Shhhh! Russia Can Like Something and It Can Be Good.

”perhaps we prefer to live in a world where people we hate are always wrong, no matter what they do, and change our definitions of right or wrong to suit their actions?”

Many go along with that instinctive impulse, a few know better. But until one experiences the truth behind the old Chinese proverb:

You do not truly know someone, until you fight them.

it’ll be hard to understand the truth about power.

Foreign supplied weapons account for less than one percent of Syrian Rebel Arms whose armament comes from captured Regime Depots, half the Regime Military defected after-all.

Also the Majority of the Syrian Rebel Groups are not Wahabist and don’t want a Sharia State.

Nor is Assad a secular dictator as Sharia Law is on the books in Syria and has been expanded as his forces increasingly incorporate Shia Militias from abroad. Said Militias are just as brutal as ISIS and just as eager to post beheadings on social media.

Yeah but any of the following may happen:
1) A unit in the CIA will go rogue and continue the smuggling.
2) The US will sell arms to the Saudis and the Saudis will do the smuggling.
3) If the Saudis are too incompetent to do it the Mossad will do it.

Also, I dont think we need to split hairs with this right reasons wrong reasons. Reminds me of Rumsfeld’s things we dont know that we dont know.

“…has Russia done more evil than America in the last 30 years?”

Russia did one thing for which the world should be eternally grateful–it voluntarily and peacefully dismantled its empire. I do not expect that America will do the same.

Ten Bears

Yeah, Usian’s are prisoners of war.

No one telling us to hate Putin gives a shit about whether Putin or Russia is evil or bad. It’s just war in the Middle East is played out. The Cold War is a distant enough, but also nostalgic memory (a better time), and those who profit considerably from the U.S. being in a constant state of war and their PR folk understand it’s time to shift the focus to a “New and Improved” enemy! Honestly, it feels like a Whisk ad intended to bring me back to their ring-around-collar solution, now minus or plus a molecule. meanwhile, as the elite hope to find an improbable solution to the problem of environmental catastrophe that does not compromise their wealth and status, tick, tick, tick…

IBW, this is an equally important quote from your link to The Horseshoe Theory.

From the other direction, abuse of the horseshoe theory can lead to the balance fallacy and appeals to moderation. This is a problem common among Very Serious People and radical centrists, who, in their desire to avoid slipping into one partisan extreme or another, often have the opposite problem and go out of their way to characterize both sides as being fundamentally crazy, even if one side or the other may very well be clearly in the right in this instance. More cynically, it can be abused by those in power to frame all opposition to their rule as extremist by connecting their more grounded, legitimate critics with the crazies. Also it should be noted that at one point or another throughout history, people who advocated for a lot of the things we take for granted in the modern West (democracy, abolition of slavery, rights for women and LGBT people, religious freedom, etc.) were often derided as extremists.

On another forum in the past week I was insultingly referred to as Fox News Watching Nutter for saying something akin to what Ian says here at his blog. Anyone who knows me knows I am not a Fox News Watching Nutter, but it doesn’t matter to these people. They have to categorize you & dismiss you immediately because otherwise, their Cognitive Dissonance will drown them, so they put up their hand and say, “talk to it because I’m not listening.”

TSMB, you really outdid yourself this time.

jackiebass
July 23, 2017

You’re closing line; The general public doesn’t have a clue about the dark side of American history.
Now there’s the rub; just what do you suggest to solve that historic problem?
I would suggest there is no solution; U.S. propaganda is in a full court press to suppress all factual reportage…
About anything not in line with U.S. propaganda…
The fact’s are all out there, for anyone to see; but see; they will not!
It’s just too bloody horrifying for most to deal with…
Denial is the course of the day; and it goes on and on and on and on, ad infinitum…

I see Trump as a sort of cross between PT Barnum and Chauncey Gardiner. But even he can have good ideas, even if by accident, and even if the motivation isn’t there. Maybe in some future better time things like ‘actual results’ will trump (devil’s jester, love it) the cult of personality too many citizens seem to need.

