Syrian Civil War Developments

[tbm3fan]

Muslims don't remember when others help them. They only remember when others hurt them. We helped the muslims in Bosnia against Milosovic in the 1990s. Did we get a thank you? Does any muslim remember? You are the naïve one if you think being nice to them will make us more "likeable."

Now isn't that one unequivocal truth...

[troung]

And NYT, the mouthpiece of democrat, is running an article complaining the US is not accepting enough syrian refugees. [B]

We should accept one economic migrants from Syria/Eritrea/wherever for every 100 fools who think we should take in economic migrants from Syria/Eritrea/wherever else.
=======

It is tantamount to conceeding to conceeding that 'might is right' which 'western civilisation' since before Socrates has held to be untrue; argumentum ad baculum is a logical fallacy.

Might is right.

Not hard to predict... What happens in Yemen? An Iranian victory in Yemen and Syria because we failed to back our allies -

They are bombing Yemeni Shia civilians with America made weapons without a peep from us, despite our laws.

First out goes any talk of supporting human rights in future and second you have no right to respect democracy or liberty since you have endorsed a dictatorial war criminal.

See above.

f you want to know why Assad crushed the protests in Daraa and is fighting this war with the support of Iran and Russia look at the proposed Qatar - Turkey pipeline as opposed to the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline.

That's not the reason... Naval bases... long time ally... only regional ally... opposition to Qatari/Saudi imperialism...

whether that be KSA or Jordan or Qatar - would show us as undependable allies;

Fuck Saudi Arabia and Qatar - we are not undependable if we don't expend blood and treasure putting fanatics into power.

how much longer then does NATO hold together?

Has nothing to do with this.

500 million down the drain and a promotion.

New Role for General After Failure of Syria Rebel Plan

By ERIC SCHMITTOCT. 19, 2015
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Maj. Gen. Michael K. Nagata will probably be promoted. Credit Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/20/us...plan.html?_r=0

WASHINGTON — The Army general in charge of the Pentagon’s failed $500 million program to train and equip Syrian rebels is leaving his job in the next few weeks, but is likely to be promoted and assigned a senior counterterrorism position here, American officials said on Monday.

The officer, Maj. Gen. Michael K. Nagata, is stepping down as commander of American Special Operations forces in the Middle East, which made him responsible for the training program that ultimately produced only a few dozen fighters. That was a far cry from the 15,000 fighters that the program was going to train over a three-year period when it was formally started in December.

The Obama administration this month abandoned its efforts to build up a new rebel force inside Syria to combat the Islamic State, announcing that it will instead use the money to provide ammunition and some weapons for groups already engaged in the battle. The shift in the program made for a logical time for General Nagata to move on, said the American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the action had not yet been formally announced.
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Untangling the Overlapping Conflicts in the Syrian War

What started as a popular uprising against the Syrian government four years ago has become a proto-world war with nearly a dozen countries embroiled in two overlapping conflicts.
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General Nagata has been in the Special Operations job for more than two years and was overdue to switch assignments as part of the military’s regular rotation of senior officers, the American officials said. The setback in training Syrian rebels does not appear to have derailed his career as one of the Army’s rising stars.

He is in line to be awarded a third star, to lieutenant general, and take a senior position at the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington, said officials who emphasized that the decision was not yet final.

Spokesmen for the military’s Central and Special Operations commands and the National Counterterrorism Center declined to comment.

General Nagata has fought in the shadows for most of his 33-year Army career, serving in Special Operations forces and classified military units in hot zones such as Somalia, the Balkans and Iraq.

Colleagues say he has displayed bureaucratic acumen in counterterrorism jobs at the C.I.A. and the Pentagon, and diplomatic savvy as a senior American military liaison officer in Pakistan during the turbulent period there from 2009 to 2011.

