That’s why we need to remove them, right now the idea is that we’re worried about the new regime and are being cautious, but we need to support the people regardless of the regime and remove the sanctions until and only if we are given reason to reimplement them.

Even small, less well off towns can reject car centricism. If we expand bus routes and hours with more investment into federal grants, create new bike infrastructure, end off-street parking minimums, and create more mixed use zones we can encourage more people to switch from cars for daily commutes.

That isn’t the main purpose. Their purpose is that the government can’t continue doing whatever bad action the sanctions are trying to prevent. Sanctions on industry might prevent a nation from getting a nuclear weapon. Assad was using chemical weapons on protestors. That’s why we imposed them.

I’m actually curious what the point of sanctions directed at a population would be? The US knows Assad didn’t care about his people, so it doesn’t make sense that our sanctions would be intentionally directed at the people instead of his government.

We’re still unsure the nature of the new government, but our focus should be on developing diplomatic ties and working with this government to build infrastructure, healthcare, schools, etc to raise the collective standard of living in Syria. Our sanctions were against Assad, not the Syrian people.

Without question.

#rolltide