Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 530 posts

Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#301

Post by roenxi »

TheAlchemist wrote: post #5

I'm not really aware of what's going on in Syria, and not really sure who's worse - Assad or the rebels, but it seems clear that Iran & Russia, which were main backers of Assad regime, appears extremely weak. That's understandable for Iran which may want to avoid to overextend itself following the recent events, but it's hard to comprehend why Russia was unable to do anything at all. In any case, it seems like there…

> but it's hard to comprehend why Russia was unable to do anything at all.

The dust hasn't settled, but my assumption is that the Russians had a sort-of working plan that the Syrian army would do the heavy lifting and Russia would be funnelling in supplies and providing power for key points - following a proxy-war style defensive model. Given the speed and totality of the Syrian army's collapse they didn't really have anything to do that wouldn't be hideously draining on resources that they don't really have.

The collapse of the Syrians may be related to the Russian military being distracted by the Ukraine war in an indirect or direct way. My base case guess is the Turks/Turk-backed faction spotted an opportunity while the Russians were distracted and went for it, and the Syrian forces were complacent because they hadn't really prepared for the situation where Russia is in a war elsewhere.

Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#302

Post by dismalaf »

dralley wrote: post #297
TrackerFF wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the timeline of failures was something like this: 1. Russia, being too entrenched in Ukraine, wanted some global focus shifted away from Ukraine, and managed to get Hamas (probably via Iran) to attack Israel last October. This would predictably become a very hot issue - especially in the US - and make the world "forget" Ukraine. There's been a lot of writing that the support for the Ukraine war will only last…

Hamas attacked Israel the day after the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war. While the October 7th attack may have benefitted Russia indirectly (temporarily at least), it's not particularly likely that Russia played any role in making it happen.

There's a lot of evidence that Russia was probably involved in Oct 7. They're certainly cozy with Hamas...

https://www.memri.org/reports/hamas-visits-its-closest-frien...

Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#304

Post by guilhas »

InfiniteVortex wrote: post #89

I’m shocked that the ruling dynasty fell as quickly as it did, along with the military being ineffective and unwilling to stop the rebels given how long the civil war has been going on for. Incredible.

In the end they couldn't alone keep fighting Al-Qaeda(rebranded) and ISIS, supported by USA, Turkey and Israel

Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#305

Post by cm2187 »

rwyinuse wrote: post #174
cm2187 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> replacing a secular evil government by.. jihadists in a loose coalition. WCGW? that's what strikes me the most. All the newspapers have rebranded "ISIS" "the rebels". The headline would be otherwise "ISIS milicia takes over Syria" and somehow that's good news. I don't know who coordonates the rebranding, but clearly there is coordination, almost every newspaper in every country I checked followed it. It's a spectac…

[flagged]

You are arguing between different flavours of jihadist groups, none of which I would refer simply as "rebels" or showing them taking over as a positive thing.

Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#306

Post by philwelch »

postingawayonhn wrote: post #29
TheAlchemist wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I'm thinking too. But if that's true, it means Ukraine has a real fighting chance to put them on their knees. In any case, this seems like a major loss for Russia.

> it means Ukraine has a real fighting chance to put them on their knees. Yes, and this point has been obvious to many for the last two years. The problem has been the west drip feeding aid into the largest war since WW2. We actually have to define the objective as reclaiming all Ukranian territory (at least to the pre-2022 borders) and supply them appropriately. It might be expensive in the short-term but we can aff…

Is Ukraine actually the largest war since WW2? Is it bigger than the Second Congo War?

Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#307

Post by stefantalpalaru »

ein0p wrote: post #139

It is a bit surreal to read people cheering for islamist head choppers who overthrew a secular government. Remember this 10 years from now when these same head choppers blow something up in NYC. The fundamental invariant of governance stands undefeated: religious head choppers, whether they are on "our side" or not, are always worse in the long run than the secular governments. See the "freedom fighter" Osama Bin Lad…

[dead]

Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#308

Post by jncfhnb »

jajko wrote: post #222
mandelken wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the 2022 Russian invasion, the West has provided 200bn in aid to Ukraine [0]. And Russia has been winning on the ground lately. It seems the West is thinking more aid will not change the outcome, but only diplomacy will. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303432/total-bilateral-...

Heh, if you call few meaningless villages per day winning. Whats really happening is decimation of russian armed and naval forces (and young population) dramatically to the point where russia is regional power at best, not any form of superpower anymore and its weapons are often considered as subpar. They almost emptied massive cold war stockpikes of more sophisticated technology. Which seems to be US plan since begi…

This Russian losses are primarily not young people actually. There’s been somewhere in the ballpark of 600-800k casualties (I believe the latter) which has been a huge struggle for the labor force. But, in fairness, it hasn’t been the young folks.

Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#309

Post by roenxi »

beretguy wrote: post #264
TheAlchemist wrote: post #5

I'm not really aware of what's going on in Syria, and not really sure who's worse - Assad or the rebels, but it seems clear that Iran & Russia, which were main backers of Assad regime, appears extremely weak. That's understandable for Iran which may want to avoid to overextend itself following the recent events, but it's hard to comprehend why Russia was unable to do anything at all. In any case, it seems like there…

> it's hard to comprehend why Russia was unable to do anything at all Easy. Because russia is all talk and no do. If you punch russia in the face it folds in half.

They're spilling a lot of blood right now because they felt the Ukraine was intolerable. You can accuse them of a lot of things (war crimes and disastrous stupidity among them) but "all talk and no do" is bizarre. On the military front they are responsible for something close to the most doing in Europe since WWII and their pain tolerance in doing has been demonstrated to be remarkably high.

Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#310

Post by dralley »

dismalaf wrote: post #302
dralley wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hamas attacked Israel the day after the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war. While the October 7th attack may have benefitted Russia indirectly (temporarily at least), it's not particularly likely that Russia played any role in making it happen.

There's a lot of evidence that Russia was probably involved in Oct 7. They're certainly cozy with Hamas... https://www.memri.org/reports/hamas-visits-its-closest-frien...

There's nothing in there that particularly suggests that they promted the attack. But of course they capitalized as best they could off of the distraction.
Post reply on HN