don't you don't. like. crosstalk now the headlines in syria gunmen of reportedly stormed the headquarters of a pro-government news channel killing three employees this comes after the country's president called on his newly sworn in ministers to do everything in their power to win what he's calling an ongoing. u.s. senate panel approves a new bill on visa bans on sanctions against russian officials implicated in alleged human rights abuses all of this in the latest diplomatic ties between moscow and washington and moscow says it will retaliate by restricting entry for

some americans if that bill gets the green light. and are just one month to go before london's twenty twelve olympics but if the city prepares to protect the streets critics say the games will look more like a security drill rather than a sporting spectacle. not time for the tempers flare with crosstalk and pit of hell . story. below and welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle another push to legitimize going

to war against assad the downing of a turkish military jet by syria may prove to be the tipping point allowing nato to force regime change in damascus though the syrians may have deliberately been sending turkey and nato a message like back off. and. start. to cross talk syria turkey relations i'm joined by ryan morrow in new york he is the national security analyst of radical islam dot org and a fellow with the clarion fund in london we have patrick case he's a journalist and political commentator at spike magazine and in beirut we cross to joseph key he is an author and columnist for gulf news all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want just if i go to you first in beirut we sing a game of chicken being played out here because the story of this the shoot the shooting down of this the turkish jet there's a lot of questions still to be answered here i mean are there elements on both

sides looking for a showdown and if there is a showdown how do you think it will play out. well we don't know exactly what happened as of now there are claims on both sides clearly what we do know is that turkey has sent one of its jets it's very questionable that a single jet like this would fly by itself but put that aside for a second will come back to it and the syrians shot it down everybody is admitting so far that in fact there was an intrusion and that there was an attack now the question is we don't know whether this was a deliberate intervention on the part of the turks to test the defense systems all or whether the pilot or pilots mistakingly of course and penetrated inside syrian territory now depending what explanations are given the underlying obviously this violation of syrian territory but this is

a cat and mouse game that both countries have been playing for a while and the syrians have repeatedly also attacked and borders on the part of of turkey on turkey's border and of course the turks even today have not refrain from crossing borders or crossed into iraq and elsewhere so therefore what we do have is that it can't mouse game testing them both sides tried to figure out what exactly is going to happen it will take a while to sort this out padraig if i go to you in line and it seems to me at least one message has been sent in damascus is saying if you want to use use planes of our territory we can shoot them down this is not libya you think that's one of the messages that's being sent out here. well i think that's certainly true i mean damascus has a military force which is far superior to liberate libya and you remember it took the full might of the u.s. air force really to bring about regime change in libya it would be much harder to do so in syria and certainly there could be

a certain message that's being sent there saying you know this is a taste of what you would be up against we could bring you down with all of these ground to missiles but so be a bit wary about calling it a game in the sense i think that things are a bit more chaotic a bit more free flowing in that at the moment and there's a bit of a sense from both sides we're talking to syria and turkey here that actually there isn't any real sense of how things are panning out what's going to happen next and they're reacting to events and i think that kind of instability in the region could be potentially particularly dangerous especially when such events as this are being hijacked by nato by the west to make broader statements about assad and the fact that he needs to go i think an inquiry needs to take place into what happens here but the danger is when you start to broaden it out and try and talk in broad brushstrokes about the assad regime in general that could really intensify and internationalize the conflict in a very dangerous way when what do you think about that only looks like you know

assad is set on a very strong messages that he will protect the sovereignty of his country if you respect if you like the regime in damascus or not. right i think this is a message to the united states and to the west in general but it is very good at amplifying the fears of outside countries about what's going on inside of his country a good example of that would be in two thousand and six we now know that the assad regime helped instigate the riots in reaction to the publication of the infamous prophet muhammad cartoons and we know that from files released by wiki leaks and also because of the available evidence and part of the reason that they did that was assad could say look you have to deal with me because the alternative is much worse this is what you get if you push democracy in my country and so i think that what you're seeing is an evolution in that strategy by the assad regime me here is a lot of worry about syria's air defenses here is that they are five times as advanced as he had and so here is i fear and then he tries to employ and i think.

