Latest news from Syria . . .

And yet we are aghast at so-called "Russian meddling" in our election.

The fact is that ISIS's growth like a cancer was deliberate on our part. Obama admitted as much in a New York Times interview with Thomas Friedman. He said he didn't do anything in the beginning in order to teach al-Awaki a lesson. How many lives has that lesson" cost?

I have a problem with our behavior on so many levels. We create a problem that cost untold lives yet sanctimoniously say "Assad must go!". We call Syria and Russia ridding Aleppo of terrorists a "re-conquest", yet we "liberate" Mosul. Here's a news flash for ya'. There are still many bodies buried in the rubble of Mosul thanks to American air power. I saw a picture the other day of a girl, maybe 10 years old, dead for months, with her head and an arm sticking out through slabs of concrete in Mosul. How's that for a lesson?

Our blood-stained hands are all over this. Design or incompetence? At this point who cares? We need to get out NOW and pour some billions into cleaning up the mess we made. We can never give those dead Syrians and Iraqis their lives back, but damn, let's at least spend the money rebuilding instead of destroying.

Assad should NOT go unless the Syrian people say so in an election. We don't have the right, and certainly not the moral authority, to say otherwise.

 

I think we agree on more than we disagree on. As much as a big piece of me would like to just **** and leave that mess to the Russians and Assad, the Kurds have been our friends for a long time, going back to the invasion of Iraq. I don't like the idea of abandoning them to the Turks, Russians, and Assad. I feel we owe it to them to give them some protection, although I also believe they too must agree to end their armed struggle against the Assad government and to be a part of a peace process. That, of course, is contingent upon the Assad government not attacking them, allowing them to live in peace and with a degree of autonomy, albeit as citizens of Syria.

I think that if that country is to ever recover, the ham fisted, brutal tactics perpetrated by the government must come to an end. And if these anti-Assad forces are willing to end the armed struggle, then Assad's tanks and army should return to their bases and end their side of it too. Assad is the symbol of a very bitter past, and I think an important part of the healing of that country would be to select a new leader.

So these are my thoughts and wishes about Syria. Pie in the sky, probably. It's a shattered country, and for now, I remain pessimistic.

 

He was a good leader (albeit a dictator too, but that works for the greater good in the middle east) before the insurrection, so why on earth should he unilaterally stop now? If he withdrew his military, do you seriously believe the jihadists would make a quid pro quo gesture by calling off their action also? No, of course they wouldn't - they'd take full advantage of the perceived peace initiative by stepping it up, and big-time.

 

I am definitely not in favor of the violent overthrow of Assad. I do think Syria should replace Assad, however. I think it should be in a deliberative, peaceful manner, as a part of an overall peace.

I cannot favor investing money into Iraq or Syria. If we do, it will be squandered and stolen. That's just what happens in those countries. The only real chance for rebuilding those countries lies with the people themselves, and the first thing they must do is to stop shooting. Without that, nothing good can happen. The next thing that must happen is that those in power in both countries must share power for the greater good of the country. That is a tall order. People in those countries are still very tribal in their thinking, and loyalty to the tribe usually outweighs loyalty to the overall country. There is great animosity and distrust among the tribes and sects. If Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again (and I stress "if"), it's going to take a long time, and it's up to those people. We cannot impose it on them.

 

Nor should we try to - it was the West's (specifically the US and its poodle the UK) mistaken and disastrous attempt at regime change from the very beginning which has caused this unmitigated catastrophe.

 

Seth, I am not speaking about investing. What I'm thinking of is more along the lines of the "you broke it, you bought it" principle. We owe them that .... at the very least.

What has been done in our name utterly disgusts me. By body count alone, it is worse than "we came, we saw, he died hah-ha-ha-ha!!!", which makes me want to puke.

 

If we did that, presuming you mean rebuild the country of Syria domestically, infrastructurally, and commercially, it would bankrupt all western countries.

 

If you gonna dance to the tune, you gotta pay the piper.

The fact is that all these western countries are increasing their military budgets to counter bogus "Russian aggression" Here in the US, Trump has upped our already obscene military spending by $70 billion, and that's not a one-time thing.

$70 billion would do a lot of repairing.

 

I think one of our areas of disagreement is that I don't think all of these rebels are jihadists, a la Al Qaeda or ISIS.

Those two organizations probably would not agree to any peace. They never do.

Radical Sunni jihadists of the AQ or ISIS ilk are unacceptable to everyone - the U.S., Russia, Assad, the Shiites, and Kurds. All of those AQ/ISIS types have to be stamped out. There must be a clear separation from them by the other rebel groups. The Sunni population has seen with their own eyes what these jihadists are like - their brutality and their cult of death, and I don't think they represent all Sunnis in Syria (or in Iraq for that matter).

Naturally, an end to hostilities by the army would be contingent upon an end to hostilities by others. It would mean that no group, whether it be the U.S. supported groups or the jihadist groups, would be allowed to just advance and take territory.

 

Indeed it would, but the question is - how much of it would actually be used for repairing, and how much would end up in Swiss bank accounts of the great and the greedy of recipient countries?

 

My take, (unless I'm mistaken, and it actually was a rebellion by Syrian malcontents, but I don't think I am!), is that I believe those so-called rebels would have been subsumed by the disparate jihadist groups within a fortnight. I'll put it another way: there's a biblical text which goes something like 'And the meek shall inherit the earth'. The meek won't inherit the earth, the (using your words) ruthlessly brutal and death-dealing cultists will. I repeat - best to get the hell out asap and leave it to those who actually know what they're doing?

