If a civil war like Syria happened in your country...

[Silent Hunter]

If a chemical attack or general warcrimes were happening in Damascus, Ohio perpetrated by the US government (allegedly) would you want the international community to come in?

[DC Al Fine]

That would really depend on who's side I was on.

[opebo]

Yeah it depends if one supported the government or the rebels.

[Blue3]

I'm assuming:

1. the government is gassing people

2. the international coalition would be to help the rebels



If those two are true, would I want an international intervention? HELL YES!

[Antonio the Sixth]

Of course.

[Donerail]

"If you were fighting on one side of a war, would you want some more support for your side?"

I don't see the point of this question.

[Lief 🗽]

"If you were fighting on one side of a war, would you want some more support for your side?"

I don't see the point of this question.

Yeah, the 400 children that Assad gassed were definitely fighting on the side of the rebels.

If my government were committing war crimes against its civilians then I would want someone to help stop them, yes, of course.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

If a chemical attack or general warcrimes were happening in Damascus, Ohio perpetrated by the US government (allegedly) would you want the international community to come in?

For the love of God we still don't know if Syrian government was behind the attack.

[DC Al Fine]

If a chemical attack or general warcrimes were happening in Damascus, Ohio perpetrated by the US government (allegedly) would you want the international community to come in?

For the love of God we still don't know if Syrian government was behind the attack.

Too late! Land war with Russia is the only answer!

[Kitteh]

If my government were committing war crimes against its civilians then I would want someone to help stop them, yes, of course.

[Leftbehind]

This really all depends on the context. Who's winning, who would be intervening etc.

[Vosem]

Depends not only on which side I'm fighting, but also who is doing the intervening. So undecided.

[barfbag]

I'd probably move or fart on all the people trying to invade our land. Or I might trick some of them into coming over for dinner and then turn the kitchen into a gas chamber.

[Redalgo]

The detail of using chemical weapons would be irrelevant to me in the event that the U.S. became embroiled in a civil war akin to that occurring in Syria. Using a succinct briefing from Freedom House as a guide of reference I would hypothetically expect the following to be true of the States in such a scenario:

• A de-facto one-party system prevails, only superficially allowing for democratic elections.
• The Constitution requires the President of the United States be of Christian faith.
• Special police units intimate the opposition and suppress freedom of expression.
• Police oft coerce confessions using torture or by arresting the suspect's relatives.
• It is illegal to express anything that undermines social cohesion or is negative about the state.
• All broadcast news sources from within the U.S. are owned and controlled by the state.
• Many journalists have been assassinated, jailed, or tortured for stepping out of line.
• Many university professors have been fired and/or jailed for being critical of the state.
• Especially outspoken opposition activists are jailed to silence their political views.
• Co-opted state informants report on dissenters, promoting a culture of self-censorship.
• Access to the internet generally entails extensive government filtering for censorship.
• There is some institutionalized discrimination in favor of Whites and against Native Americans.

As for the armed conflict itself:

• The National Guard was mobilized to disperse some early protests, firing live munitions.
• Some fragments of the military have sided with the protestors and opposition militias.
• The government insists the armed militias are affiliated with foreign terrorist groups.
• Some of militias are, in fact, comprised of political extremists and Christian crusaders.
• Some of the militias are aided and/or based in other parts of the West or Latin America.
• Pro-government forces in the war are primarily from the military and "Patriot" groups.
• Actors on both sides of the conflict are responsible for numerous human rights abuses.
• Civil war has added millions to the number of homeless and impoverished Americans.
• The civil war has led to hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties as collateral damage.
• A similarly significant number of Americans have fled into and seek refuge in Canada.
• The United States is successfully obstructing moves in the U.N. toward intervention.
• A slight majority of Americans side with the government, seeking an end to the violence.

Under those circumstances, or others similar to them, I would very strongly support foreign intervention while also unwaveringly desiring both the ruling regime's defeat and the founding of a new government.

Edit: If you only want a response to the chemical weapon provision, however, I would likely trust foreign inspectors more than those dispatched by my country's own government agencies.

[ingemann]

That would really depend on who's side I was on.

Agree with this comment.

I would imagine that the 80 000 Christians who was expelled from Homs by FSA, would prefer that USA didn't intervene on the side of FSA.

[barfbag]

Yeah it depends if one supported the government or the rebels.

Your snowman is so cute.

[Cory]

That would really depend on who's side I was on.

