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.

[mwe12]

The US under Obama and Kerry will at some point if the US continues to do nothing be complicit in those killings if they are not already.

They are not complicit in those killings, though they rather are regarding KSA and company in Yemen and through their support of other extremist groups while importing US weapons and hanging out under a US defense umbrella.

Though two terrorists for each civilian is considerably better than Israel's six civilians per Hezbollah member, even more so when they are bombing people who hide among civilians with 1970s tech.

What does it take for the President and his DoS to stand up and state that if a nation state commits war crimes then the leader of that nation state must be charged with war crimes..

We going to host a dinner for our Mideast kinglets at Bad Saint and then arrest them all?

UN SecGen has clearly stated today the use of starvation is a war crime and if the US which claims to follow the Law of Land Warfare carefully rereads it...the deliberate targeting of civilians by a military is also a war crime......

Cuts both ways.

Reference Assad cyber attacks.....currently a high number of ongoing Syrian cyber attacks originating in Damascus and targeting the KSA....has been occurring in waves all day. Have seen the same tactic being used out of Iraq focusing on the KSA and that has been steady all day.

And poor victimized KSA exports money for terrorists and radicals the world around...

Although the subtle question is ...does the WH actually agree with the killing of civilians and believe the attacks on FSA are OK.....in the their striving for a "legacy"......

America has no stomach for a war over these guys and the government has been unable to hide the stink of the anti-Assad forces. His base has increasingly moved towards staying out foreign conflicts and the other side, which he can't lead to water, has a mix of "let them kill each other", "kill them all let God sort them out", "Obama is a wimp", and a some unrepentant neocons.

It be good for the WH to look like they are doing something as it will be harder and harder to restrain Turkey and KSA both who view themselves "as defenders of the faith and Sunni global community" and Arabs when they perceive Iran is out to destroy Sunni's and Arabs.

Through support of IF, JAN and ISIS....

e are slowly getting to that point of no return OR they release the MANPADs and argue the need to defend defenseless civilians from Assad and Russian AFs.....we are almost at that point.

Thankfully I hope the US has learned from Afghanistan and has put enough pressure on them to not send MANPADS to terrorists...

NOW after that surreal drone footage this is the utter reality of a deliberate Russian air strike on civilians which might require Kerry to do more than simply "ask".....and Kerry wonders why the HNC makes "pre conditions" that he himself via the UNSC has already agreed to BUT cannot fulfill......come on it is not rocket science...just humanity...

They are basically demanding Assad/Putin surrender before they will talk.

Maybe this can help the Obama WH and Kerry fully understand the effects of Russian air strikes and just why the rebel HNC Geneva team demands they stop...this town had roughly 24K before the Russian groups attacked with Spetsnaz and Shia militia, Iraqi Shia militia, IRGC and Hezbollah....and over 800 Russian air strikes and that included carpet bombings with the Tu-122.

It's a war and Russia did not kill 24k people in that town, they fled from a civil war. Talk about a flawed taking point.

An interesting game is afoot it appears...so now if the US announces they are ceasing air strikes against all except IS/and maybe JaN and the Russians do not follow suit and continue to bomb FSA a party in the talks...IS in fact then Russia responsible for the failure of any further talks..at least until they stop bombing everyone except IS??

So would the FSA/IF stop shooting at the SAA? I think not. Russia is totally within its rights and acting above board in bombing the IF/FSA.

Maybe when it comes to Syria Kerry should be replaced with the former Ambassador to Syria...at least he calls a spade a spade.......

Thanks but no. We sure don't need another idiot calling for the use of force or giving aid to terrorists. Good to let him whine from the sidelines in some useless "think tank."

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mi...-idUSKCN0V61M4
Before agreeing to talks, the HNC had been seeking U.N. guarantees of steps including a halt to attacks on civilian areas, a release of detainees, and a lifting of blockades. The measures were mentioned in a Security Council resolution approved last month that endorsed the peace process for Syria.

Sabra said a response from de Mistura was "unfortunately still ink on paper". "We are not certain that the opportunity is historic," he told Arabic news channel Arabiya al-Hadath.

Riad Hijab, who heads the Syrian opposition council, told Arabiya TV members might be in the city of Geneva, but would not attend the talks. He demanded immediate steps to alleviate the plight of Syrians under siege and bombardment.

...
The exclusion of a powerful Kurdish faction that controls wide areas of northern Syria has triggered a boycott by some of the invitees. Turkey had opposed the PYD's participation on the ground it views it as a terrorist group.

The United States, whose Secretary of State John Kerry is among those pushing for negotiations to start on Friday, urged the opposition to seize the "historic opportunity" and enter talks without preconditions to end the war, which has also displaced more than 11 million people.

.....
The HNC groups political and armed groups fighting Assad. It includes some of the main armed groups fighting in western Syria, including the Islamist Jaysh al-Islam, which is deemed a terrorist group by Russia, and Free Syrian Army factions that have received military support from states including the Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Earlier this week the Syrian army took a strategic town in the southern province of Deraa, securing its supply routes from the capital to the south, days after retaking more territory in Latakia province.

Damascus, Tehran and Moscow have objected to the inclusion of groups they consider terrorists in any peace talks.

