If Trump goes to war with the Assad regime
One airstrike does not make a war.
For instance, President Clinton bombed Iraq every week for eight years, but it took Bush to lead us into a disastrous war.
So are we going to war with the Assad regime? The rhetoric is unclear at this point, but it is alarming.
"There's not any sort of option where a political solution is going to happen with Assad at the head of the regime," Haley told "State of the Union" anchor Jake Tapper. "It just -- if you look at his actions, if you look at the situation, it's going to be hard to see a government that's peaceful and stable with Assad."
Haley's remarks come just a day after she warned that the United States was prepared to take further actions in Syria during a special session at the UN following a US military strike against a Syrian air base.
The Syrian government has issued threats in response, but they can largely be ignored. Why do I say that?
Because the Syrian military has been absolutely devastated by six years of war. It's completely unable to mount a major assault without the air support of Russia and Iranian ground forces leading the charge. To make matters worse, the Assad regime isn't really a dictatorship anymore. Syria is completely broken.
Indeed, after five years of war, the regime’s force structure today is not entirely different from that of opposition militias. While much better supplied by the Syria Arab Army’s still-standing logistics skeleton, the government’s fighting force today consists of a dizzying array of hyper-local militias aligned with various factions, domestic and foreign sponsors, and local warlords. Aymenn al-Tamimi’s profiles of loyalist militias provide some insight into their diverse backgrounds. Among these groups, only a handful are still capable of anything close to offensive action. Much more so than sectarian or demographic limitations, this fragmentation is the direct result of the interaction between national and local economic and governance pressures. As the once totalitarian Syrian central state atrophies, its constituent parts — be they sectarian, rentierist, or simple brutes — have gained a stunning degree of political and economic independence from Damascus. Contrary to what others have claimed, Assad’s regime has not struck some grand bargain with a large section the Syria’s urban Sunni population. Instead, he has elevated to power the most brutish elements of the country and doubled down on the sectarian, tribal, and thuggish inclinations of its base.
Today, where briefing maps now show solid red across Syria’s western governorates, they ought to distinguish dozens and perhaps even hundreds of small fiefdoms only nominally loyal to Assad. Indeed, in much of the country, loyalist security forces function like a grand racketeering scheme: simultaneously a cause and consequence of state collapse at the local level.
The government-allied militias that make up the bulk of the Syrian forces are basically a collection of warlords.
Forget for a moment that knocking off Assad would empower the al-Qaeda-linked jihadists. Consider the nightmare of a chaotic power-struggle would happen within the government-controlled areas. Think Afghanistan circa 1995, but with more minorities.
That's the future that liberal interventionists are demanding in the name of "humanitarianism".
I wonder if Democrats even care?
The biggest danger here is that Assad has two big external allies, and their rhetoric is ratcheting up.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev issued a statement today criticizing US airstrikes against Syria, saying attacks on the airbase were illegal and brought the US “one step away from military clashes with Russia.”
There is growing concern on that front, as the two nations already had very bad relations, and Medvedev warned today the US-Russia ties were “completely ruined” after the attack.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for a meeting with his security council on Friday to discuss the US attacks, and potential Russian reprisals. Already, Russia is promising additional air defenses for Syria, and deploying ships into the region.
Russia also cut off the “deconfliction” communications with the US military to protest the attacks, which Kremlin officials are warning significantly increases the threat of military conflict.
That's a very high price to pay in order to "send a message". Iran isn't happy either. Iran and Russia has drawn up their own red lines.
Russia and Iran have warned the US they will “respond with force” if their own “red lines” are crossed in Syria.
The Trump Administration, instead of trying to smooth out the hard feelings, threatened more sanctions, despite Russia and Iran not having done anything wrong.
I won't go into the potential scenarios of conflict with Russia and Iran. I'll leave that for another day. Although I will point out that the U.S. and Iran are headed toward conflict in Iraq, regardless of what happens in Syria due to Shia militias that are beyond the control of Baghdad.