[barfbag]

If a Civil War happened in our country, then I'd bake cookies and sell them to the soldiers for a profit.

[Grumpier Than Thou]

Pacifists die hard

Therefore, I'll be one of the first casualties.

[Person Man]

I would, in principle, be for it. However, the fact that the United States owns thousands of nuclear weapons could complicate the matter. The "red line" would be a 20 kiloton nuke dropped on a mid sized town of 50 or 100,000 people that supported the rebels. tens of thousands would be dead and hundreds of thousands would be injured and if rebels got ahold of nukes, this could eventually escalate into the world's first nuclear war.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

If a chemical attack or general warcrimes were happening in Damascus, Ohio perpetrated by the US government (allegedly) would you want the international community to come in?

Of course I'd want them to intervene in some constructive way. And of course I wouldn't want them to lob missiles into areas with military installations, considering where I live.

[barfbag]

I would, in principle, be for it. However, the fact that the United States owns thousands of nuclear weapons could complicate the matter. The "red line" would be a 20 kiloton nuke dropped on a mid sized town of 50 or 100,000 people that supported the rebels. tens of thousands would be dead and hundreds of thousands would be injured and if rebels got ahold of nukes, this could eventually escalate into the world's first nuclear war.

Nuclear weapons could persuade me otherwise too.

[angus]

If a chemical attack or general warcrimes were happening in Damascus, Ohio perpetrated by the US government (allegedly) would you want the international community to come in?

Depends upon which is my country.  Damascus Ohio is a hard call.  If my country were Wyoming, I'd say no.  I'd just empty my bank account and take the cash and my family to somewhere else.  If I were in a more densely populated place like New Jersey, where roads could easily be blocked and neighborhoods easily cordoned off, then hauling ass wouldn't be such an easy option.  In that case I might even favor foreign invasion.  Damascus, Ohio is somewhere between those two extremes.  On balance, I think I'd still prefer the option of flight by my own means so that I could wait it out till things got better. 

Not really a good comparison, though.  Economic mobility in my country isn't comparable to that in Syria.  Also, Syria doesn't have regularly-scheduled opportunities to replace the current legislature with another less hostile one.  And you can't really go as far in Syria without running into an international border as you can in the United States.  Moreover, Syria has fewer natural resources than the US so it's more difficult to go Nigel Thornberry and survive indefinitely on twigs and berries and snakemeat.

[Franknburger]

In the case of my country (Germany), this is not a theoretical but a historical question: The civil war is known as Thirty Years War, and the Sack of Magdeburg, where  some 20,000 civilians were massacred, has traditionally been regarded as one of the largest atrocities to ever have happened in Europe  before the 20th century.

This religiously-motivated war saw several foreign interventions. One may argue that the 1625-1629 Danish intervention (with financial support from France and England) was still a kind of domestic affair, since the Danish realm included Holstein, which was part of the German Empire. However, the Swedish-French intervention that started in 1630 (France initially just providing financial support, but actively intervening from 1635 on) was clearly a foreign intervention.

Outcomes:
1. Securing Protestant religious independence, and finishing once and for all religiously-motivated wars in Central Europe. As a Northern German, and cultural (though not practising) Protestant, I am anything but unhappy about this outcome. However, it needs to be noted that the subsequent peace furthered religious segregation, most notably re-catholisation of Bohemia and Bavaria.

2. Prolonging a civil war, which otherwise would have been over, by another 18 years (23 years, if the Danish intervention is qualified as foreign intervention as well). Total casualties are estimated at some 5-6 million, most of which occurred after the foreign intervention (the Swedish army alone may have destroyed up to 1,500 towns and 18,000 villages in Germany).


Population loss due to the Thirty Years War (map from Wikipedia)

3. Fragmentising Germany, thus exposing it to and making it the theatre of, respectively, several subsequent European wars, most notably the Great Nordic War (1700-1721), French expansionism towards the Rhine including the Napoleonic Wars, and the Seven Years War  (WW 0). The 'lesson learnt" from these experiences was similar to the Russian (after defeating the Golden Horde) and French (after the War of Hundred Years) conclusions: Need for a strong, united state that, to the extent it lacks internal cohesion, is kept together by external aggression and expansionism->Bismarck's unification, WWs I & II.

Would I favour intervention? Seriously, I don't know...

[barfbag]

If there was a civil war in my country, the free market would fix it.