Syria. While Russia’s bombing campaigns get the thumbs up
from Assad, the West offers civilian death tolls. What about our short lived
bombing campaign? Have we calmed down since Paris now?
We hit the Omar oil fields, targeting the money and the funding, for a few days from the 2nd December. Asides from that?
“There has only been one other British air strike in Syria - an unmanned Reaper drone firing a Hellfire missile at an IS checkpoint near Raqqa on Christmas Day.”
America gets the 90% figure when it comes to the action. And is making an $11 million a day spend on Syria.
What’s America up to there, and the UN? Well, the UN peacekeeping mission came and went in 2012 – things just got too violent for peacekeeping. The US has, like it often does, offered support. The American agenda that isn’t meant to be threatening, where American values and moral/human values overlap somewhat, somewhat. For over a century now America starts out with the support, verbally praising those seeking independence, change, freedom, and accompanying it with non-lethal supplies – food, clothes… and the CIA training selected leaders in the resistance groups, helping them to help themselves.
It’s a vetting process, because the US has this kind of meta- status, where it can go above the level of national to judge things on more global concerns. By 2015 the US had picked 1,200 people in Syria to train. It might be well intentioned, it might not be (and just disingenuous gloss and rhetoric), but either way, the reports by September had only 4 or 5 US trained fighters tackling ISIS. Others had handed their weapons over to the opposition, and a month later the programme was to be suspended. That’s been the US in Syria since 2011. From 2013 the training included handing over weapons. From 2014 surveillance accompanied the above, and towards the end of the year airstrikes – hitting ISIS, and a few other select Islamist groups, in Syria, and a few other countries. They’ve been attacking so long it’s normal. They wondered what all the fuss was about when we suddenly said the UK needed to join in to defeat ISIS. They’d had to carry on without us when the Commons vote failed in 2013.
What has been Assad’s take on this? The airstrikes were illegal and unhelpful. He’s quite often talked to and at the West’s media, and called any firepower coming from this way ‘terrorism’, or at least something that supports it. He dubbed any anti-government forces in Syria as the same, too.
He doesn’t have a problem with Russia’s missile accuracy though. And Russia has had its fair share of strikes, and civilian casualties, what with all those rebel leaders meeting in residential areas (this seems to be the residents’ problem, not the military’s). Although an Assad/Russia intelligence based mission killed rebel leaders on Christmas Day it seems.
“Am I backing the Assad regime, and the Russians, in their joint enterprise to recapture that amazing site? You bet I am. That does not mean I trust Putin, and it does not mean that I want to keep Assad in power indefinitely.”
As for us in the UK? We’d like to act, but it’s a mess – was our take on Syria before the brief flirtation with airstrikes. But while ISIS is ‘easy’ to openly criticize and attack, we seem to be (relatively) diplomatic with Assad. You could feel Gadhafi’s days were numbered back in 2011. There was no need for diplomatic selectiveness when criticizing ‘the situation’; there were calls for Gadhafi to go, Presidential and Prime Ministerial. Assad isn’t the most popular tinpot despot in the West’s eyes, but all the same he can sometimes be the unnamed leader of a bad situation we tend to bring up here and there. ISIS we could grab on to with gusto. Assad? Who knows, maybe we quite like him.
Madaya has no supplies, people are starving. These are pro Assad forces blocking people’s passage, here. obviously they’re talking about the fighting forces but applying the rules to everyone, residents. Over a dozen people apparently shot trying to gather firewood. Children are starving, people are starving. Say you can actually find some rice in Madaya, that’ll cost you £170. Kids old enough to care about being cool are wheeled along in prams because they’re too weak to walk. What with the airstrikes and the infrastructure being used as a battlefield, school isn’t likely for many reasons. Kids in Madaya are taking to minefields to strip plants of leaves for food (the only places where other people haven’t already done this). Like they do everywhere, the minefields are taking limbs off the kids.
We hit the Omar oil fields, targeting the money and the funding, for a few days from the 2nd December. Asides from that?
“There has only been one other British air strike in Syria - an unmanned Reaper drone firing a Hellfire missile at an IS checkpoint near Raqqa on Christmas Day.”
America gets the 90% figure when it comes to the action. And is making an $11 million a day spend on Syria.
What’s America up to there, and the UN? Well, the UN peacekeeping mission came and went in 2012 – things just got too violent for peacekeeping. The US has, like it often does, offered support. The American agenda that isn’t meant to be threatening, where American values and moral/human values overlap somewhat, somewhat. For over a century now America starts out with the support, verbally praising those seeking independence, change, freedom, and accompanying it with non-lethal supplies – food, clothes… and the CIA training selected leaders in the resistance groups, helping them to help themselves.
