Russian military buildup in Syria...

[backtoiam]

Somebody needs to hire this guy.

[backtoiam]

US military airdrops 50 tons of ammo for Syrian fighters, after training mission ends
Posted on October 12, 2015

Fox News

The U.S. military airdropped 50 tons of small arms ammo and grenades in northern Syria on Sunday, a senior defense official told Fox News, representing the Pentagon’s shift from training rebel fighters to equipping them.

Coming just two days after the Defense Department announced it was effectively ending its current training program, the airdrop delivery was made Sunday by four C-17 transport aircraft. The 112 pallets contained ammunition for M-16s and AK-47s.

“All the pallets reached friendly forces,” the official said, adding that the drop “looked similar to what we did in Kobani.” This referred to one of the few bright spots in the war against the Islamic State when the U.S. military dropped weapons to Syrian Kurdish fighters, known as the YPG, who successfully expelled ISIS from the Turkish-Syrian border town of Kobani earlier this year.

This time, the official said Syrian Kurds were not recipients of the U.S. airdrop — only Syrian Arabs fighting ISIS. There is sensitivity in Washington over arming Syrian Kurds, whom Turkey sees as an enemy but the U.S. counts as a NATO ally.

The 50 tons of supplies were airdropped into Al-Hasakah province, home to Syrian Kurds, Arabs and a minority Assyrian community.

The ammunition originally was intended for the U.S. military’s “train and equip” mission, the official said. But that program was canceled last week.

“So now we are more focused on the ‘E’ [equip] part of the T&E [train & equip],” said the official, who described equipping Syrian Arabs as the focus of the new strategy against ISIS.

The Defense Department announced Friday that it was overhauling the mission to aid Syrian rebel fighters. After the program fell far short of its goals for recruiting and training Syrian fighters, the DOD said it would focus instead on providing “equipment packages and weapons to a select group of vetted leaders and their units so that over time they can make a concerted push into territory still controlled by ISIL.”

The shift also comes as Russia continues to launch airstrikes in Syria, causing tension with the U.S. amid suspicions Moscow is only trying to prop up Bashar Assad.

Col. Steve Warren, spokesman for the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition, confirmed that coalition forces conducted the airdrop on Sunday.

“The aircraft delivery includes small arms ammunition to resupply counter-ISIL ground forces so that they can continue operations against ISIL. All aircraft exited the drop area safely,” he said in a statement.

President Obama, in an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” aired Sunday, said there’s “no doubt” that the training mission “did not work.” But he noted he was “skeptical from the get-go about the notion that we were going to effectively create this proxy army inside of Syria.”

Obama said while there are no “silver bullets,” the U.S. is “prepared to work both diplomatically and where we can to support moderate opposition that can help convince the Russians and Iranians to put pressure on Assad for a transition.”

Lucas Tomlinson is the Pentagon and State Department producer for Fox News Channel. You can follow him on Twitter: @LucasFoxNews

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/10 ... g-mission/

[AlicetheKurious]

Alice, good to see you back. What do you make of the Qataris sending troops and jets to join the Saudi intervention in Yemen, or the amazing international consensus not to do anything that might annoy Khartoum about atrocities in Darfur? There's a united front there between the US, China, Russia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which is odd. I'd appreciate your thoughts on these things, which I've found puzzling.

It reveals 'a pattern of deliberate policy to brutalise the civilian population', HRW's UN and Crisis Advocacy Director, Philippe Bolopion, told AC. 'The UN Security Council response has been abysmal, with no meaningful effort to hold Sudan accountable or put an end to these abuses'. China and Russia were 'blocking more meaningful engagement', he said, while France, the United Kingdom and United States 'accepted the status quo'.
[...]
Rights activists widely believe that Washington and Khartoum stitched up a deal and then passed it to the African group to sponsor. On 24 September, Sudan was asked to present the draft as a compromise between it and the USA. The European Union (EU), Australia, Canada, Ireland, Mexico, Norway and Switzerland tried to strengthen the text, we hear. However, China, Qatar and Saudi Arabia opposed any amendments. Changes are largely in the language, not the substance.

There's nothing in the least puzzling about either one of these things. Though the Reuters headline "Qatar Sends 1,000 Ground Troops to Yemen Conflict: Al-Jazeera" had me laughing in a bitter sort of way. I'll eat my arm if there's a single Qatari among them. What Qatar is sending to Yemen is a bunch of mercenary terrorists recruited from the world's gutters, and led by Islamist terrorists such as "Al-Qaeda", "ISIS", or whatever the latest Muslim Brotherhood subsidiaries choose to call themselves.

The US (very possibly in collusion with Iran) laid the trap, and the Saudis stupidly took the bait, while turning a deaf ear to the many warnings from friends, and now they're stuck in a quagmire with no visible way out. Yemen and the Yemeni people are paying the heaviest price, of course, but that's collateral damage. The real target is Saudi Arabia itself, which is being 'softened up' and readied for destruction and fragmentation as per the American/Israeli plan.

Yemen has been destroyed at Saudi expense, and handed over to a toxic mix of Iranian-controlled Houthis (who, if they didn't before, certainly now represent an existential danger to Saudi Arabia), and takfiri Muslim Brotherhood terrorist offshoots (who equally represent an existential danger to Saudi Arabia). Saudi Arabia is digging its own grave, and paying exorbitantly to do so. (So is Qatar, of course, but Qatar is not a real country. It's a Mossad-run pseudo-state that is used as a bottomless wallet to finance the destruction of the Arabs).

