Juan Cole: Mitt Romney made clear his intention to intervene in Syria
should he become president. As usual, how exactly he would do that remained vague.
In the meantime, events in Syria are moving fast. The suicide bombing at a branch of Air Force intelligence at a base in Hrasta near Demascus showed that the regime is gradually losing its grip in Syria. The group that claimed to have been behind the explosions is Nusrat al-Islam (aid to Islam), considered by Washington, D.C. as an al-Qaeda affiliate. That Muslim radicals are carrying out efficient large scale bombings of Syrian government facilities raises some red flags with analysts.
In other Syria news, on Tuesday Syrian revolutionaries took the town of Maaret al-Nu’man, in the hinterland of Idlib. If they kept it the rebels would be in a position to control the trade in and out of Aleppo. The Syrian regime is sending troops up to try to to take the area back.
In the absence of a UN Security Council resolution, however, intervening militarily would be a huge risk, since things could easily spiral out of control and the US would be acting illegally and without international support. The option of a ‘no fly zone’ would be extremely difficult to implement in Syria. A lot of regime tanks are inside cities, where trying to bomb them could well produce large numbers of wounded civilians. (NATO never bombed the tanks attacking Misrata because they were too far inside city limits and the danger of friendly fire was too great.)
http://www.juancole.com/2012/10/romney-and-the-syrian-dilemma.html
