Syria in 2016: an exchange on what to do

[mwe12]

now if we accept the commenter is from the US then the following comment is directed to the commenter....it is far easier to do a cut and paste critique BUT really hard to formulate a direct answer using knowledge of the area involved.

I take the silver line to work - luckily it is closed today. Thanks Obama.

Of the two of us I think I am the American.

mwe12.....I had posted the comment that JaN has never attacked the US anywhere globally and while they often do crazy internal Syrian things politically and fighting wise that sometimes causes one to shake their heads they are basically Syrian to their roots and take their fighters mainly from inside Syria.....AND yes they have even had internal and open debates about their oath of allegiance to AQ...which is unusual for a so called "terrorist" grouping in the realm of AQ. So again show me any article, or statement coming from JaN issued as a direct threat to the US such as does AQ and or IS???

Basically the above shows you are a mark for terrorists. JAN is AQ. A decade after 9/11 and those clowns were like "yeah this is a movement we want in on." It is a shame and an insult to the victims of 9/11 that we are not hitting JAN and anyone who teams up with them with daily drone strikes - much less vaporize those pow-wows.

The mass killing of civilians is an affront to our common humanity and a threat to our common security. It destabilizes countries and regions … [and] creates grievances that extremists exploit. We have a strong interest in leading an international response to genocide and mass atrocities when they arise. … [It is] less costly when we act preventively before situations reach crisis proportions.

Thankfully empty words. We have sat out of plenty. Thankfully we have kept out at least to the degree we have on this one. Though we should be paying it forward for 9/11 and going after the mass-killers and their allies who were in on 9/11.

Obama administration does not want you to know them as that would require the use of force and Obama is all about the non use of force as he does not want to go down in history as using force.

Takes a surprising amount of personal courage not to deploy US military power to put a new Taliban into power.

BUT has the US even thought about responding to what the anti Assad forces ie FSA has been saying for years now...."help us take care of first Assad and THEN we will take on IS ourselves"..."help arm us and support us ...we will do the fighting ourselves"......sounds like a offer/plan to me.....

BS - Seeing as the FSA fights alongside JAN/IF, who are also terrorists.

0 after the "liberation" by #Putin and #Assad in 2016.

It's a war - civilian populations flee.

You're 9/11 is our 24/7

9/11 as done by the class of people we are "expected" to put into power.

Obama's answer...hey we have this really great successful Syrian strategy that is working ..."all we need is more messaging".....come on....

He has kept us out of getting bogged down there, we are not fighting to put Islamists into power - pretty good job.

Let's get back to the US...do we not preach to the entire world that the benefits of rule of law, good governance and transparency is what drives a developing civil society...yes we do so when a civil society stands up and states "we have had enough of 50 years of dictatorship" and simply now want the rule of law and good governance..... should we simply stand by when via genocide they are being wiped out because of these demands??

There is no genocide - first off.
Secondly we gladly support brutal repression in that part of the world.

BTW...this was written in an article from October 2015 and here we are five months later and the Obama administration has basically caved on anything they have demanded concerning Assad for the last four years....it is telling when one looks at the actions taken by Obama and his NSC.......we simply do not know what to do.

Please do a better job citing things.

BTW...mwe12...perfect example of the RuAF air striking opposition forces fighting with IS..THUS they are in fact protecting IS...DO you hear anything about this in the US MSM and or from Obama and or Kerry...NO

They do bomb ISIS, quite regularly, they are free to hit both groups of terrorists in whatever order they think is best at the moment.

IS that not in the interests of the US and the entire world right now when it comes to IS???

Russia is free to smash both in whatever order they choose.

IS that not in the interests of the US and the entire world right now when it comes to IS???

Or we can sit back and watch Russia/Iran/Hezbollah/Syria do the dirty work for us, basically for free. Let the bad take care of the ugly.

BUT what does the US do to appease unilaterally Putin...it restricts the TOW from the anti Assad fighters the only real equalizer right now in the face of massive combined Assad and Putin air strikes when MANPADs are not being delivered....WHY the restriction of the weapons flows??...

Great news that we stopped giving TOWs to these clowns. Putin changed the nature of the conflict by showing up and thankfully we have cut back our TOW-FSGs for JAN/IF.

ssive combined Assad and Putin air strikes when MANPADs are not being delivered...

Thank God we have prevented that insanity.

After the massive genocide would you support that move??

There is no genocide large or small.

Obama wants to pressure the anti Assad force into compromising with a genocidal dictator, basically surrendering after the massive killing of Syrians would you as an anti Assad force now surrender.....?

But he is not genocidal.

BTW...if I were you I would spend far more time fully understanding the Iranian UW support of Shia militias and militant groupings who have a definite ax to grind with the US in the ME....

Nowhere near the threat of AQ and all of the toads fighting alongside AQ in this conflict.
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If an American tried to join the IF - he (or she) wouldn't be accepted, because the IF does not accept any foreigners (and that since at least two years).

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archiv...p-in-syria.php

Baroudi and his co-conspirators exported American “tactical equipment to Syria for the purpose of supplying and arming Ahrar al Sham and other insurgent groups in Syria whose stated goal is to overthrow the Assad government and install an Islamic state,” according to the DOJ.

Yeah, 'they discredited themselves' - by MSM reporting nonsense about them... somehow, your own statements are contradicting themselves

Water was carried and AJ stories and SOHR BS repeated without much thought - and even today they are calling people "moderate" rather "moderate islamists." The anti-Assad forces own horrible beliefs and actions have made them so unpopular to support in America.

As I said these clowns could learn from the amazing job the PKK, a terrorist group, has done in turning it's local franchise into the defender of women, secular ideals, minorities, and apple pie - all while expanding its control.

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http://www.militarytimes.com/story/m...alks/79347564/

Lavrov emphasized that the Kurdish group, the Democratic Union Party, or PYD, plays an important role in fighting the Islamic State group and is an essential part of political settlement in Syria.

Turkey sees the PYD and its YPG militia group as branches of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, a Kurdish resistance group it has long fought and considers a terrorist group.

Lavrov warned that it would be a "grave mistake" not to invite the PYD. "How can you talk about political reforms in Syria if you ignore a leading Kurdish party?" he said, adding that the Kurds account for 15 percent of the population.

Lavrov also warned against Saudi Arabia's proposal to invite only opposition groups that it hosted at a meeting last month, saying the Syrian peace process should also include other opposition representatives, like those that met for talks in Moscow last year.

The current opposition negotiating team announced in Saudi Arabia last week includes Saudi-backed Islamic rebel factions like Jaish al-Islam, or the Army of Islam, which Russia considers terrorists.

....
n Ankara, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Tuesday reiterated Turkey's opposition to including Syrian Kurdish forces at the Geneva talks.

"A table without the Kurds would be incomplete. We do not oppose the Kurds but we oppose the PYD and YPG who oppress the Kurds," Davutoglu said in his weekly address to his party's legislators. "It is not acceptable for us for a terror organization to be included within the opposition."

Foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, in an interview with NTV television, said Turkey would boycott the talks if the PYD were invited.

Lavrov has dismissed the demand by some opposition groups that the Syrian military must lift the siege of some areas before the talks begin, saying that unblocking the besieged areas and delivering humanitarian aid should be an important part of the negotiations.

"There must be no preconditions for starting the talks, and the humanitarian issues must be among the central issues on their agenda," he said, adding that while the plight of the city of Madaya blockaded by Syrian government forces has been widely publicized, a similar situation in government-controlled Deir el-Zour has been largely out of the public eye.