You know what happens when you try to climb a s***rope, jihadis?
Posted on 11/29/2013 9:10:09 PM PST by Brad from Tennessee
DAMASCUS, Syria — In a terrace cafe within earshot of army artillery, a 28-year-old graduate student wept as she confessed that she had stopped planning antigovernment protests and delivering medical supplies to rebel-held towns.
Khaled, 33, a former protester who fled Damascus after being tortured and fired from his bank post, quit his job in Turkey with the exile opposition, disillusioned and saying that he wished the uprising “had never happened.”
In the Syrian city of Homs, a rebel fighter, Abu Firas, 30, recently put down the gun his wife had sold her jewelry to buy, disgusted with his commanders, who, he said, focus on enriching themselves. Now he finds himself trapped under government shelling, broke and hopeless.
“The ones who fight now are from the side of the regime or the side of the thieves,” he said in a recent interview via Skype. “I was stupid and naïve,” he added. “We were all stupid.”
Even as President Bashar al-Assad of Syria racks up modest battlefield victories, this may well be his greatest success to date: wearing down the resolve of some who were committed to his downfall. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Cool.
Now that the pawns are figuring out their “leadership” maybe they can negotiate a peaceful surrender?
Looks like the Russians have backed the winner here. Sometimes the tyrant you know is better than the crazy wild eyed fanatic you might get saddled with.
Assad will likely remain.
I don’t claim to know much but he seems no worse than the options among the rebels.
US policy was successful when we supported moderate, secular strongmen.
Divergent sects in the Arab states, to include Maronites, Coptics, etc. among the many muslim sects and ancient religions had a place under previous US strategies
The Clown Prince of America has done much damage.
Vojwode von Siebenbürgen
I always preferred Assad. A bloodthirsty, corrupt, fascist, SECULAR dictator is always preferable to a bloodthirsty, corrupt theocracy.
A lot of other weird stuff was at play, too. Pipelines, Sunni vs. Shia, etc. But the US shouldn’t play “The Great Game.” We should play a straight game, doing what is right because it is right.
This is impossible. The CIA and Obamabots said that Assad was finished.
Revolutions go through generations, and unfortunately for the idealists, theirs is the first one to go. Assad would do well, IMHO, to offer the olive branch to the opposition, because they do have a function - they're his bulwark against complete control by the Russians and the Iranians. His family has, historically speaking, been quite good at that.
But I don't see a way out of this that doesn't confer Syria a client-state status, or more precisely even more of a client-state status than she has enjoyed heretofore. It isn't a happy thought for the Syrians.
That would be a very constructive strategy if Assad is capable of conciliation.
It appears that something going on defensively by the helicopter?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qfMuBJBBWw
Americans simply need to accept the fact that Islam is incompatible with a democratic or republican form of goverment.
They will learn soon enough when the real nutcrunching starts.
Sad commentary from those young people who, like so many young people, think they actually know what they are doing and what life is all about.
I visited Syria in the early 1980's when daddy Hafez was in command. Damascus was glorious. I saw a old man on a carpet outside a store. The old man was selling carpets. He had one of those old credit cards machines that swiped cards. I had a VISA and he took the card and that's how I bought a BEAUTIFUL silk Damascene carpet.
I did get sick as a dog there too. I drank some hot tea one of the store owners offered me. The cup was clean. After about 20 minutes I went to his bathroom--too much tea.
Guess where he had been cleaning those tea cups? YEP, in that toilet. Wow, I was SO sick. I wanted God to take me home. My fault for having that cup of tea -- with SUCH a clean tea cup. What an IDIOT I was.
The Syrians were great, just interested in making a buck. The doctor I had at the hotel was so nice. Hahaha, what a young fool I was back then. :o)
All Assad has to do is grant amnesty for information and this thing will be fairly over.
Can anyone make sense of Obama’s foreign policy? Seriously. It seems chaos must be the goal. Nothing else makes a damned bit of sense.
Assad is a monster and a tool of Iran and N Korea. I don’t know how people here started thinking he’s the lesser of two evils. He is evil.
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