Oh dear.
Right. Now I've got that out I shall begin.
Whoever it was upthread who said "It doesn't make sense for Assad to do this", have you been missing the part where he's been murdering his own people for the last two and a half years, starting with some teenagers in Derra, whose only crime was to write some graffitti against the regime.
This is regime which sent a teenager to prison (Tal Al Mallohi) for writing poetry on a blog, where every school child, every day had to swear undying loyalty to the Assad regime. Over 100,000 people have been killed and vast chunks of the country rendered uninhabitable. All this in response to the people asking for peaceful reform of the regime.
Sense, as we would understand it, doesn't come into it.
Also, there seems be great confusion as to what intervention would entail.
No one is asking for Western troops on the ground
Repeat
No one is asking for Western troops on the ground
By intervention they mean either:
1)Arming the rebels
2)Maintaining a no fly zone
or both.
This would bring the current war to a swifter conclusion and ensure the removal of the Assad regime. The regime staying is not an option at this point.
The majority of the rebels are Free Syrian Army - they are fighting for a democratic state, this is what the opposition Syrian National Council want to, as do the majority of the Syrian people.
The Islamist rebels would then either have the choice of coming on board with the reconstruction or not. There would be extremely limited support if they wished to perpetrate a terrorism campaign post settlement - Syria is not like Iraq demographically.
Comparing Syria to Afghanistan is facile. Afghanistan was brutalised by the Soviets for 10 years and then suffered further years of internal conflict. Syria is not at that stage. Also, people seem to be forgetting the very dubious precept for the Western invasion of Afghanistan.
I'm not sure what I've written will change any minds here. There seems to be this underlying sentiment, that Syrians aren't quite like us nice, decent British people, so why should we care?
Except I have family in Damascus and I can tell you that they are very much like you, they have children and families and their lives much like yours (bar the having no political freedom of course). They deserve better then the world turning its back on them.