What we're witnessing in Yemen is the end game of the long-running collaboration of Saudi Arabia with the United States, in exchange for the US propping up the Saudi monarchy. For the past 90 years or so, the Saudis' American "friends" have always blandished the threat of withdrawing their support for the Saudi monarchy, and the Saudis have been invariably terrified into complying with the Americans' increasingly expensive and destructive demands. Economically, Saudi Arabia is being bled dry, serving the US agenda by keeping oil production insanely high to keep prices falling, as part of the US' strategy to collapse Russia's economy. But the Americans weren't satisfied with that. Saudi Arabia also had to finance the so-called coalition's open-ended and extortionate "War on ISIS" in Syria and Iraq, to the tune of billions of dollars every month. Still, the Americans weren't satisfied. Egged on by the Americans and alarmed by the Houthis' rapid armed takeover in Yemen right next door, and their overt threats against Saudi Arabia, it was provoked into launching a poorly planned, panic-driven war against them, despite the fact that Saudi Arabia has no ground troops to speak of, and no war can be won with just air power. This led to the spectacle of Saudi Arabia belatedly shopping around for regular ground troops from other countries, and being politely refused by all of them. Thus, unable to advance or to withdraw, Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen consists of increasingly desperate and vicious air-strikes that are creating massive human suffering on the ground, with US proxies Al-Qaeda and similar groups advancing to take over the territories thus "liberated", only to have them later recaptured by the Houthis, and vice versa.

The US/Israel do not want this catastrophe to end any time soon, and neither does Iran, for its own reasons. As the war degenerates into ruinous gang warfare and chaos, and Saudi Arabia's economy begins showing signs of imminent collapse, this, combined with certain recent events, is serving to finally wake the Saudis up. First, instead of placating the US and keeping its support, as promised, the Saudi war in Yemen is being used by its US 'friend' to blackmail the Saudi rulers with the threat of legal prosecution for war crimes there, of which there is no shortage, committed by all sides.

Second, instead of a quick victory in Yemen followed by its pacification and takeover by Saudi Arabia to neutralize the Iranian-backed Houthi threat, Saudi Arabia discovered that it has turned Yemen into a festering and spreading open sore that represents a much bigger and direct threat to its own existence than ever before. All its money and the sacrifice of Saudi lives have only bought it more enmity and placed its national security in greater danger.

Third, the bizarre series of accidents that plagued the recent Hajj gathering of millions of Muslims from around the world, and which led to the deaths of thousands of people, have provide Iran with the ammunition it needed to lead a global campaign demanding that the holy cities of Mecca and Medina be forcibly taken from Saudi Arabia's sovereign control and handed to an international council representing all the Muslim countries.

No longer can Saudi Arabia deny that the warnings of its friends were accurate, and that its current course is leading it only to economic and social collapse and fragmentation, all orchestrated by its "friends", the Americans, in concert with its arch-enemies, the Iranians. As for the takfiri terrorists it has been sponsoring, these have proven with the recent series of deadly bombings in Saudi Arabia, particularly the two horrific bombings of Saudi Shia mosques last May, and subsequent car bombings, etc., that Saudi Arabia has been cherishing a viper in its own bosom.

When it finally, finally realized that the US is repaying Saudi Arabia's loyalty with betrayal, Saudi Arabia did the unthinkable, and turned to Russia, America's own nemesis. The US/Zionist agenda in the Arab world can be summed up in one phrase: "fragmentation and chaos". A counter-bloc is slowly taking shape, which aims to unite and stabilize those countries, in coordination with Russia (with a less prominent but no less significant role for China). Until now, Saudi Arabia has not totally joined the other side, but intense negotiations are taking place, with full appreciation of the stakes involved.

It is in this context, and against this background, that you may perhaps understand why Qatar, at this particular time, is sending in more terrorists, US/Israeli proxies, into Yemen. In a nutshell, consider it to be a counter-move to the Saudis' surprise overtures to Russia.

As for your second question, about the Sudanese President Bashir, the explanation is even more obvious. You seem to be laboring under some sort of bizarre delusion that the international community gives a hoot about atrocities in Darfur or anywhere else, or that the ICC hasn't been utterly discredited and exposed as just another weapon in the US' imperialist arsenal. Let me break it to you: it doesn't, and it has.

African states in particular are particularly, and openly for the most part, disgusted with the fact that in a world where the governments of countries like the US and Britain and Israel and other rogue states commit mass murder and rampage through other countries, destroying and stealing and committing all sorts of war crimes in broad daylight without the slightest fear of prosecution (on the contrary, their biggest war criminals are virtually guaranteed a luxurious retirement of vast fortunes and prestige), outfits like the ICC go after Africans exclusively, even sitting African presidents. And not just any Africans, but those who don't obediently follow the orders of their Western masters. Even if they do obey, the threat of ICC arrest and prosecution is extra insurance to make sure they don't step outside the lines that are drawn for them.

Last summer, during the Summit of the Organization of African States that was held in South Africa, Omar Bashir's hunters thought they had him finally cornered. He's been quite freely and safely travelling to various African and other countries, but South Africa was viewed as firmly in the Western camp. And indeed, the South African courts did rule that Bashir must be arrested and handed over to the ICC, a ruling that is legally binding on the South African President Jacob Zuma, who was hosting the Summit.

But this put President Zuma in a terrible bind: if he didn't hand over Bashir, he would anger his country's Western allies. If he did, he and his country would become a pariah not only in Africa, but among Bashir's many Arab allies, and very possibly throughout the Third World. President Zuma made his calculations, and decided to let him go, making it clear that even South Africa cannot afford to alienate all the Africans and the Arabs. That was very telling, and interesting.

