No they don't... there are
international agreements about this sort of thing. Did you really think there weren't, and it was just up to any country to decide whatever they wanted to do in whatever situation? It's one of the reasons Belgium and France refused to partake in the Iraq war, because it's thoroughly illegitimate.
My apologies, it was late and I mixed it up.
As for the al-Qaeda connection,
did you read my post past the sarin thing? I think I mentioned al-Qaeda. I think I also mentioned that the FSA denounces al-Qaeda, because it portrays itself as a secular movement.
al-Qaeda isn't a structured terorist movement anymore (if it ever was). Most of the so-called cells are not in contact with eachother or - and this is rather important - any form of central command. I can wake up one morning and form an al-Qaeda cell, and no one can tell me I'm not one. When I mentioned Jabhat al-Nusra, one of the problems for the FSA there is that the leader of the al-Nusra Front is probably a former member of a self-appointed al-Qaeda cell, and definitely has ties with some higher-up al-Qaeda members. [And with higher-up, I mean people in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region of the world.]
Also, when it comes to the Middle East, you might not want to believe 'the news'. Go for independent sources and newspapers, and HRW or AI. They're usually there, and they usually have a rather clear view of what's happening. The only mainstream-y kind of thing I found recently that bothered to do the situation justice, was that Fareed Zakariah interview in TDS.
I never denied there are people with ties to al-Qaeda in this conflict. It's just not as simple as that. It would be like saying:
We're not going to arm the Belgians in their uprising against their evil socialist gay Italian dictator, because there are members of neo-nazi movements amongst them.
We don't make that distinction with non-muslim countries, because it would be really fucking stupid. But with muslim countries, nobody bothers to do some research and everyones buzzing with al-Qaeda and terrorism - two things that aren't a reason for not supplying weapons here. Everything else, is.
Before they were al-Qaeda, they were Saudi rich kids living the life, and Muslim Brotherhood scholars. You mean the Taliban, who are not terrorists, just assholes.
And I agree, this is going to lead to civil war, whether we interfere or not. Just like Iraq, btw, which didn't need pacification at all (a dictator will pacify almost anything): it's the US intervention in Iraq that caused the subsequent ten year civil war. And it's not over yet. And it's not mere about islamism either: it also about sovereignty, ethnicity, how you view government and - lest we forget them - the Kurds.