Instead I'll draw attention to another complicated scenario - the Kurds.
In two towns, Sinjar in Iraq and Manbij in Syria, Syrian Kurds are fighting not only against the Islamic State, but primarily against their Kurdish brethren and the Turkish forces that invaded Syria last summer.
Earlier this month, Syrian Kurds clashed with peshmerga forces from Iraqi Kurdistan over control of Sinjar...
Kurdish aspirations on both sides of the border have “parents” who are working to achieve their own interests. Turkey, for instance, which invaded Syria’s Kurdish areas last August, wants to prevent the establishment of a contiguous Syrian Kurdish zone, lest it become a base of operations for fighters from the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK, and form the nucleus of an independent Kurdish state in Syria that would attract Turkish Kurds in its wake. To achieve this goal, it forged an alliance with Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani and asked his peshmerga forces to fight against the Syrian Kurds.
You got that? Turkey is helping the Iraqi Kurds to fight the Syrian Kurds, while still bombing Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan.
This is the political environment that our thousands of our troops are in right now. And then it gets really complicated.
Turkey hastened to warn that if the Syrian Kurds didn’t evacuate Sinjar, Turkish forces would take over the city. But that would risk embroiling it in a three-way conflict – with Iraq; with Iran, which wants its Shi’ite militias to take over the town and the district; and with the United States.
The Syrian Kurds’ backers include both America and Russia.
Syrian Kurds want autonomy from Damascus, which Damascus rejects. Overthrowing Assad and plunging Syria into chaos would make the Syrian Kurds independent by default, which would send Turkey into a panic and probably cause them to invade Syria Kurdistan.
Comments
This raid was about as effective
As blowing up a baby formula factory in Libya or an empty training camp in Afghanistan...Both part of the Klinton legacy...
" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "
America's lapdog Britain is ramping up the rhetoric against
Russia. Russia in return said America's poodle doesn't even get a doggy bag from the table.
The rhetoric is like that leading up to Iraq. No fly zones tend to lead to ground invasions.
Trump has flipped, and now is executing The NEOCON agenda!
What is really going on is that Trump appointed and surrounded himself with Neocons (McMaster, Tillerson, Nikki Haley, Pompeo,, Kushner, etc.), just like Obama had done, and now we are seeing the horrifying results of that.
He has been brought to heel and is now abandoning his Campaign pledges (and his grassroots base), and is doing exactly what the Oligarchy and Globalists want....Regime Change and War against Syria.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj4h99lIZ84]
---
And, here is the real reason why Worldwide Chaos, another failed State, and possibly World War III (with Russia) have to be created:
The Assad government had opposed the construction of the U.S. Oil Pipeline going right through his Country. So for the Globalists, naturally it is better for them to force the (legitimate) Assad government out of the way, and have the Country just destroyed and overrun by Terrorists groups (which they fund and control)......because this way then the U.S. Oil Pipeline -- and their crooked Monopoly and Global theft over World Resources -- is assured for them. That's what's going on.
And Trump has turned his back on the electorate, and decided to just become yet another controlled President by the Elites, by the Globalists, by the Neocons.
Very sad and reckless ....and WW III literally now hangs in the balance.
Was bound to happen and most out here
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Sooner or later,
Americans will get tired of fighting Israel's wars. In this past election, both major candidates were completely in Israel's bag, but I hope that that will change in future elections.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Don't hold your breath
Yep, don't hold your breath on that scenario
have you read any right wing websites that have Trump supporters on them? They agree with everything he does and agrees that the military should drop bombs on ISIS and their families.
After reading the comments I was dumbfounded by how people buy the propaganda or come to other views of the wars on their own.
There were many military members commenting on my local website and people wrote "thank you for your service" over and over. They believe that our military is fighting to defend our freedoms.
Israel doesn't want ISIS defeated because the superpowers would leave the Middle East leaving them alone to fight their enemies themselves.
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/israeli-intelligence-chief-not-want...
