6 ms·

The US is literally sponsoring Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Syria to fuel the proxy war against Russia and Iran and to hinder their fight against ISIS and oth

The US is literally sponsoring Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Syria to fuel the proxy war against Russia and Iran and to hinder their fight against ISIS and other jihadi groups. It's 1980s all over again and a 16th anniversary of 9/11. No lessons learned.

travmatt 9y ago
So all Russia and Iran are doing is just trying to defend against ISIS? That's certainly one interpretation I suppose.
- baursak 9y ago
  At this point, they are trying to support a secular and a relatively liberal (relative to an alternative) regime against ISIS and other jihadis, yes. To see an alternative, take a look at Libya after Gaddafi where there are literally slave markets in 2017.
  - Cyph0n 9y ago
    "At this point" being the key phrase here. That wasn't their goal when they came in to back Syria: the goal was to clamp down on the uprising and its armed resistance. Of course, things are more complicated now. Oh definitely, Assad is liberal and secular, to the point where he operates countless secret torture prisons and has forcibly disappeared tens of thousands of his citizens. Use the term "lesser of evils" if you must. But relatively liberal? Absolutely not.
    - toyg 9y ago
      "Relatively" implies "to something ", in this case (I would assume) either to middle-age-style religious warlords (Daesh et al) or absolutist monarchies built around religious rule (Iran, Saudi). So yeah, I'd say Assad is "relatively liberal" by Middle-Eastern standards - a place where almost every state has some secret police, an absolutist ruler, and no separation of church and state.
      - Cyph0n 9y ago
        I'm from (arguably) the only Arab Spring success story, so I'm quite familiar with how Middle Eastern dictatorships operate. We have a truth commission that has gone through how people have suffered at the hands of the deposed regime. Even when compared to similar Middle Eastern autocrats, Assad is simply on a whole other level in my opinion. One might argue it's because of the war, but I really don't see why war crimes and torture prisons are required to "win" the civil war. On the contrary, his people will never forget. Good luck building a stable and successful country with so much blood on your hands.
    - X86BSD 9y ago
      Citations on these secret prisons and dissapearing of people by the tens of thousands please?
      - Cyph0n 9y ago
        https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/12/16/if-dead-could-speak/mass-deaths-and-torture-syrias-detention-facilities https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/12/16/if-dead-could-speak/ma... There are a few other good sources. I'll try to find them.
      - ionised 9y ago
        https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2016/08/syria-torture-prisons/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2016/08/syria-to... https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/mar/21/syrias-disappeared-the-case-against-assad-channel-4 https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/mar/21/syrias-... https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/aug/30/tortured-abused-hidden-horror-disappeared-women-syria-prisons-international-day-of-the-disappeared https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/aug/30/t... http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-03-23/it-was-my-duty-to-get-the-names-out-the-brutal-stories-of-assads-victims-told-in-c4s-syrias-disappeared/ http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-03-23/it-was-my-duty-to-...
  - travmatt 9y ago
    >relatively liberal (relative to an alternative) We're talking about the al-Assad ruling family? The same family whose literal policy is to raze towns that shelter any opposition, and are currently literally gassing their own citizens?
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    Fun fact, Gaddafi didn't run the country. No media outlets reported on the democratically elected head of state in Libya. They also didn't report on the free electricity, subsidized housing, subsidized fuel, free education and the fact that Libya was stable and in no debt to the WMF. Now they are in debt to the WMF, are a totally non-stable state ravaged with crime and their slowly progressively moving government has reverted decades in terms of democracy and human rights. It's a mini-Iraq with less than 1/8 of the news coverage.
    - wil421 9y ago
      Free is only free until your money runs out. Look at Venezuela, the government gave the things you listed as free until they couldn't.
      - pm90 9y ago
        You could say that about almost any Petro State, including Saudi Arabia. Libya's tremendous energy reserves plus small urban population made it that much more easy to offer freebies to all the citizens who asked for it.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - chinhodado 9y ago
      What do you mean by "didn't run the country"? Do you mean "ruin" instead?
  - notfromhere 9y ago
    Keeping a minority Alawite government in power is just going to keep leading to these Sunni uprisings.
    - dagenleg 9y ago
      At least Alawite goverment looks out for other minorities. Sunny majority government is going to be devastating for everyone who is not Sunni.
    - baursak 9y ago
      Majority of Syrian Sunnis support the government. Majority of Syrian army is Sunni.
    - zacurry 9y ago
      These uprisings "keep" happening because the Saudis and the usa provide funds to these rebel groups to oust the Shiite (alawite) regime. In Bahrain, a Sunni minority government is ruling the state.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  Interesting that you're conflating Russia and Iran unprompted, especially since Iran has done more to fight ISIS than the Gulf State 'allies' who appear to be happy to invest in both ISIS and Al Qaeda.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  The US and Russia are not really enemies at all; not even under the Obama administration. It's all a nice setup to keep most people distracted. Both nations depend on each other for arms and weapons sales.
- wilburTheDog 9y ago