purposely and i think in these languages anyway and if i think it was you know i mean it was you know it was the turks did flew the plane over their territory ok i mean this was a provocation one way or another isn't it i mean that's not assad's fault well it could have easily been a mistake because what the turks are saying is that high speed aircraft frequently penetrate their space of surrounding countries accidentally and syria shot it down fifteen minutes after it left syrian airspace now do you believe that or not the fact is is that it's syria purposely shot this plane down what message were they trying to say and that's the message i believe that they're trying to convey that our air defenses are not like libya is you have a much bigger fight on your hands if an international intervention were to take place just what do you think about you know we came out today earlier a few hours ago saying it's obviously standing by its ally turkey but in another statement was made i would expect such an incident wouldn't happen again that

sounds like a real threat. well neutral has condemned the attack of us do you expect that to occur but it's not going to take any action i don't think there will be a no two intervention for the time being however i think that it is important to bear in mind that this was a deliberate attack on the part of the syrians as well let's remember that syrian air space has been loudly to repeatedly since two thousand and one by israel on the repeated basis and as recently as september of two thousand and seven b. israeli air force went all the way to all come out and destroyed allegedly the nuclear facility there at that time the syrian air defense system did not go into action and shoot down any of the israeli aircraft but this time around i think that the message was much more political in nature than military that in fact we could do this to you that is the the syrians telling the turks we can do damage to you

unless you really get your act together because we are suffering on the border with all these defections from the military that are finding refuge inside thirty all of these refugees that are being received god knows the kind of assistance that the free syrian army is receiving but from a variety of countries through turkey therefore i think this was a deliberate message that was sent by damascus to uncut are trying to warn them that in fact there should be careful in terms of how they react now the onus now is on caught up to respond ok patrick it's very interesting i mean you know they if you look at the syrian situation you have a country on your border that is certainly training maybe arming rebels to go back into the country and to continue with this civil war i mean no wonder syria's trigger happy to say the very least. well there certainly seems to be various reports that suggest that turkey are now arming the rebels in syria and i think it was important when we talk about the free syrian army to actually recognize just

how can a fragmented that kind of the people are on the ground there i mean we talk about in terms of a civil war but it is a very good here an opposition at this time which is another reason why i get worried that people are starting to arm kind of disparate groups of troops in syria without really knowing what they're going to do as a result i think this moving on to the nato warning i think that's actually very telling because there is a decision to go oversee the u.n. security council at the moments will not spend any intervention or condemnation of the assad regime g. to china and russia's veto so i think turkey is increasingly being seen as an important strategic player in order to try and place of the put the pressure on to assad's and to try and intensify the conflict in various ways now they have said at this stage they're not going to invoke article five of the nato treaty but certainly you know even the denial of the fact that they're not going to do that at

this stage again is putting pressure on assad and i think that does have the unfortunate consequences of intensifying the civil war and the battle inside syria it means that the plan becomes much harder it's much harder to get you know to sit around the table with the rebels when there is increasing international pressure for him to step down and not actually engage in dialogue and debate instead do you think nato will eventually go around the united nations security council as it has in the past and started a conflict in the name of humanitarian intervention in syria. well i would say that nato could start a conflict because the conflict has already begun and the u.s. and other countries are involved behind the scenes at the very least involved providing humanitarian aid and then you have other countries like saudi arabia and qatar they are arming the rebels now one of the things that if it considers that it's an option year the united states and public opinion is very much against any

type of military intervention in syria right now and the case isn't even being made to the american people that that's what's necessary so i'm not seeing a lot of willpower on the part of the united states to get involved militarily at this point ok i mean how we internationalize the conflict in syria because i think lebanon comes to mind the country that you're actually in right now. well look we have a civil war in our hands regrettably there will be no foreign intervention on anybody's side i say with weatherley not in the sense that i want foreign intervention in the sense that this is going to go on and on and on we're in in a real civil war it seems to me and nobody can really gain the upper hand the government of syria is under tremendous pressure to actually gain some kind of control and there are large chunks of syria that it no longer does control the rebels are in fact getting strength over time defections are continuing with high

level officers that are all small participated just couple of days ago we had the first air force defection go into jordan we're going to see this going on now there is no appetite with everybody else that in fact there is no appetite in international community to intervene militarily in syria not because syria is much more difficult to do than let's say libya or any other country that's not the reason and it's not because of the strategic considerations of the region whether it's on lebanon whether it's on jordan or in iraq obviously all three countries are very much affected by what's going on in syria right gentlemen let me jump in here to let me jump in here we're going to go to a short break after a show for a book in kenya our discussion on syrian state.

