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steinrokkan posted:At this point it's probably best to allow the side most capable of winning to wrap things up. Even if it means Assad - no matter what he is going to do, it won't be as bloody as a continuation of the war, and there's no chance in hell the opposition could come up with a government even if they somehow managed to win instead of continuing the stalemate ad infinitum. He's also the only actor with support from local powers credibly committed to actually provide support. So, things don't look rosy for any nn Assad alternative. Watch him continue to barrel bomb people even after all the opposition is wiped out.
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Nov 30, 2016 14:10
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Imapanda posted:Watch him continue to barrel bomb people even after all the opposition is wiped out. Don't be so silly. When all the opposition is wiped out, he'll use Shiite militias to drive into town and terrorize the locals with small arms, sticks, concrete blocks, and knives. I've seen a lot of videos of the SAA torturing prisoners to death in the field and it usually starts with beating, following by whipping/caning, followed by stabbing/cutting, then they smash the head with a concrete block. It's almost formulaic. I've seen so many videos of that exact process in order. Of course, we'll never see those newer videos, since the cellphones will never fall into the hands of rebel fighters anymore. EDIT: If Caesar's photos of those thousands of corpses splayed out within view of Assad's balcony are anything to go by, most of the people snatched off the street will be starved and covered in whip wounds, knife wounds, and ligature marks. Sergg fucked around with this message at 14:19 on Nov 30, 2016 |
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Nov 30, 2016 14:16
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Sergg posted:Don't be so silly. When all the opposition is wiped out, he'll use Shiite militias to drive into town and terrorize the locals with small arms, sticks, concrete blocks, and knives. I've seen a lot of videos of the SAA torturing prisoners to death in the field and it usually starts with beating, following by whipping/caning, followed by stabbing/cutting, then they smash the head with a concrete block. It's almost formulaic. I've seen so many videos of that exact process in order. Of course, we'll never see those newer videos, since the cellphones will never fall into the hands of rebel fighters anymore. The regime had green buses lined up to start taking people from east Aleppo "to safety" as the invasion started rolling. Nobody wants to end up in one of those.
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Nov 30, 2016 14:26
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thatfatkid posted:And a jihadist victory wouldn't somehow lead to the same scenario because...? You only have to look at Libya and see how stable such a victory would be not at all As bad as Libya is, it's still officially Better Than Syria™. And I'll point out that Libyan jihadists don't have undisputed power, either.
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Nov 30, 2016 14:32
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mediadave posted:Al-Saqr clearly can't talk openly about his home country's policies, and we should appreciate and understand that. I don't think al saqr has ever really spoken in real support of US intervention, though he can correct me if I'm wrong. I certainly would expect him to view any such intervention with a lot of scrutiny, even if it's clear the potential for it to accomplish something positive is/was there. But he has lashed out quite a bit at Arab leaders who've turned a blind eye to oppression and suffering in Syria. In the forums, it's more the fact that people who argue against intervention, liberals in general, tend to do so in a way that marginalizes the people in Syria who's voices deserve to be heard. It's very crude and offensive to people who base their perspective when it comes to Syria on sympathy for those Syrians plight. It's less of a pro and anti intervention argument than it is a pro and anti compassion and decency argument. The ideals of representative government that is a servant of its people, leadership of a country being accountable, and freedom and equality, have been chained to jihadist ideology by people trying to undermine the Syrian academics and activists who've poured their blood into the revolution, all in the name of preventing intervention against Assad. It is this slander that is most objectionable, and I can't fault al saqr for getting so riled up about it. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Nov 30, 2016 |
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Nov 30, 2016 14:36
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Volkerball posted:It's less of a pro and anti intervention argument than it is a pro and anti compassion and decency argument. We can call this ideology compassionate neo-conservatism. Volkerball posted:The ideals of representative government that is a servant of its people, leadership of a country being accountable, and freedom and equality, have been chained to jihadist ideology by people trying to undermine the Syrian academics and activists who've poured their blood into the revolution, all in the name of preventing intervention against Assad. It is this slander that is most objectionable, and I can't fault al saqr for getting so riled up about it. The jihadist groups actually are the ones who've been running the show for years now; it's not just some fantasy made up by anti-interventionists. If the moderate rebels had demonstrated any real ability to stand up to the jihadists during the various attempts the US made at supplying them, more people would have favored continued and possibly even escalated assistance for them. Instead, they faced humiliating defeats in which the jihadists beat them up and took their US-supplied lunch money/weapons, or they pre-emptively surrendered to the jihadists, often because their aims weren't as diametrically opposed as you'd like them to be. Yeah, the Pentagon had a ton of conditions for rebel groups to meet which made it difficult to gather any sizable number of recruits, but less strenuously vetted CIA efforts weren't much more successful at separating groups from the jihadists.