The US was certainly not happy, but it had gambled and lost, and there was nothing to be gained by further antagonizing Africa and the others at this particular time.

I hope this helps.

[stefano]

Thanks Alice... I must say it still doesn't make sense to me though.

It is in this context, and against this background, that you may perhaps understand why Qatar, at this particular time, is sending in more terrorists, US/Israeli proxies, into Yemen. In a nutshell, consider it to be a counter-move to the Saudis' surprise overtures to Russia.

If these troops are a long-term threat to Saudi stability, though, why are they there? The Saudis let them drive right through the kingdom, then opened the border crossing to Yemen for them. At the moment they're co-operating in Yemen (with each other and with Hadi's forces) against the Houthis and issuing joint statements at GCC things. I'm not getting it.

You seem to be laboring under some sort of bizarre delusion that the international community gives a hoot about atrocities in Darfur or anywhere else, or that the ICC hasn't been utterly discredited and exposed as just another weapon in the US' imperialist arsenal. Let me break it to you: it doesn't, and it has.

No, I'm not labouring under that delusion. I quite get what the ICC is. What I don't understand is why the US didn't use the instance of this UNHRC vote to try and save it, or to score points against the Russians by voting against them and drawing attention to it - 'look at those Russians, they just support dictators'. The Bashir indictment is the last throw for the ICC - if nothing comes of it, as now seems almost certain, the court will collapse. William Ruto's case is very shaky, the one against JP Bemba is really just a pretext to keep him in jail until after the next elections in the DRC, and Bosco Ntaganda is a minor player. The case against Laurent Gbagbo was always the most nakedly political of all of them, and if it's the last one left then there's really nothing.

The American's can't really publicly push for states to act on ICC warrants, as the US itself is not a member, but in the month before that vote Human Rights Watch published a pretty gruesome report on Darfur - on past form I'd have expected the US State Department to draw attention to it by having a pliant journo ask about it in a presser, or frankly for the report to get more coverage than it did. None of that happened. Sudan's relations with Washington have improved drastically in the past five years, as the US has been pushing (partnering with?) the MB all over, but some pro forma move on the UNHCR thing could have been agreed in advance, and might even have boosted Bashir at home.

The US was certainly not happy, but it had gambled and lost, and there was nothing to be gained by further antagonizing Africa and the others at this particular time.

Maybe. Thanks, as always, for a well-written and meaty post.

[AlicetheKurious]

If these troops are a long-term threat to Saudi stability, though, why are they there? The Saudis let them drive right through the kingdom, then opened the border crossing to Yemen for them. At the moment they're co-operating in Yemen (with each other and with Hadi's forces) against the Houthis and issuing joint statements at GCC things. I'm not getting it.

As I said earlier, the Saudis right now are stuck in a quagmire with no way out. What is their alternative? If the Saudis let up on their "war", then there is no doubt the Houthis would win. It's not possible to exaggerate how terrifying that prospect is, to the Saudis. It's simply not an option. They don't have real ground troops to fight for them, so they are forced to make do with whatever mercenaries and terrorist garbage can be cobbled together and sent to fight in Yemen. It's the lesser of two evils. Still an evil, and a big potential danger to the Saudis themselves, but they literally don't know what else to do, in the immediate situation.

I quite get what the ICC is. What I don't understand is why the US didn't use the instance of this UNHRC vote to try and save it, or to score points against the Russians by voting against them and drawing attention to it - 'look at those Russians, they just support dictators'. The Bashir indictment is the last throw for the ICC - if nothing comes of it, as now seems almost certain, the court will collapse. William Ruto's case is very shaky, the one against JP Bemba is really just a pretext to keep him in jail until after the next elections in the DRC, and Bosco Ntaganda is a minor player. The case against Laurent Gbagbo was always the most nakedly political of all of them, and if it's the last one left then there's really nothing.

The American's can't really publicly push for states to act on ICC warrants, as the US itself is not a member, but in the month before that vote Human Rights Watch published a pretty gruesome report on Darfur - on past form I'd have expected the US State Department to draw attention to it by having a pliant journo ask about it in a presser, or frankly for the report to get more coverage than it did. None of that happened. Sudan's relations with Washington have improved drastically in the past five years, as the US has been pushing (partnering with?) the MB all over, but some pro forma move on the UNHCR thing could have been agreed in advance, and might even have boosted Bashir at home.

The problem, I think, is that the US and its organizations like Human Rights Watch, as well as the ICC itself, have all been widely exposed and no longer have any credibility at all. Whatever moral veneer they used to have, they've squandered to the extent that they are commonly viewed, especially in the Third World, as weapons against people and against freedom and against human rights, and especially as weapons against weaker nations that are trying to exercise their sovereignty and defend their nation's wealth against American greed. I'm not saying that such perceptions are always accurate, but that they are very broadly shared even on the street. The saying "المتغطي بالامريكان عريان" ("He who is covered by the Americans is naked") has rapidly joined ancient popular proverbs among common people across the Arab world, for example.

