It's the move that dictators make when their backs are against the wall - they force their followers to do something so terrible that there's no going back, with the idea that the followers will fight harder for the dictator.

no matter how hard his followers fight for him.

so he has to fight to the death, and he has a better shot if his people are fighting harder.

Beats me, just a guess.

We are saying about Russian and Iran. They wouldn't dare fire on us. Russia is starting from pretty much the same place. They wouldn't dare risk war to attack Syria. Syria is saying they wouldn't dare depose me and put AQ and the Muslim Brotherhood in charge, haven't they figured out that Libya is a complete devolvement into regional warlords?

They wouldn't dare assumes that everyone views things as you do. Russia is backing Syria, they don't have much choice. Russia will fight over Syria, and that includes firing on those who fire on Syria. AQ and the MB will gain if we attack, and they like us slightly more than the hate Israel, which is to say after they destroy the Jews, they'll destroy us.

President Obama is saying that Congress wouldn't dare vote against his request. Everyone is saying it, everyone is starting from there. The problem is that one dare means a war we can't hope to win, and we'll be lucky to survive.

Keepin it real.

We've talked about them here, but nobody is talking about them on NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, and while I'm not sure, the idiots at Faux probably aren't either. Nobody is. Yet Russia is saying that they will deploy missile shield tech to Syria, their ships are deployed defensively, and they've upped the numbers of ships. Russia is clearly saying that they will fight for Syria, and we are ignoring it. The only possible reason is that we are convinced that they wouldn't dare fire on us.

Assad knowing that he has this protection from his ally, also knowing the Russians have one foreign naval base, and it's in Syria, believe that the American's wouldn't dare bomb him because of Russia's clearly stated intent to defend their ally. We wouldn't dare risk Global War over 1,400 people who aren't our citizens.

Iran knows they've clearly threatened retaliation against us, and against our ally Israel. They believe that we wouldn't dare fire on Syria without stationing forces to block Iran from carrying out those threats. Instead we've moved carriers to be closer to Syria, instead of moving ships to parry any move from Iran, so we're not taking them seriously, so we wouldn't dare fire without doing the deployments to block them.

Everyone is posturing, everyone is talking, but nobody is listening. We are all ignoring the threats of the others secure in the belief that nobody is crazy enough to do what they say, we wouldn't dare. The Iranians wouldn't dare, the Russians wouldn't dare.

The only difference between this situation and 1962 is the Press in 1962 were explaining in far too much detail what would happen if the world went to war. Everyone knew we were on the threshold of global nuclear war. Now, convinced of our own technological superiority, and our belief we are the worlds last Superpower, that all this posturing is merely rhetoric to get us to moderate slightly. They wouldn't want to fight a war with us, we would win.

But could we win? We can't invade Russia. It's impossible. China might be able to with 1.2 Billion people, but even that would be a stretch. All we can do is fight, because without invading Russia, we can't defeat them, and eventually we run out of million dollar missiles and money to fight. Then Russia comes at us, and we lose. Even if we somehow managed to hurt them so badly that they surrendered to us, or agreed to a peace treaty, we would be so weakened that defending Guantanamo Bay from the Cubans might be more than we could handle without help.

The Russians are deploying forces and their obvious motivation is that we wouldn't dare challenge them so openly if we really intended to fight. We are ignoring their threats, because they wouldn't dare follow through with them.

Russia has no choice but to follow through, if they don't then they have serious problems with the formation of other alliances. Iran would fire missiles, perhaps a token attack, perhaps a serious attack, just to prove they aren't afraid of the United States.

So are those overstatements? Is my reasoning flawed? Because yesterday, I told a friend who wondered how we could prepare for this if it went sideways to war with the Russians. I told him not to bother. We live too close to Fort Stewart, Hunter Army Airfield, and there was no way we would survive two days if the missiles started to fly.

It isn't unthinkable, and it's no where near impossible. If we get into a shooting war with the Russians, we'll be extremely lucky if the missiles don't fly.

He's got the support of Russia, China, and Iran, and the West has essentially stood on the sidelines. Now it appears that he can more or less do whatever he wants. Why should he cave now while he's riding so high?

1) As protests spread through the Arab world in 2011, the mostly leftist groups who organized the Arab Spring protests in Syria formed the NCB to coordinate peaceful protests and resistance to government repression. They agreed, and they still agree, on three basic principles: non-violence; non-sectarianism; and no foreign military intervention. But the U.S. and its allies marginalized the NCB, formed an unrepresentative "Syrian National Council" in Turkey as a government-in-exile and recruited, armed and trained violent armed groups to pursue regime change in Syria.