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Nov 30, 2016 15:12
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Sinteres posted:The jihadist groups actually are the ones who've been running the show for years now; it's not just some fantasy made up by anti-interventionists. If the moderate rebels This is exactly what I'm talking about. Nobody was talking about rebels, but that's all you are capable of seeing. 20 million people lived in Syria before the war. What, 100,000 are currently fighting against Assad? A fraction of that in jihadist groups? You only see those 100,000. No one else exists. Not the millions upon millions of refugees or the millions upon millions of internally displaced. Their beliefs, what they stand for, what they want. What they've achieved. It doesn't matter. You nonchalantly deny them any agency in Syria. That is both morally and analytically wrong.
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Nov 30, 2016 15:24
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Volkerball posted:This is exactly what I'm talking about. Nobody was talking about rebels, but that's all you are capable of seeing. 20 million people lived in Syria before the war. What, 100,000 are currently fighting against Assad? A fraction of that in jihadist groups? You only see those 100,000. No one else exists. Not the millions upon millions of refugees or the millions upon millions of internally displaced. Their beliefs, what they stand for, what they want. What they've achieved. It doesn't matter. You nonchalantly deny them any agency in Syria. That is both morally and analytically wrong. They literally don't have agency in Syria if they've been pushed out of the country or are internally displaced and represented by jihadist killers.
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Nov 30, 2016 15:28
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The Jihadists aren't on the back foot because they lack weapons. Turkish and Gulf sources keep them plentifully supplied as well as American or anyone else could. I think its true for all factions except the Kurds. Now that the Kurds are on the Assad side they may even get some heavier weapons too. Despite what you might see in youtube videos there are actually still a lot of T-72s left in the wprld. I almost typed "losing" instead of "on the back foot" because if there's anything to learn after 5 years is that poo poo changes real quick and maybe the rebel rumors that Nusra has 10,000 fighters in Idlib preparing to counter-attack tomorrow and turn the tide again could be true? Or maybe Erdogan will close the Bosphorus and declare war on Russia? http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-russia-erdogan-idUSKBN13P136 quote:The Kremlin said on Wednesday that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's statement that his forces in Syria were there to topple President Bashar al-Assad had come as a surprise to Moscow and that it expected an explanation from Ankara.
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Nov 30, 2016 15:29
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Sinteres posted:They literally don't have agency in Syria if they've been pushed out of the country or are internally displaced and represented by jihadist killers. That is not an excuse to tell them to get hosed.
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Nov 30, 2016 15:29
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The people of Syria will never be free in the capitalist order.
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Nov 30, 2016 15:33
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Volkerball posted:Let's make a list of all the fools who have opportunistically made deals with the regime and didn't get burned by it: I'm not being sarcastic here, the Druze seem to have made basically the same kind of deal with the regime.
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Nov 30, 2016 15:49
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Saladin Rising posted:The Druze? The only Druze enclave that could be comparable as an independent actor like Rojava is in Suwaida, and they have been pretty staunchly anti-Assad, despite being significantly smaller. Things have been tense since Sheikh Balous was assassinated, and the Sheikhs of Dignity still oppose the regime and are the largest faction in the city. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Nov 30, 2016 |
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Nov 30, 2016 16:08
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Panzeh posted:The people of Syria will never be free in the capitalist order. This is the greatest posting gimmick.
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Nov 30, 2016 16:09
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so that means I can be a cheapskate and post about posting instead of having some wit or spending any more on comedy avs for people. Which I'm also incapable of. Comedy.
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In some good news, it seems like women might get the chance to be allowed to drive (soon) in Saudi Arabia! http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38157565 quote:An influential Saudi prince, the billionaire investor Alwaleed bin Talal, has called on his country to lift its ban on women driving cars. Well I guess economic necessity is better than nothing.
