Assad is back for good in Syria - and with Trump’s blessing

It looks like Trump will get credit for yet another diplomatic triumph ... really, for not getting in the way of one: there will be peace in Syria.

Assad will stay in power, some of his enemies will get asylum abroad, the Russians will persuade the Iranians and their proxies to go back home and will provide security for Assad. They get their naval base secured and can pretend to be big players on the world scene. The Arab regimes get to see the Iranians pushed back. The Israelis get a neutred Syria on their border. Everyone's happy except the Iranians and the opponents of Assad, both the democrats and the jihadis. The US can continue to withdraw from this tar-baby region, not needing to be there anymore to guarantee access to oil (praise be to fracking!!!!)

I hope this allows Trump to reverse himself on the Iranian nuclear deal.

It won't arouse any significant opposition in the US Congress because Israel is for it, and of course Congress does what it's told where the Israelis are concerned.

A win-win all 'round, except for any Assad opponents who can't get out. We should all lobby for taking them in -- not the jihadis of course but the genuine democrats.

The Kurds are screwed, it looks like, unless they can become Russian clients.

A full article on this by a reporter with lots of experience in the Middle East, in the conservative British Spectator, here.

 

excerpt:

Israel, he said, would have no problem working with an Assad regime in Syria in the future. This is despite his repeated calls for regime change, and the Israeli air force bombing military targets inside the country dozens of times over the past few years.

So why is Bibi now keen on Assad? Because his main concern is routing the Iranian forces who have been settling down in Syria — often with Russian connivance. Israel also wants fighters from Hezbollah to return to Lebanon, and for Syria’s own forces to stay away from the border areas with Israel. If Russia would agree to this, Israel would be content to accept that Syria is under Russian management — and that the Kremlin has its own naval base on the Mediterranean.

Putin seems to have convinced Netanyahu that he would do everything in his power to see off the Iranians, and keep everyone far from the Israeli border. Given the almighty mess inside Syria, that is as much as Israel should reasonably expect of Putin in the short term. And what do the Iranians get in return? In what appears to be compensation for selling them out, Putin announced $50 billion in direct Russian investment in Iran’s oil and gas sectors — up from precisely nada the day before. Hezbollah can now retreat to southern Lebanon and Iran can even save face by saying its revolutionary guard has seen off Assad’s enemies.

 

Trump will take credit for it, just as he does for the sun rising but I think most people will see it for what it is, yet another opportunity for the big time oppressors in the area to **** on everyone else's head. Who could possibly be against that? unless you just bought a new hat.

 

But what's the alternative?

 

From your link--

No one is likely to congratulate Trump for having skilfully navigated the Syrian minefield. But his decision to leave Syria’s fate to the Syrians (and their new friends in Russia) is the bravest and most logical decision by a US president when it comes to the Middle East since Eisenhower ordered Britain, France and Israel to withdraw from Suez. His comments at the Helsinki press conference underlined how little interest he has in the conflict: he sees it as someone else’s war. And if American withdrawal means handing Russia a large sphere of influence in the Middle East, another Mediterranean asset to go along with Ukraine, then so be it.

We had best get used to this American disinterest. Once, Washington policed the Middle East because it thought it would always depend on the region for its energy. Now America will soon be energy self-sufficient — and the expectation of this is visibly shaping its foreign policy. Last year the US produced 90 per cent of its domestic energy needs. So why should the US continue to spend blood and treasure keeping peace in the Middle East? Fracking means it can now finally leave, as long as the Saudis remain willing to help control oil prices.

Under Trump, Americans can now envisage a time when their country isn’t directly involved in a military conflict in the combustible Arab world — with all sides desperate to end the disastrous Saudi-led war on Yemen, and US troops playing an ever more marginal role in Iraq — for the first time in living memory. While it would be naive to hope that the terror threat in the West has disappeared, it is true to say that Islamic State is now effectively defeated and al-Qaeda is a shadow of its former self. Thankfully, even war against Iran remains a distant neocon fantasy, with Trump opting instead for economic sanctions as a way of bringing about regime change in Tehran. (It won’t work, but that’s another story.) He also achieved almost overnight what many had thought impossible: getting the Saudis to abandon their hateful Wahhabi ideology and to stop funding terror abroad.


Great article.

 

Yes, I thought so as well. Never heard of the author before though.

 

Bernie Sanders?

 

I didn't follow the Sanders campaign ... just assumed he was basically an old-time New Dealer. He seems like a decent fellow personally.
What are his foreign policy proposals like?

 

If the Kurds become russian clients in Syria, will Iraq and Turkish Kurds be far behind. Now there is a giant invitation to continuing the clustermuck.

So trump has conceded Assad the victory in the interests of "peace". Will be interesting to see if this actually happens. And of course all the players get a "get outta jail free" card for all their war crimes and crimes against humanity. Even better Assad gets reconstruction money from America. Yet another win for the fascists I guess.

Is it just me or does Trump squander America's hard earned international political capital and position for his own domestic political purposes?

 

The situation would be perfect now if all the chemicals used in fracking were biodegradable.

 

Mr Trump has turned the world upside down.

Had there been no Trump, and had Bernie Sanders won the Democratic nomination and the Presidency, then he could very conceivably be doing just the same sort of thing in Syria that Trump is doing, i.e.