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Have seen “Alt-Right” sites disagree with Trump going into Syria
But obviously, that’s what makes them “alt” or “alternative” Right as opposed to ordinary-Right Trump supporters.
There are quite a few Trump supporters who are saying that this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkmnSeCZYX0
Syrian episode is NOT the beginning of a larger escalation, which my earlier essay stated.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SoN0ySZl7k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Tc31NkBXo
More on this later, but I think many here, as in the mainstream are completely missing the target.
The trouble is,
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Many of us know that
our government and our allies are creating and funding ISIS, AQ and other terrorists groups but most Americans aren't aware of that. They get their news from the msm and believe what they are told.
I read an article on antiwar that was about how the Syrian rebels could call for more US attacks by releasing more chemical weapons.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
And some of the so-called rebels
are the US military's proxy army. The following area of interest is where the CW release took place. It appears the US is not happy with SAA moving into this area before the Americans can prepare their 'troops'. These rebels would NOT be tasked with fighting the Al Qaeda linked HTS which fighting the SAA in this same area. I suspect the HTS will again go after the US backed 'rebels' and steal their US weapons and trained men as was done before.
The US has no interest in destroying any of the Al-Qaeda extremist Salafist jihadists in Syria because they have been, by far, the most effective group that has been fighting Assad. ISIS has been pushed out of Aleppo and Idlib provinces back towards Raqqa, Palmyra and Deir ez-Zor.
Take note that 'funding' also means arming.
That is why they are upset with Russia
Russian jets are bombing the terrorists that the US and its allies are supporting to help overthrow Assad.
Remember the how the ceasefire that was brokered was undone by the pentagon and others who didn't agree with what Obama was doing. They bombed the Syrian army that had taken control of an air base. The bombing killed 82 Syrian troops and then ISIS was able to take the air base back. Ash Carter was part of the group and I didn't understand why Obama didn't do anything to them when they went behind his back like that.
And they were the neocons from the Bush administration who were backing Hillary because they too wanted a no fly zone and more troops on the ground in Syria.
That's one promise Obama kept. He said that he wouldn't put more troops in Syria.
I watched the video of him saying that last night and if anyone wants to see it I will try to find it and post it.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Breitbart commenters were tearing Trump apart over this
somehow a couple of right-wing spamnews orgs
got one of my email addresses. today, one of them breathlessly informed me that Syrians are saying they are so happy about Trump's attack on the air field, they are going to name their next child, "Donald".
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Anti-war opposition needs to change tactics
Stop saying it was a false flag attack (it was likely simply the destruction of a chemical plant).
What needs to be emphasized is the violent chaos that would follow the fall of Assad.
Recall how people said "How can it get worse than life under Saddam?"
Well, it got a lot worse.
Same with Assad. Regime change in Syria would mean a disaster resembling the Second Congo War when millions died.
Anti-war opposition crumbles when faced with
babies tossed out of incubators onto the cold hard floor.
War mongering is now done by experts in propaganda. The US MIC has the most advanced propaganda machine in the world working against people with the lowest attention span in history.
We have just had our new incubator moment for Syria.
The problem is that Putin and Assad along with Iranian forces were steadily making large gains against HTS. This is not in the US playbook. They will have to put more of their players into the game.
The White Helmets actually won on Oscar.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
What needs to be emphasized is the lies that this war
They did know that it was a false flag
The Russians and our military leaders speak to each other so that both countries know what the other is doing and Russia informed us that the Syrians were going to bomb the building where they believed they were stockpiling the ammunition.
And that is what Russia is saying when they say that they are going to stop communication.
I can't find the article I read about this.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
The reaction alone shows it was staged,
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2017/04/us-missiles-strike-syrian-forc...
Yelling "false flag" plays into their hands
because it makes the anti-war crowd look like CT people.
It's not necessary to oppose this war.
Ah I don't play that shit g. No offense.
I've said my piece
There are countless obvious reasons to oppose this war. You don't need to grasp one you can't prove.
