🇸🇾 Syria

Reasonably serious discussion
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Assad dismisses Cameron’s strategy as a farce.

He said: “You cannot defeat them [Isis] through air strikes alone. You cannot defeat them without co-operation with forces on the ground.

“You cannot defeat them if you do not have buy-in from the general public and the government …They are going to fail again.”

“This is a new episode in a long series of David Cameron’s classical farce … where are they? Where are the 70,000 moderates he is talking about? There is no 70,000. There is no 7,000.”

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Originally posted by @pap

Assad dismisses Cameron’s strategy as a farce.

He said: “You cannot defeat them [Isis] through air strikes alone. You cannot defeat them without co-operation with forces on the ground.

“You cannot defeat them if you do not have buy-in from the general public and the government …They are going to fail again.”

“This is a new episode in a long series of David Cameron’s classical farce … where are they? Where are the 70,000 moderates he is talking about? There is no 70,000. There is no 7,000.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-president-bashar-al-assad-says-british-air-strikes-will-fail-and-mocks-david-cameron-farce-a6762591.html

Cameron’s 70,00-strong force is almost certainly immaginary, but quoting Assad’s view on events in Syria is rather like seeking Robert Mugabe’s views on democracy. Assad considers himself to be the sole legitimate political entity in Syria, and views anyone opposed to his rule as a terrorist (a view echoed by Russia and Iran), He also sees himself as the only legitimate opposition to IS in Syria, though his forces and those of his allies have shown considerably more interest in attacking the Free Syrian Army and other opponents of Assad than they have in attacking IS. For a map of air strikes in Syria since the end of September, follow this link. He is scarcely about to acknowledge the presence of any legitimate opposition to his government.

As an aside on Assad, I heard an interview with him a few months ago in which he was questioned on tthe well-documented use of “barrel bombs” by the Syrian airforce on civilian areas. His response was to laugh this off with a comment about his army having bombs, bullets and missiles, but not barrels or cooking pots. Nice to see that he considers such things to be funny.

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Originally posted by @Fowllyd

Cameron’s 70,00-strong force is almost certainly immaginary, but quoting Assad’s view on events in Syria is rather like seeking Robert Mugabe’s views on democracy. Assad considers himself to be the sole legitimate political entity in Syria, and views anyone opposed to his rule as a terrorist (a view echoed by Russia and Iran), He also sees himself as the only legitimate opposition to IS in Syria, though his forces and those of his allies have shown considerably more interest in attacking the Free Syrian Army and other opponents of Assad than they have in attacking IS. For a map of air strikes in Syria since the end of September, follow this link. He is scarcely about to acknowledge the presence of any legitimate opposition to his government.

He’s the legal representative of his company, viewed mostly through the lens of a partial Western media. I don’t think we do the subject any credit by excluding his comments, particularly if we want a wider perspective.

As an aside on Assad, I heard an interview with him a few months ago in which he was questioned on tthe well-documented use of “barrel bombs” by the Syrian airforce on civilian areas. His response was to laugh this off with a comment about his army having bombs, bullets and missiles, but not barrels or cooking pots. Nice to see that he considers such things to be funny.

We’ve dealt with worse people than Assad, the Saudis for a start. The problem is that his being around is incompatible with the probable long term plan of having a Balkanised Middle East, each with their own dysfunctional version of democracy if they’re lucky. Jihadist replete hellhole if they are not. His being removed via Russian diplomacy, as has been tried before, won’t work either. It’s incompatible with long term objectives.

The case for Western intervention in Syria was fucked the moment that Putin pulled that extraordinary deal out of the bag after Assad was accused of chemical weapons, a case that was never proved, two years after the event.

People treated Dubya seriously, and if we stick to the media’s narrow definition of absolute bastard, “leader who kills his or her own people”, then yeah, Assad’s regime looks shit compared to the West. Widen that definition to “kills a lot of people illegally” then he does somewhat better than us on the reductive numbers game.

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Another agent to consider. Allegations that Israel is involved have long been floating around, but didn’t spot this official admission until this morning. The news is almost a week old.

Jerusalem (AFP) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted for the first time Tuesday that Israeli forces have been operating in Syria, where the Iran-backed regime is battling rebels including the jihadist Islamic State.