---- doing what the Israelis tell him to do
---- carrying on in the spirit of President Obama, and trying to get out of this mess,
---- doing what has pretty much been the thrust of the liberal-leftist base's foreign policy for a long time now.

And the Republicans, you can absolutely bet on it would be ... well, their instinct would be to cry 'treason' and 'bomb 'em' etc etc... but the Israeli endorsement would probably reduce them to incoherent grumbles.

The emergence of F-35 liberals, and peace-with-our-Russian-friends conservatives, has been something to witness, I can tell you!

And it's not only mainstream liberals and conservatives who are confused. I follow a Marxist discussion listmail, and the war there between pro-Assad anti-Americans, and the anti-Assad anti-Americans is something to see. (Carried on at a much higher level than the usual lib/con spat. Some of those people know what they're talking about.)

Anyway, hopefully it will be a done deal. If the Russians are smart -- and I think they are -- they will bend over backward to keep the Israelis on side, will buy off the Iranians with whatever they can scrape together, and will make sure Assad isn't too openly horrible to the defeated side. I don't know how much influence they will have with the Turks, so the fate of the Kurds ... the only not-too-awful people in the region ... is probably grim. But maybe the Russians will be smart here too and make Assad do some sort of autonomy thing.

 

Why did Obama even go to Syria. This whole mess looks like a half-job. We should have either came strong and got **** done, or not getten involved at all. Throwing millions at training 20-30 “good” resistance fighters was the dumbest idea, yet Obama is being praised by the left as the smartest leader that ever walked on this earth.
To me Syria is a giant Obama screwup with his name written all over it.
I am all for pulling out of that useless mess 100% and let Pootin have his little naval base there, as if it’s of any significant importance anyway.

 

A 100% Russian plan, where they get to have their way.
Seems obvious Trump likes it. He's Putin's little wife.

 

I wish the rebels had won and taken Assad out. But I wouldn't want to go, and wouldn't want any relatives to go and shed blood to achieve that in Syria.

The MSM wept and moaned about this for seven or eight years but it was all hot air, no call to action and sacrifice. IOW we MSM just want it so it automatically should be.

 

"The Kurds have no friends but the Mountains".

 

If Vlad the Bad gives the order for us to cool it in Syria, YOU KNOW Dirty Donald will follow his orders.

 

Why don't we, just for one year, divert the billions we send to Israel to buy arms with, to the Kurds?

 

The trick is sorting out the jihadists from the others, and that ain't easy!! In fact it has been Assad's problem for the past 6 years.

 

Yes, although I think a lot of the jihadis were foreign imports, sent by our gallant allies in Saudi and the Gulf States. So the first criterion should be, are you Syrian? And then, we have to rely on Syrian democrats to filter out the Syrian Islamists.

But the problem will probably be, that there is not an absolutely bright line between a Syrian secular democrat, on the one hand, and an Islamist, on the other.

 

Couldn't agree more. The Kurds are brave soldiers. They weren't the ones who ran away leaving weapons and vehicles for ISIS to scavenge. I suggested on this forum that they should be given a homeland. A poster who may be Turkish, said " over my dead body". Uphill battle to get agreement on this.

 

Your "genuine democrats" caused a great mess didn't they.
These "genuine democrats" collaborated with ISIS where it could help them with their agenda.
How can they claim they're fighting for the Syrian people if they collaborate with these maniacs.

Not to mention that they collaborated with outside forces who want a piece of their country. They're selling out their people and their country to foreigners at that point.

 

If the Kurds had a wise leadership, they would offer the Turks a deal: no dismemberment of Turkey, but a Kurdish homeland in what is now Iraq and perhaps part of Syria, with Turkish Kurds encouraged to immigrate (hopefully not in the way the Kurds helped the Armenians to 'immigrate' in 1916.) But whatever happens, the main problem is that the populations in that part of the world are mixed: Turkmen, Kurds, Arabs ... with religious divisions making another fracture line. It's why I always fall over laughing when some earnest liberal proclaims "Diversity is strength!"

 

I don't know the details of this collaboration, but people in a war are always tempted by the enemy-of-my-enemy argument.

Joseph Stalin signed a pact with Hitler and co operated with him in dividing up Eastern Europe -- deeply disappointing those in the West who had hoped Hitler would attack the USSR rather than them. Then the West allied with Stalin against Hitler. Churchill offered Libya to the Italians if they wouldn't join Hitler. I am sure none of these people had any illusions about their temporary allies.

As for 'collaborating with outside forces' ...да, товарищ, они существуют!

I am sure there are some very good people among the Syrian democrats, far better morally than the apologists for Assad's torture-chamber regime. Too bad that they weren't strong enough to overthrow it on their own.

 

Kurd's should know better than to trust any ally
for their national aspirations.

The over throw of Saddam did NOT deliver a Kurdistan, did it.
Circa 1919 Churchill and the Brits didn't wish the Kurds to sit on all that oil.
Just like and nation building a post Saddam Iraq.


Moi

​

 

The difference is none of these collaborations and pacts you mentioned were at the cost of their own people's lives.
Don't you see the difference? Syrians helped bearded maniacs who came from all around the world terrorize other Syrians, real Syrian civilians.

They're idiots is what they are. They believed in the West when they were told they'll get all the help needed. They got screwed over pretty bad.
They were probably ok with some Syrians to die at the hands of these maniacs as long as it helped them. But they got nothing. Just death among the Syrians.