"Who says I'm not serious about Syria? C'mon, man! Jill makes sure I get a delicious bowl for breakfast every day!"
Posted on 03/25/2021 4:18:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
The tenth anniversary of the conflict in Syria that began on March 5, 2011 was greeted with deafening silence in Washington, D.C. Though the Biden administration would favor a political settlement of the conflict and is conscious of humanitarian problems of displaced civilians in the area of Idlib, it has not settled on any policy on Syria, which appears to rank relatively low on its list of global and regional priorities. At present, it has no intention of drawing another "red line" as the Obama administration did.
In contrast, it comes as no surprise that the Russian Wagner Group, a paramilitary organization and private military company headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch and a close friend of President Vladimir Putin, has taken part in the civil war in Syria, as well as in a number of other countries, including Ukraine, Sudan, Libya, Venezuela, Azerbaijan, and Germany. It is, however, a surprise that three human rights groups, from France, Russia, and Syria, have been able in March 2021 to file a criminal complaint, a landmark criminal case, in Moscow over the torture by Wagner of a detainee in Syria.
This provides a rare opportunity for the U.S. and the international community not only to learn more about the activities of Wagner and its deployment across the Middle East and Africa, but also to realize the continuing involvement of Russia in the civil war in Syria, the most important proxy war of our age with its regional and international dimensions.
The Syrian conflict began in March 2011, after an initially peaceful protest in Deraa, inspired by uprisings for reform in neighboring Arab counties, against the existing Ba'athist Arab regime of Bashar Assad, originally an ophthalmologist who inherited power from his father Hafez.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Serious over what?
ISIS is in extreme decline, and unless someone is willing to go pump money into the ISIS-machine, this fake civil war is just laying there.
Begging for some confrontational situation between the US and Russia? What’s the objective? No oil, no rich reserves? No interest by Russia to engage upon the Turks (aren’t they selling Russian military over to Turkey).
Oh, No! Syria!
Oh, No! Russia!
I guess it’s time for another endless war.
The guy's a vegetable! How can he get serious about anything?
Putin is playing with Erdoo doo.
He wants the Straits. He kept Assad in power, and also dealt with the Iranians.
I’m no fan of Putin. Oddly there are some here.
Biden is brain dead. Why do you think they want to keep the barb wire around the capital? It is becoming the forbidden city.
We went through a 4 year coup by the highest officials in the US government, the media and foreign powers. And on November 3-4 we witnessed Pearl Harbor II. What several foreign nations did is an act of War, supported by internal Traitors.
Nobody will admit it, but it is true.
Here we are.
He’s an Idiot, if you ask me. The only position he is qualified for is dog catcher.
A Syrian immigrant just killed 10 innocent people in Boulder and the only twitch Biden coul,make was about gun control. as if the Syrian aspect did not exist in those killings?
We need to GTFO of Syria.
We have no business there.
“The Syrian conflict began in March 2011, after an initially peaceful protest in Deraa”
Other than rioting and demanding the overthrow of the government, I agree, it was a ‘peaceful’ protest.
No.
It is past time for us to get entirely out of Syria. And Iraq. And the rest of the dumpster fire that is the Middle East.
There is no one and nothing there that is worth the life of a single US service member or single US taxpayer dollar.
With the Israel, Egypt, GCC alliance, Syria has become irrelevant
Syria just doesn’t matter. Iran is contained and attacks on Isrrael from an addled Syria will be countered and cease
Biden et al are trying to play a game that is already over
Asterisks mine. Warning: NSFW.
Bidon is addled, he might get serios about his breakfast fruit loops.
I can see why Iran is there - it’s their neighborhood, and they want influence there.
I can see why Israel hits them once in a while - they’re not going to allow Iranian-type terrorists to set up bases there.
I can see why Russia is there - Syria is their long-time ally and understand that things will be far worse in Syria if Assad falls.
But I can’t see why we ever went there, other than some sort of demented ‘vanity project’ of Skunk Cabbage and Obama (along with the usual GOP suspects). They weren’t threatening us and we had no interest there. Now, thanks to those 2 starting the war and backing the terrorists there, half a million people are dead, half of their population is displaced, and what was a large Christian population that had been protected by Assad, has been mostly driven out.
...and yet we’re still there.
He bombed them within the 1st week he was in office. How much more serious about Syria do you want him to get?
Syria is actually very complicated cause. From protests to get rid of Assad, it evolved in civil war. When radical Islamists took over the opposition, the good vs. bad guys became really muddled.
Assad is a murderer, but secular murderer. His main opposition evolved and turned out into ISIS.