“We occasionally carry out operations in Syria to prevent that country from becoming a front against us,” Netanyahu told reporters during a visit to northern Israel.

“We also do everything to prevent weapons, particularly lethal ones, being moved from Syria to Lebanon,” he added.

Netanyahu did not provide further details and his comments were the first public recognition that Israel has been active in conflict-riddled Syria

http://news.yahoo.com/israel-pm-admits-forces-operating-war-hit-syria-194312782.html

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Boris disagrees with the 70,000 assessment too.

He also thinks that we should work with Assad and Putin.

Help. I am in partial agreement with Boris Johnson.

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I would definitely take Assad’s word for anything. We should ask Putin to confirm though.

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Of course you would, but when you’ve progressed beyond good guy/bad guy shit, put your toy guns away and we can talk politics :lou_wink_2:

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The news reports are coming in thick and fast now, with the Syrian government claiming that US-led forces bombed one of their military bases.

We need not take this seriously, though. The ever trustful spokespeople of our armed forces said they were flying their illegal sorties 30 miles away. Plus, Assad is a bad man that cannot be trusted on anything. Fuck, Syria would be better off with Skeletor in charge.

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Hmm. I’ve seen you take things as fact on a good deal less proof than that given for Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Nobody denies that chemical weapons have been used against civilians in Syria; Assad merely claims that it must have been his opponents that did it.

I don’t disagree with you on a good deal of what you’ve posted there, but Assad’s brutality is well documented. The fact that we deal with Saudi Arabia in spite of the hideous nature of their regime is neither here nor there; you could use that same argument to suggest that anybody is OK to cosy up to. The day that a UK government drops barrel bombs on Birmingham - or on a foreign city, come to that - I’ll think again about your final line on Assad.

I oppose the current campaign of air strikes because I don’t believe that they will be effective without two other things - first, troops on the ground; second. and more importantly, a political settlement in Syria that includes all parties. From a UK point of view, I can’t see where gorund troops are coming from; nor is there any sign that moves towards a genuine political settlement are anything more than hollow talk.

However, I cannot conceive that any political settlement will be possible if Assad remains in power, or if his regime is replaced by a similar one, for the simple reason that such a regime would clearly not include all parties.

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Originally posted by @Fowllyd

Hmm. I’ve seen you take things as fact on a good deal less proof than that given for Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Nobody denies that chemical weapons have been used against civilians in Syria; Assad merely claims that it must have been his opponents that did it.

I repeat, there was no proof of Assad’s involvement in that atrocity, and every fucking reason for him NOT to do it. Chemical weapons had repeatedly been cited as the “red line” that Assad could not cross, despite the fact that the US deployed white phosphorous on Fallujah, and the Israelis have done the same to their enemies.

So I ask you, why on Earth would Assad do the one thing that practically ensures Western intervention?

It was bollocks, first to last. William Hague, in the absence of any proof, was forced into his thesaurus to come up with impressive sounding terminology which masked the fact they had no evidence.

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If not Assad (or his military, with or without his knowledge), then who? Did opposition groups have access to such weaponry? Nobody denies that chemical weapons were used at some point. If memory serves, the “red line” comments were made after allegations of chemical weapons ue had been made, though I could be wrong on that.

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The red line comments were made by Obama in 2012, long before the 2013 incident took place.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-issues-syria-red-line-warning-on-chemical-weapons/2012/08/20/ba5d26ec-eaf7-11e1-b811-09036bcb182b_story.html

So I ask again, why would Assad even consider it?

Given the context, far likelier that the atrocity was carried out by one of the opposition groups, probably supplied through one of the proxies fighting the war.

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I really don’t know who to believe on this - Assad is a barbaric and deluded dictator who has used chemical weapons against his own people numerous times, but our own Coaltion sources will be so keen to play down any incidents to an otherwise uneducated populus that they may just choose to lie. It’s happened before…

How is this such a clusterfuck already? What’s it been, 3 or 4 days since we intervened?

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It was a clusterfuck before we intervened, mikey.

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Our intervention I meant, but yeah the place has been bollocksed for years.

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ah, sorry. Misunderstood.

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What makes you think it’s a clusterfuck on 4 days, Mikey?

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It has been a clusterfuck since 1919.

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