  The proxy war against Russia is about oil. The US and its allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar want the Trans Arabian Pipeline to run through Syria. Russia is financially dependent on its oil and natural gas deliveries to Europe. If the US had been able to overthrow Assad they would have been able to supply Europe's energy needs from the Arabian peninsula and weaken Russia. This is old news, really. These kind of energy politics have been going on since the 50's. (https://www.ecowatch.com/syria-another-pipeline-war-1882180532.html https://www.ecowatch.com/syria-another-pipeline-war-18821805...) and have shown no sign of stopping (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/world/europe/us-seeks-to-reduce-ukraines-reliance-on-russia-for-natural-gas.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/world/europe/us-seeks-to-...)
- rajathagasthya 9y ago
  To put in another way, Russia is trying to defend Assad rather than fighting ISIS. They are going to fight anyone who opposes Assad, whether it's ISIS or the rebels. The reason is their military bases in Syria which Assad has allowed them to operate in exchange for his "safety".
- Stranger43 9y ago
  And protect their influence. The US have never managed to secure any positive relationship with any secular/moderate Arab movement due to an mixture of commiphobia and incompetent arrogance within the western diplomatic establishment. Where as there is an relatively close relationship between most of the sponsors of radical Islamic terror and the US establishment through the gulf royals and their investment into the failing businesses of western dynasties and retired generals/admirals. So the result of tolerating/establishing a moderate semi-secular government in an Arab state, tend to benefit Iran/Russia as we saw with post Saddam Iraq where the new government was forced to buy Russian planes and ask for Iranian support as the US kept stalling their attempts to buy American(mostly due to infighting between us suppliers) until half of Iraq had fallen to ISIS.
QAPereo 9y ago
Lessons were learned... 9/11 gave the MIC 2 tasty wars, one ongoing and the longest ever for us. They've learned that this is how you create a cycle of demand, aka a cycle of violence.
- sixQuarks 9y ago
  Sadly, you're probably correct. Although we should never underestimate the incompetence of government, but this is too crazy to be incompetence.
- elif 9y ago
  7 wars at last count, i believe. Or actually, 0 wars and 7 AUMFs since if they were wars, congress would have to publicly debate their merits and impacts.
yogthos 9y ago
Wars are a business for the US military industrial complex, plain and simple. The longer US is funding these wars, the more profit these people make.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
  I thought as you do. That's why I invested in Haliburton when Trump was elected. I figured the Military/Industrial complex was about to do VERY well. I'm down 20% since Trump was elected. Not saying we are wrong, necessarily. But its good to check these theories against reality whenever possible. http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/hal http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/hal
  - codeisawesome 9y ago
    Does that have to do more with the industry's performance as a whole, or this specific company? I do notice that in order to possibly avoid the arms "looking western", they are focussing on buying & supplying soviet looking weapons instead. Perhaps, the to-capacity usage of black/smuggling routes by various powers (US, NK, Saudi) - would increase business to legal transportation routes? Because the price of being illegal might be driven too high. Thus shipping might actually be doing well... I dunno.
  - baursak 9y ago
    Should have gone with Raytheon, up ~35% since the election. Why HAL anyway, it's more of an oil company than a MIC company?
    - mmjaa 9y ago
      Oil companies are the industry, in military-industrial-complex. (Note that it should really be: military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex, since that is a more accurate description of the conglomerates currently destroying the planet..)
  - mengibar10 9y ago
    What makes you think Trump is pro-war? My observation that he's against wars unless they are very profitable for the State not necessarily for companies. That is why the stocks are down probably. On the contrary Clinton was pro-war and establishment wanted her to win but she lost.
rdtsc 9y ago
What exactly do they expect these "rebels" would do even if they win the fight with ISIS. Are they going to pack up their bags, return all the weapons and go home to rearing children and being doctors, teacher and engineers. Rebel groups have pretty fluid membership. I see some joining one group and going to ISIS. That's how ISIS ended up with a lot of US weapons in their hands. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38048482 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38048482
frandroid 9y ago
Did you miss the part where the U.S. has been giving tremendous support to the SDF/YPG in its fight against ISIS?
- baursak 9y ago
  This literally started a couple of months ago under Trump, along with ending CIA's weapons running program. Here Trump truly deserves credit and outshines Nobel Peace laureate Obama. If he removes PKK from the US list of terrorist groups, that would be a 3 for 3 for him, although I'm not holding my breath.
  - notfromhere 9y ago
    US has been supporting the Kurds longer than trump's term in office
    - baursak 9y ago
      Not sure what you mean by "Kurds". Why is PKK still a designated terrorist group?
      - megous 9y ago
        Obviously some Kurds in north-east of Syria. I'm not sure there's any support of Kurds on the Turkey side, where Kurdish cities are being razed to the ground last several years. It's not even in the news that much compared to the other stuff from the region. Yet there is million or more of internally displaced people by this violence.
      - frandroid 9y ago
        Because NATO.
    - richardknop 9y ago
      The level of support is what's important. Under previous administration the support was on a very low side and much more support was thrown behind sunni states (Turkey for example) and extremist sunni militias. This has changed under Trump and it seems like the support will be shifted away from extremist sunni militias and towards Kurds. I have to give Trump credit for this.