General Nagata has also earned a reputation for creative thinking. Last year, he assembled an unofficial brain trust beyond the traditional realms of expertise within the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence agencies, in search of fresh ideas and inspiration for how to combat the Islamic State. Business professors, for example, were asked to examine the Islamic State’s marketing and branding strategies.

Training the Syrian rebels, however, proved to be a star-crossed task. In late July, many of the first 54 Syrian graduates of the military’s training program and the rebel unit in which they served came under attack by the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda. A day before the attack, two leaders of the American-backed group and several of its fighters were captured.

Classified military assessments later concluded that the rebels were ill-prepared for an enemy attack and were sent back into Syria in numbers that were too small. They had no support from the local population and had poor intelligence about their foes.

Defense Department training sites across the Middle East, including ones in Turkey and Jordan that General Nagata and his aides spent months preparing, will soon suspend almost all operations.

A version of this article appears in print on October 20, 2015

[troung]

Would be great to see that terrorist exporting slave state get stomped on.

Qatar foreign minister: 'If a military intervention will protect the Syrian people from the brutality of the regime, we will do it'
http://www.businessinsider.com/qatar...-do-it-2015-10

Dassault Mirage qatar military air force odyssey dawn libyaUS Navy photo by Paul FarleyA Qatari Dassault Mirage during Qatar's last military engagement, Odyssey Dawn, where Qatar helped enforce a no-fly zone over Libya.
See Also
Here's why Israel is helping Qatar aid Hamas in the Gaza Strip
US to speed up arms sales to Gulf after Iran deal: Kerry
Defying allies, Qatar unlikely to abandon favored Syria rebels

Qatar, a major supporter of rebels in Syria's civil war, suggested it could intervene militarily following Russia's intervention in support of President Bashar al-Assad but said it still preferred a political solution to the crisis.

The comments by Qatar's foreign minister, made in a CNN interview on Wednesday, drew a swift reply from Assad's government with a senior official warning that Damascus would respond harshly to such "direct aggression".

Gulf Arab backers of Syrian rebels such as Qatar have been unsettled by Russia's three-week-old air strike campaign that has allowed Assad's forces to wrest back some territory to help secure his strongholds in western Syria.

Qatar has been a leading supporter of anti-Assad rebel groups, providing arms and financial and political backing.

Asked by CNN if Qatar supported the Saudi position that does not rule out a military option in Syria as a result of Russia's intervention, Foreign Minister Khalid al-Attiyah said:

"Anything that protects the Syrian people and Syria from partition, we will not spare any effort to carry it out with our Saudi and Turkish brothers, no matter what this is.

"If a military intervention will protect the Syrian people from the brutality of the regime, we will do it," he added, according to a text in Arabic carried by Qatar's state news agency QNA.

Russian Air Strike Takes Out Free Syrian Army Commander
http://www.breitbart.com/national-se...rmy-commander/

by John Hayward20 Oct 2015107

A round of Russian air strikes on the ISIS-free province of Latakia reportedly killed Basil Zimmo, a brigade commander in the U.S.-aligned “moderate” Free Syrian Army, along with a number of civilians.

According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the dead and wounded included both rebels and their families. The Observatory put the death toll at 45 and counting, while Reuters reports an estimate of five rebel fighters and 15 civilians killed from a Free Syrian Army spokesman. The death toll from the strike is expected to rise, as many of the wounded were critically injured.

The BBC reports that Russia claims it was attacking Islamic State positions, but “activists say the jihadist group has little or no presence in the coastal province, which is a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect.”

“Moderate and Islamist rebel groups took control of Jabal al-Akrad in 2012,” the BBC writes. “From positions in the mountainous region, they have been able to shell the city of Latakia’s airport and Qardaha, the president’s ancestral village.”

The area was hit by several previous Russian strikes before Monday’s heavy-casualty operation, which Syrian opposition activists say targeted the village of Bisharfeh, where many women and children lived. Reuters claims the Russians continued bombing the site even after rescue workers arrived at the scene.

