Or with a vestigial morality, it appears.
“Had Western powers, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey overthrown Syria, an al-Qaeda-style government would have seized power. It would have combined with ISIS-held territories to form a massive and violent caliphate with all of the arms presently held by the Syrian Arab Army. Surrounding nations would have collapsed as a result, and been integrated into the savage caliphate. This terroristic government would have annihilated millions of moderate Muslims and religious minorities,” Sen. Black asserted.There’s nothing fanciful about Sen. Black’s assessment. Removal of Assad and defeat of the Syrian Arab Army would have been an unmitigated, far-reaching disaster and nothing would have stood in the way of just such a nightmare as Black envisioned had the Syrians not fought back and Russia, Syria, and Hezbollah come to their aid.He went on to say: “Had the West and its Arab allies succeeded in toppling Syria, I am convinced that Europe would now be threatened by jihad waged not by isolated terrorists, but by massive armed forces. In 2016, I went to Palmyra right after it was liberated by the Syrian armed forces. When I spoke to the pilots and aircrew standing by an attack aircraft, I told them that they were not only fighting to defend Syria but that they were defending the entire civilized world.”[1]
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Notes
[1] "Sen. Richard Black to ST: U.S. has established 17 bases in Syria without the slightest lawful justification for doing so." Interview by Basma Qaddour, The Syria Times, 11/22/18 (emphasis added).
ISIS in particular was and is actively supported by several countries, including specifically the US. The main ISIS area in southeast Syria is only 3 miles from a major US base, and yet the ISIS area goes unmolested. A number of reporters claim that the US actively defends ISIS form attacks by Assad's forces.
ReplyDeleteEven if that last claim is false (I happen to believe it.), it remains true that ISIS is pumping oil from Syrian fields and exporting it for sale. It collects the revenues from the sales. ISIS also routinely receives new recruits and military supplies. All this despite the fact that all the Syrian borders are under the complete control of the US and its allies.
The US took no action against ISIS until its forces came close to Baghdad, and even then the bulk of the fighting was done by Iran and the Shia militias. The Kurds conspicuously stood aside, as they usually do in Syria. The only forces that fought ISIS early on were the Russians. They bombed the oil convoys the US refused to touch.
Some years ago I remember - don't recall the source, of course - a Syrian General saying about the meddling "Don't these people understand we're the only thing keeping ISIS from taking over and then going into Europe"? Or something like that.
ReplyDeleteAssad's a monster. Of that there's no doubt. But he's got his eyes set on THIS side of the life/death divide; he values his own skin. You can work with a person like that, as distasteful as that person might be. In the real world of geopolitics, sometimes you have to do that because the alternatives are worse.
Sykes.1, you're right on all counts. The al-Tanf site is a training area for some kind of force the U.S. wants to see take the field against Assad. It's also intended to be a roadblock for anything coming from Iran.
ReplyDeleteIt was pathetic the way the ISIS oil tankers operated without interference from the U.S. or "the Coalition." When the Russians came in they put a stop to that eo instante much to the embarrassment of the U.S. After that, we got on the stick sorta kinda but before we ignored this sick trade.
The West has been singularly oblivious to the consequences of its actions to destabilize countries. It's been an amazing moral dereliction.
ReplyDeleteI don't see Assad as the so-called monster that the West has portrayed him as. His primary sin seems to have been fighting back when his country was invaded. The crematorium in the prison story as well as the story about dead bodies stacked up after his police got through with them are both bogus. Anything else that can be hung on him or his people are exactly what you'd expect from a vicious conflict where the insurgents behead, burn, and drown prisoners and traffic in sex slaves. The essence of the charge against Assad appears to be that the 500,000+ civilian casualties are the result of his ordering deliberate attacks on civilians and only civilians, as though urban warfare can be anything what it was when we (the U.S.) attack Raqqah and Mosul.
Even the story of Syrian government's targeting of protestors in 2011 is false. His police were initially unarmed and they were fired on and killed by the jihadi scum.