Cirofren posted:

[*]Bashar released extremists from prison, collaborated with Daesh, and focused his forces on these moderates to remove them from the equitation

Al-Saqr posted:

Al-Saqr posted:

speaking of which, I looked up the shelling of sheikh maqsood which you guys like to bring up when justifying inaction during the siege and destruction of Aleppo, which according to estimates, the earliest signs of shelling started in march or april of 2016.


https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/rebels-strike-kurdish-neighborhood-aleppo-chemical-gas/

Oh my goodness! those evil rebels! I wonder what important and cataclysmic event may have happened just prior to that that may have driven the rebels in Aleppo to strike out at the YPG's territory:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Aleppo_offensive_(February_2016)

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/16/middleeast/syria-battle-north/index.html
http://time.com/4229812/syrian-refugees-turkey-border/
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-talrifaat-idUKKCN0VO204

Oooooooh so the shelling started it came right after the YPG helped Assad and the Russians destroy and take over the rebel supply lines leading to Aleppo! pretty much guaranteeing the death and destruction of Aleppo and the suffering of everyone inside!

So you know what? I take it back it's not random, it's fully justified given that the YPG just helped secure the siege of Aleppo right before the shelling started. The YPG made a definitive statement on who's side they were on literally two weeks before the shelling started so they can eat poo poo.

But hey! you guys got what you wanted, the YPG followed it's interests and so, fascism won! who cares about helping a rabid animal eat your neighbor, it's not like they'll turn around and bite you next.

Volkerball posted:

Says the pro-Gaddafi leftist.

Volkerball posted:

The envy of every African nation lmao.

thatfatkid posted:

Is this the part when you and your ilk try and justify this situation as somehow an improvement on Gaddafi's Libya?

Volkerball posted:

And Assad recognized that, and that's why he spent the last several years bolstering jihadist forces at the expense of people who supported freedom and equality.

Volkerball posted:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/01/assad-henchman-here-s-how-we-built-isis.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/02/how-assad-staged-al-qaeda-bombings.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/05/how-isis-returned-to-syria.html

quote:

But the fury is also an indication that they suspect they have been outmanoeuvred by Assad, who has during his rule alternated between waging war on Islamist militants and working with them.

Punkin Spunkin posted:

I mean it could be worse, she could be calling Bashar al Assad the "pragmatic path to peace".

3peat posted:

In a perfect world, SDF would take power in Syria which would give the Shammar tribe enough power to take revenge on the wahhabis and overthrow the house of Saud (preferably by throwing them all in the red sea), then bring back the house of Rashid to rule over a reborn Shammar emirate stretching from Mosul to Sana'a.
But we don't live in a perfect world, and the Houthis are all we have in the struggle to purge the Saud plague vv

A Typical Goon posted:

Intervention in the Middle East has historically gone well for the United States

Huggybear posted:

Yeah I'll stop adding to this discussion after this post because it is not the most mentally healthy thing to consider, however the Germans solved the noise issue by a) conducting executions in rooms adjacent to machinery (where for example individuals would be brought into a room with doctors present, and sent into the execution chamber with the explanation that a secondary examination was necessary) and b) telling groups of Jews they were being marched to relocation and conducting the mass executions far enough away from habitation.

The easiest method, and this was something Stalin perfected, was just taking all the food away and allowing millions to starve to death (Assad obviously read his history).

Huggybear posted:

/\/\/\ yes at Kalinin the chief executioner was Vasily Blokhin who killed 250 people per night's work.


It's a disservice to good posting when you just show up to make drive-by accusations. I don't even know what you are referring to.

\/\/\/ In the Ukraine, officials deliberately carried out a policy of taking seed grain, year after year, causing the deaths of millions by starvation.

Huggybear posted:

In the Ukraine, considered ethnically distinct, and yes it was totally deliberate. He exported the grain.

SickZip posted:

Because killing civilians for literally no reason in a massive gently caress up is basically SOP for the US in the middle east and the selective outrage over this is the dumbest poo poo ever

Volkerball posted:

For most people, the only thing of significance about Aleppo is that Gary Johnson didn't know where it was,

Sinteres posted:

On a somewhat related note, I wonder if ISIS will rename itself after it loses Mosul and Raqqa,

Bohemian Nights posted:

RE: countermeasures against UAVs

https://twitter.com/CT_operative/status/840257662172426241

Brother Friendship posted:

Secular Lion Bashar Al-Assad was forced to attack the water supply to Damascus because of what appears to be CIA coup gone wrong. Terrorist UN now states that this is war crime, when will justice be served?

https://twitter.com/UNCoISyria/status/841542147509800960

Volkerball posted:

Well the regime certainly believes in punishing everything that exists in territory it doesn't control, so maybe it is a Xerxes and the Hellespont situation.

Volkerball posted:

Did you miss that bit about the principle of proportionality at the end there.

Warbadger posted:

I've just imagining a water supply occupied by terrorists. Bearded men with AKs bobbing around until suddenly interrupted by a flaming barrel bomb from the sky.

Also: How dare people who do not like Assad exist in the general vicinity of water treatment/pumping infrastructure!

Warbadger posted:

Well, assuming that's true, it seems somebody beat them to it with aerial bombs leading to the contamination of the water supply. Shockingly this was the same somebody who has been hitting water/food/medical infrastructure throughout Syria.