travmatt 9y ago

So all Russia and Iran are doing is just trying to defend against ISIS? That's certainly one interpretation I suppose.

baursak 9y ago
At this point, they are trying to support a secular and a relatively liberal (relative to an alternative) regime against ISIS and other jihadis, yes. To see an alternative, take a look at Libya after Gaddafi where there are literally slave markets in 2017.
- Cyph0n 9y ago
  "At this point" being the key phrase here. That wasn't their goal when they came in to back Syria: the goal was to clamp down on the uprising and its armed resistance. Of course, things are more complicated now. Oh definitely, Assad is liberal and secular, to the point where he operates countless secret torture prisons and has forcibly disappeared tens of thousands of his citizens. Use the term "lesser of evils" if you must. But relatively liberal? Absolutely not.
  - toyg 9y ago
    "Relatively" implies "to something ", in this case (I would assume) either to middle-age-style religious warlords (Daesh et al) or absolutist monarchies built around religious rule (Iran, Saudi). So yeah, I'd say Assad is "relatively liberal" by Middle-Eastern standards - a place where almost every state has some secret police, an absolutist ruler, and no separation of church and state.
    - Cyph0n 9y ago
      I'm from (arguably) the only Arab Spring success story, so I'm quite familiar with how Middle Eastern dictatorships operate. We have a truth commission that has gone through how people have suffered at the hands of the deposed regime. Even when compared to similar Middle Eastern autocrats, Assad is simply on a whole other level in my opinion. One might argue it's because of the war, but I really don't see why war crimes and torture prisons are required to "win" the civil war. On the contrary, his people will never forget. Good luck building a stable and successful country with so much blood on your hands.
  - X86BSD 9y ago
    Citations on these secret prisons and dissapearing of people by the tens of thousands please?
    - Cyph0n 9y ago
      https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/12/16/if-dead-could-speak/mass-deaths-and-torture-syrias-detention-facilities https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/12/16/if-dead-could-speak/ma... There are a few other good sources. I'll try to find them.
    - ionised 9y ago
      https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2016/08/syria-torture-prisons/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2016/08/syria-to... https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/mar/21/syrias-disappeared-the-case-against-assad-channel-4 https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/mar/21/syrias-... https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/aug/30/tortured-abused-hidden-horror-disappeared-women-syria-prisons-international-day-of-the-disappeared https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/aug/30/t... http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-03-23/it-was-my-duty-to-get-the-names-out-the-brutal-stories-of-assads-victims-told-in-c4s-syrias-disappeared/ http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-03-23/it-was-my-duty-to-...
- travmatt 9y ago
  >relatively liberal (relative to an alternative) We're talking about the al-Assad ruling family? The same family whose literal policy is to raze towns that shelter any opposition, and are currently literally gassing their own citizens?
- djsumdog 9y ago
  Fun fact, Gaddafi didn't run the country. No media outlets reported on the democratically elected head of state in Libya. They also didn't report on the free electricity, subsidized housing, subsidized fuel, free education and the fact that Libya was stable and in no debt to the WMF. Now they are in debt to the WMF, are a totally non-stable state ravaged with crime and their slowly progressively moving government has reverted decades in terms of democracy and human rights. It's a mini-Iraq with less than 1/8 of the news coverage.
