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

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

#361

Post by tzs »

rswail wrote: post #275
throwup238 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe there's something else going on we don't know yet. We know whats going on, the world was just focused elsewhere when this all started and suddenly spiraled. Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham launched a run of the mill offensive on November 27 in retaliation to SAA attacks and it turned out to be so successful that the Kurdish SDF launched its own offensive on November 29 to take advantage of the situation. Within a week…

Plus Hezbollah has been beheaded and Iran attacked by Israel and Russia over-extended by its invasion of Ukraine. Turkey has also been involved in this because they don't want the Kurds to have a state, but HTS seems to have managed to form a coalition for now. There was also reports of US strafing attacks on columns of some SAA forces (and possibly IRGC) but that seems to have disappeared in the rapid events. The ex…

> Russia will be desperate to hang on to its naval base at Tartus, but that seems to be wishful thinking, but maybe it can make a deal

Do they actually still need it?

A quick bit of Googling suggests that the main thing they use it for is supplying arms to Syria, which presumably they will no longer need to do.

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

#362

Post by guerrilla »

dralley wrote: post #360
guerrilla wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you think that means they aren't terrorists. Al-qaeda and ISIS have also been at war for a decade. Does that make one of them any less terrible than they have always been? It's not about trust. We have enormous amounts of evidence from all human rights organizations monitoring the situation. You may not understand this but the entire war was filmed. You can just go look up who they are, what they bel…

I said no such thing. I also wouldn't dispute that the PKK are also "terrorists". I still think it's pretty clear that there can be some hierarchy within that category. HTS and the Kurds are less evil than the Taliban, which is less evil than Al-Qaeda, which is less evil than ISIS. Like you said, there is plenty of history to look at here. HTS has run Idlib for years and they have done nothing that compares to the li…

I misunderstood then. My bad.

> I still think it's pretty clear that there can be some hierarchy within that category. HTS and the Kurds are less evil than the Taliban, which is less evil than Al-Qaeda, which is less evil than ISIS.

This I can agree with for sure. There are lesser evils and a hierarchy. I think the hierarchy also depends on the situation on the ground for who it's tolerable to support at a specific time. If it would have taken HTS as much bloodshed to get to where they are today as it did Assad to originally regain control, then I think it would less favorable than what actually happened, for example.

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

#363

Post by amenhotep »

poopsmithe wrote: post #7

Despite reading it 5 times, I fail to understand the meaning of the title, "Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family"

This is a newspaper headlineism more than it is regular English.

[Thing happens] in [description of thing]

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

#364

Post by VoodooJuJu »

If you compare the Assad regime to your own western country, you'd think what happened here was a good thing.

But that's the wrong comparison to make. The rosier Dutch government won't be taking over control here. The rebels will be.

And if you compare the Assad regime to the actual alternative, the rebels, you'll instead realize: the hard times have only just begun [1].

[1] https://medium.com/opacity/the-syrian-war-condensed-a-more-r...

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

#365

Post by lukan »

j_maffe wrote: post #339
j_maffe wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all well and good. Could you please reply to my other question? I'm very curious where this notion is coming from.

The sentence "I said going the authorian islamic way,", implies that there is an "authoritarian Islamic" way. What is that? Because it sounds like you're implying that the religion has intrinsic authoritarian aspects to it.

"Because it sounds like you're implying that the religion has intrinsic authoritarian aspects to it."

No, it implies the focus on the authorian aspects of Islam, just like certain groups in the US would like a authorian christian rule of law.

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

#366

Post by thunky »

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…

> We can ask Ukraine to do this, but we they will need an ironclad commitment that we will supply them with everything they ask for

Sounds like a good way to escalate the war.

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

#367

Post by kkfx »

ggm wrote: post #6

Much though I want to view this as good news I keep finding myself steelmanning that it's actually bad news * destabilising a region already in flames * replacing a secular evil government by.. jihadists in a loose coalition. WCGW? * Russia used port and airfields to maintain a presence in the Med and for nefarious purposes in Africa. What do they do now, to replace them because I doubt "nothing" is the answer. * doe…

You might like to read https://css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/c...

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

#368

Post by Eumenes »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #273
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…

" not really sure who's worse" What is the hot take on the rebels.? Are these the ones the US was backing a few years ago against ISIS? Is this another case of the replacement is worse? Or not? Assad was so bad for using chemical weapons on citizens, the US couldn't conceive of worse? But is that true?

> Assad was so bad for using chemical weapons on citizens

Thats fake/contested

https://x.com/scotthortonshow/status/1863289718890193160

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

#369

Post by DoughnutHole »

sgt wrote: post #270
otherme123 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it's hard to comprehend why Russia was unable to do anything at all. Russia is a country with a modest GDP. They are very close to Mexico or Brazil both in GDP and population. We wouldn't be surprised that Mexico couldn't hold multiple wars

GDP is almost irrelevant when it comes to Russia's true strength and persistence. It's true however that winning a war is incredibly difficult, and the outcome could still be the same for Russia, if their GDP was increased by an order of magnitude. Russia also has a unique ability to turn the entire economy into a sort of "war economy". That hasn't really been done yet.

Russia’s ability to implement a war economy isn’t unique - the last time they did it (WWII) so did the UK, Germany, and the US.

More recent examples include the both sides of the Iran-Iraq war and Armenia in its war with Azerbaijan.

GDP has implications for the productivity of an economy and the budget of the government.

41% of Russia’s government spending at the minute is on the war which means they have to either cut spending on other things weakening the state or drive massive debt and inflation.

There’s a reason you can only run a war economy for so long - eventually you win the war or bleed your economy dry. Russia’s had the advantage of huge legacy reserves of equipment from the USSR days and a larger population. We’ll see how long they can last tapping the well.

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