rebels" the US sponsors are terrorists) in Syria, just get out. Assad maintained peace from 2000 - 2011, and he can do it again.
The saddest part is this: when a Syrian kid learns of the destruction of his country and wants revenge on the US, it will be these same newspapers that will be crying about "Why do they hate us?"
So now oppositions all over the world go ballistic and use violence as the only solution to a problem, confident that USA will come and take out the head of the regime they oppose, ...Americans coming in, die for them. 3 years ago they were betting on Americans invading Syria and do the work for them ?
Silly.
