&gt; It&#x27;s debatable. Do you stand aside and look the other way and say, that&#x27;s their lot in the world, or do you do something.<p>&gt; It&#x27;s not an was call. If you do nothing people die. If you try to do something people will die. The idea is to pave a better path to the future.<p>This was the propaganda used to excuse invading Iraq, but it&#x27;s incredibly naive to believe it.<p>&gt; Or even today, do we say, forget Syria. Seal it up, let them sort things out and condemn a whole country&#x27;s population to great suffering?<p>That&#x27;s <i>exactly</i> what we&#x27;d be doing if they weren&#x27;t sitting in the way of fossil fuel transportation routes.<p>It&#x27;s ridiculous to claim that we&#x27;re doing this to reduce the suffering of people in Syria. The US has supplied Israel with bombs that have been used to kill Syrian civilians for more than half a century, yet suddenly we care about the suffering of Syrians now? Yeah, right.