Erdoğan’s game plan as Turkey enters Syrian Civil War

And what are these ''Western Standards''?

Human rights, rule of law, democratic governance. The sort of stuff most people in the world yearn for.

Did MI6 and CIA not support Islamists against Mosaddegh?

No not really. The strongest faction of Shia Islamists in the Majlis at the time was around Abol-Ghasem Kashani who supported the Toudeh government. Western powers lent support to revisionist, nationalists in their by and large domestic coup.

Taliban against the Soviets?

The Taliban only came into existence 5 years after the Soviets left Afghanistan. The US supplied a lot of unsavory characters at the time of the war, namely the Peshawar Seven. Aid was cut off from other nationalist and left-wing groups by Paksitan, not Washington. Most of these backed warlords would later battle the Taliban (though a reasonable argument can be made that the Haqqani Network came out of the Khalis group).

Did USA not invade Vietnam, just because they were going the communist route? They invaded a country on the otherside of the globe just to support the regime that was warmer to them than the communists.

Not to defend that war, but Vietnam was a nation divided into two countries in 1954 following the First Indochina War with decades of strife and various proxy involvement. In the 50s, millions fled the Northern communist regime's persecution of democrats, catholics, etnic minorities, landholders and others. The Southern regime (republican, though barely democratic) requested western aid. The war slowly escalated into a regional clusterfuck proxy war that US couldn't win.

Did USA not support countless facist regimes during the Cold War to root out any leftist movement?

Giving you that one.

Protestors dying? USA's way of dealing with protestors in Ferguson and Baltimore?

Oh goodness. Across the united states people protested peacefully and were protected in their right to do so. Some of these protests turned violent, and even then - nobody died.

On the rest of your rant: Just zoom out on the map. Mark all countries in degree of political, social and economic freedom. There's a number of groups who will do that for you. Then see if you can recognize a pattern. Open a list of all groups in Syria and list their confirmed suppliers, then check those on the list as well. Still no pattern?

The West isn't innocent, but to say it is worse than the worlds random tinpot dicatorships, fascist regimes, communist gulags and revolutionary zealots is to be absurd.

/r/syriancivilwar Thread Parent Link - atimes.com