[Syria] For the rebels of Aleppo: It's all over but the crying

Your post is interesting. American interventionism abroad, for better or worse, used to be based on a Cold War mindset. We either demanded democratic reforms in exchange for support or looked the other way when it came to dictatorships so long as they were anti-communist like Pinochet. Winning WWII and confronting the horrors of the Holocaust set the table for our global approach: democracy was worth spreading and human rights were worth preserving.

The fall of the USSR meant we no longer had international communism to contrast ourselves against. This left the military industrial complex adrift - they had all these expensive weapons and nobody to use them on! So we fought Iraq and got involved in Kosovo. Both had human rights justifications behind them that seemed acceptable at the time. After all, we're America, we won the Cold War, we set the global rules, and it was time to swing our dick around! One of those rules is that you don't massacre innocent people. 9/11 gave us cover to fight some rebels we'd previously allied with against the Soviets and then it was abused by Bush to topple Hussein. I agree with you: the void we created in Iraq should've taught us what happens when you topple strongmen in religiously- and culturally-volatile places. Once the lid is off, the pot overflows with pent-up violence.

The Arab Spring was the type of movement we've publicly supported all over the world for decades: largely peaceful, popular uprisings demanding freedom from brutal leaders. It would've run counter to 60 years of American rhetoric if we'd publicly said "No, no, keep Gaddafi, Mubarak, Ben Ali, and Assad in power!" instead of siding with self-determination. Like all autocrats, each one of them responded with brutal violence that forced us to support anybody else and stand by our rhetoric on human rights. To not do so would've laid bare a much more transactional view of international relations and undermined our new contrasts with China and Russia.

But, going back to the example of Iraq, countries like Egypt (where the leader stepped down) immediately voted in the Muslim Brotherhood and countries like Libya (where the leader held on and slaughtered people) descended into chaos. To date, only Tunisia emerged "free" and that is looking tenuous these days. These are volatile places that were controlled by cults of personality. Zealotry and democracy do not mix and suddenly zealots were on the ballot. I'm not a student of this stuff, but I'm struggling to think of any country in modern history that emerged from decades of dictatorship and made a clean transition to democracy (without the backing of a larger entity like the US or EU); Iraq, Egypt, Mexico, Peru, South Africa, etc. have all had their issues when it comes to representative democracy.

Either way, "running Assad out of power no matter what" was a pretty uncontroversial opinion for a US that historically balked at gassing civilians. Shrugging our shoulders after such a visceral image of violent despotism wasn't an option considering our history.

 

What evidence do you have that the Syrian Rebels are Biden backed puppets?

 

If anyone thinks the US high command would think it's a good idea to fund, train, and back a terrorist group to take over Syria, and send the middle east into disarray then you really are kidding yourself.

The US rarely benefits from civil wars, and vacuums for terrorism.

Yes there is some benefit in the long term of weakening Putin's grip on the middle east, but in the short term this just means that Putin will likely be throwing everything he has at Ukraine with little effort and resources diverted elsewhere. If this was a strategy by the US to get Russia stretched too thin than that effort failed because you would have WANTED a years + long conflict between Assad's regime in Syria where Russian troops by the tens of thousands would have to be diverted from Ukraine to Syria.

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It looks like this Al Jalani guy is going to be the initial leader here initially for the Syrian Rebels. So far it looks like he understands the politics of not initially winning power with the poor politics of chopping off heads etc. that ISIS or Hamas would be doing. It's all a big guessing game though for what comes next... and the US rarely likes guessing games in a vacuum state with mixed ideologies in conflict with each other surrounded by other countries at war as well.

Trying to tie this to THE DEMOCRATS is so lazy and stupid... However predictable from the usual suspects here who just cry tears for Putin and his cronies any chance they get because they think he's their friend.... (which he's not. He would have you dead or impoverished if he had the chance you idiots.)

 

Oh also Al Jalani and his movement really started back in 2017 when he broke with Al Qaeda and organized for years what happened in the past week.

So if any president is responsible for this happening it's probably Trump and his CIA and foreign policy that set this in motion back then.

 

It's up to the people and government of Ukraine if they want to fight of negotiate for peace. As long as they are fighting, it would be stupid not to support them. It's obviously not going well for Russia since they have abandoned Syria and will likely lose their only port in the Mediterranean.

And fighting a defensive war is not the same thing as fighting an offensive war. More powerful aggressors lose all the time. Russia lost in Afghanistan and it accelerated collapse of the Soviet Union. The US funded Afghanistan much like we are doing with Ukraine.