 

The question you ask in no way absolves us of our obligation.

I can think of a few ways to ensure the money is well spent. Hell, we could even send Haliburton over there to do the job. Just don't send Syria and Iraq the bill.

Bottom line ...... where there's a will, there's a way. But no, we're too busy with this charade of public perception lest we get caught with our guilt showing.

BTW .... Libya, too!!!

 

I too am disgusted. I, as just one individual American, never wanted anything to do with that conflict in Syria - no arming, no covert training of one side in it - nothing. And I remember that quote you quoted, and she too disgusts me.

I understand the sense of justice you're driving at when you talk about "you broke it, you bought it." But we can't just give away huge, gigantic sums of money to Iraq and Syria. In the first place, the people, and the Congress that represents them, would never agree to it. Second, as I said, the money would be squandered and stolen. Corruption runs rife in those countries. Corruption is the status quo. The bottom line is that they wouldn't spend it on rebuilding. They'd steal it.

 

I'll go along with all of that, except that I don't see why an American firm should profit from the misbegotten expenditure of taxpayer dollars and GBPs by incompetent American and Brit politicians. But hey, if it prevents the embezzlement of the rebuilding aid fund then fine, let Haliburton do the job; it'll take them a minimum of 3 decades, but at least it'll be done in the end. Jeezus what an unholy mess!

 

And Afghanistan?

 

Well, unlike people like John McCain and Hillary Clinton, I feel no loyalty towards the Sunni rebels, regardless of whether they're jihadists or not jihadists. Zero. I do, however, feel some sympathy for the Kurds as I spoke of earlier. And for the civilians and the helpless caught up in all this, I feel sorry for them, and I'm sorry we had anything to do with fueling this catastrophe.

ISIS in Syria and Iraq is largely destroyed. I want out of there, but I don't want to abandon the Kurds. I would like to see an end to war in that country, but who knows? Maybe they don't want an end to it. Maybe they want to fight and kill and destroy until there's nothing left. Most peoples, after long destructive wars, just want an end to it. I guess time will tell.

 

Strangely Zoom, I can't remember a single case where a nation the US invaded, warred with and bombed to f*ck, thereafter hanging out the welcome signs saying America! Please Come Back Soon!

But in order to be scientific about this I'm going to send a questionnaire to the residents of former arch-enemy nations of the US who clearly had designs to attack the old home country with over-ripe Pumkins, chicken-feather-snowballs and other similar deadly mass destructive weapons to see what they. Maybe they'll agree with you, who knows? Anyway, I'm start with the highly dangerous Grenada, move on to the well known nuclear-stocked (and drug-money-laundering free) Panama and then move on to the other 68 nations listed HERE.

 

Afghanistan too.

We need to regard Afghanistan as purely a military problem, but spending money to nation-build there is fruitless.

 

Like we haven't spent enough already? The sums squandered and otherwise misappropriated since it began 16(?) years ago under Kharzai (it's all in Bitter Lake) is breath-taking. And yet the Taliban are still strutting their stuff and blowing up schools, and the 'government' just as corrupt as it ever was, so hardly a case of 'money well-spent'?

 

So true. And all the USA's usual suspects like the UK and France begin weeping crocodile tears and wringing their hands in anguish at the cruelty and destruction. That is to say, the cruelty and destruction that they originally initiated and prosecuted over many years.

But now that they're regime change game-plan is folding quicker than a deck of losing cards in a Nevada casino, they revert to twanging the trusted harp strings to evoke sympathy to give them breathing space to develop a counter-strategy.

Nothing changes.

 

Well observed, but a pity (and an oddity too, but that's neuro linguistic programming for you?) that so few are able to perceive it?

 

We have (not talking about just the US here), in this century, literally wrecked 4 countries (5 counting Yemen). The cost to the US alone is in the trillions (and counting).

Would be better for everyone, and likely cheaper for us, to just leave a trillion by the door on our way out.

 

Let me stop you there Seth.

I assume you haven't seen the 2012 DIA memo HERE?

I also assume you haven't seen or heard about the secret meeting John McCain had with the Caliph of IS in Syria in 2013 (the Caliph, al-Baghdadi is on the left)?



Nor the meeting McCain had with al-Qaeda in Syria.

Here is McCain with Mohammed Nour (in the doorway in blue shirt), spokesman for the Northern Storm Brigade of the al-Nusra Front i.e., al-Qaeda in Syria during the same 2013 visit:



The icing on the cake, of course - and I keep posting this because people don't really like inconvenient truths and find ways to ignore or forget it - is the TV interview with former former French Foreign Minister, Roland Dumas:



And the cherry on the icing on the Syria cake was the capture by Syrian Special Forces, in December 2016, of a number of US Coalition and NATO officers from a bunker in Aleppo. A partial list of 14 names was published but there were more, officers from the US, UK, France and Germany (HERE). I understand they were all returned to their respective masters, presumably in exchange for unstated and certainly unpublished "concessions" to Assad - I assume money, but then I am an awful cynic.

 

Then stay out?

 

And I'll bet they were running rings around him; having watched McCain in the election I got the impression he isn't very bright. But then who among them are? And as for our own shower of ****, the least said about them, the better!