Anybody know how to cure cognitive dissonance, or the most dysfunctional forms of “cognitive closure” which Arie Kruglanski talks about, or Dunning–Kruger? Obviously successfully evil people know how to exploit such maladies. How does a regular guy counter their manipulations?

Putin? He reputedly still has Robert Kraft’s Super Bowl ring. A cross between Teddy Roosevelt and Stalin?

Willy, how does it feel to be on the same brainwave as Jonah Goldberg?

The resentment of the managerial class and its middlebrow intelligentsia: Trump doesn’t look like them, doesn’t talk like them, isn’t of them, so he’s illegitimate as their boss. They call him a fool, but who was ever consumed with hatred for a fool? Their own words betray them.

@BOO
They call him a fool, but who was ever consumed with hatred for a fool?

When the fool carries such power. You’ve never had a boss whose primary qualifications were knowing the right people and watching the right television? I’ve had one destroy a company I worked at. Leadership should carry responsibility.

Trump publicly claimed that Australia has better health care than America, while trying to take American health care in the exact opposite direction. Now maybe this is part of some clever strategy he has which will get the US that better system, at the end of the day.

But I don’t think so. Based on his past behavior, I highly doubt he even knows or cares what that better system even is.

From my Fbook post

S Brennan
July 20 at 9:38am ·

Good; the regime change policy of Bush/Obama administration that has cost millions of civilians their lives ends. And what did those innocents die for? To create hellish distopias in the few Arab countries where women, if not equal, did not have to live as chattel?

Of course, many of my “liberal” neocolonialist/[aka neocon] friends will cheer…should the CIA not follow their bosses order and continue the US war in Syria…just as they cheer Mueller’s efforts to secure Pence the presidency…all so the slaughter can continue in Syria. But my “liberal” neocolonialist friends are wrong, it is high time this national disgrace ends and good on Trump for trying to do the right thing against the clearly expressed wishes of theDeep-State[D]-or-[R].

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-ends-covert-cia-program-to-arm-anti-assad-rebels-in-syria-a-move-sought-by-moscow/2017/07/19/b6821a62-6beb-11e7-96ab-5f38140b38cc_story.html?utm_term=.19185c7ef155

@Tom

I have literally no idea where you’re getting the idea that half the Syrian army revolted. That the bulk of the military, both grunts and officers, stayed loyal is one of the major reasons that the foreign plans for a quick overthrow of Assad failed.

As for how many weapons are foreign supplied, it’s a hell of a lot more than 1%. Especially when it comes to heavy and special weapons (the American made TOW that has been key to militant efforts against Syrian armor is particularly conspicuous).

The ‘opposition’ literally consists of almost nothing but different flavors of Al-Qaeda. This may or may not have always been the case (though jihadist elements have been present since the very start of all this in 2011), but such moderates as ever actually existed have either disbanded and gone home or left the country, fled north to join the Kurdish SDF, or are dead. Idlib province is the heartland of the ‘rebellion’, and has been a cesspit of jihadist infighting for years. The two dominate factions have long been Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Al-Qaeda) and Ahrar al-Sham (Al-Qaeda with the serial numbersfiled off). HTS seems to have just finished cutting the heart out of Ahara al-Sham and now completely dominates, totally controlling the provincial capital and the Turkish border tolling that is the only remaining source of significant income. There is no one left who remotely resembles a ‘noble freedom fighter’, if there ever were any such people to begin with.

And in the east of the country the only ‘opposition’ is ISIS.

@Mer

It’s difficult to get any accurate numbers about the SAA but many defectors were reported and the FSA is one force they lead. Young Syrian men of draft age in Assad controlled areas joined the refugees to avoid conscription and I’ve read that what remains of the SAA is mostly Alawite volunteers.

Assad friendly media reports on the victories of the SAA but the self described Jihadist Hezbollah and the Iranian proxy militias seem to be doing most of the actual fighting as is happening near Arsal Lebanon.