"the stunt pulled in Syria" - what does that mean. Russia/Iran are spread too thin and abandoned Syria. I'm guessing the Syrian rebels were armed by Saudi Arabia in their never ending proxy war with Iran.

Putin losing his only base in the Mediterranean shows he is weak. Russia should be losing bargaining power, but it really all depends on if Trump is the puppet everyone thinks he is.

 

So should we GTFO or send in the troops to protect the Christians and Jews? You guys are schizophrenic. Or is this just whining and playing the blame game no matter what happens.

 

I don't know if recent developments are good news and I have no idea what's going to happen in Syria. But I'm hoping the US won't be involved at all. Sure, there are possible outcomes that are unfavorable to the US. But, I kinda doubt we can steer this thing to a better outcome by being involved. Which echoes my pov with the rest of the middle east, Israel included.

 

I agree but the narratives and propaganda could be unavoidable regardless because we are a convenient device for the fundamentalist groups over there to use to further their power.

What we know is two things are going to or are already in motion.

-The UN is already in contact with Syrian rebel officials and the prime minister about a process moving forward to transition. If the process seems to sideline the more extremist factions you better believe they will propagate narratives that the US is behind putting a puppet regime in place and will use Iraq and Afghanistan as an example.

-The US is likely to turn the dial up in eastern Syria against isis in the coming days to keep them from being able to move into Damascus and seeking to gain power out of this situation. I think most would agree that’s a good thing but again a move that doesn’t come without the challenge of perception and propaganda.

When you are the most powerful and wealthy country in the world you’ll be involved in everything whether you want to be or not… or even at least perceptually you’ll be involved.

What will Trump do though…. There’s what he wants to do vs what he’ll actually do. He will want to pull all troops out of Syria but even his most loyal MAGA generals will tell him “sir there will be ISIS fighters within hours with videos of them celebrating at our military bases and it will be viewed as Trump loses to ISIS.” For someone so fixated on image I have a hard time imagining him actually going through with that.

But we’ll see. Anyone who knows exactly how this will turn out is full of it.

 

The fall of Assad isn't good or bad for the USA.

It is bad for Putin but that is a secondary gain.

The USA should stay out of it - something that no President has done in generations.

The fall of Hussein in Iraq - Libya - Iran - and the propping up of Israel all have resulted in there being instability and more extremism in the region.

If there was ever a time to stay involved, it was Iraq - but we abandoned them some time ago....

At this point we need to stay out - Israel can worry about Israel etc.

Iran will fall at some point - stay out.

 

In other news, Israel now has a ski resort lol.

And they destroyed most of the Syrian army's weapons so they wouldn't fall into the hands of the Islamists.

Once again, well done IDF!

 

Given we have a lame duck presidency right now and the incoming administration doesn’t appear interested in projecting power the US is going to do little to nothing in Syria. I predict Syria will likely be like Iraq and Libya with further conflicts between Islamists, Kurds and other groups for quite awhile.

This is speculative but it wouldn’t surprise me if next year Russia can get a resolution that is favorable to it in Ukraine they don’t try to set back up Assad again.

 

If anyone thinks this will not be even much, much worse than Assad...you are naive.

 

We already have like 15k soldiers in Syria so we are involved whether we want to be or not. The UN is going to be heavily involved in the transition as well and anyone who wants to blame the US for what comes next can always just say the US is leading the UN to do what it wants.

More than likely over the next two weeks you’ll see some significant actions from our troops firing on any ISIS factions that make moves towards Damascus. The Biden admin won’t want Trump to be able to say that it was Bidens fault that he “took out” Assad and let ISIS come into power. Biden will probably want a big show of it so people and the media remember what comes next isn’t his fault if it goes bad.

Even if the US sits it out there will still be the perception of US involvement either way with the way propaganda works.

 

I’ve likened the US to being like a rich uncle. The rich uncle likes to throw his weight around and meddle in family affairs. When something happens thought to someone in the family and the rich uncle does nothing he also gets blamed.

In this case yes I think the US will get blamed no matter what happens. You bring up a good point that Biden doesn’t want to leave Syria alone and certainly doesn’t want ISIS to reform he’s still a lame duck and will be out in about a month. Congress certainly isn’t going to want to commit a lot of funding or troops to about going Biden intervention. It’s also lowly many in he Biden admin don’t want to saddle the next admin with a major commitment like GH Bush did in Somalia with Clinton.