"Why Assad's army hasn't defected"

[elmo_1968]

Getting rid of Saddam wasn't the problem. Finding a suitable replacement was. Not to mention, Iraq was relatively safe and harmless until ISIS decided to cross the border.

Besides, those are two different situations. Saddam was ousted by the U.S. Assad is being opposed by his own people. They won't have him.

You touch on something I wish people would realize, and that is if a guy is deposed someone has to take his place. If everyone is clamoring for the guy to go, there is a chance his successor will have some support and the revolution will work. Otherwise, it almost certainly won't.

 

[elmo_1968]

If the U.S. had not left Iraq so quickly, the place would be as violent as your average US city.

True, ISIS was born in Iraq, but we're small potatoes until they seized on the opportunity in Syria.

I somewhat agree with your last point. At least Assad is better than ISIS, but once ISIS is wiped out, Assad cannot and should not be allowed back in power.

I think if we hadn't left Iraq when we did Malaki would have continued gutting the military to the benefit of his cronies while starting fights with the Sunnis and expecting us to finish them.

 

[MadSquabbles500]

I wish I could post the pictures of dead men, women, and children that Assad has killed.

Its almost as if some of you forget that his snipers were indiscriminately gunning people down in the streets of Homs, or that there's verifiable proof that he's been using barrel bombs, or that he has been accused of killing over a thousand civilians via chemical weapons.

But how was Assad before the civil war? And is he not protecting the people he has on the turf he does control? What he did indiscriminately was in response to what he perceived as a serious threat.

 

[whougonnacall]

But how was Assad before the civil war?
And is he not protecting the people he has on the turf he does control?
What he did indiscriminately was in response to what he perceived as a serious threat.

Before the civil war syria was up there with saudia arabia and north korea for brutal opression levels,a sectarian apartheid

No hes not protecting them on his territory as they are subject to mass arbitary arrest and torture,desperate conscription patrols,gang rape if female, predatation by foriegn forces for theft ,bribery ,rape etc etc

What he did he did as he and his inner circle,are sociopaths.....lets not act like he 'had to'.or they 'made him '...thats the attitude of a battered wife .

 

[KILL KILL]

Compared to what will replace him, he is better. His replacement is going to be Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda like groups that will start mass ethnic cleansing and genocide . ISIS isn't the only Sunni Salafi group there, they just garner the most attention.

None of this means the West should support Assad, rather they shouldn't support his overthrow unless they are committed to ensuring the safety of the minorities by having a credible international military force on the ground . Though even with Western manpower on the ground, Christians were cleansed out of Iraq, because the NeoCons don't care about MidEast Christians.

We don't know who will replace him. I agree that it's risky given the amount of radicals, but I can assure you that if Assad remains in power, war will break out again within a few years. There has to be a better solution than propping up a war criminal that will only lead to more war.

 

[KILL KILL]

But how was Assad before the civil war? And is he not protecting the people he has on the turf he does control? What he did indiscriminately was in response to what he perceived as a serious threat.

how is shooting people indiscriminately in the streets a reasonable response? What about gassing and barrel bombs?

You want to know what type of guy Assad is? Just Google "Yarmouk refugee camp". It's a refugee camp that was encircled by Assad's forces, that refused to allow shipments of food in. The UN was finally allowed in to distribute relief. Here's a pic.

 

[xcvbn]

how is shooting people indiscriminately in the streets a reasonable response? What about gassing and barrel bombs?

You want to know what type of guy Assad is? Just Google "Yarmouk refugee camp". It's a refugee camp that was encircled by Assad's forces, that refused to allow shipments of food in. The UN was finally allowed in to distribute relief. Here's a pic.

Read(note the bold):

By definition, an insurgent rebellion fights against its own government. Whenever the government fights such an insurgency, it's killing its own people. That's what Civil War is. If one faction of society declares all-out war on the other factions, including the central government, I don't know what kind of response you would expect. These aren't peaceful protestors who are dancing around with flowers and such.

Those terrorist assholes in Jund-al-aqsa just cut the gov't supply route to Aleppo.

http://news.yahoo.com/jihadists-cut-regime-supply-route-syrias-aleppo-monitor-111554629.html

Nobody cares, of course, and these guys in Jund al-aqsa are foreign terrorists (not Islamic State, rather part of the 'moderate Sunni rebels') but a million crocodile tears will fall if the gov't in turn cuts the Turks' supply route to their combatants in Aleppo. That Al-Qaeda is fighting the regime, nobody cares, we're actively asked to support them.

