system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Syria, and why Russia and China wont condemn Assad's regime.
gpt
Countries like America and France condemn the Assad regime for mistreating its own people.  Some people believe that when governments are mistreating their own people, ie. shooting, torturing, imprisoning them, that other countries have a responsibility to act militarily to stop them.  This doctrine is called humanitarian intervention and 'responsibility to protect.'

Russia and China both, broadly speaking, oppose these principles.  They say that there are problems with the idea of humanitarian intervention.  For one, who decides when to intervene?  Most of the countries of the world have abuses of some kind occurring in them.  Clearly a country that wanted to intervene couldn't invade all human rights violators, so no matter what they're going to be selective in their choice of invasions.  Is that selection legitimate or arbitrary?  It has the potential to be arbitrary, and there's no standard to make that judgment.   America indefinitely detains people; should other countries 'intervene' to stop that?  For instance: N. Korea is at least as bad as Assad's crackdown has been.  No one is trying to intervene there.  The other thing to keep in mind is that interventions have the potential to go very badly.  As bad as Assad's crackdown as been he's still only killed a tiny fraction of the number who died 2005-2006 in Iraq.  Maybe in 5 years we'll regret Libya; what if a civil war starts or someone worse gets power? 

The other answer is that Russia and China both are concerned that in the future someone could use that argument to justify attacking them.  There is a particular risk of this because both Russia and China tend to do things considered human rights abuses.