The division commanded by the late Basil Zimmo had been equipped with TOW anti-tank missiles by the United States, according to the BBC, which adds that another Free Syrian Army-aligned commander was killed in a ground engagement with regime forces near Aleppo on Monday.

According to a report at Al-Masdar News, Zimmo was “attending a private meeting with the Free Syrian Army’s 1st Coastal Brigades Central Command” when the Russians bombed the Latakia mountains, which are generally seen as Kurdish territory. Zimmo was a captain in the Syrian military before defecting to join the rebellion, and is described as the “chief of staff” for the FSA at the time of his death.

The area doesn’t have much of an ISIS presence, but al-Qaeda’s franchise the Nusra Front can be found there, and according to al-Masdar, a powerful ground attack from elite Syrian Army forces attacked with Russian air cover and killed over 30 Nusra fighters, including “a number of foreigners from Chechnya, Dagestan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, and Lebanon.”

[gunnut]

I had hoped that some more venerable member of the forum would respond to this but as they seem reluctant I feel I must speak out against this nonsense that you suggest; I mean no offence, you are entitled to your view and in the same way I am entitled to regard your view as naive.

I do not know much about what has been going on Syria and have not had the opportunity to follow as such, being busy with other matters, so I speak without detailed knowledge of the course of the conflict but as I recall it started in Daraa right down in the south. The Government moved in to crush protests there as I recall and some child was killed I believe... from there it escalated. So who started the war? Well the Assad faction clearly. Who used chemical weapons on his own people? Assad... This guy is not just a dictator (and corrupt as hell) but a war criminal and you suggest we validate his actions by supporting him? What sort of message would that send to other existing and wannabe dictators? First out goes any talk of supporting human rights in future and second you have no right to respect democracy or liberty since you have endorsed a dictatorial war criminal. This would be an exceedingly dangerous precedent to set, even for our own 'western nations' future. It is tantamount to conceeding to conceeding that 'might is right' which 'western civilisation' since before Socrates has held to be untrue; argumentum ad baculum is a logical fallacy.

Don't care who started it. Don't care about how brutal he is. That region needs dictators. Democracy is a hotbed for terrorism in that part of the world. We saw that in Egypt. As far as chem weapons, maybe he only used them because he was out of options and desperate. Maybe if we, or Russia, helped him early on to crush the rebels, he wouldn't resort to chems.

Secondly suppose everyone took your advice; what happens to the region and in the wider field after Assad is secure again? What happens to Iraq? Well it falls increasingly into being an Iranian puppet state, which it already partly is. .You create what some call a 'Shi'ite Crescent' run from Tehran and Moscow from the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan to Lebanon. Who do you think they go after next? Not hard to predict... What happens in Yemen? An Iranian victory in Yemen and Syria because we failed to back our allies - whether that be KSA or Jordan or Qatar - would show us as undependable allies; how much longer then does NATO hold together? The Sauds would undoubtledly look for nukes; some say they already are due to the entirely worthless 'Iran deal' which many believe will lead to Iranian nuclear weapons.

The Shiite crescent sounds like a good idea. Saudi Arabia would need to buy more of our weapons. We play Pakistan and India pretty much the same way.

Thirdly you ignore entirely the 'gas game': Europe has in part woken up to the dangers of over reliance on Muscovite gas and some are looking to diversify their supply (as well introduce 'green energy'). If you want to know why Assad crushed the protests in Daraa and is fighting this war with the support of Iran and Russia look at the proposed Qatar - Turkey pipeline as opposed to the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline. Naturally the Russians are anxious to keep their market in Europe as it enables them to blackmail and corrupt European elites, some of us will doubt recall certain prominent politicians who have succumbed in the past. For the Russians an pipeline that ends in Syria is ideal, one that ends in Turkey and then links into Europe is a threat. Of course LNG remains possible Poland is looking to open it's LNG terminal in the Baltic next year (though the Prime Minister declared it 'open' recently as an election gimmick).