It’s a vetting process, because the US has this kind of meta- status, where it can go above the level of national to judge things on more global concerns. By 2015 the US had picked 1,200 people in Syria to train. It might be well intentioned, it might not be (and just disingenuous gloss and rhetoric), but either way, the reports by September had only 4 or 5 US trained fighters tackling ISIS. Others had handed their weapons over to the opposition, and a month later the programme was to be suspended. That’s been the US in Syria since 2011. From 2013 the training included handing over weapons. From 2014 surveillance accompanied the above, and towards the end of the year airstrikes – hitting ISIS, and a few other select Islamist groups, in Syria, and a few other countries. They’ve been attacking so long it’s normal. They wondered what all the fuss was about when we suddenly said the UK needed to join in to defeat ISIS. They’d had to carry on without us when the Commons vote failed in 2013.
What has been Assad’s take on this? The airstrikes were illegal and unhelpful. He’s quite often talked to and at the West’s media, and called any firepower coming from this way ‘terrorism’, or at least something that supports it. He dubbed any anti-government forces in Syria as the same, too.
He doesn’t have a problem with Russia’s missile accuracy though. And Russia has had its fair share of strikes, and civilian casualties, what with all those rebel leaders meeting in residential areas (this seems to be the residents’ problem, not the military’s). Although an Assad/Russia intelligence based mission killed rebel leaders on Christmas Day it seems.
“Am I backing the Assad regime, and the Russians, in their joint enterprise to recapture that amazing site? You bet I am. That does not mean I trust Putin, and it does not mean that I want to keep Assad in power indefinitely.”
As for us in the UK? We’d like to act, but it’s a mess – was our take on Syria before the brief flirtation with airstrikes. But while ISIS is ‘easy’ to openly criticize and attack, we seem to be (relatively) diplomatic with Assad. You could feel Gadhafi’s days were numbered back in 2011. There was no need for diplomatic selectiveness when criticizing ‘the situation’; there were calls for Gadhafi to go, Presidential and Prime Ministerial. Assad isn’t the most popular tinpot despot in the West’s eyes, but all the same he can sometimes be the unnamed leader of a bad situation we tend to bring up here and there. ISIS we could grab on to with gusto. Assad? Who knows, maybe we quite like him.
Madaya has no supplies, people are starving. These are pro Assad forces blocking people’s passage, here. obviously they’re talking about the fighting forces but applying the rules to everyone, residents. Over a dozen people apparently shot trying to gather firewood. Children are starving, people are starving. Say you can actually find some rice in Madaya, that’ll cost you £170. Kids old enough to care about being cool are wheeled along in prams because they’re too weak to walk. What with the airstrikes and the infrastructure being used as a battlefield, school isn’t likely for many reasons. Kids in Madaya are taking to minefields to strip plants of leaves for food (the only places where other people haven’t already done this). Like they do everywhere, the minefields are taking limbs off the kids.
It's scary to think back on the last five years or so, and
how many times Syrians from every walk of life have been quoted about what they
think of the outside world. Homs? Aleppo? These things lasted for years, and
the level of atrocity, daily, was astral, gut wrenching. Moral map redefining.
Except that it wasn’t, of course. We couldn’t/wouldn’t pick a side
(generously), or preferred the blood on Assad’s hands to the blood on his
opponents’ hands (less generous). Who
knows, maybe we quite like him. And the
whole time with all these people burying their grandmother or their grandson,
with fathers beaten to death for telling rebel fighters to leave women alone to
boys thrown from rooftops by ISIS brave-in-a-crowd thug pools for being gay.
The whole time these young and old relatives, hand wringing leaders and
politicians, aid workers, community leaders have been saying what they think of
the west’s inaction, and what they will go on thinking of the West once this is
all over and they’ve had to just survive through not succumbing to their
‘opponents’ attrition.
You kind of get opponents thrust on you as a resident.
You’re not fighting, you’re not even interested in sides and malice, all things
being equal, but as someone’s hurting you then you have to admit you’ve ended
up with an opponent. It’s just unfair, because you never wanted involvement.
What these people say about the west is harder to read or
look at than the photos of the starved bodies or pulped men women and children
sticking the rubble together. They give these sort of quiet hints that they
will never forget our reaction, non-reaction, in the years ahead when it’s all
over. Sometimes they talk like they don’t mind the non-reaction anymore. They
know our reply, and now they are getting on with dealing with the situation
themselves.
You could feel Gadhafi’s days were numbered back in 2011… Isis has around 150 miles of coastline around Libyan city Sirte now, too. It’s been covert reconnaissance for us and the States for the last few months, apparently. Libya’s looking to see Western action again.
You could feel Gadhafi’s days were numbered back in 2011… Isis has around 150 miles of coastline around Libyan city Sirte now, too. It’s been covert reconnaissance for us and the States for the last few months, apparently. Libya’s looking to see Western action again.
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