The Guardian newspaper asked Stop the War to comment on five different ways the outside world could respond to the crisis in Syria. Chris Nineham, national officer of Stop the War, gives our reply.

If you wish to halt the insane rush from one war to the next that western governments are embarked on, you cannot condemn acts of state terrorism in one country and then find excuses for it in another.

Whether we like it or not, it is incumbent upon those of us who are instinctively opposed to western military interventions in the Middle East to answer the question: what would you do to stop Assad?

Western intervention in Syria – and Russia and China's opposition to it – can only be understood as part of a proxy war against Iran, which disastrously threatens to become a direct one.

Unmarked Nato warplanes are delivering arms, French and British special forces trainers are on the ground assisting the Syrian rebels, the CIA is providing communications equipment and intelligence.

There will always be those who will claim savagery is preferable to humanity under the guise of care for their victims, but there is no humanitarian case for military intervention by the West in Syria.

The youth of Syria are being cut down by Assad's troops. But, says Mehdi Hasan, a western-led military intervention would be a disaster: if the uprising is to succeed, Syrians will have to make it happen on their own.

The Syrian opposition is calling for a NATO no-fly zone but, says George Galloway, "no-flying" means lots of flying and bombing by us of the people down below.

Pepi Escobar says the name of this game is not Libya; it's Long War, aimed at turning the Mediterranean into a Nato lake and dealing with the non-players, Syria and Lebanon.