Time to sell Euros some of our stuff. We have plenty of gas to sell.

Your 'solution' of assuring Assad power and validating his crimes and his corruption and dictatorship should in itself make any sane person reject this course; "Sic Semper Tyrannis" is not forgotten in some hearts, nor "Give me freedom or give me death". While I am sure the Arabs use different mottos surely it is our duty to help those who wish some degree of moderation defend themselves against a regime which is implicated in war crimes? In the longer term I am not sure we can afford not to as otherwise this will just be the start. The Israeli's have nuclear weapons.

Muslims don't remember when others help them. They only remember when others hurt them. We helped the muslims in Bosnia against Milosovic in the 1990s. Did we get a thank you? Does any muslim remember? You are the naïve one if you think being nice to them will make us more "likeable."

Anyway I thought someone should post the contrary arguments to what I regard as a naive view expressed by gunnut.

Your point of view is always welcome. But I think you are as naïve as GW Bush was when he thought he could spread democracy in the middle east. He tried. He had temporary success. Things fell apart as soon as we left Iraq and A-stan. These people aren't the Germans or Japanese in 1945. They aren't the Poles or Czechs in 1992. They can't handle democracy. Gaza and Egypt prove my point.

[snapper]

Nope.

Help Assad to crush the rebels. He's a dictator. A dictator tends to keep his hallways clean. We can deal with dictators. We can't and won't deal with terrorist factions unless we have boots on the ground like in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Unless, of course, we change our designation for these factions from "terrorists" to "moderates." Then we can give them money and weapons to help us overthrow a ruthless tyrant in order to establish a democracy.

How did that democracy work out in Egypt? Libya? Iraq?

I had hoped that some more venerable member of the forum would respond to this but as they seem reluctant I feel I must speak out against this nonsense that you suggest; I mean no offence, you are entitled to your view and in the same way I am entitled to regard your view as naive.

I do not know much about what has been going on Syria and have not had the opportunity to follow as such, being busy with other matters, so I speak without detailed knowledge of the course of the conflict but as I recall it started in Daraa right down in the south. The Government moved in to crush protests there as I recall and some child was killed I believe... from there it escalated. So who started the war? Well the Assad faction clearly. Who used chemical weapons on his own people? Assad... This guy is not just a dictator (and corrupt as hell) but a war criminal and you suggest we validate his actions by supporting him? What sort of message would that send to other existing and wannabe dictators? First out goes any talk of supporting human rights in future and second you have no right to respect democracy or liberty since you have endorsed a dictatorial war criminal. This would be an exceedingly dangerous precedent to set, even for our own 'western nations' future. It is tantamount to conceeding to conceeding that 'might is right' which 'western civilisation' since before Socrates has held to be untrue; argumentum ad baculum is a logical fallacy.

Secondly suppose everyone took your advice; what happens to the region and in the wider field after Assad is secure again? What happens to Iraq? Well it falls increasingly into being an Iranian puppet state, which it already partly is. .You create what some call a 'Shi'ite Crescent' run from Tehran and Moscow from the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan to Lebanon. Who do you think they go after next? Not hard to predict... What happens in Yemen? An Iranian victory in Yemen and Syria because we failed to back our allies - whether that be KSA or Jordan or Qatar - would show us as undependable allies; how much longer then does NATO hold together? The Sauds would undoubtledly look for nukes; some say they already are due to the entirely worthless 'Iran deal' which many believe will lead to Iranian nuclear weapons.

