The Syrian "Revolution": A Farce from Beginning to End

How would you feel if you were being mugged in the street in front of a whole crowd of gazing bystanders, an American tourist came to your defense and the crowd told him to piss off? As if the US should feel guilty and criminal should it attempt to get involved in Syria to save lives- this is the real deal and not a fabrication like the war in Iraq. Or we can all sit back, do nothing and watch Assad invite in all the foreign help he needs to crush his opponents, pretending he alone has the sole legitimacy to do so, as if your desire for your own country to stay out of the fight had any moral bearing on what other nations can and should do. It's precisely because Assad thinks America is in a state of domestic weakness that he's been testing the red lines, and as long as perceives that weakness, he will continue to escalate. If you're looking for a pissing contest, then look at the man who's pissing gas all over his own people- that's never, ever supposed to become an accepted norm.

Edit: I mean I just don't get it. It's fine if you don't want the UK to risk its soldiers, funds, international standing or making the Syrian conflict worse. Are you telling me you would also be screaming "bloody murder" if the US goes in and attempts to halt a genocide?

 

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Simply stated, there is no doubt that Assad has now used weapons of mass destruction. (Sound familiar?)

This is almost word for word the rationale we used to attack Iraq.

 

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How would you feel if you were being mugged in front of a whole crowd of gazing bystanders - say, in Chicago - and no one lifted a hand to help? Would you be angry at a Chinese guy in Shenzhen who did not fly over to help you out? Or would you be angry at the people right in front of you who didn't lift a finger to help you?

 

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I'd be angry at the crowd that didn't help, which is in this case the whole international community gazing in and sighing while they abandon the place to extremists and pretend they're powerless to influence the outcome, only to condemn anyone who has the guts to try.

 

No, that crowd is made up of local people. The guy in China who is refusing to fly in to help you with your problem is the international community.

If that guy from China came in and killed your attacker, your family and 200 of those bystanders, would you hail him as a hero?

 

Well here's a juicy new release from Germany's "Bundesnachrichtendienst" (thank goodness it's abbreviated "BND") intelligence service, assessing that Assad almost certainly conducted the attack and offering substantial new evidence. Other than proving it was sarin and not magic happy gas, what evidence is there left to gather? Maybe we need to find video of Syrian soldiers mixing and loading volatile chemicals into a warhead shortly before launch (as it's done in real life- you can't just have these shells sitting for months in rebel stockpiles), then they need to accidentally tape the camera to the missile so we can verify that it was launched into a rebel neighbourhood, and finally Barack Obama, David Cameron and Ban Ki-Moon need to go personally choke on the sarin to make sure it's authentic.

Link: http://www.yalibnan.com/2013/09/04/hezbollah-admits-assad-behind-poison-gas-attack-in-syria/#more-64906

Excerpts:

And

Oh but let me guess, that's just the Germans giving the Israelis a leg up and helping with their deceptions as compensation for... er... that other atrocity the Jews also invented.

 

That analogy doesn't hold in the form you present it. If the crowd of bystanders represents the local population, they wouldn't be bystanders because they'd also be getting slaughtered. Even if you killed all of them, you'd only be speeding up what would happen if you did nothing. If Assad wasn't a threat to his entire nation, gassing his people and exterminating whole communities, I'd get the gist of what you're saying.

 

And if the proposed solution wasn't exterminating people I might agree with the "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Assad" solution. Killing lots of people is a poor solution to the problem of someone killing lots of people.

(what's the body count in Iraq up to?)

 

Great! Let's support the organization that was ratified in.

 

Democracy sucks sometimes, eh?

 

Now as I said before, when I read and post Israeli-based rumours on what's happening in Syria, I only use them for colour commentary to present possible storylines to explain present events, especially when they're things not covered in the mainstream international press. Given that Israel has an obvious interest, right or wrong, in what people believe and understand about the Middle East and its conflicts, one must take its claims with a grain of salt just like one should do the same for all the other actors in the region, especially when they're claims that lack independent verification or based on alleged rumours in the global intelligence community that may or may not be true.

Nonetheless, in addressing the question of how Assad could possibly be so stupid as to use chemical weapons- although based on some of the conversations here, it doesn't seem like he was very stupid or miscalculating to have used them after all- I believe there are Israeli-based rumours which provide a very interesting and plausible take on just why he may have made his decisions, and may have even offered a small degree of predictive power as to developments in the conflict (by contrast, when's the last time someone like Alex Jones made an accurate, relevant prediction?). By far my favourite website for Mideast intelligence rumours is the Israeli website Debkafile which I've mentioned to users here in the past, and even though its reports can often be hit or miss or simply unverifiable altogether, they're taken very seriously around the world and have even worked with New York City police to help avert planned or threatened terrorist attacks since 9/11.