But you're an adult. You do what you feel is right.
I do notice a couple geopolitical analysts I respect,
It depends on who we are talking to
So I understand why you are opposed to the term "false flag" operation, gjohnsit. But I also believe that among those of us here who have a greater knowledge of why we are fighting these wars, the use of the term "false flag" is not necessarily problematic.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Amen!
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
The elephant in the room.
How about this?
Actually, I think we need to emphasize both. We need a full-court press, attacking all the BS on every level, to generate a general feeling of mistrust of our Idiot Leaders.
James Kroeger
I keep thinking about flowers and liberators
how tptb control all thoughts and actions IRT the war machine, the neocons/neolibs
control everything, the narrative,etc.etc, why, what and how it all goes down.
donnie tinyhands and clowngress are nothing but paid actors in this movie.
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
Must be the new neocon talking point
Rubio says the exact same thing:
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
The US will not stop in Syria until
Netanyahu gets his wish - Assad gone from Syria and Syria partitioned.
The US has shipped multiple thousands of pieces of heavy military equipment to Europe along the Russian border and Mediterranean. This has been the greatest buildup of US war materiel since the height of the cold war. More shipments are coming into German and other European ports as we speak. Something big is going on.
I expect a rapid increase in American forces on the ground in Syria in the coming months probably staged from Romania. The following shipment is one of a number of train loads that are currently coming in from Poland. These are in addition to a very large shipment of 300 tracked and wheeled vehicles that came in by ship last July.
I watched those videos and while watching the first one
I wondered if those troops are mindless bots just doing what they are told to do, are in agreement with the mission or even bothering to question what they are doing?
Are they aware how this war of terror is not to defend our freedoms and country, but to line the pockets of the defense industries?
I am aware that there is an economic draft and that is why a lot of people join the military, I just don't understand how they can be part of something that causes so much misery and death.
Reminds me of this picture.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
I think that's one of the reasons for
I'm going to have to have this discussion with my niece, Air Force, when she comes in on leave in a month. I'll be gentle as I don't want to actively condemn her for what she's doing, but I know me and I won't be able to say nothing either. She went in for college money, I would have helped her with that as much as I can but she wanted to do it on her own... I get that and respect it, but I wish to hell she'd get out. She's an F-16 crew chief, she keeps the planes in the air that are dropping the bombs. How in hell I'm going to address that somewhat tactfully I'm not sure yet.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
An excellent account concerning Sinjar and the Yezidis
The account you gave doesn't mention the Yezidis, who are the indigenous people of the area around Sinjar. It also didn't mention what is meant by "Syrian Kurds".
In short, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq, who abandoned the Yezidis to Daesh in 2014. The YPG (anarcho-communitarian Syrian Kurdish militia who are a main fighting part of the Northern Syrian Federation and SDF) rescued the Yezidi from Syria with light weaponry and formed/trained the local Yezidi defense force.
Since that time the KRG has blockaded the Yezidis who have formed their own defensive forces and the YPG. The KRG has also formed an alliance with Turkey and formed a militia called the Rojava Peshmarga which is made up of Kurdish refugees from Syria. The KRG/Turks are trying to resettle the Yezidis i.e. a sort of ethnic cleansing operation.
Trying to say that there is the Yezidi people protected by themselves and Syrian Kurds of the YPG against the Iraqi Kurds with Turkish allies and a group of paid Syrian Kurdish refugee mercenaries.
OK, complicated so I suggest you read the linked detailed and intelligent analysis.
http://www.nrttv.com/en/birura-details.aspx?Jimare=4855
From the Light House.
Scott Ritter says 'hold on'
huffpo
Hey John...
(I assume that's your name ) You gotta publish this one at Dailykos, man. If it doesn't open up some eyes, then that place is really beyond the pale.
I think we need to try to rally some of the anti-war folks at TOP who ended up getting sucked into Hillary's orbit, many of whom I assume are publishing there.
It's getting scary...we've got to try to expand the resistance against this war in any way we can, and there is reason to believe that there is some fertile ground there.