2) The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar began flying in fighters, weapons and equipment to turn the Syrian Spring into a bloody civil war. Once they had overthrown the government of Libya, at the cost of 25,000 to 50,000 lives, they began adapting the same strategy to Syria, despite knowing full well that this would be a much more drawn-out, destructive and bloody war.

3) Even as a Qatari-funded YouGov poll in December 2011 found that 55% of Syrians still supported their government, unmarked NATO planes were flying fighters and weapons from Libya to the "Free Syrian Army" base at Iskanderum in Turkey. British and French special forces were training FSA recruits, while the CIA and US special forces provided communications equipment and intelligence, as in Libya. Retired CIA officer Philip Giraldi concluded, "Syrian government claims that it is being assaulted by rebels who are armed, trained and financed by foreign governments are more true than false."

http://www.alternet.org/world/america-has-fueled-bloody-civil-war-syria



Syrian rebels get first new heavy weapons after Obama announces U.S. to send military support

Richard Spencer, The Telegraph | 13/06/19 | Last Updated: 13/06/19 6:55 PM ET

The first new heavy weapons have arrived on Syria’s front lines following President Barack Obama’s decision to put Western military might behind the official opposition, rebels have told The Daily Telegraph.

Rebel sources said Russian-made “Konkurs” anti-tank missiles had been supplied by America’s key Gulf ally, Saudi Arabia. They have already been used to destructive effect and may have held up a promised regime assault on Aleppo.

A handful of the missiles were already in use and in high demand after opposition forces looted them from captured regime bases.

More have now arrived, confirming reports that the White House has lifted an unofficial embargo on its Gulf allies sending heavy weapons to the rebels.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/06/19/syrian-rebels-get-first-new-heavy-weapons-after-obama-announces-u-s-to-send-military-support/

Right now it's a stalemate, as it has been for several years. And that would probably be the best situation for our interests, sad as that is.

But that may be changing as the world demonstrates its distaste for getting involved even after this last action. Inaction will certainly accrue to the Assad regime's side. Remember, Assad shot down one of Turkey's fighter jets and fired into Turkish territory in 2011, and there was no retaliation even from Turkey. Support has been minimal at best, and less so as more radical forces have come to take over the rebel side.

getting too close.

and if you characterize Russia and China as supporting Assad, you certainly can't characterize "the west" as essentially being on the sidelines. The opposition to Assad is greater than his support.

Again, all he has to do is look at Qaddafi and Hussein to for clear object lessons..

He doesn't believe he's wrong. No one tells him he's wrong. He thinks he's above any laws, manmade or otherwise because that's how dictators think. No one has told them they are mortal. That's why. Saddam and Khaddafi behaved the same way and ended up dead. He, too, will end up dead most likely.

A lot of those sorts of setups collapse pretty quickly if you drop the pretense and start looking the least bit doubtful. The Syrian government's morale is probably pretty decent right now, but it's just as probably incredibly fragile too.

aka pampered child syndrome. Absolute power is the only thing he's ever known.

for his country?

I apologize if this sounds glib, but He is is a dictator, what do you expect? Dictators are by nature obtuse.

Staying on top of the sorts of snake pits some of those leaders generate isn't the job of a stupid person, and Assad's done it through two years of a civil war where a significant chunk of his political and military allies turned on him in the early stages. Remaining in power when it's effectively you keeping the foundations going, rather than a longstanding constitutional system or some other kind of stability-providing setup, has never been easy at any point in history.

The problem is that even appearing like he's thinking about bugging out, or that the war might not be a slam dunk, would cause everything to unravel for him very, very quickly. A lot of people in positions of power have a lot to lose, and if he was doing anything short of putting up the bravest possible face what's left of his own government would probably reduce him to confetti before he could get out of there.

It's also not clear that the people involved want this war to end.

For over two years the gulf states have been encouraging their citizens to go to Syria and to wage jihad. They have even emptied their death rows to fill the ranks of the rebels. The gulf princes did not send these men to Syria to be trained and radicalized so they can return home to unemployment and social injustice.

Once in Syria these men are poorly armed and receive minimal training. Typical kit consists of a ammo carrier, an assault rifle and a t-shirt. Congress long ago authorized non lethal aid for the rebels, two years later they still lack flack jackets, helmets, or smoke grenades for cover, all easily provided non lethal aid.

