I posted this six days ago, but it may be some missed it. Worth a read. States the total number is 100-120k moderate fighters, but that is not the full story.
i know Papās response was on my second point above, i.e. that in some parts of the country there are many factions and they are not organised or coordinated, at least, and hate each other, at worst, so their strength is questionable. But in some parts of the country this report states there is credible and relatively organised opposition to Assad and IS. Its a very mixed picture.
No more of a speculative jump than to suggest that the leaders of one or other of those western nations decided to provide chemical weapons to one or other of the militias opposing Assad and persuaded them to use said weapons on innocent civilians, all in the hope that the blame could be pinned on Assad. Nor is there any more evidence for your view of what happened and, while the objective you suggest may have some grounds (in that the US, UK and France all wanted Assad gone) itās one fuck of a leap from that to what youāre sugggesting.
Thatās not really the case. There have already been numerous reports that point the blame in the other direction, including a French journalist that was being held captive at the time, who claimed that heād heard his captors talk about opposition forces being responsible.
RT have also identified a ludicrous bit of doctoring in the official reporting of the event.
The only consistent objective that the West have had in the region is removing Assad. Many of the people that weāre supposed to be in the business of destroying now were people that could have been our allies two years ago.
Iām not really arsed whether anyone buys my assessment of events. but putting things into the wider context, the chemical attack initially only served the interests of those that wanted Assad out. Theyād have gotten away with it too, if not for those pesky Russians.
I donāt buy the case, in terms of its likely efficacy or stated mission objectives, and there are very good reasons for that. Weāve been lied to on both domestic and foreign policy before, by many of the same politicians. We armed many of these people in the first place, to fight against Assad, and now weāre apparently spending more money to get rid of ISIS (even though our politicians keep mentioning that weāve got to get rid of Assad).
Western involvement is really about enforced regime change. Given that most, if not all attempts at Western-inspired regime change have been expensive and ongoing failures, Iām not really on board. Even if the bombing takes out a significant portion of ISIS, what next for the West? The likely scenario would be them promoting some Western-friendly warlord as the saviour of Syria, and take a stab at Assad. If theyāre not prepared to work with him, how else do they āsecure the peaceā but rely on a local nutter and the associated death squads?
According to FB yesterday there was a peace march by āhundredsā of moderate Muslims in London on the weekend but it wasnt picked up by the media according to organisers because the story wasnt ājuicyā enough???
So weāre spending money on bombs to destroy schools and hospitals overseas, instead of building schools and hospitals here.
Some figures before I leave you with the obligatory Guardian article.
Weāre spending 35K per hour just to keep a Tornado in the air. If it drops a cheap bomb, thatās Ā£22K per bomb. The expensive ones that apparently donāt kill civilians are Ā£102K each. By way of comparison, one fully loaded university graduate costs Ā£50K, and thatās taking ridiculous price inflation in the higher education sector into account.
Today, as you read this, sophisticated military weapons are being ā purposely or mistakenly ā aimed at hospitals and clinics. With total impunity, essential medical services are being destroyed as a military strategy, both by national armies and by international coalitions, in Afghanistan, in Syria and in Yemen. And ultimately the people that this hurts the most are patients who no longer have access to healthcare.
Dozens of health facilities have come under attack in Yemen and Syria in the past four months. This cannot become the new normal. This cannot become an acceptable trend to which the world resigns itself. Please join us in our indignation and ask your leaders to stop bombing hospitals. For armies, too, the protection of civilians should be a high priority, not just to avoid legal prosecution, but because no one should be indifferent to the loss of human life.
MSF formally calls on the UK government to reaffirm its unequivocal commitment to international humanitarian law and to uphold it in any coalition it supports. We also call on the UK government to support investigations into possible breaches of international humanitarian law in Yemen and beyond and to make the results of such investigations public.
Gotta wonder if Hillary Benn is feeling as good about his speech now.
I was at the West Derby CLP tonight. I met my local MP for the first time; seems like a nice chap. We also had a debate on the whole Arab Spring movement, and where it lies, five years on. Some brilliant contributors; one guy had personally met Assad and his personal armies of Alawite acolytes.
I was going to keep quiet, but ended up making a speech on my debut. I hadnāt prepared it, but it rolled off anyway. Itās almost as if Iāve been saying the same shit for years
Many people commented on where democracy fits into that part of the world. Most were actually in the same ballpark as myself. Democracy isnāt just something you transplant. It has to be something sought for by the people, and guess what, theyāll probably have so little understanding of the concept that it might not be a democracy in our image. I drew comparisons between our apparent need to spread democracy with the concept of white manās burden during the British Empire. We justify our actions by convincing ourselves that we are a civilising influence, yet conditions worsen for those weāre trying to āhelpā.
I donāt think itās a coincidence that Tunisia, the nation with the least amount of āhelpā, is the only nation from the Arab Spring that has a chance of implementing democracy. Libya is a haven for extremist groups and warlords. The Sinai peninsula has IS crawling all over it. I made the point that everywhere weād helped, our solutions had sown death and destruction.
The really amusing thing is that the last period of real stability involved a caliphate of sorts, one of the things that racist Facebook morons declare is so dangerous.
What caliphate and where? Do you prclaim to know what the citizens want? So say we shouldnāt help them? What should we do? Does this make me right all along with the concept of simply leaving them alone? And I agree they have to fight for freedom theselves, blood will be shed and 99.9% of it innocent but who are we to draw sectarian lines again? They are a God fearong people and law and order can not reason with that only a totalitarian regime can.