As an empire, the US has acquired a very bad reputation for betraying its friends and stabbing them in the back; cutting deals with its (and its friends') supposedly mortal enemies; infinite hypocrisy; savagery; corruption; and last but not least, saber-rattling and warmongering, then getting its ass kicked. That's not good, especially when alternatives to the uni-polar world domineered by the unchallenged US superpower are slowly but surely forming. The US blew it, and the "American Century" barely lasted maybe 10-20 years. The US empire, in the wake of its appalling military failures, has also lost the public relations war as well; it is forced to operate in a very different environment today than that of say, 10 years ago. Or even 5 years ago. First, its "humanitarian" wars turned out, before the eyes of the world, to be today's version of the Mongol invasions, leaving nothing but death, destruction and grinding poverty in their wake. And then, its "humanitarian" institutions and their agents turned out to be nothing but subversives, saboteurs and traitors, and instruments for bullying and blackmailing weaker nations. It's finally getting through, even to the block-headed policy makers in Washington that too much heavy-handedness is simply going to create a stronger backlash, and push countries even more into joining forces and fighting back with whatever they can. The process has begun in Latin America, the Arab world, Africa, Asia and even, to a certain extent, in Europe. So if you want to understand why the US is not crashing around like a bull in a china shop the way it has been, you have to take today's changing context into account.

[AlicetheKurious]

On October 9, 2015, all the Western media announced the news that the Russian campaign in Syria was actually empowering "ISIS". According to this narrative, because Russia is bombing the "wrong" targets, "ISIS" is using the Russian air-strikes as cover to make rapid advances in Aleppo. According to the New York Times, for example:

ISIS Makes Gains in Syria Territory Bombed by Russia
By ANNE BARNARD and THOMAS ERDBRINKOCT. 9, 2015

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Islamic State registered significant gains on Friday in the area of northwestern Syria that Russian warplanes have been bombing, taking six villages near Aleppo and threatening to cut off an important route north to the Turkish border. Late in the day, there were reports that rebels had reasserted control in one village.

The Kremlin has said its military had entered Syria to fight the Islamic State, but the Russian forces have concentrated much of their firepower on insurgent groups aligned against President Bashar al-Assad, including the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, and relatively secular groups like the Free Syrian Army. Rival insurgents say that the Islamic State, also called ISIS or Daesh, is taking advantage.

“Daesh has exploited the Russian airstrikes and the preoccupation of the Free Syrian Army in its battles in Hama, and advanced in Aleppo,” one rebel commander told Reuters.

The Islamic State advance is threatening a strategic area north of Aleppo on the way to crossing points into Turkey that was to be part of a proposed ISIS-free buffer zone under a plan the United States announced over the summer with Turkey. That plan now seems to have stalled. ...Link

But beginning this morning, there's been breaking news all day that the Syrian Army and Hezbullah, with air cover from Russia, are conducting a major offensive against the terrorists in Aleppo, and have already liberated several positions, sending the terrorists scrambling to escape.

According to field reports from the provincial capital, the Syrian Armed Forces and Lebanese Resistance captured 4 sites from the Islamist rebels of Jabhat Al-Shamiyah (Levantine Front), Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham, and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) this morning, killing a number of enemy combatants in the process of their advance in the Aleppo Governorate’s southern countryside.

The Syrian Armed Forces and Lebanese Resistance captured the villages of ‘Abtayn, Al-Wadayhi, and Qala’at Al-Najam, along with the Defense Battalion Base and the farms surrounding it; this rapid progress by the pro-government forces caught the Islamist rebels off-guard, as they frantically retreated to the southwest in order to evade the swarming enemy fighters. Link

And surely the official announcement by the Russian Defense Ministry that "ISIS" has lost most of its ammunition and heavy vehicles deserves some mention in Western media.

ISIS lost most of its ammunition & heavy vehicles in Russian airstrikes – military
Published time: 13 Oct, 2015 12:50
Edited time: 13 Oct, 2015 20:04


Islamic State militants have lost "most" of their ammunition, heavy vehicles and equipment in Russian airstrikes, the Defense Ministry said Tuesday. At least 86 ISIS targets were hit during 88 sorties in the last 24 hours.

Sukhoi Su-24M and Su-34 bombers, together with Su-25SM ground support aircrafts targeted Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) sites in the provinces of Raqqah, Hama, Idlib, Latakia and Aleppo, according to the ministry. The jets hit command posts, ammunition and armament depots, military vehicles, plants producing explosives, field camps and bases.

Su-24M bombers also targeted an IS field headquarters near the city of Anadan in the province of Aleppo from which the terrorists coordinated their activities. There was an ammunition depot at the site, the ministry said.

One more IS field post was destroyed near the city of al-Bab in Aleppo Province.

A new set of videos was released showing targets hit in Latakia and Hama.

(Videos at link)


An Su-34 bomber airstrike completely destroyed a bunker with an ammunition depot near Latamna in the province of Hama, the ministry said in a press release.

According to intercepted communications, the militants suffer from shortages of ammunition, small arms and grenade guns. Several commanders allegedly say they will withdraw their units unless their ammunition needs are satisfied.

“Russian airstrikes resulted in the elimination of the majority of ISIS ammunition, heavy vehicles and equipment,” the Defense Ministry tweeted.

Russia launched its anti-IS military operation in Syria on September, 30, at the request of the Syrian government. Western countries have voiced concerns that Russia rather targets moderate opposition in Syria, but Moscow says it is after terrorist groups such as IS and Al-Nusra Front.

“[Western countries] say we are bombing false targets. On Sunday US air forces targeted a power station and a transformer in Aleppo. Why did they do it? Whom did they punish? What was the sense? That is unclear,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defense has prepared an agreement concerning the safety of flights in Syria and sent it to US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, who confirmed that talks are being held. However, no agreements have yet been reached, RIA Novosti reported. Link

But no, nothing.

[AlicetheKurious]

Kind of funny, though unconfirmed:

ISIL Fighters Cut Beards and Flee to Turkey

The Syrian Army estimates that "ISIS"/Daesh has so far lost around 10,000 of its troops, including those killed, fled, or surrendered.