Warbadger posted:

I don't blame them for not doing that, given they'd be negotiating with the guy responsible for bombing their infrastructure and murdering them in droves to preserve his own status as ruler. Also hilarious that we're talking about water infrastructure getting intentionally bombed, water supplies contaminated for a ton of people, and a systematic bombing campaign against civilian infrastructure while calling the guys on the receiving end "terrorists".

Volkerball posted:

If you'd happily let a thousand Sunni civilians die if it meant one Shia got to live, I don't think you get to play the "They don't believe in equality" card. Your perspective is just as dehumanizing and gross as the worst examples of who you're ranting about.

Saladin Rising posted:

What's a better term, "regime"? There's not really a good term for the motley collection of "SAA, NDF, Hezbollah, SSNP, Shia militias, Afghan militias, Russian forces, Iranian forces" and whoever else is fighting on that side.

Volkerball posted:

I didn't deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan, but that was a matter of circumstance. In the time period when I would have gone, I would've either been fighting what became ISIS, or fighting the Taliban. I didn't have any moral issues with doing either, being the jihadist sympathizer that I am. The war crimes being committed back then were mostly at an individual level rather than at an institutional level. You had soldiers who thought killing anyone, to include unarmed noncombatants, made them a badass. Or that if they didn't kill anyone, they weren't doing the job "they signed up for." So you had situations like Haditha and the kill teams where soldiers took it upon themselves to go and murder civilians. At a lower, more common level, you had guys chuckling about throwing gatorade bottles of piss at Iraqi kids and things like that to dehumanize the civilians. I never bought into all of that poo poo, so I don't consider myself part of that problem, although I did see soldiers with that attitude while I was in. I felt like I could be somewhat of a counterweight to that, and would have support in doing so because the mission was to win hearts and minds and build stable militaries and governments. The jackasses taking shots at old men in wheelchairs were directly undermining that mission, and as a result, were empowering groups like ISIS. But I had to change jobs due to hearing loss, so I never ended up going. In the end, the jackasses were pretty successful.

But more in line with what happened in Syria, had protesters back home started protesting about regulatory capture and then been gunned down, sparking a civil war in which I was obligated to fight on behalf of the army against US citizens, I would've defected or died trying, no question about it. It's easier to do that when you are young and don't have a family, but if I had been in a situation where I had made the determination to collaborate to protect my own family, I wouldn't expect, or want your sympathy. I'd probably welcome death at that point, and it wouldn't be undeserved when it came.

fishmech posted:

No war is legal in the first place, there's nothing that makes any given war more illegal.

Sergg posted:

You mean when the Soviet military was invited into Afghanistan, where it proceeded to assassinate President Hafizullah Amin, the man who invited them in, 3 months after they arrived, purged his followers, couped the government, and put their own supporters in power before proceeding to depopulate the countryside and deliberately targeting civilians, killing up to 2 million Afghans?

fishmech posted:

Hmm, that sure sounds like grounds to say every war the American government has entered into from the start is "legal".

steinrokkan posted:

I trust you can produce a document where the sitting government of Afghanistan invited the Soviets to lead a violent military coup in Kabul?

Bates posted:

How did you get from "The USSR overthrew the government of Afghanistan" to "Backing jihadists is good"?

Volkerball posted:

Yeah, that was the biggest drawback of people looking at Syria through the lens of Iraq. In Iraq, the whole thing was initiated by the US. The broad takeaway being that if the US "stays out of it," then these types of situations don't happen. It's a pretty fringe thing now, but back when things were first kicking off and different actors goals were more open to interpretation, it was really common for people to think that the US was trying to oust Assad like they did Saddam, and we needed to oppose US involvement. But of course, Syria was significantly different than Iraq in that it wasn't initiated by the US, and it was going to happen with or without the US. So in the end, Obama using anti-interventionist sentiment to minimize US involvement in Syria as much as possible led to a power vacuum. All the US not getting involved accomplished was allowing Qatar, KSA, and Turkey to fill the opposition role at an international level. And a fine loving job they did at it.

Re: Khatib, as with all democratic activists in Syria, and especially so given his prominence, he was slandered relentlessly by the pro-regime media network. Any criticism that could be leveled at him could be leveled tenfold to Assad. He was exactly what Syria needed​ imo, and he would've had a much better chance of bringing Syria back from the brink than Assad did. But it didn't really suit the US to push for that.


I hope so too because it'll be extra funny when they go to take a bite out of that big juicy sandwich they were promised only to find out they've got nothing but two slices of bread. Would serve them right to get sandwichet ghawwar'ed for trying to work with a fascist.

Cease to Hope posted:

vb said the US intervened, though?

Play posted:

It should be pretty easy to understand that it's not "intervention" or "non-intervention". It's a sliding scale from refusing to be involved at all, to providing weapons and ammunition and air support, to putting troops on the ground, to dropping a loving atomic bomb I guess. volkerball's position has been consistent in that he believe more muscular intervention earlier would've had better outcomes. I agree up to a point, but the fact is the question is pointless anyways. It didn't happen and hypotheticals lead to pretty silly arguments.

As far as recent news goes, I'm very happy that the US military, if it has to be involved, seems to be choosing to back the SDF over all others. That was definitely an open question until recently but I'm happy to see that US commanders are as unimpressed by Erdogan as most of us are. Best case scenario is a heavily federalized or even completely divided Syria, and if the US pulls out now we will just be allowing Assad and the Russians to have their way with the entire country.