The leaders then fail to use tactics common to insurgencies and send the lightly armed Jihadist to confront a modern army face to face and to hold territory that can be easily blasted with artillery, tanks and air power.

The lunacy of this can be seen with the Yellow Brigade who wore bright YELLOW t-shirts into battle.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017142498

They and their commander were destroyed, documented here - warning graphic -

Warning .....what happened to the FSA yellow brigade

So I guess they really have nothing to lose. Very sad for them and the people in Syria.

Saudi Arabia has sent death-row inmates from several nations to fight against the Syrian government in exchange for commuting their sentences, the Assyrian International News Agency reports.

Citing what it calls a "top secret memo" in April from the Ministry of Interior, AINA says the Saudi offered 1,239 inmates a pardon and a monthly stipend for their families, which were were allowed to stay in the Sunni Arab kingdom. Syrian President Bashar Assad is an Alawite, a minority Shiite sect.

According to an English translation of the memo, besides Saudis, the prisoners included Afghans, Egyptians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Kuwaitis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Somalis, Sudanese, Syrians and Yemenis. All faced "execution by sword" for murder, rape or drug smuggling.

Russia, which has backed Assad, objected to the bargain and allegedly threatened to bring the issue to the United Nations, said an unidentified former Iraqi member of Parliament who confirmed the memo's authenticity, says AINA, an independent outlet.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/01/21/saudi-inmates-fight-syria-commute-death-sentences/1852629/


110 Yemenis, 21 Palestinians, 212 Saudis, 96 Sudanese, 254 Syrians, 82 Jordanians, 68 Somalis, 32 Afghanis, 94 Egyptians, 203 Pakistanis, 23 Iraqis, and 44 Kuwaitis.
http://www.aina.org/news/20130120160624.htm

Venezuela? He's got lots of money. With a billion dollars, finding a haven shouldn't be that tough.

collapses - the Alawites, Christians, Druze, Kurds, Shiites and other minorities in Syria are going to be in a very dangerous situation. This is an undeniable fact.

on for any extended period of time.

Kurds and others simply have too much to loose - In most cases they fear at least ethnic cleansing and in the worst case - genocide - They are not going to give up. Iran and Russia are probably going to continue backing them. The Sunni majority are receiving so much outside support particularly from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar and probably clandestine support from America - they have the resources to keep fighting indefinitely also. I think this conflict still has a long ways to go. Perhaps the push for American strikes is a hope to tilt the balance enough so that a conclusion with a rebel victory comes a lot quicker. Which of course means that the Christians, Alawites, Shiites, Druze and Kurds will be having to face their fate - whatever that may be - all the sooner -

If the government collapses and is eliminated then I'm in favor of an international occupation force that will protect these factions until things are sorted out. We did this after WWII when we occupied Japan and the Phillipines with little destruction and loss of life. We could do it again, but not with this military. We need to go back to our old military that is manned by us, not paid contractors and it really should be an international force, not just us.

Plus he doesn't want some of Sunnis to be in charge.


The West has a crappy record in regards to resigned dictators. We make all kinds of nice assurances that they can just step down and walk away. It's a nice solution. No-fault abdication. It's painless for all involved, avoids protracted fighting by the guy's supporters and his opponents. It's supposed to be followed by a period of reconciliation.

What actually happens is that the West is hypocritical and the minute the guy's out of power he's under the gun. He's arrested, tried, sentenced, or just arrested and punished. The West--whether it's a US president or some set of European leaders--is totally untrustworthy and its promises aren't worth a lead slug.

Moreover, immediately it's assumed that one side or the other should stay in charge, and the West (or some country in particular) sees a way to gain some geopolitical points and the bloodshed continues. Or there's a pogrom against the ousted guy's followers, one that everybody said wouldn't happen or would be prevented but which happens and is sometimes encouraged.

When you lie down with wolves, you get up with fleas. Cameron, Obama, Merkel, Holland all are wolves in this analogy.

It's also forgotten in all the calls for "getting Assad to the bargaining table" that this was offered. Perhaps he was lying. Nobody took him up on the offer. In fact, the new "government in exile" repudiated the very idea--it's all or nothing from the nuance-loving liberals, while the absolutist, at least on paper, says, "Let's talk." That bodes poorly for a peaceful solution even if Assad does just board a plane for Snowden-land.

.....and sycophants as the messenger tends to get shot.
So they have a rosier view of the world then warranted.

Like Hitler at the end moving imaginary armies around on the map because everyone was afraid to tell him they had been wiped out.