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back to rostock i'm here about two minds who are talking about nato's response to the crisis in syria and turkey relations. and you can see. how can i go back to joseph in beirut i want to want you to finish your point in the first part of the program but you know you say there's no appetite for intervention but there is certainly an appetite for clandestine operations and what not i mean there are so many different things flying around in the media confirmed unconfirmed but i mean ok if it's not going to be an overt war there's already outside interference in syria an ounce of on its borders. naturally all countries in gauging clandestine activities that's that's

what defines them but i think the reason why there is no appetite to intervene militarily in syria today has got to do with western policy more than anything else united states there is no public support in france fifty percent of the population are actually supporting some kind of intervention natal itself is not committed to it some of the other countries like saudi arabia and qatar are in fact supporting the rebels but the appetite is really not there to put in troops on the ground what we are seeing is sensually and this is really the sad part of it is that the entire world has abandoned the syrian population and that's very sad the result being that we're in for a long and prolonged civil war patrick if i think how do you how do you how do you feel about that because it seems to me an argument a strong argument can be made is that more outside involvement in this conflict the worse it gets. yeah i mean i think it's certainly true that there isn't an appetite

for military intervention at the moment but yes there's a whole wave of different types of meddling and intervention taking place from other countries at the moment when you have inspectors on the grounds of the home monitoring syria's affairs and you have this massive amounts of money grandstanding from hillary clinton from william hague in britain david cameron. as well who are basically really hitting the pressure the moral pressure on assad to try and step down and that's very important because that in in a large way does start to have an impact upon the way in which these negotiations between the two warring sides in syria basically get played out and it also has an impact because i mean for all this talk of the syrian people being left alone i don't think they're being left alone and nothing really i think really destroys civil war spirit solved for who. basically engaging with the syrian people in the resolution coming about that way that's the only way any kind of democracy which is

what i would want in syria could emerge through the democratic struggle of the syrian people to bring about a society that they want that cannot be imposed by outsiders and i think. you know i'm really glad you bring up the word democracy again because it seems have dropped out of the down the narrative over the last few weeks josef you want to reply go ahead no i was going to the inspectors are have suspended their work and they're not inspecting any think the south part is that on a daily basis we have upwards of one hundred people that are being killed and i think it is really that the rest of the international community not only is not talking about democratization but is not supporting that portion of the syrian population that is for sixteen months now on a daily basis or pausing what the boss regime has done for them during the past fifty years that's telling ok ryan you are a green which i can see you nodding you want to reply to that. yes i'll have been

disappointed that the west over a long period of time even before this revolution began wasn't supporting the syrian opposition particularly the elements i believe in separation of mosque and state and want to build a modern democracy ryan can't even thought of anything that's the majority of those even the leaders that the majority of the people of syria and if it's true how do we know that. that. yes i think so because if you look at the high number of minorities that are in syria they would never vote for an islam as like the muslim brotherhood and then also even within the sunni community which is the majority of the population you see very strong secular currents for example i interviewed a man named me who's one of the more popular opposition figures and he's out there calling for separation of mosque and state and building a modern democracy and we need to be making people like him famous we need to be supporting their cause and making sure how would use it or any of the cars would you rate the army what i would make would you be arming him is that with the kind of support you would give well he is

a would you potentially potentially but he's personally not a fighter i think that there should be a direct relationship with the free syrian army so we can at first figure out who it is that we can potentially arm and then who we should but i think that there has to be a direct relationship there to even figure out who you're dealing with but politically we need to support people like when they go in prison we need to publicly call for their release and make their names famous and heard by all ok patrick you know it's like you know people forget the experience of afghanistan of libya i mean arming these people you know they can turn their arms against you later ok i mean look at iraq ok i mean is arming the solution it seems to me that should be no arming of anybody and it has to be resolved among themselves as tragic as it is. i mean for all this talk of you know respecting the democratic rights of of the syrian people there really doesn't seem to be much of that in this conversation at the moment because the syrian people to be able to really bring about a democracy they have to do it by themselves they cannot be hundred it by well

