Syria in 2017 (April-December)

[Azor]

And again here is what you simply are not getting...you can "defeat" IS on the ground...BUT again in Iraq I watched the US military claim they "defeated" AQI by 2008/2009...

Please read my comments fully before replying. I specifically and explicitly referred to defeating Daesh “on the battlefield”. If you have read my past comments, you will see that I have consistently asserted that Sunni Arab supremacism cannot be defeated by other ethnic and sectarian groups nor without resolving Sunni Arab grievances. I have also asserted that only Sunni Arab egalitarians, such as elements of the Free Syrian Army and Iraq’s Golden Division, can defeat Sunni Arab supremacists such as Al Qaeda and Daesh.

However, there must be the perception of victory over Daesh before Americans will countenance efforts to deal with the Turkish-Kurdish conflict.

As a historical parallel, in 1944 Stalin delayed the Red Army’s drive towards Germany in order to conquer Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. He did not have to justify this deviation, or his vision beyond Germany’s defeat. Yet what Briton would have tolerated Churchill pondering conflict with the Soviet Union, or Operation Unthinkable?

Thus, we need a publicity stunt so that the real work can begin. Who better to deliver on that then the current president?

I will remain on my soap box as long as US FP is operating under the Trump Principle of "Wag the Dog"...which is neither a strategy or a FP and simply uses any action to deflect and or direct attention away from a lack of a strategy and or FP...on anything!

Lister is pleased with the airstrike on Shayrat.

Regardless, millions of Americans now believe in a new lost cause: the “stolen” election of 2016. Prior to the campaign, I had considered the current president to be vain, vapid and venal. Now, I would say that his former opponent exhibits those qualities to a far worse degree.

Almost three weeks after the United States dropped its most powerful non-nuclear bomb in Eastern Afghanistan, the Islamic State group continues to show battlefield resilience as well as run its FM radio channel in the area.

And? One could question whether the MOAB is more powerful than the MOP. I didn’t realize that a single MOAB was supposed to defeat Daesh in Afghanistan. Why did Obama keep it in storage for so long, then?

Actually if one really does reread Mao and his writings on guerrilla warfare...IS is in a phase two actually possibly a full phase three and when pushed hard simply backs back down to a phase two and or phase one guerrilla war. If pushed harder.

Isn’t guerrilla warfare and subversion preferable to conventional mobile warfare?

AND here is the key in both Iraq and Syria...there will be a lot of disaffected Sunni's remembering the ethnically cleansing by Shia militias or sectarian genocide conducted by Shia's in general and West standing by doing nothing and they will then support quietly that new guerrilla war...

Curious. I would imagine that they would remember the bloody hands of Iran and Russia, to say nothing of China watching with disinterest, while the West at least made some effort. The leading Sunni Arab state is a U.S. ally, whereas Iran and Russia are adversaries.