To Western people its a backwards philosophy but I refer to impoverished people again and its all that they have, fredom isnāt free it was fought for in the work place, trenches and courtrooms it has never been given without pain, a proper Pandoras box.
So weāre spending money on bombs to destroy schools and hospitals overseas, instead of building schools and hospitals here.
Dozens of health facilities have come under attack in Yemen and Syria in the past four months. This cannot become the new normal. This cannot become an acceptable trend to which the world resigns itself. Please join us in our indignation and ask your leaders to stop bombing hospitals. For armies, too, the protection of civilians should be a high priority, not just to avoid legal prosecution, but because no one should be indifferent to the loss of human life.
Gotta wonder if Hillary Benn is feeling as good about his speech now.
The example of the hospital was in Yemen, yet this journalist brings Syria into the conversation from nowhere and refrences no evidence for the statementā¦ From what Iāve seen the strategy in Syria has been in the main to avoid cities. Unlike Russia who are activity bombing schools, market places etc indiscriminately. Multiple reports out of Syria report this to be the case.
Hereās todayās latest update about the resistance of the people of Raqqa to IS, which references coalition targets vs Russia and Assad.
So unless Iām missing something really obvious, I donāt undersand what Hillary Benn has to not feel good about given his speech was about Syria, not Yemen (which alone has plenty of need to be focused on).
And yes, being involve in Syria is an expensive business, but given the negative impact the current situation has and potentially could have more on the UK, you could argue itās a necessity.
The reports coming out of the US suggested that many of their sorties were hitting nothing, coming up empty. The French were also involved. In order to argue that it is a necessity, the UK has to be bringing something decisive to the table that our Western allies lack. Thatās not the case, so Iām left to conclude that aside from any personal conviction of Cameron and his government, this is just a gigantic and ongoing earner for anyone that makes those bombs.
Well, clearly itās not an easy situation to be making progress with (unless you are prepared to bomb schools, market places) but the report I linked to suggests contrary, as do other reports coming out of the area. So I guess it depends on who you want to listen to.
Syrian civilian journalist Rami Jarrah has been arrested by Turkish authorities. This guy is as brave as it gets, and his reports from inside Syria have been a massive insight into whatās happening, and what the Syrian people are experiencing and thinking. Really do hope this is resolved and he is freed.
āWe estimate that 7 Daesh combatants have been killed or wounded as a result of RAF airstrikes in Syria between 2 December 2015 and 29 January 2016.ā
From the article. They estimate seven Daesh combatants killed as a result of British involvement in two months. Weād probably have had more lethal success if weād made it known in Pompey that ISIS were paediatricians.
The article does also say that they have been used against ground targets like revenue earning oil infrastructure, vehicles and a command and control centre.
The article does also say that they have been used against ground targets like revenue earning oil infrastructure, vehicles and a command and control centre.
All military objectives that could have been achieved with other means than Brimstone and/or without British involvement.
The reality is that weāve been running military operations in Syria for sixty days and taken out seven targets. We think. That is a tremendous amount of money spent to achieve a miniscule fraction of the stated aim.
With specific reference to its achievements, my understanding is that the missile was going to be the decisive difference in the Syrian conflict for two reasons. First, it is apparently good at hitting moving targets; all other missile systems before this were presumably crap at this. Second, it is supposed to be configurable to cause low collateral damage.
That acknowledged, I think all of that might be irrelevant anyway because the statement referred to the overall involvement (unless I read it incorrectly), not the specific performance of the Brimstone. Furthermore, if they have taken out vehicles with the Brimstone, the drivers arenāt on the casualty lists.
Iāve got the same opinion then that I do now; everything said about it was political bollocks aimed at assuaging concerns around collateral damage, justifying the 100K per pop deployment of these ostensibly lethal bastards.
I know itās not in that article, but I do love the fact we non-ironically have drones that we proudly call Reaper. Puts me in mind of this Mitchell and Webb sketch.
Iāve just finished reading back through Sotoniansā perspectives on this topic.
I hate situations like the one I now find myself in, as there are things that I know about the utter shit being carried out in Syria, through certain consultation work I undertake, that I am prevented by NDAs from speaking openly about.
This sucks in the sense that all I can do is tell you what I know, but I cannot either show or tell you about the evidence that actually backs up what I say.
As such, I do not expect to be roundly believed, yet, I cannot in conscience sit here and say nothing.
So here goes: The Chemical attacks that were blamed on Assad were nothing to do with him or his government. They were carried out to order by an American Private Millitary Contractor (that I cannot name) with the specific aim of ousting Assad, with the help of a complicit media that simply print/report whatever their corporate paymasters tell them to.
Even the original āuprisingā in Syria was fomented and whipped up into a frenzy by these same paid contractors. I am not saying that there were no people in Syria unhappy with their own government at that time ā but I am saying it would never have spiralled into the devastating mess that we see ravaging the country and its people to this day, without initial American intervention.
As I say, sadly I can offer no proof of what I say, all I can do is tell you that I myself have seen crystal clear evidence in the form of documentation with my own eyes that irrefutably proves this. I do not expect to be blindly believed, but my conscience forces me to lay that out on the table regardless of any flack that I may or may not receive in light of doing so.
For āArab Springā ā read ā filling in the āNon-Integrating Gapā.
