Syria in 2017 (January-April)

[Azor]

…the rebels for the last several years have stated...push out Assad and then we can focus and will focus on IS as they are not Syrians...

Then who will succeed him as leader of the Alawi/Christian/Druze faction?

…IF and I use the term IF..if in fact Obama had been willing to completely ground the Syrian AF and their helicopters there would have been no

1. sarin gas attacks
2. no chlorine barrel bombs
3. no barrel bombs
4. limited very limited refugee flows towards Europe
5. would have greatly limited starvation...ethnic cleansings
6. potentially facilitated the removal of Assad

RE:

1. Not necessarily. Assad could have used rocket artillery
2. See above
   
3. Russia and Iran could have intervened with their airpower in 2013 to replace the SyAAF
   
4. Not necessarily. What of rockets and shells?
   
5. How so? Most of that is done on the ground
   
6. Or the direct intervention of Iran and Russia on Assad’s behalf

The key even today is in fact the removal of Assad as the majority of his society the Sunni's demand it…BUT it clashes with the Iranian green crescent objectives...

His “society” now consists of Alawi, Christian and Druze Arabs, living primarily in the governorates of Latakia, Tartus, As-Suwayda and parts of Homs, Hama, Daraa, Rif Dimashq, Damascus and others.

There is no way that the minorities, be they Kurds, Alawis, Christians or Druze, are going to peacefully accept majority rule by the Sunni Arabs and face a possible “tyranny of the majority”. The best that the Sunni Arabs can hope for are population transfers for mixed areas and border demarcations of the variety carried out in East-Central Europe in the aftermath of World War II.

Simply stated no Iranian troops and no Russian troops and AF...should remain in Syria otherwise I hate to say this we will see an actual partition of Syria into an Assad zone...a Sunni/Turkish zone and a Kurdish zone setting up conflict in Syria for the next two decades at a minimum...

Partitioning the country and imposing ceasefires is the solution. While the Russian and Iranian forces could retreat to Assad’s enclave in the west, any Iranian-led mercenaries attempting to commit ethnic or sectarian cleansing of mixed areas with Sunni Arabs should be considered as FTOs and targeted in the same manner as Daesh and Khorasan.

Face it, Syria is a failed and fractured state. You had might as well pine for Yugoslavia to be pieced back together.

BTW check the posted map which clearly now depicts this green crescent that I have been writing about here since say about the late 2004 timeframe and now in 2017 we are seeing in an accurate map...the "green crescent"...

Yes, Teheran does have imperial ambitions. Yet it is wasting resources to preserve by force what it had already obtained by “soft power” by 2011. Teheran is unconcerned that Lebanon is not a unitary Shia-led state, and it should have moved toward allowing for similar federalism in Iraq and Syria, rather than allowing and/or spurring its allies there to provoke civil wars.

,..I am after participating in three wars in my lifetime not a warmonger by any means…I believe that diplomacy has it's place but when it fails one must be able and willing to use force to resolve issues...

Yet what of the ongoing mass murder and development of WMDs in North Korea? What of the ongoing mass murder and war crimes in Sudan, South Sudan and other parts of Africa? What of ethnic and sectarian cleansing in Myanmar?

Your interest in applying force is confined to a particular region, when the U.S. has global interests. Moreover, the “humanitarian” interventions in Yugoslavia and Libya did far more to damage U.S. relations with its rivals and adversaries than the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq ever did. Merely because YouTube isn’t abounding with footage, doesn’t mean that the paramilitaries and indeed militaries of Africa, have stopped raping, murdering, torturing, maiming and pillaging.

...Notice the crescent shape of the map...then expand that crescent into AFG and on to Pakistan....THEN you will notice that it accurately follows the old Silk Trading Road…

Pakistan (and formerly Iraq) is the reason why Iran has a nuclear weapons program, in addition to state security. Israel is a diversion, not unlike how Russia violates the INF Treaty in response to China not NATO.

Iran has to be very careful with Pakistan, lest the ISI fire up Iran’s Balochis and Sunnis in reply. Nor can the Iranian military defeat Pakistan’s. Even with Indian support, Pakistan is backstopped with nuclear weapons, albeit the U.S. does have a costly and uncertain contingency plan for securing them.

... But bombs can never substitute for a strategic foreign policy in a set strategy. Bombing simply covers up that fact as it is again simply a tactical move on the FP battlefield...kind of like lashing out with no thought behind it to just prove how strong you are...AND that you can go it alone...

It worked for Clinton, who was able to successfully kick a number of cans down the road, from non-proliferation to counter-terrorism. It also worked for Obama, who far from engaging with the Muslim world, pursued a strategy of containment and attrition via airpower.