[backtoiam]

eye don't know why it usually makes me nervous when somebody like Putin is in the front row and is missing an eye, but it does. maybe its just me...

putin missing an eye.PNG

[American Dream]

http://fpif.org/is-putin-really-as-foolish-as-we-are/

Is Putin Really as Foolish as We Are?

Putin’s attempt at "shock and awe" in Syria has all the hallmarks of failed U.S. interventions of the past

By John Feffer, October 14, 2015.




Nixon lied.

Surely this is not a shocker. But what’s interesting about the latest revelation concerning Nixon and Vietnam is that the most duplicitous president in U.S. history actually knew that the U.S. air war in Southeast Asia was a dismal failure. Even as Nixon was telling the media that the saturation bombings of Vietnam and Laos were “very effective,” he was privately acknowledging the opposite.

“We have had 10 years of total control of the air in Laos and V.Nam,” Nixon wrote to his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, on January 3, 1972. “The result = Zilch. There is something wrong with the strategy or the Air Force.”

The Obama administration has unleashed a similar air war in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State. The results have been comparable to Nixon’s “zilch.” The Islamic State has not replaced its black flag with a white one, nor has it shrunk appreciably in size. Obama’s attempt to unseat Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has not produced much either, other than increased violence and chaos in the poor, benighted country. The Pentagon’s effort to train and re-insert “moderate” rebels into the country has proven so disastrous that the Obama administration recently suspended the project.

Meanwhile, the CIA’s rival plan to simply ship armaments to existing forces fighting against the government in Damascus has yielded more than “zilch,” at least according to recent reports. Indeed, the success anti-Assad forces have had with anti-tank missiles helped persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to intervene on the side of the Syrian government to forestall checkmate and prolong stalemate.

Since Putin is Russian, chess has been the go-to metaphor for portraying recent Kremlin strategy. No surprise, then, that Putin’s move in Syria has been hailed (by some) as the brilliant gambit of a grandmaster. They’re wrong. It’s more like a desperate pawn sacrifice designed to stave off the inevitably grisly endgame.

Like Nixon, Putin would like us to think he’s tricky. But they’re both just brutal tacticians of limited imagination.

Putin’s Folly

Since the end of last month, the Russian government has sent fighter jets, tanks, drones and a couple hundred of soldiers to Syria. It has already conducted hundreds of air strikes. It’s even launched cruise missile strikes from ships anchored in the Caspian Sea at targets nearly a thousand miles away. The Russian government claims that it’s targeting the Islamic State, but many of the air strikes appear to have hit other rebel groups fighting the Assad regime. And in the short period that the air strikes have taken place, they’ve predictably generated the usual reports of “collateral damage,” including 17 civilians in Talbiseh at the very outset on September 30.

The Russian moves, if only because they represent something fundamentally different in a conflict that has ground on for more than four years, have attracted enormous media attention. Putin’s audacity has even garnered something approximating grudging respect from across the political spectrum.

His speech at the UN last month, which heralded the more muscular Russian policy, qualified him as the “new sheriff in town” and his country as the “real powerbroker in the Middle East,” according to conservative national security analyst John Schindler. Economist contributor Edward Lucas termed Putin’s speech a “triumph” while his decisive intervention in Syria, in comparison to the blunders of the West, make the Russian leader seem “a responsible statesman, to whom we turn in desperation for help.” Juan Cole, after dismissing the Obama administration efforts as ineffectual, concludes that “Putin knows what he wants and has an idea about how to achieve it.”

Even for some on the left, Putin continues to represent a praiseworthy counterforce to American power and the kind of iron-fist response to the Islamic State that some crave. “Putin is not going to stop for anything or anyone,” writes Mike Whitney at Counterpunch. “He’s going to nail these guys while he has them in his gun-sights, then he’s going to wrap it up and go home. By the time the Obama crew gets its act together and realizes that they have to stop the bombing pronto or their whole regime change operation is going to go up in smoke, Putin’s going to be blowing kisses from atop a float ambling through Red Square in Moscow’s first tickertape parade since the end of WW2.”

It’s safe to say that most military interventions look decisive at the beginning. That’s when pundits and policymakers talk of “cakewalks” and “troops home by Christmas.”

But there’s really no reason to believe that Russia’s military intervention in Syria will produce results appreciably different from what the United States and its allies have already (not) achieved. President Obama, who is probably enjoying his own private moments of schadenfreude, has predicted that Russia will descend into a “quagmire” in Syria (though, of course, the president hasn’t publicly acknowledged the quasi-quagmire into which he himself has tiptoed).

It’s impossible to know what Putin hopes to achieve from this gambit other than to guarantee Russian involvement in whatever happens next. Perhaps all sides will throw up their hands and take refuge at the negotiating table, with Putin emerging, as he did after the chemical weapons compromise in September 2013, as the master diplomat. Or perhaps the war will continue to grind on, but with more firepower added to the equation and thus more casualties, more extremist reactions, and more desperate refugees, with Putin playing the role of master spoiler who wants to pin the West down in an intractable conflict. In either case, Putin would earn his title as grandmaster of geopolitics.

I suspect, however, that Vladimir Putin is just as foolish and trigger-happy as any world leader with a large expeditionary force and the itch to use it. Attempting to save Bashar al-Assad in Syria is tantamount to trying to prop up Nguyen Van Thieu in South Vietnam in the 1960s. The Russian government will claim success for its air war — just as the United States and allies do for theirs — and there will no doubt be some tactical victories as the Assad government reclaims some rebel-held territory.