So, nowadays, Assad has quite a popular support! Not that anybody likes him there, but he is the “lesser evil” by many.
He got the support of the Alawites, the Christians (there are many over there), the Shiites, some moderate Sunnis as well as others. The country is a total mess, but nowadays, it is quite hard to tell whom to support. Secular, socialist murderer vs. radical Islamists.
What a choice!
As a legal matter, yes, a state that uses a private Army for its own proxy force IS covered by international law, and outlawed. That matter all by itself ought to be pursued and yes even just because Putin will not like it.
As to Syria, the current status quo is generally serving all interested parties - Russia with its support of Assad, Iran with its support of Assad, Turkey with its support of terrorists it pays to be “Syrian rebels”, the Kurds in northern Syria and the U.S. with its working alliance with those Kurds.
So the U.S. already has a hand in, an interest in, any final outcome in Syria, and does not need to increase that hand at all, in order for the others to eventually need U.S. agreement to any final resolution in Syria.
The major humanitarian problem with the status quo is the millions of Syrian refugees. Unfortunately neither Russia nor Assad care too much about that problem, as long as others are paying for it.
Finally, in my view, the reporting on the origins of the disintegration of Syria is told in part by liars - reporters who know the truth - and part by the ignorant - those who have investigated nothing and just repeat what the liars said.
From the time of the post-Saddam there-way civil war in Iraq
(the U.S. trying to keep order, Iranian backed militias trying to “win” by terror, force of arms and intimidation (attacking U.S. forces and Iraqi Sunni groups), and Iraq Sunni militias (also attacking U.S. forces and the Shia Iraqi forces backed by Iran)
a covert regime change operation against Saddam was devised and implemented, backed by the U.S. and other western powers and supported & coordinated by some Sunni states in the region.
They nurtured the “Syrian opposition” movement and it would not have had the strength and idea that it could challenge Assad without the international covert operations, and encouragement behind it. I am convinced it made its final major public notice to Assad, on timing agreed to by the international powers behind it.
Those behind the scenes powers were stupid in three ways.
The first way was feeding or agreeing to the “Syrian opposition” the idea that Assad would fold to “peaceful protests” (the opposition was actually already armed).
The second way was not admitting that Assad was well aware of the western regime change operation covertly operating behind the “Syrian opposition”.
The third way was not admitting that Assad would have a scorched earth response to the opposition. Past history of Assad and his father, when it comes to the largely Sunni Syrian opposition movements, told anyone who cared to look that Assad would see any opposition as an existential threat to his rule and respond accordingly.
The western powers and their Middle East friends miscalculated how that given the recent events in Afghanistan and Iraq the U.S. population was not going to go along with another regime change war in the Middle East - the western backing for the “Syrian opposition” was not going to put western boots on the ground nor endanger western air forces without on the ground objectives.
When it could not directly come out in direct support for the “Syrian opposition”, the western powers made the same mistake they made against the Soviets years before in Afghanistan. They farmed out the vetting of the “rebels” to be armed to their “friends” in the Middle East, who, as they did in Afghanistan, with that aid built radical fundamentalist Sunni militia units who operated like terrorists.
At the end of the day, it was acknowledged that the one movement with the most backing among the armed Syrian Sunni militias groups was . . . . . . . . . the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. Assad likely anticipated that, as they had organized the last two “civil unrest” attempts against the Assad family rule.
I say all of that to say yes, we did have a hand in the disintegration of Syria.
And, nothing regarding the U.S. and Syria could have been more stupid.
Prior to the unrest in Syria, Syria was a manageable and contained security issue for the U.S. and Russia had no major presence there and Iranian and Hezbollah forces were not operating there.
Yes, our stupid intelligence and state folks took a stable situation and increased U.S. security issues concerning Iran, Russia and Assad.
And the Syrian people have paid the price.
Yet, no, I am not calling for the U.S. to do any more than it is doing in Syria already - keeping a small section of Syria in the hands of friendly forces, because it is their land and because it helps keep ISIS out of it. Neither Russia nor Assad are going to make any direct moves to oust us from helping the small enclave of Kurds in Syria. They have no need or interest in escalating anything with us. They know we will only be out when there is a final resolution in Syria and that we will not agree to one that does not satisfy our friends, the Kurds.
The status quo in Syria should remain acceptable U.S. policy for now.
The American people have made it very clear. They have NO INTEREST in that mess at all.
He and Biden created the war. A million dead people and counting. Spilled over to Libya and Egypt. He will make matters even worse by design.
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