  - wil421 9y ago
    Free is only free until your money runs out. Look at Venezuela, the government gave the things you listed as free until they couldn't.
    - pm90 9y ago
      You could say that about almost any Petro State, including Saudi Arabia. Libya's tremendous energy reserves plus small urban population made it that much more easy to offer freebies to all the citizens who asked for it.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - chinhodado 9y ago
    What do you mean by "didn't run the country"? Do you mean "ruin" instead?
- notfromhere 9y ago
  Keeping a minority Alawite government in power is just going to keep leading to these Sunni uprisings.
  - dagenleg 9y ago
    At least Alawite goverment looks out for other minorities. Sunny majority government is going to be devastating for everyone who is not Sunni.
  - baursak 9y ago
    Majority of Syrian Sunnis support the government. Majority of Syrian army is Sunni.
  - zacurry 9y ago
    These uprisings "keep" happening because the Saudis and the usa provide funds to these rebel groups to oust the Shiite (alawite) regime. In Bahrain, a Sunni minority government is ruling the state.
wavefunction 9y ago
Interesting that you're conflating Russia and Iran unprompted, especially since Iran has done more to fight ISIS than the Gulf State 'allies' who appear to be happy to invest in both ISIS and Al Qaeda.
djsumdog 9y ago
The US and Russia are not really enemies at all; not even under the Obama administration. It's all a nice setup to keep most people distracted. Both nations depend on each other for arms and weapons sales.
wilburTheDog 9y ago
The proxy war against Russia is about oil. The US and its allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar want the Trans Arabian Pipeline to run through Syria. Russia is financially dependent on its oil and natural gas deliveries to Europe. If the US had been able to overthrow Assad they would have been able to supply Europe's energy needs from the Arabian peninsula and weaken Russia. This is old news, really. These kind of energy politics have been going on since the 50's. (https://www.ecowatch.com/syria-another-pipeline-war-1882180532.html https://www.ecowatch.com/syria-another-pipeline-war-18821805...) and have shown no sign of stopping (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/world/europe/us-seeks-to-reduce-ukraines-reliance-on-russia-for-natural-gas.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/world/europe/us-seeks-to-...)
rajathagasthya 9y ago
To put in another way, Russia is trying to defend Assad rather than fighting ISIS. They are going to fight anyone who opposes Assad, whether it's ISIS or the rebels. The reason is their military bases in Syria which Assad has allowed them to operate in exchange for his "safety".
Stranger43 9y ago
And protect their influence. The US have never managed to secure any positive relationship with any secular/moderate Arab movement due to an mixture of commiphobia and incompetent arrogance within the western diplomatic establishment. Where as there is an relatively close relationship between most of the sponsors of radical Islamic terror and the US establishment through the gulf royals and their investment into the failing businesses of western dynasties and retired generals/admirals. So the result of tolerating/establishing a moderate semi-secular government in an Arab state, tend to benefit Iran/Russia as we saw with post Saddam Iraq where the new government was forced to buy Russian planes and ask for Iranian support as the US kept stalling their attempts to buy American(mostly due to infighting between us suppliers) until half of Iraq had fallen to ISIS.