But Putin will not likely accomplish the physically impossible task that Obama and others have already attempted: bombing a broken country back into shape. At what point will the Russian leader write a confidential note to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to confess that their strategy of “strategic bombing” has yielded “zilch”?

Rolling Back the Arab Spring

It’s heartening that the Nobel Peace Prize this year went not only to the one bright legacy of the Arab Spring — the democratic transformation of Tunisia — but to the civic groups that made it happen. Two trade unions, the oldest human rights organization in the Arab world, and a lawyer’s group, which together form the National Dialogue Quartet, have created a civil society that is so far strong enough to resist religious extremists, political strongmen, and outside intervention.

Tunisia is quite literally the anti-Syria, having taken the path that the initial non-violent protesters attempted and that Bashar al-Assad so ruthlessly suppressed. Tunisia is far from perfect, but it’s the one place in the region where “people power” hasn’t given way to civil war, counter-coups, and vertiginous descents into chaos.

Vladimir Putin has looked on all that the Arab Spring has wrought and fretted. Not only did he lose reliable allies like Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, but he witnessed the rise of Islamic extremist groups that have direct links to secessionist movements within Russia itself. Where strong men reasserted control, as in Egypt, Putin has been quick to renew support. Opposition to Sunni extremism has also proven a useful means of establishing new understandings with Iran and Iraq. Putin doesn’t care about the human rights records of any of these governments. Given the periodic outbreaks of people power inside Russia itself, Putin appreciates the need for the occasional crackdown.

Putin probably doesn’t care one way or another about Bashar al-Assad. If someone else could hold the country together more effectively and mount a credible campaign against the Islamic State, the Russian president would embrace the alternative in a heartbeat. In the end, Putin doesn’t want Russia’s tenuous claim to geopolitical influence beyond its borders — primarily a stake in the vitally important Middle East — to disappear simply because of the political or religious passions of people on the ground. You can hear echoes of Nixon and Kissinger in such Russian realpolitik.

In this sense, Putin’s intervention in Syria is no different from his intervention in Ukraine — just substitute the Arab Spring for the Euromaidan, Islamic fundamentalists for Ukrainian fascists, and the beleaguered semi-state of Bashar al-Assad for the declared semi-state of the Donetsk People’s Republic. In Ukraine as in Syria, Putin is winging it. With Ukraine, however, the expedition is across the border and the lay of the land somewhat more familiar. In Syria, despite surveillance drones and guided missile technology, Putin is literally flying blind.

Which puts him in good company.

Following in Our Footsteps

As Nixon discovered to his dismay in the early 1970s, the virtues of bombing campaigns are often oversold.

U.S. policymakers, led by Robert McNamara, believed that they were applying the lessons learned from World War II about the efficacy of air strikes. But as James Russell points out in LobeLog, “The allied bombers missed most of what they were aiming at, did not end Germany’s means to wage war, and did not convince the German people to give up the fight.” Greater accuracy didn’t produce better results in Vietnam — and even greater accuracy in Afghanistan and Iraq didn’t ultimately create outcomes on the ground that the United States desired.

Putin’s attempt at “shock and awe” in Syria has all the hallmarks of failed U.S. policies of the past. In the initial days, for instance, the Russian media has focused on the pinpoint accuracy of the air strikes in taking out “most” of the Islamic State’s ammunition and heavy machinery. It will take some time before more critical reports — of Russian bombings of medical facilities or missiles that went astray in Iran — reach Putin’s constituents.

Then there’s the emphasis on the preemptive nature of the attacks. “It’s better to fight them there than here,” George W. Bush famously said (more than once). Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev essentially said the same thing last week:

“It’s better to do it abroad rather than fight terrorism inside the country.”

Of course, the Russians have more to worry about. Neither the Taliban nor Saddam Hussein had any plans to attack the United States (al-Qaeda was a different matter). The Islamic State, meanwhile, has thrown a thousand Chechen fighters into battle, and who knows what might happen if these battle-hardened veterans ever make it back to Russia proper.

A handful of Russian tourists and hostages have died at the hands of Islamic extremists in the Middle East. A few of the Russian Marines now hunkered down in Syria will probably die as well, particularly now that the Homs Liberation Movement (part of the Free Syrian Army) has promised to use suicide bombers to weed out the Russians. Just this week, as a shot across the bow, insurgents shelled the Russian embassy in Damascus.

But Russians will only feel the true consequences of Putin’s actions when the next wave of retaliatory bombings strikes Russia itself. The Moscow subway was hit by two suicide bombers in 2010 and the Moscow airport was targeted in 2011. Just this week, the Russian government has reportedly thwarted another attack on public transportation, allegedly organized this time by the Islamic State. Here, then, is where Putin’s chess-playing skills reveal themselves to be sub-par. He is throwing his pieces into battle without protecting his flanks. The Russian public should brace itself for blowback.

This is the ugliest parallel with American follies. After all, the air wars that the Bush administration conducted in the 2000s continue to haunt the United States even after the dramatic toppling of the kings. Indeed, only as the wars continued in Iraq and Afghanistan long after Saddam and the Taliban had been deposed did the United States learn that a symmetrical game of chess was a poor metaphor for the strategies needed to address asymmetrical warfare against a determined adversary. Bombing a country to rubble only produces a flinty determination on the part of the survivors to fight back.

It’s a lesson that Nixon learned (too late), that Obama is struggling to learn (or perhaps struggling to teach his Republican opponents), and that Putin, in the arrogance of his power, probably thinks that he doesn’t need to learn at all.

