Finally, Tye said, Avaaz is a member organization and as such was responding to tens of thousands of Syrian members who were calling for a no-fly zone. It should be noted that Avaaz shows 54,000 members in Syria in a population of 23 million -- which means that even if every Avaaz member supported a no-fly zone, this would still mean that only one of every 426 Syrians had "voted" for one.
Nevertheless, Tye concluded, "The Avaaz community has repeatedly stood behind the principle that defenseless civilian populations should be protected -- and these tens of thousands of Syrian Avaaz members deserve no less."
It seems an odd notion that it is "Syrian Avaaz members" -- rather than Avaaz staffers in New York promulgating petitions for a no-fly zone -- who are somehow responsible for the direction of this campaign. Seriously?
In its call for no-fly zones in Libya and Syria, Avaaz has turned the concept of progressive advocacy on its head and appears to be untrue to the direction it has followed in the overwhelming majority of its campaigns. Advocacy organizations should be about stopping wars, not asking their members to buy into a dubious military tactic for Syria that even leading U.S. generals say "entails killing a lot of people"[and is] a violent combat action that results in lots of casualties" for those very Syrian civilians that Avaaz argues it is trying to protect.
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