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Nov 30, 2016 16:14
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Once the FSA/Al Qaida rebels have been beaten down enough that they no longer have the ability to launch offensives it will be interesting to see how the Kurd/Turkish/Syrian triangle plays out. Both the Syrians and Turks have used ISIS for their own ends in the past but with the rebels reduced to insurgent attacks of opportunity it will be hard for any side to justify continuing the war fighting against any faction other than ISIS. On the other hand both Syria and Turkey would like to knock the Kurds down but the only faction who can get away with open warfare against the Kurds are ISIS, due to the Americans de facto allying themselves with the Kurds. So could we see ISIS gain clandestine support from either/both of those factions in an effort weaken Rojava? On the other hand the USAs only reason to continue operating in Syria is the annihilation of ISIS, so will the Turks and Syrians independently feel that the best medium/long term way to wage war against the Kurds is to completely remove ISIS, thusly removing the Kurds main backer from major operations/interest in the area. I have a feeling that despite all the talk Syria and Turkey will not go to war with each other, due in no small part to the Russians.
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Nov 30, 2016 16:16
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Volkerball posted:I don't think al saqr has ever really spoken in real support of US intervention, though he can correct me if I'm wrong. I certainly would expect him to view any such intervention with a lot of scrutiny, even if it's clear the potential for it to accomplish something positive is/was there. But he has lashed out quite a bit at Arab leaders who've turned a blind eye to oppression and suffering in Syria. Pro-intervention forces have an incredibly outsized voice in the form of tacky, manipulative NATO propaganda, cheap PR stunts, and credulous mouthpieces endlessly moralizing on behalf of their handlers. But that's hardly the point: even a sincere desire for Western intervention as articulated by "academics and activists" should be understood on the merits of the idea rather than some trite gradeschool appeal to freedom and democracy. You're weeping liberal baby tears over a revolution that can hardly be expected to result in anything other a Syria-shaped crater in light of U.S. and Saudi intelligence services training and funding every insane right-wing nightmare in the region going back at least as far as the Bush years. There is exactly one faction in the conflict capable of preventing this situation from degenerating into a Libya-style blood orgy and you're loving calling for their removal on humanitarian grounds. This kind of poo poo never fails to appeal to the perennially underdeveloped consciousness of red-baiting morons within capitalist borders. This tired gimmick of destabilization, regime change, suspiciously profitable Western reconstruction is not anything like "democracy". You've had more than a decade to learn this lesson though so I don't know why I even bother.
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Nov 30, 2016 16:44
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Throatwarbler posted:
They JUST did an offensive to break the siege a month or so ago and it was smacked down pretty quickly. The SAA's position has only grown stronger at this point, so I have my doubts this offensive will be successful.
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Nov 30, 2016 17:13
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Idlib is entirely controlled by Nusra and Ahrar. Whatever rebels who got on the green buses to Idlib and who aren't loyal to Nusra will probably be beheaded once they get there. Aleppo falling is probably useful in so far as it eliminates any further rebel infighting in the future.
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Nov 30, 2016 17:24
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rear end struggle posted:Same reason that I'm angry for the world not intervening in Rwanda. Evil always wins. Welcome to the world.
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Nov 30, 2016 18:08
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FeedingHam2Cats posted:They JUST did an offensive to break the siege a month or so ago and it was smacked down pretty quickly. The SAA's position has only grown stronger at this point, so I have my doubts this offensive will be successful. Yeah, the rebels could barely scrounge together 4-5k troops together for the last offensive, if they were holding those type of reserves why didn't they use them earlier? Admittedly, the strategy of the rebels during the last offensive was also baffling, I still don't know why there were assaulting the most dense portions of the government held line. Edit: So yeah that OPEC oil deal was hammered out and oil prices jumped up around 7-8%, it looks like the target price is $55-60. I guess it has been a pretty good month for Putin. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Nov 30, 2016 |
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Nov 30, 2016 18:15
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Welp, the collapse isn't stopping: https://twitter.com/MIG29_/status/804026005023232000 quote:#Aleppo Al-Shiekh Saeed  https://twitter.com/CivilWarMap/status/803978002073649153 quote:#SAA fully captured Sheikh Sa'eed district and Sadcop Fuel depot - #Aleppo City https://twitter.com/MIG29_/status/804017097261072384/photo/1 quote:Breaking Aleppo , syrian Army capture Youth housing in the neighborhood Ahalouanah
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Nov 30, 2016 19:53
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Well, this sucks. Regardless of the evils or crimes committed by either side (not to entertain a real false equivalence between them,) I mainly think of the people at large who just wanted to live a normal life, to have a family, to send their children to school and see them grow up and have lives of their own, to finish their lives in peace and security, and who are now either corpses or uprooted and living desperate lives in miserable circumstances with no hope, pawns in a callous and heartless game of realist policy. There will be no end to this war, only a normalization of unrest that will continue to spread across the region as its fundamental issues, both political (Iran/SA etc) and geological (rising temperatures and loss of water resources) continue to worsen.