John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus.

[Searcher08]

John Feffer is a fully-paid up (or more accurately fully PAID) member of the Soros Open Society Foundations neo-liberal ecosystem. Kinda of like analysis-free State Department talking points for an Anderson Cooper audience who want to have the "More Info" button pressed for them.

[AlicetheKurious]

John Feffer is a fully-paid up (or more accurately fully PAID) member of the Soros Open Society Foundations neo-liberal ecosystem. Kinda of like analysis-free State Department talking points for an Anderson Cooper audience who want to have the "More Info" button pressed for them.

Who would have guessed? One can almost smell the desperation.

But this, this sounded like a threat:

But Russians will only feel the true consequences of Putin’s actions when the next wave of retaliatory bombings strikes Russia itself. The Moscow subway was hit by two suicide bombers in 2010 and the Moscow airport was targeted in 2011. Just this week, the Russian government has reportedly thwarted another attack on public transportation, allegedly organized this time by the Islamic State. Here, then, is where Putin’s chess-playing skills reveal themselves to be sub-par. He is throwing his pieces into battle without protecting his flanks. The Russian public should brace itself for blowback.

Thank goodness the Russians know EXACTLY whom they're dealing with, who's behind them, and all their little tricks. And I guarantee they've done their homework.

But all the focus on Russia is causing Mr. Feffer to miss the obvious: Russia did make a huge difference with all the air power. But just as important is the effective coordination on the ground between the Syrian Army, the Iraqi Army, and Hezbullah, as well as the central command center that joins all three with Iran. And that's just the countries we know about (I can think of at least two other countries covertly coordinating with the others, that are never mentioned). What we're seeing in Syria is the birth of a genuine, nationalist, anti-terror coalition, a partnership based on shared LEGITIMATE strategic objectives, unlike those fake coalitions with vassals and mercenaries that the US uses to mask its wars of aggression. Despite Mr. Feffer's whistling in the dark, the rather spectacular results speak for themselves.

[Grizzly]

Holy Shit! Hell frozen over ... to think I would ever mention the Catholic church about ANYTHING ...

Syrian archbishop: there are no "moderate rebels, US is joining forces with al-Qaeda, if Assad goes away now, Syria will become like Libya.
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/20 ... -al-qaeda/

Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo has said the CIA has been training Syrian rebel groups which are 'al-Qaeda under a different name'

A Syrian Catholic archbishop has accused the United States of joining forces with al-Qaeda in an attempt to topple President Bashar Al-Assad.

Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo of Hassaké-Nisibi said he believed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was arming and training rebel groups in Syria which were al-Qaeda under “a different name”.

He said it was misleading for Western politicians to speak of support for “moderate rebels” in Syria because such groups simply did not exist.

He also said that Western military interference in his country was misguided because it could make Syria “like Libya”, a country where government and law and order have effectively collapsed amid fighting by rival groups after the US, Britain and France helped to bring down Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The 74-year-old prelate spoke of his concerns after John McCain, chairman of the US Senate Armed Services Committee, admitted that America was supporting anti-Assad rebels at war with the Syrian government.

Mr McCain had made the admission in an interview with CNN, the US news organisation, in which he expressed his anger that Russian jets had started bombing Islamist rebels in Syria at the invitation of President Assad.

ch–advert-new-600

“US Senator John McCain protested saying that the Russians are not bombing the positions of ISIS, but rather the anti-Assad rebels trained by the CIA,” Archbishop Hindo told Fides, a Vatican-based news agency.

“I find these words are disturbing,” he said. “They represent a blatant admission that behind the war against Assad there is also the CIA.”

Archbishop Hindo continued: “Western propaganda keeps talking about moderate rebels, who do not exist. There is something very disturbing about all this – there is a superpower that since September 11 protests because the Russians hit the militias of al-Qaeda in Syria.

“What does it mean, (that) al-Qaeda is now a US ally, just because in Syria it has a different name? But do they really despise our intelligence and our memory?”

Western powers had no right to be interfering in the conflict in Syria, the archbishop said, adding: “The Syrians will decide if and when Assad has to go away, and not the Daesh (ISIS) or the West and it is certain that if Assad goes away now, Syria will become like Libya.”

Russia has insisted that it is targeting only terrorist groups with the authorisation of the only legitimate government in Syria.

But in his interview with CNN, Mr McCain, a former Republican presidential candidate, said he could “absolutely confirm” that Russian jets had bombed “our Free Syrian Army, or groups that have been armed and trained by the CIA, because we have communications with people there”.

In a second interview with CNN, he accused Russia of treating the US with “disdain and contempt” and repeated his claim that “CIA-run operations” had been targeted by Russia.

“They want to take them out,” he said.

President Assad is a member of the Alawite Muslim Shia minority of Syria and most of his opponents are Sunni Muslim jihadists supported by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the some of the Gulf States.

[AlicetheKurious]

“What does it mean, (that) al-Qaeda is now a US ally, just because in Syria it has a different name? But do they really despise our intelligence and our memory?”

Western powers had no right to be interfering in the conflict in Syria, the archbishop said, adding: “The Syrians will decide if and when Assad has to go away, and not the Daesh (ISIS) or the West and it is certain that if Assad goes away now, Syria will become like Libya.”

...

But in his interview with CNN, Mr McCain, a former Republican presidential candidate, said he could “absolutely confirm” that Russian jets had bombed “our Free Syrian Army, or groups that have been armed and trained by the CIA, because we have communications with people there”.

Yes, they do despise our intelligence and our memory. They despise everyone's intelligence and memory.