Deputy Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Thursday his country strongly opposed moves by Saudi Arabia to allow "terrorists in a new mask" to sit down for talks.

[mwe12]

. is there any adults left in the WH and the NSC....??

Yes, ergo why we are not doing more.

[.am NATO and the EU the US is now out of the leadership role Obama has wanted.....it is now all up to the various regional powers against Russia and Iran

A bunch of GCC kinglets who cluster bomb weddings and couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag, teamed with a state which jails people for discussing a genocide it did 100 years ago and is bogged down fighting Kurds. The world trembles.

The US has never intended that the bombing actually stop, never intended to end toe war crimes of killing civilians, has never intended to end the starvation an another war crime even agreed to by Ban, and this is critical never really intended to remove Assad WHEN for four years Obama claimed he had to go......WHY he simply has no strategy nor foreign policy.

And thank God we have done so little.

So mwe12 as a massive supporter of Putin's/Assad's moves in Syria...you must be fully aware of every statement he has made on IS being in Syria...based on all those statements..."he is in Syria to destroy Islamic State" OR at least that is WHAT he is stating publicly.... but you already know that......

BTW...mwe12...this was just in ...ABSOLUTELY not a single IS fighter and or IS positon where this barrel bomb from Assad landed...not a single IS anywhere to be seen......SO your Putin is doing WHAT supporting a genocidal dictator...GUESS he is because "it sure ain't IS he is trying to destroy in his protection of Assad."

A. Assad is not committing a genocide.
B. Russia has bombed ISIS. Russia is still bombing ISIS.
C. Russia is within its rights to bomb the FSA/IF/JAN while supporting Assad. Putin does not have to limit his strikes to only ISIS.

Otherwise just keep at reading the posted comments as that is also a form of learning about the world around you especially with the limited US MSM info on the ME that you get in the US..........

Your comments are weird non-native English speaking rants about Obama. Seeing people who have opinions on the spectrum with mine are a part of the reason the US has not gotten deeper with Islamists, I would say I matter more than you.

The 24K did in fact flee...WHY over 800 air strikes...many of them carpet bombing strikes...so they were suppose to stay and be killed...come on .....that is worth a snide remark...come on now you can do better.

Yeah they left - so mentioning the population between now and before the fighting started is an attempt to make it look as if they are dead, and not fled from 5 years of civil war. Maybe if the islamists had not held up in urban areas in the first place...

So instead of cutting and pasting why not attempt to state what you actually believe and or not believe then we can cut and paste.

I have many times. America should stay the hell out of this and let Russia/Hezbollah/Iran/Assad flatten JAN/ISIS/IF, I would go further and say we should join in striking those groups to keep America safe.

So keep on commenting but am backing out of this as you are lost in a mountain of what the Germans would call "altered state of reality" or what I call "cognitive dissonance"....meaning lost between what you think you know balanced against the brutal reality of the ME that you somehow missed by being in the US that counters your own believes or biases.

Please then keep your railing to Germany being complicit on this and leave us silly Americans out of your daily rants.

A third grade German student argues like you argue.

I don't know any. But fly to America and hand out flyers calling on people to save IF/JAN. Make sure you tell them that the local AQ aren't so bad.

BTW mwe12 while you are riding the so called "silver line",

I am sure I am the only American in this conversation. Probably the only one with a job also.

use your smart phone and look up in "Websters"...you do know the book?, and check the definition of "complicit"......

We are no more complicit than East Timor. No court of law would put ascribe any legal liability against Obama for acting a conspirator to Assad/Putin by not rushing in and handing out MANPADs to Islamists. Your argument holds up nowhere.

Where we are complicit is in helping the KSA wedding crash in Yemen.

If you do not respond to this direct question then we know for sure trolling is ongoing...awaiting your response to the question......

Calling you out on being totally wrong on the idea of American responsibility does not make someone a troll. Being against ones country getting in bed with JAN/IF does make you a troll. Welcome to the reality of being on the losing side of an issue.

http://www.businessinsider.com/syria...rogress-2016-1

The council will apparently continue to deliberate in the coming days and weeks over whether it will attend at all — a development that is in line with Russia's strategy for winning the war on behalf of the regime.

"The bickering over the opposition delegation for Geneva III is the ideal opposition the Russians wish to present—leaderless, aimless and weak," Antoun Issa, a senior editor at the Middle East Institute, wrote on Thursday.

He continued:

It all leads to the fulfillment of the regime's and Russia's strategy: a Syria divided between terrorist jihadists and the Assad regime. Such a portrayal leaves the West with no option but to legitimize the Assad regime in the fight against terror, and certify Russia as the primary power in Syria.

The delegation's decision to skip the talks comes after its final calls for Syria's government to end its aerial bombardments on civilians and lift its sieges on rebel-held areas went unheeded by the UN's Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura.

De Mistura had insisted at a press conference on Monday that "our line ... is clear: no preconditions, at least to start the talks."

The HNC sent a letter to de Mistura and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon reiterating its demands on Wednesday. It convened in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to await clarification from de Mistura over whether its preconditions would be met before Friday.

"There is a problem we would like to clarify with de Mistura," Riyadh Naasan Agha, a member of the HNC, told ABC. "Is the main aim of these negotiations for them to be held or to succeed?"