There are no moderates in an armed conflict but your attempt at pigeonholing the rebels as all ‘flavors of al Qaeda’ smells of SANA propaganda and the orientalist’s Islamophobia. The fact that some of them are fighting each other exposes your lie because if they are all like AQ there would be no reason for conflict.

The rebel forces in Syria are mostly Syrians who are also Sunni Muslims from the majority fed up with sectarian minority rule. Conservative political Islam is gaining support in the ME and that fact frightens Western imperialists and the Russian imperialists because it shows a way to counter western dominance.

The main function of this supplying arms program was to control the flow of supply of arms — as in, preventing manpads from flowing in. It really wasn’t about the supply so much as the control over what Turkey and Arab states were giving. Also, even if we accept your absurd premise that the rebels are enthralled with Wahhabism, and that the rebels are just all ISIS/AQ, and that ISIS is genocidal (which it is), they haven’t killed 400,000 people because of a refusal to step down when the Syrian people revolted en masse. To say “ISIS/AQ” whatever is “worse” shouldn’t even be on anyone’s radar. But then, this is the Russia-apologist left. Syria should be controlled by Syrians, not Russian and Iranian imperialists. Assad would have fallen had Russia not intervened, and Iran before that. Really, US and Russian intervention into Syria has been about regime preservation, not regime change. But seeing things through such a geopolitical lens comes naturally from attachment to states as opposed to standing with people’s.

@Mer

The first link you provided is a perfect example of a SANA style Op-Ed rant. The conscripts who are fighting and dying to overthrow Assad barely earn a dismissal but a handful of elite quisling officers show the real strength of Assad’ sectarian regime because they happen to be Sunni. This type of accommodation and subservience always develops under autocratic rule and it helps mask the facts of who actually makes the decisions that affect everyone.

The writer of this opinion piece did eventually admit that the SAA has been hollowed out by attrition and is unable to conscript from the young Sunni population so that leaves Alawites to fill the ranks, if they get filled.

You’re confusing the Islamic State (head choppers) with the Syrian rebels (liver eaters} even if there was only one nibble.

I think most Syrians want the war to end but the version of the end with Assad holding ultimate power means the killing and torture won’t end. With Iran and their proxy forces turning into death squads terror will reign. If the Russians can control this sectarian reprisal there might be a chance for a relatively peaceful transition in Syria.

@Peter

“You’re confusing the Islamic State (head choppers) with the Syrian rebels (liver eaters} even if there was only one nibble.”

Because there is no difference.

The ‘opposition’ is entirely dominated by Salafist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra/Tahrir al-Sham and Ahrar al-Sham. Any ‘moderates’ who still exist are so weak they’re (being generous here) forced to ally with the headchoppers to accomplish anything. The major attempt to break the siege of East Aleppo, the defeat of which seems to have completely broken the back of the opposition, was almost fully an AQ show.

@Mallam

“If Assad had stepped down like Mubarak, there wouldn’t have been hundreds of thousands of deaths. Every death is his fault simply because he refused to step down when he should have.”

Step down to what? A foreign backed jihadist insurgency? You seem to be under the impression that there was a massive peoples uprising against the Assad government. But the ‘rebellion’ never succeeded in taking more than one of the fourteen provincial capitals. When the people of Aleppo and Deir Ezzor failed to rise up, ‘insurgent’ forces from outside had to come in and try to force the issue.

“If you want to stand with a murderous dictator and defend his actions against the revolution from his point of view, that’s your prerogative. […] When did “the left” abandon basic solidarity with people’s in favor of states simply because those states are (nominally) opposed to US foreign policy? And even there you idiots don’t have the basics right because you accept Assad’s talking points at face value.”

Funny, here I was thinking I was standing with the Syrian people in wanting a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displayed millions to end. I don’t have any love for Assad, but I have far less for freaking jihadists. Syria was a much better off place before this ‘civil war’ started.