QAPereo 9y ago

Lessons were learned... 9/11 gave the MIC 2 tasty wars, one ongoing and the longest ever for us. They've learned that this is how you create a cycle of demand, aka a cycle of violence.

sixQuarks 9y ago
Sadly, you're probably correct. Although we should never underestimate the incompetence of government, but this is too crazy to be incompetence.
elif 9y ago
7 wars at last count, i believe. Or actually, 0 wars and 7 AUMFs since if they were wars, congress would have to publicly debate their merits and impacts.

yogthos 9y ago

Wars are a business for the US military industrial complex, plain and simple. The longer US is funding these wars, the more profit these people make.

ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
I thought as you do. That's why I invested in Haliburton when Trump was elected. I figured the Military/Industrial complex was about to do VERY well. I'm down 20% since Trump was elected. Not saying we are wrong, necessarily. But its good to check these theories against reality whenever possible. http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/hal http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/hal
- codeisawesome 9y ago
  Does that have to do more with the industry's performance as a whole, or this specific company? I do notice that in order to possibly avoid the arms "looking western", they are focussing on buying & supplying soviet looking weapons instead. Perhaps, the to-capacity usage of black/smuggling routes by various powers (US, NK, Saudi) - would increase business to legal transportation routes? Because the price of being illegal might be driven too high. Thus shipping might actually be doing well... I dunno.
- baursak 9y ago
  Should have gone with Raytheon, up ~35% since the election. Why HAL anyway, it's more of an oil company than a MIC company?
  - mmjaa 9y ago
    Oil companies are the industry, in military-industrial-complex. (Note that it should really be: military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex, since that is a more accurate description of the conglomerates currently destroying the planet..)
- mengibar10 9y ago
  What makes you think Trump is pro-war? My observation that he's against wars unless they are very profitable for the State not necessarily for companies. That is why the stocks are down probably. On the contrary Clinton was pro-war and establishment wanted her to win but she lost.

rdtsc 9y ago

What exactly do they expect these "rebels" would do even if they win the fight with ISIS. Are they going to pack up their bags, return all the weapons and go home to rearing children and being doctors, teacher and engineers. Rebel groups have pretty fluid membership. I see some joining one group and going to ISIS. That's how ISIS ended up with a lot of US weapons in their hands. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38048482 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38048482

frandroid 9y ago

Did you miss the part where the U.S. has been giving tremendous support to the SDF/YPG in its fight against ISIS?

baursak 9y ago
This literally started a couple of months ago under Trump, along with ending CIA's weapons running program. Here Trump truly deserves credit and outshines Nobel Peace laureate Obama. If he removes PKK from the US list of terrorist groups, that would be a 3 for 3 for him, although I'm not holding my breath.
- notfromhere 9y ago
  US has been supporting the Kurds longer than trump's term in office
  - baursak 9y ago
    Not sure what you mean by "Kurds". Why is PKK still a designated terrorist group?
    - megous 9y ago
      Obviously some Kurds in north-east of Syria. I'm not sure there's any support of Kurds on the Turkey side, where Kurdish cities are being razed to the ground last several years. It's not even in the news that much compared to the other stuff from the region. Yet there is million or more of internally displaced people by this violence.
    - frandroid 9y ago
      Because NATO.
  - richardknop 9y ago
    The level of support is what's important. Under previous administration the support was on a very low side and much more support was thrown behind sunni states (Turkey for example) and extremist sunni militias. This has changed under Trump and it seems like the support will be shifted away from extremist sunni militias and towards Kurds. I have to give Trump credit for this.