meaning western service and they're being very crucial especially when people are very willing to speak on their behalf all the time and yes there are some horrible things are happening in syria at moment but it is the nature of a civil war you cannot just wrap the syrian people up in cotton wool and protect them and do what we're trying to help in libya effectively where you just try and bond the country to a democracy you basically just off their heads get rid of gadhafi and then just hope that the libyan people will be able to forge a new future for themselves that hasn't happened is now started to disintegrate into basically city states there's been a vacuum there the libyan national council which is effectively was cherry picked by the west isn't necessarily seen to be representative of the libyan people and i think the big problem here is that western intervention in libya basically meant that the libyan people weren't able to force that struggle to engage in a battle of ideas between themselves about how they want to govern the country and

for all of the kind of the well meaning is no intervention in the unsellable of the . jump in go ahead this is cross talk go ahead jump no i'm saying there is no intervention there is no intervention going on the international you know say it's no longer intervene in syria you know there is a lot of progress nobody wants to intervene in syria no i still there i don't know are talking about it. they're talking about it because there are violations going on on a regular basis and we are gathered we're discussing the fact that a turkish airplane has been shot down and obviously this is an escalation obviously something could occur but there are no indications whatsoever that anyone including do turks are ready to engage militarily against syria at this stage no things could happen down the line that will change the equation but for the time being there is no foreign intervention what we have are two things we have defections from the army which means the free syrian army gaining strength inside turkey and fighting

and second the risk lend support to these forces coming from a variety of countries both regional and international to arm them to continue this something. there is no end to it what one side of what is on the one side of the civil war if it is an intervention yes there is a military intervention at the moment yes bombs are falling from the sky but certainly the west is mentally in lots of different ways they're calling for the. to leave ok ryan you've been remarkably quiet going to jump in. well one point out is that the turks are saying that a second plane has been fired on by the syrians a search and rescue plane so i would add that to the ocean but this idea that we have to let the syrian people decide their own fate when one side is on armed and being completely massacred that struggle can even take place when you have the assad regime massacring innocent people ok i mean if i can stay with me here and

hang on guys you know brian let me go to you you know you make it sound like you know syria was wrong in protecting its airspace ok i think we have more to find out about that but if someone violates israel's airspace you know what they do to people ok i mean why is that why is syrian sovereignty less valuable than the other country's sovereignty. well the turks say that they didn't even ask even trying to communicate with the plane and that's why if you have a guy like me that is going to find you know even on the neighbor on the other side of the border i mean what kind of civility do you expect i mean my goodness what is a plane doing in that airspace in the first place. well listen of course assad is going to respond to you know supporting his enemies but that doesn't mean that he is right and that there is some type of equivalence between what turkey is doing when they're harboring syrian refugees coming out of the country for their very lives and then assad who is forcing them to flee with his

barbarism. so i think you made a very important point there about sovereignty because i think there's a real double standards going on here if it was israel if it was america or european airspace yes i mean they would be shut down immediately. syrian so fancy is being breached all over the place people that's not necessarily true. then why is it to be and this u.n. monitors on the ground why is it that there's a lot of talk about intervention and the russians in particular being demonized for preventing that's kind of for that kind of rhetoric from taking place there's a why is turkey and saudi arabia another country russia as opposed to. helping him take kill his you know right and there's a lot of misinformation in the media and then another example. and i will finish it ok likely like helicopters russia was fixing syrian helicopters ok that was part of this new ok so russia is not violating any law whatsoever you may not like it

that's too bad but it's not against the law and what about the other side being armed ok this is something you know with this should be an international agreement of all arms everybody and i think the russians would agree to that ok joseph you want to jump in before we finish. well what i was going to say you know lebanon went through a civil war for fifteen plus years where all kinds of foreign interventions occurred arms came in from all walks of life and for fifteen years upwards of one hundred fifty thousand lebanese died for absolutely no reason whatsoever and we are today where we were forty thirty years ago i'm afraid that syria is facing a similar fate unless it's need to exercise a great deal more foresight to realize that they have a real problem internally and they have to address the reforms that have been neglected for the past fifty years all right gentlemen to jump in here we've run out of time many thanks to my guest today in new york london and in beirut and thanks to our viewers for watching us here see you next time remember.

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