Thirdly you ignore entirely the 'gas game': Europe has in part woken up to the dangers of over reliance on Muscovite gas and some are looking to diversify their supply (as well introduce 'green energy'). If you want to know why Assad crushed the protests in Daraa and is fighting this war with the support of Iran and Russia look at the proposed Qatar - Turkey pipeline as opposed to the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline. Naturally the Russians are anxious to keep their market in Europe as it enables them to blackmail and corrupt European elites, some of us will doubt recall certain prominent politicians who have succumbed in the past. For the Russians an pipeline that ends in Syria is ideal, one that ends in Turkey and then links into Europe is a threat. Of course LNG remains possible Poland is looking to open it's LNG terminal in the Baltic next year (though the Prime Minister declared it 'open' recently as an election gimmick).

Your 'solution' of assuring Assad power and validating his crimes and his corruption and dictatorship should in itself make any sane person reject this course; "Sic Semper Tyrannis" is not forgotten in some hearts, nor "Give me freedom or give me death". While I am sure the Arabs use different mottos surely it is our duty to help those who wish some degree of moderation defend themselves against a regime which is implicated in war crimes? In the longer term I am not sure we can afford not to as otherwise this will just be the start. The Israeli's have nuclear weapons.

Anyway I thought someone should post the contrary arguments to what I regard as a naive view expressed by gunnut.

[drhuy]

Canada just leaves the sinking ship.

And NYT, the mouthpiece of democrat, is running an article complaining the US is not accepting enough syrian refugees.

[gunnut]

I take it that you also assume ISIS to be the greatest threat right now to the US in that region. That said how would we reconcile helping out Assad, a Ba'thist, with the fact that many in the upper division of ISIS are also former Ba'thists and also have done business with the Syrian government forces i.e., selling oil

Not saying that there's an alliance between them, but they hardly seem to be mortal enemies.

We sold grain to the Soviet Union during the Cold War while having thousands of nukes aimed at them, and they at us.

[gunnut]

Whose riff raff is it? Its Assad's riff raff not America's, why should America help Assad? This riff raff will be a threat to KSA, Turkey, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Russia, Israel etc for a good long while before they think of crossing oceans to the US. US should get out of the way, sit this out and wait.

What? How can Assad be a threat to Russia and Iran?

Assad's Syria before the "Arab Spring" fiasco was a state actor. We can deal with a state better than a non-state actor like IS. Assad is a dictator. The natural tendency of a dictator is to stay alive, remain in power, to enjoy this power. A dictator does not seek martyrdom. That's just stupid. Saddam was stupid. Qaddafi was smart.

We have 3 choices: help anti-Assad faction, which is friendly to IS; help Assad; or do nothing.

Anti-Assad people are basically terrorists. They may join IS. They may not. We don't know. There's no organization to them. They are individuals. They may disperse and end up in Europe, or worse, US. In fact I'm betting on they will do that.

Assad is a dictator. We can deal with him because he may export terrorism, but how is that any different than Iran? We seem to love making deals with Iran.

Or we do nothing and watch the show. Which is not that bad.

[Red Team]

Nope.

Help Assad to crush the rebels. He's a dictator. A dictator tends to keep his hallways clean. We can deal with dictators. We can't and won't deal with terrorist factions unless we have boots on the ground like in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Unless, of course, we change our designation for these factions from "terrorists" to "moderates." Then we can give them money and weapons to help us overthrow a ruthless tyrant in order to establish a democracy.

How did that democracy work out in Egypt? Libya? Iraq?

I take it that you also assume ISIS to be the greatest threat right now to the US in that region. That said how would we reconcile helping out Assad, a Ba'thist, with the fact that many in the upper division of ISIS are also former Ba'thists and also have done business with the Syrian government forces i.e., selling oil

Not saying that there's an alliance between them, but they hardly seem to be mortal enemies.

[Zinja]

Trade? Who said anything about a bilateral economic relationship with Assad? All we need is for him to maintain control over the riff raffs in Syria like how Qaddafi kept Libya in line.

Whose riff raff is it? Its Assad's riff raff not America's, why should America help Assad? This riff raff will be a threat to KSA, Turkey, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Russia, Israel etc for a good long while before they think of crossing oceans to the US. US should get out of the way, sit this out and wait.