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Sun 1 Mar, 2015 06:36 pm
Quote:The Syrian rebel group Harakat al-Hazm, one of the White House’s most trusted militias fighting President Bashar al Assad, appeared to be collapsing Sunday, with activists posting a statement online from frontline commanders saying they are disbanding their units and folding them into brigades aligned with a larger Islamist insurgent alliance distrusted by Washington.
The statement bore Hazm’s stamp and logo, and according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition monitoring group, the brigade’s fighting units are disbanding. Emails and phone calls to Hazm’s political leaders were not returned.
“Given what is happening on the Syrian front, offenses by the criminal regime with its cronies against Syria as a whole, and Aleppo specifically, and in an effort to stem the bloodshed of the fighters, the Hazm movement announces its dissolution,” the statement said.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/01/main-u-s-backed-syrian-rebel-group-disbanding-joining-islamists.html
Taking on Either ISIS or Assad will require a hot war with American military boots on the ground. Which the American people will not stand for.
Time for a rethink. Is it time to admit that we lost any say in the region and stand down letting Iran take over? Is it time to go into alliance with Putin, we support Assad and then work with Russia to cleanse Syria of all the other factions and in return agree that Russia controls the former USSR footprint?
IDK, but what we are doing is not working, and shows no hope of ever working.
Islamic State wants the world, and they will keep going until someone stops them.
Very likely at some point along that trajectory, the US will have to confront them no matter how much the American public dislikes it.
If the US is not willing to confront Islamic State presently, we should continue to develop a diplomatic consensus against them, so that when the day comes that we have no choice but to go to war against them, we will have the rest of the world on our side to help us out.
Assad cannot be forgiven for his atrocities. We must never ally with him in any way.
Regarding the former Soviet footprint, we will never allow Putin to have any NATO country. This includes the Baltic NATO states.
I see four ways of protecting NATO from Putin:
a) Arm and train the Ukrainians so that Russia is bogged down in unending war there, preventing Putin from invading any other state.
b) Arm and train the Moldovans so that, when Putin invades them after he is done with Ukraine, they will be able to defend themselves.
c) Move US forces into Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states. Station tactical nukes in Poland and Romania. This will impress on Putin that if he invades NATO, his invasion will be repelled.
d) Do nothing until Putin invades NATO and our only remaining option is open warfare between the US and Russia, then launch all the ICBMs.
As willing as I am to have a nuclear war with Russia, I think that quite possibly "option D" is not the wisest choice.
I think "B" might be worth considering. I've heard a lot of pros and cons about arming and training the Ukrainians, and about moving military force east within NATO, but thus far I've heard little consideration given to arming and training the Moldovans so that they are prepared for the day Putin invades them.
@oralloy,
Quote:Assad cannot be forgiven for his atrocities. We must never ally with him in any way.
That is what we said about Gaddafi and look at the result...the country can no longer be said to exist, almost no crude is being pumped, Gaddafi's war stockpiles have spread through africa and the middle east terrorist organizations, and ISIS is setting up shop in the land formerly known as Libya.
Which was the bigger moral outrage, Gaddafi, or what happened when we knocked him off?
@hawkeye10,
hawkeye10 wrote:Which was the bigger moral outrage, Gaddafi, or what happened when we knocked him off?
Gaddafi was the bigger moral outrage.
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