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Nov 30, 2016 20:22
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Foreign YPG fighter Michael Israel has been killed in Syria.
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Nov 30, 2016 21:33
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death to israel (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 30, 2016 21:41
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From The Economist Espresso: After Aleppo: the battle for al-Bab https://espresso.economist.com/d18c255f89434eab3211813c0e765c6b
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Nov 30, 2016 22:28
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Dusty Baker 2 posted:Foreign YPG fighter Michael Israel has been killed in Syria. This makes me very worried about PissPigGranddad
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Nov 30, 2016 22:28
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Dusty Baker 2 posted:Foreign YPG fighter Michael Israel has been killed in Syria. Wait, is this the guy you knew? If so, my condolences. FeedingHam2Cats posted:This makes me very worried about PissPigGranddad It makes me wonder if this happened internally, like some sort of YPG purge, if SAA rounded them up, or if it was a battlefield casualty.
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Nov 30, 2016 22:28
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Young Freud posted:Wait, is this the guy you knew? If so, my condolences. He's almost certainly a battlefield casualty against ISIS. This is the Rojava PYD/YPG which has uneasy relations with the regime and attracts pretty much all the foreign fighters, whereas the Afrin YPG by necessity has been relatively friendly with the SAA. edit: he was listed as a casualty in the Raqqa offensive so yeah FeedingHam2Cats fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Nov 30, 2016 |
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Nov 30, 2016 22:33
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Dusty Baker 2 posted:Foreign YPG fighter Michael Israel has been killed in Syria. Was he your source/buddy? I'm sorry man 
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Nov 30, 2016 22:41
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Dodoman posted:Was he your source/buddy? I'm sorry man I thought that guy was in Iraq.
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Nov 30, 2016 22:43
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Has anyone tried to estimate how much it would cost, at this point, to re-build cities like Aleppo?
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Dec 1, 2016 01:55
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https://twitter.com/leloveluck/status/804094762848555008 A lot of horrific footage coming out of Aleppo. People would seek shelter during bombings in years past, which helped to limit the damage. But now with the streets full of people who have fled their homes, there's nowhere to hide. The state of first response and hospitals is the worst it's ever been, which is exacerbating the problem. People are trying to band together and help the displaced find shelter, but everything is in chaos. https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/803938192995008512 https://twitter.com/RamiJarrah/status/803577353959899136 https://twitter.com/Maysaloon/status/804006381359611908
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Dec 1, 2016 02:11
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goose willis posted:Has anyone tried to estimate how much it would cost, at this point, to re-build cities like Aleppo? Don't worry, I'm sure there is a non-involved country that would be happy to put them deep in hock for the next 100 years
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Dec 1, 2016 03:02
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goose willis posted:Has anyone tried to estimate how much it would cost, at this point, to re-build cities like Aleppo? Whatever blood the IMF can still wring out of the country.
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Dec 1, 2016 03:05
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The only thing the FSA (Read: Salafists) had to do was look better than Bashar Al-Assad, violent murderer man. They failed to even do that (I suppose ethnic cleansing and beheading children doesn't appeal to many people) . I have thoroughly enjoyed all the posts demonizing the only good guys in this fight however. Bang up job boys.
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Dec 1, 2016 04:32
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The good guys died some time ago.
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Dec 1, 2016 04:34
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Dodoman posted:Was he your source/buddy? I'm sorry man No, not my close friend. He's back in the US, he's actually headed to Standing Rock right now. I did know Michael Israel, but not as closely. Chatted with him once or twice in a G+ hangout.
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Dec 1, 2016 04:38
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goose willis posted:Has anyone tried to estimate how much it would cost, at this point, to re-build cities like Aleppo? You might as well list it in monopoly money for all it matters, no part of Syria is getting rebuilt.
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Dec 1, 2016 04:52
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Human Grand Prix posted:The only thing the FSA (Read: Salafists) had to do was look better than Bashar Al-Assad, violent murderer man. They failed to even do that (I suppose ethnic cleansing and beheading children doesn't appeal to many people) . I have thoroughly enjoyed all the posts demonizing the only good guys in this fight however. Bang up job boys. Wait, who in this conflict (aside from perhaps ISIS) looks worse than Assad? I mean the Russians are literally waging a war on hospitals and even they look better than Assad.
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Dec 1, 2016 05:21
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