There aren't many people who affirmatively like Assad, but there are many people who point out that the 'moderate opposition' is full of little but rabid Sunni jihadis, while the parts of Syria that are actually filled with diverse, non-rabid populations are all siding with the regime. It doesn't take much brainpower to see that making the one side (the worse side) bigger and the other side (the better side) smaller = badder. Asking us to believe that the worse side will suddenly *stop* being maniacal Sunni jihadis, if only they are allowed to win, beggars belief. If it didn't work 943743209 times before, it's not going to work this time either.

 

[KILL KILL]

Here are more articles about Assad's use of starvation on the Syrian populous

https://news.vice.com/article/how-assad-is-using-sieges-and-hunger-to-grab-more-of-the-useful-syria


Here's an article about how children have to resort to eating the leaves off of trees to survive in Madaya

https://news.vice.com/article/child...es-the-nightmare-of-the-siege-of-madaya-syria

Loay's mother Umm Mohamad, 52, also hasn't had a meal in months. "My only dream is to have a piece of bread," she said.

The below link has transmissions and messages that have been sent out by the people of Madaya
http://abcnews.go.com/International/syria-starving-familys-fight-survival-madaya/story?id=36374004

 

[KILL KILL]

Read(note the bold):

Civil war is NOT ordering snipers to kill anyone that crosses the street. Nor is it dropping barrel bomb. It's definitely NOT gassing people.

 

[Fronk]

In those three cases you mentioned, none of the people were killed by their own government.

The point I was trying to make is that there are people that believe Assad Should stick around. His own people won't have that. He controls such little territory in Syria as is, PLUS, he's a total dickhole.

Umm 70% of the pop still lives in goverment held areas. What the hell do you know about Syria and Syrians? Millions of people stand behind him. You want to throw it in with sunni supremacists because you read some piece by a think thank paid by Qatar.

 

[Fronk]

Civil war is NOT ordering snipers to kill anyone that crosses the street. Nor is it dropping barrel bomb. It's definitely NOT gassing people.

The protests in Syria wasn't bloodier than any other of the protests in the ME, certainly not bloodier than Egypt for example. I mean Turkey seems to enjoy the backing of the US while killing scores of its own people in eastern Turkey right now.

I can give you the case of Aleppo that's in focus right now. It was never part of the "revolution", never any widespread demonstrations in the city. The vast vast majority of the population still lives in the goverment held areas there.

So the city didn't fall to the people of Aleppo but it was invaded by sunnis of the countryside, who made themselves instantly disliked by acting like thugs, dismantling factories and selling them in Turkey and ethnically cleansing eastern Aleppo. Talk to some Aleppans in gov areas and see what they think about rebel and their "hell cannons" who kills scores of women and children every week. Want me to post pictures of that?

 

[Fronk]

Before the civil war syria was up there with saudia arabia and north korea for brutal opression levels,a sectarian apartheid

No hes not protecting them on his territory as they are subject to mass arbitary arrest and torture,desperate conscription patrols,gang rape if female, predatation by foriegn forces for theft ,bribery ,rape etc etc

What he did he did as he and his inner circle,are sociopaths.....lets not act like he 'had to'.or they 'made him '...thats the attitude of a battered wife .

A sectarian apartheid? Don't you ever get tired of spouting such bullshit?

The goverment goes out of its way to never mention religion or ethnicity, it doesn't benefit from being sectarian. No, Alawites didn't all live in golden palaces and kept sunnis under their foot in pre-war Syria. But they weren't treated like subhumans and apostates like under the Ottomans. The horror.

 

[whougonnacall]

Umm 70% of the pop still lives in goverment held areas. What the hell do you know about Syria and Syrians? Millions of people stand behind him. You want to throw it in with sunni supremacists because you read some piece by a think thank paid by Qatar.

Not wanting to be barrel bombed is not the same as supporting
Plus are we forgetting hes the most cited reason by refugees leaving
Nor can we forget his manpower issues.....only a minority want to die for the prick hence his utter reliance now on iranians,iraqis,lebaneses,russians and afghans

 

[whougonnacall]

A sectarian apartheid? Don't you ever get tired of spouting such bullshit?