I’ll also point out that none of these opposition groups ever stood much chance of outright winning, at least on any kind of reasonable timescale. Without the Russian intervention the Syrian government would likely have been reduced to a rump, and the rest of the country divided up amongst different factions (being generous, maybe one or two of them would have been passably ‘moderate’). The most likely scenario is an Afghanistan Civil War one in which the country is a multi-way free-for-all for years to come. We can see a miniature version of this in ‘rebel’ dominated Idlib province. And if ever one faction did come out on top, it’s pretty clear it would either be one of the powerful AQ franchises, or ISIS. Either way, it wouldn’t be anyone sympathetic to democratic elections or a secular state.

“But stop hiding behind Islamaphobia to defend it.”

Ah, yes, I’m so Islamophobic I want a country of Muslims to stop being destroyed by foreign powers. Look up the major players in the ‘opposition’ yourself. They’re literally all slightly different flavors of Salafist Wahhabists. Calling literal terrorist groups terrorists isn’t Islamophobia. I’m not calling Muslims terrorists; I’m calling takfiri head-choppers terrorists.

“For the record, I did not support the CIA program.”

You seem not to have much of a problem with the Turkish and Gulf State programs, though.

“Doesn’t mean I have to turn into a Baathist propogandist as a result.”

I don’t care about the Baathists. And the objective reality that the ‘rebellion’ has far more foreign than domestic support is not propaganda.

Put Emma down as “Undecided” lol.

Only $100/month? How old, and what deductible, one wonders.

Assad never wanted to kill half the people of Syria. The Takfiris objectively do. The Kurds just want some place where they are in a majority. The Turks want to prevent this and Erdogan doesn’t like Assad(too secular? Likes the Wahabis better? Dunno.) The Russians and the Iranians DO like Assad for various reasons the main one being he’s preferable to the Takfiris. The Saudis and Emiraties and some of their pals like the Takfiris because they advance the interest of a Wahabist Caliphate at the expense of Iran specifically and Shi’ites generally. Israel also likes the Takfiris for those reasons and that it keeps Syria weak.

There, what could be simpler?

@Peter

“The Russians are stuck to this Syrian tar-baby now and Trump seems willing to let them try to sort it out while the US concentrates on the IS.”

Have you looked at a battlemap of Syria recently? Or ever, for that matter? Also, it’s the Russians and the SAA who are doing the bulk of the heavy lifting against ISIS in Syria.

@Peter

Like I said, when was the last time you looked at a battlemap? Pushing east to retake valuable oil and gas fields and to end the siege of Deir Ezzor, has always been an SAA goal. After securing Aleppo and reducing or eliminating various ‘rebel’ pockets, and forcing the remaining ones to adhere to ceasefires, the SAA has the manpower to turn its full attention east.

The notion that the US-Kurdish assault on Raqqa is taking up a majority of ISIS’s manpower is completely wrong. ISIS gave up on holding Raqqa the better part of half a year ago and moved their capital to Mayadin in Deir Ezzor province (http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/04/21/isis-moves-its-capital-in-syria.html, http://www.icsve.org/brief-reports/is-isis-moving-its-capital-from-raqqa-to-mayadin-in-deir-ez-zor/, http://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2017/06/15/messy-fight-awaits-islamic-state-s-next-syrian-capital-at-mayadeen/). There were at most 2,000 fighters left in Raqqa at the beginning of July (http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/12/politics/us-troops-more-exposed-raqqa-mosul-isis/index.html). The bulk of the rest of their forces in Syria are attempting to stop the SAA. Jane’s/IHS Markit estimates that for more than a year the Syrian Army has been the primary opponent of ISIS (http://news.ihsmarkit.com/press-release/aerospace-defense-security/study-shows-islamic-states-primary-opponent-syria-governmen). ISIS spends more than twice the amount of time and effort fighting rival headchoppers than it does fighting the US-backed Kurds.