James Kroeger
@James Kroeger jamess wrote about the
I expect to be insulted and called an idiot by a right winger. I do not take it well when a supposed lefty does it. Going over there with anti-war sentiments is an invitation to be slammed.
I doubt there are more than a handful of progressives remaining at TOP.
I stayed on the site about 3 minutes, did not log in.
There is no good reason to do so.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Thanks for the report...
Yeah, it's awful unpleasant to try to publish sanity over there, but I'm starting to feel really anxious about how this could all end up.
The war mongers have definitely been carrying the day over there, so tightly do they cling to Hilary's bosom (and to the funding they get from CIA bots?).
But, damn the torpedoes, ya know? We gotta expand the opposition to this madness or I fear we may regret not doing everything in our power...
James Kroeger
At this point,
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Seen from that perspective, one could have predicted
The euro is never going to be allowed to succeed, lest more and more countries dump the petrodollar and, led by Russia, Iran, Venezuela etc., start trading oil in euros instead.
The petrodollar system is why even purported human-rights organizations actually serve a function of parroting Saudi and Gulf regime propaganda.
https://angryarab.blogspot.de/2017/04/hrw-director-now-reproduces-all.html
Any loosening of the petrodollar’s iron grip and, boom! there’s your currency collapse.
oh, how convenient that I am poor in dollars and euros
so, I guess, I am lost whatever happens. I barter my livelihood in food currencies. One brown-spotted rotten banana against one brown-spotted rotten apple. If you cut out the brown rotten parts it's still edible, so I guess I am good...
Hi, lotlizard...
https://www.euronews.com/live
Grüß Gott, mimi, wie geht’s?
Moin, moin, lotlizard, (hate moin, moin, gruezi much nicer)
my mood switches like the weather here and that means, very often. I try to figure out how to build a new life and where. Getting a little old and sometimes lose my "hopey, changey" feelings to do it.
But my son gets stronger while I get weaker and that gives me tremendous pleasure ... over the darn mobile phone that is. It sounds much like this (he can sing too, a little)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwOU3bnuU0k]
Nice dialect you have there over in Dresden ... can't tell you how I dislike my fellow neighbors one, but if you look carefully and listen attentively you'll find something nice about them too. Just a matter of good will...
Have some more sunshine. Sorry to say, I love that song, but if Stevie would sing that in today's White House, I think it would even be a worse edition that this one is (imo).
[video:https://youtu.be/gZXjFV8nT4E]
It could be like this and that's what I like better:
[video:https://youtu.be/uPyq4iqt6Go]
I need Joe or NCTim to find the best version of that "sunshine" song. Love 'em guys for their musical donations to the C99p folks too, yeah.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Let Israel fight their own damn wars.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQUXuQ6Zd9w]
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
Thank you,
"Just call me Hillbilly Dem(exit)."
-H/T to Wavey Davey
Guardian has a reporter on the ground
Compare his pictures to White Helmet video. Completely different areas. This story is falling apart rapidly.
I feel like one of Pavlov's dogs.
If memory serves, one of the outcomes of Pavlov's experiments was the complete apathy to pain when the electric shocks and rewards were totally random. Didn't the dogs just lay on the electrical grids when the charges were administered? It looks to me that anything we say or don't say, protest or not protest, write to our representatives or not write to our representatives, the outcome is war and human death.
Elites’ plan is to induce in us a state of learned helplessness?
According to this reading, Trump will now administer X years of “electric shocks” (betrayals) to his anti-war, pro-99%, pro-civil-liberties voters, draining energy from and inducing apathy among the working-class Right and Alt-Right.
I'm more of a Pink Floyd man myself.
@Hillbilly Dem Ozzy's definitely up there though. Dio too. Sabbath with Gillan as front man wasn't bad either but I fail to see why Iommi kept the Sabbath brand after that.
I'm also into some other weird obscure bands like this one...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8Zc7TJa1zU]
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.