Debkafile claims to be an "open source" intelligence website which gets its information from both purported political insiders throughout the Middle East, and through extensive monitoring of internet traffic including known Al Qaeda websites and chatrooms. It's thought but naturally unproven that much of their info comes from Israeli government and military leaks which means yes, you might be getting false information, but you might also be getting info you won't find anywhere else and certainly you'll find claims there that aren't published anywhere else. They also have an extensive team of intelligence analysts who at the very least provide a fascinating and original perspective on known events. Here's a partial chronology on their discussion of events which are barely mentioned anywhere else (and wherever else they are mentioned, i.e. in France's Le Figaro newspaper, Debka accuses them of plagiarizing):

On June 5, one day prior to the fall of the Syrian town of Qusayr on the Lebanese border to Hezbollah fighters, Debka published a report describing how large numbers of US marines had landed in Jordan and were heading towards the Syrian border under heavily armed Jordanian escort, to establish a new operations center for training and supplying Syrian rebels based in Jordan. The article is now archived and you'd have to pay to read it, but here's a link to a page where you can access it and read the abstract. As far as my memory serves, the existence of this base didn't become public knowledge until something like a week later, but if anyone can find me a report dating to June 5 or prior, I'd very much appreciate it.

On August 13 Debka published this report discussing how the US in coordination with Israel, Jordan and other regional partners, was training and preparing to deploy 3000 handpicked US-equipped Syrian rebels into the conflict. The article claims that the US and its allies had planned to establish a no-fly zone between Jordan and Damascus in support of the rebels, who'd be on the ground seizing a buffer zone along the Israeli and Jordanian borders before advancing towards Damascus. US and other foreign ground troops would have no involvement whatsoever, other than protecting their existing assets in the region as usual.

On August 17 Debka published another report giving more details on the imminent intervention, along with this video that I linked to earlier in this thread. In particular, the video states that Assad had commenced a massive assault on "southern rebel strongholds" (which I presume include the rebel-held suburbs of Damascus) in anticipation of the incoming force. It's also stated in the video that the goal wouldn't be to remove Assad, but to "push him into a corner" and presumably force him to accept a diplomatic solution. Then on the morning of August 21 we hear the first news of chemical attacks in rebel-held suburbs of Damascus, and almost immediately Debka publishes this report describing the attacks as coming at the same time that the first few hundred fighters of the US-backed unit were reaching these areas.

Now today the Daily Telegraph publishes word that a US-trained force has begun entering Syria from Jordan, although they notably peg the initial number of fighters at merely 50 (the Daily Telegraph figure is based on what Obama is alleged to have told US senators, nothing more). My take on all this? Could all just be baseless rumour and coincidences, but Assad has threatened to use chemical weapons in the event of foreign intrusion in the past (unless they're foreigners he personally invites, of course), and I think he could have easily panicked and decided to stretch that definition to include Syrian citizens trained by foreigners on foreign soil. Again, just colour commentary, but the sequence of claimed events does seem fairly coherent to me, and as of today we might be seeing more evidence emerging in the public realm to back this version.

 

billvon, I was going to add this to the other Syria thread, but figured it might be better suited here. (we were talking about this in the 'retreat' thread earlier today)

When you all have a little time, this is worth the read...
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu...mework_for_the_iran_nuclear_negotiations.html

 

The only other reasonable alternative I can see is to punish and deter the foreigners intervening on Assad's side. Break trade ties with Russia, increase assistance to Lebanese secularists to resist Hezbollah's thugs, tighten the noose on Iran.

 

That might indeed make a difference without resorting to violence.

Supporting violence is, IMO, a poor solution to violence.

If that means more pressure (more sticks and carrots) then agreed.

 

Ok, give more ice cream and flowers to secular Lebanese so they can thank Hezbollah for turning their country into a theocracy. Well at least we've got agreement on 2/3 points

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Better yet - help people kill each other and hope that violence declines. How's that going?

 

What help are you talking about? Lebanon's been virtually abandoned by the West since occupying Syrian troops left in 2005, and UN ceasefire observers are doing exactly what their title implies and nothing more, minus the part about the ceasefire. US won't even give arms to the Lebanese Army at this point because it's already almost under Hezbollah's control and being used to wipe out their opposition at home. Hezbollah's weapons supply has to be cut off one way or another unless you simply propose sanctioning the entire country.