Also, Iran has never had a problem supplying Hezbollah (as most clearly demonstrated by the 150,000 rockets Hezbollah has stockpiled), either by ships offloaded in Syria, via ground transport through Turkey into Syria, or flying them via Iraq. They’ve always had ‘direct delivery’. And the Kurds controlling the whole Syrian-Iraq border? That ship sailed quite a while ago.

Calling somebody a “troll” is an attempt to destroy their online persona completely and forever.

We have nothing but our credibility when we participate in these threads. As someone who has been called a troll by dozens of assholes of every political persuasion from left to right (hey, they can’t all be right!) I would like to implore the thoughtful folks here not to stoop to that tactic.

We need people who offer thoughts and ideas that do more than just echo the local hallelujah chorus. If being challenged that way is too scary for anyone, maybe debating issues on these threads is not something you should be doing.

@Mer

You seem to base most of your projections about the Axis forces on al-Masdar and al-Manar spin and propaganda so the links to Janes/IHS was refreshing. It seems that the Axis forces can’t help but run into IS forces wherever the march to. They’re still fighting them around Palmira, did they ever retake that tourist trap?

The battle for Raqqa is ongoing and will be costly with a small IS force holding off a much larger invasion and inflicting heavy losses on the attackers. We’ll have to wait and see what happens in deir ez zor where the IS seems to have strong support.

The water and air routes for Iranian arms to Hezbollah would be cut immediately if there is war with Israel. The land line would be exposed also but could be defended somewhat. I wonder where you get the idea that Turkey would allow anything to go to Hezbollah through their territory, that’s insane.

Most of Hesbollah’s insanely large stockpile of rockets seem to be more terror weapons than tactical munitions. They have some long range accurate rockets and we may get to see how effective Israeli high tech air defenses are.

@Peter

“They’re still fighting them around Palmira, did they ever retake that tourist trap?”

Months ago, as well as a large amount of territory in all directions from it. They’re attacking Al-Sukhnah, 70 km east of Palmyra, right now. Seriously, again, when was the last time you look at a battlemap? http://syriancivilwarmap.com/

“The battle for Raqqa is ongoing and will be costly with a small IS force holding off a much larger invasion and inflicting heavy losses on the attackers.”

Yes, with a force of no more than 2,000 fighters willing to fight to the death against a Kurdish force that while effective light infantry are at a disadvantage in heavy city fighting.

“The water and air routes for Iranian arms to Hezbollah would be cut immediately if there is war with Israel.”

Yeah, good luck with that.

” I wonder where you get the idea that Turkey would allow anything to go to Hezbollah through their territory, that’s insane.”

Gee, it’s almost like Turkey is a cesspool of corruption that can be bribed and deceived, or something.

http://www.nysun.com/foreign/iranian-shipments-to-hezbollah-strain-israeli/38364/

http://www.haaretz.com/iran-rearming-hezbollah-via-turkey-mi-says-1.240646

http://www.jpost.com/Defense/In-Depth-How-Iranian-weapons-go-through-Syria-to-Hezbollah-314313

“Most of Hesbollah’s insanely large stockpile of rockets seem to be more terror weapons than tactical munitions. They have some long range accurate rockets and we may get to see how effective Israeli high tech air defenses are.”

The effectiveness of the missiles is immaterial to this discussion, which is about whether Iran is having difficulty getting supplies to Hezbollah. It isn’t. A ‘Shia Crescent’ may indeed by a thing in terms of creating a power-block to counter Saudi influence, but the meme that it’s needed to supply Hezbollah is simply incorrect.

@Mer

Minutiae is sometimes interesting but often a diversion for propagandists trying to sell certainty where none exists. I imagine most Iranian arms are flowing to the Hezbollah forces in Syria and Israel does seem to regularly interdict shipments headed for Lebanon.

The fact that Russia doesn’t interfere with the Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Syria shows that Putin may be wary of Iranian plans for the region. Russia seems to be settling in for a long imperial stay in Syria and the alliance of convenience with Hezbollah/Iran there may not last.