The goverment goes out of its way to never mention religion or ethnicity, it doesn't benefit from being sectarian. No, Alawites didn't all live in golden palaces and kept sunnis under their foot in pre-war Syria. But they weren't treated like subhumans and apostates like under the Ottomans. The horror.

Yeah im sure all those human rights orgs are just making shit up
It was a sectarian apartheid hence I called it one,a north korea level of opression

 

[Madmick]

I don't really know what to make of that.

 

[Fronk]

Yeah im sure all those human rights orgs are just making shit up
It was a sectarian apartheid hence I called it one,a north korea level of opression

No it certainly wasn't, where do you come up with this stuff? Comparing pre-war Syria to North Korea is completely useless hyperbole but have fun in your own little world.

 

[whougonnacall]

No it certainly wasn't, where do you come up with this stuff? Comparing pre-war Syria to North Korea is completely useless hyperbole but have fun in your own little world.

I.litereraly told u were to find imfo on it....human rights orgs like hrw and amnesty gave volumes on the regieme
Theres a few that give rankings and most ranked syria just behind sa in the middle east and in par with the likes of north korea and libya

 

[MicroBrew]

Just read this yesterday, article was posted by the Indepedent less than a day ago.

" Syria civil war: The untold story of the siege of two small Shia villages - and how the world turned a blind eye. "

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/nubl-zahra-a6889921.html

2 Shia villages were under seige and cut off from the rest of the world by Al Nusra and some Sunnis from neighbouring villages . The interestting thing is that 100 Sunni families decided to stay in the Shia villages rather than join a Sunni area under control of Islamists.

" Among them were at least 100 Sunni Muslim families – perhaps 500 souls – who, way back in 2012 chose to take refuge with their Shia countrymen rather than live under the rules of the Islamists. "

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/nubl-zahra-a6889921.html

 

[Zankou]

I.litereraly told u were to find imfo on it....human rights orgs like hrw and amnesty gave volumes on the regieme
Theres a few that give rankings and most ranked syria just behind sa in the middle east and in par with the likes of north korea and libya

Sure, but it was like heaven compared to what it is now. And lol at it being 'sectarian apartheid,' it's not a sectarian apartheid even now in the midst of the war ...EXCEPT on the Sunni rebel side, which you don't care about, because you actively support that kind of sectarian apartheid, the kind with the Sunni Arabs on top.

Syria was just like its neighbor, Iraq -- ruled by a brutal dictator, sure, but what he was ruling over was a nightmarish powder keg that all the regional players kept trying to detonate (and continue to try). Remove the dictator, and instead of peace and flowers, you get a hideous religious war. It's not a peaceful benevolent democracy that takes its place, it's Islamic State and al-Nusra. Al-Qaeda is not fighting to create a peaceful democracy in Syria, and if it wins, it's not going to chortle and say 'now we create the friendly, totally non-genocidal Al-Qaeda controlled Syria.'

Also saying only a minority is willing to die for Assad is laughable considering who is willing to die for the rebels .... Sunni jihadi lunatics, jam packed with foreigners, funneled and funded by Turks/Saudis. There's not a professional secular Syrian military fighting back.

You are so concerned with 'ethnic cleansing', but comparing the rebel side of Aleppo to the gov't side of Aleppo, who has actually been cleansed? Go look at the land they actually control, look at the forces actually fighting for them. You want to turn all of Syria into the equivalent of rebel-controlled Aleppo? Or instead into the equivalent of government-controlled Aleppo? It's not a hard choice.

 

[Rod1]

Here are more articles about Assad's use of starvation on the Syrian populous

https://news.vice.com/article/how-assad-is-using-sieges-and-hunger-to-grab-more-of-the-useful-syria


Here's an article about how children have to resort to eating the leaves off of trees to survive in Madaya

https://news.vice.com/article/child...es-the-nightmare-of-the-siege-of-madaya-syria






The below link has transmissions and messages that have been sent out by the people of Madaya
http://abcnews.go.com/International/syria-starving-familys-fight-survival-madaya/story?id=36374004

Assad is not the only one using siege tactics, its just the more effective due to the fact that he has an air force capable of supplying his own besieged towns.