There's no such thing as a "Free Syrian Army", just a few bought-and-paid-for traitors living in Turkey, Qatar or London. The real free Syrian Army is the one liberating Syria from "your" terrorists.

[American Dream]

http://compamanuel.com/2015/10/18/zibec ... ft-values/

Zibechi: New colonialisms and left values

Posted on October 18, 2015 by Chiapas Support Committee

NEW COLONIALISMS and the CRISIS OF LEFT VALUES


Mural by Diego Rivera, at the Palacio Nacional, Mexico City.

By: Raúl Zibechi

When visibility is minimal because powerful storms cloud the perception of reality, it may be appropriate to enlarge one’s view, to climb slopes to look for broader observation points, in order to discern the context in which we move. In these times, when the world is crossing through multiple contradictions and interests, it’s urgent to stimulate the senses to gaze far and inside.

Times of confusion in which ethics are shipwrecked, basic points of reference disappear and something is installed like “anything goes,” which permits supporting any cause that goes against the bigger enemy, beyond all consideration of principles and values. Shortcuts lead to dead ends, like equating Putin with Lenin, to use a somewhat fashionable example.

The Russian intervention in Syria is a neocolonial act, which places Russia on the same side of history as the United States, France and England. Good, emancipating colonialisms don’t exist. As much as Russian intervention is justified with the argument of stopping the Islamic State and the imperial offensive in the region, it is nothing more than an action symmetric to one using identical methods and similar arguments that is condemned.

The question that I consider central is: Why are voices from the Latin American left raised in support of Putin? It’s evident that many have hung their hopes for a better world, on the intervention of the big powers like China and Russia, with the hope of stopping or overthrowing the still hegemonic powers. It’s understandable in view of the exploits that Washington commits in our region. But it’s a strategic error and an ethical deviation.

I would like to illuminate this especially critical juncture, appealing to a historic document: the letter to Maurice Thorez (secretary general of the French Communist Party), written in October 1956 by Aimé Césaire. The text was born in one of the corners of history, a little after the XX Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, where the crimes of Stalinism were denounced; the same month as the uprising of the Hungarian people against the pro-Russian bureaucratic regime (which resulted in thousands of deaths) and of the colonial attack Egypt for the nationalization of the Suez Canal.

Césaire renounced the party after a shameful congress in which the leadership was incapable of the least self-criticism before the revelation of crimes that, in fact, it was supporting. He was born in Martinique, like Frantz Fanon, where he was a secondary school teacher. He was a poet and the founder of the blackness movement in the 1930s. In 1950 he wrote Discourse on colonialism, with a big impact in black communities. His letter to Thorez was, in the words of Immanuel Wallerstein, “the document that best explained and expressed the distancing between the global communist movement and the different national liberation movements” (in Discurso sobre el colonialismo, Akal, p. 8 ).

I find three questions in his letter that illuminate the crisis of left values through which we travel.

The first is the lack of will to break with Stalinism. Césaire turns against the ethical relativism that seeks to exorcise the crimes of Stalinism with “some mechanical phrase.” It’s like that cracking of the whip that is repeated over and over, saying that Stalin “committed errors.” Murdering millions is not an error, even though it supposedly kills in the name of a just cause.

The largest part of the lefts do not make a serious and self-critical balance of the Stalinism that, as has been written in these pages, goes way beyond the figure of Stalin. What gave life to Stalinism is a model of society centered on the State and on the power of a bureaucracy that comes from a State bourgeoisie, which controls the means of production. It continues betting on a socialism that repeats that old and expired model of centralization of the means of production.

The second is that the struggles of the oppressed cannot be treated, Césaire says, “as part of a more important whole,” because a “singularity of our problems exists that cannot be reduced to any other problem.” The struggle against racism, he says, is “of a very different nature than the struggle of the French worker against French capitalism,” and cannot be considered “a fragment of this struggle.”

On this point, the anti-colonial and anti-patriarchal struggles touch the same fibers. “These forces would be faded into organizations that are not their own, made for them, made by them and adapted to objectives that only they can determine.” Even today there are those who don’t comprehend that women need their own spaces, like all oppressed peoples.

It’s about, affirms Césaire, “not confusing alliance and subordination,” something very frequent when parties of the left seek to “assimilate” the demands of the different groups below to a single cause, through the sacrosanct unity that does nothing more than homogenize differences, thereby installing new oppressions.

The third question that Césaire’s letter illuminates, highly topical, is related with universalism; in other words, with the construction of non-Eurocentric universals, in which the totality is not imposed on the diversities. “There are two ways of getting lost: by walled segregation in the particular or by dissolution into the ‘universal.’”

We are still far from constructing “a universal depository of all the particulars,” which supposes the “deepening and coexistence of all the particulars,” as Césaire wrote six decades ago.

Those who bet on powers symmetric with the existing, excluding and hegemonic ones, but of the left; those who oppose the bad bombs of the Yankees with the good bombs of the Russians, follow the path traced by Stalinism of making a clean sweep with the past and with differences, instead of working for something different, for “a world where many worlds fit.”
———————————————————–
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Friday, October 16, 2015
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2015/10/16/opinion/020a2pol

[Searcher08]

Amazing to think in the 21st century, there are people who are so disconnected from reality as the writer of that piece, who hide behind a PoMo double-quote-friendly word salad and who have earnest, deeply constrained arguments with others similar to themselves about heads of pins, who consider themselves the Guardians of The Only Path - and are ultimately determined to see the whole world marching on that Only Path, at the point of a bayonet if needs be.