[Zamuel]

The Real Next War in Syria: Iran vs. Israel By Thomas L. Friedman New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/15/opin ... srael.html

“Unless (Iran’s military mastermind Qassem) Suleimani backs down, you are about to see in Syria an unstoppable force — Iran’s Quds Force — meet an immovable object: Israel.””

This may be a valid prediction .

Zam

[Seeker8]

Labour abstain once again.

[noir]

This may be a valid prediction .

Zam

Seems the Syrians (opposition) are pleased

[Zamuel]

Seems the Syrians (opposition) are pleased

Overconfident probably, it's typical. I should say though that I don't think the Iranians are "unstoppable." And I do suspect that if they develop the strength to threaten Israel, the Saudis will get involved ... THAT should be interesting.

Zam

[noir]

Can't see the "overconfidence", they are desperate. For a Sunni to live under Shia hegemony, is like for an American or West European to live next to Communist threat during the Cold War. It's two antithetical way of life. Each despises the other for centuries.

[Zamuel]

Can't see the "overconfidence", they are desperate. For a Sunni to live under Shia hegemony, is like for an American or West European to live next to Communist threat during the Cold War. It's two antithetical way of life. Each despises the other for centuries.

I think I misunderstood what you meant by "opposition." The rebels may indeed be feeling a little desperate, but their position really isn't that bad (imho).

Zam

[noir]

The tweets are not from the "rebels", they don't hold guns. They are the syrian middle class. A civil opposition.

[Zamuel]

The tweets are not from the "rebels", they don't hold guns. They are the syrian middle class. A civil opposition.

Ah, a "self interest group." I understand your distinction. Pretty sure Assad considers them "rebels." I'd say their choice, at the moment, is to submit to domination or commit to rebellion, neither of which allows them to continue their "safe and comfortable" lifestyle. Do you see any other option for them?

Zam

[noir]

The journalists have power. They generate public opinion. It seems Putin will stay loyal to Assad. What about Iran after they shed so much blood. Time will tell.

[maz]

He has just made his way – not accompanied by Russian or Syrian government officials – to Douma and this is what he reports.

No sign of poison gas, not in Douma, not near the bombed out buildings allegedly storing Assad's stockpiles of chemical weapons. The locals in Douma did not even hear about the poison gas attack the imperialist powers are telling us about.

So apparently this alleged "chemical attack" was about what I expected to have happened. The White Helmet actors just filmed some children being sprayed with water LOL

[skinster]

I think I misunderstood what you meant by "opposition." The rebels may indeed be feeling a little desperate, but their position really isn't that bad (imho).

The tweets are not from the "rebels", they don't hold guns. They are the syrian middle class. A civil opposition.

The tweets noir is talking about, is the jpgs she keeps posting of a Syrian journalist who fled Syria to sell war on Syria, in Qatar, for a Qatari newspaper that was pro-war from the beginning. noir thinks if she keeps posting the same one Syrian who wants his country of birth destroyed, that it'll convince others. Stupid, I know...but it appears as if it's all she has left on this topic.

lol, noir claims journalists Fisk, Pilger and Cook - who've never allowed themselves to be compromised and subsequently pushed out of the MSM - are propagandists and then posts this:

By Thomas L. Friedman

[Atlantis]

On a personal note, I know Robert Fisk personally

The experience of having known noir personally is bound to turn even a saint into an "Arab propagandist."

[annatar1914]

It hasn't been pointless to me, as a political and meta-historical reflection. I recall this quote of mine from before my hiatus from PoFo, on the ''Rise of the Islamic State'' thread;


"Assad's Regime will fall, ISIS will eventually take Damascus and get Islamic street cred for seizing the capital of a former Caliphate. They're pretty serious, their enemies are not, and the Islamic State operates under an eschatological paradigm that renders their strategic and tactical logic inpenetrable to modern political and military minds.

In other words, what many of us here on PoFo were saying far earlier and much more emphatically."

The enemies of the Islamists are not serious. We use them in our political games, we fight each other more than we fight them, and when the least amount of pressure is released, they start coming back. Everything tells me that nobody in the modern world, not Trump or his foes in the Western World, not the Israelis, not even Assad or Putin, gets the real dynamic here.

This is the End of the Modern Age. This is the End of the Nation State as we have known it for about 300 years now. ISIS is the future of the Middle East. When they first rose up a few years ago, they destroyed Iraq and Syria for good, permanently shattered the borders drawn by Sykes-Picot. What they unleashed has rocked the foundations of what we moderns considered normal. Slavery had come back, executions by beheading, all the surface ephemera of a much deeper crisis.

Of all the people who understand this post, I think it would be Victoribus Spolia, perhaps more than I did myself at the time. I brought it back to recall precisely because of what I saw last night in Singapore. No end to the Korean War, two leaders engaged in a very special strain of personalized politics. One the head of a ruling dynasty over a reclusive kingdom, the other a wealthy Oligarch made elected President.

Of course, the modern secular liberal, safely ensconced in their safe spaces from reality, cannot face the facts, which are dawning on me as well, that political Barbarism, by which I mean a personalized and privatized rule on the basis of individual force, wealth, charisma, or spiritual authority, is on it's way back to stay for good.

And in itself, this is not a bad thing, only in certain localized effects. I predict that ISIS/al-Qaida will revive, for example. But anyway, the pre-modern sensibility is the new post-modern.

[Godstud]

I predict that ISIS/al-Qaida will revive, for example.

They will because the USA will fund them, AGAIN.

[annatar1914]

They will because the USA will fund them, AGAIN.

These kinds of groups won't revive merely because there's a certain element of Western black operations funding for them, as easy as it would be to say so and thus absolve others for their culpability in this matter.

Besides all that, what is more important in one respect is that natural avoidance of the real issues which seems a hallmark of modern secularized society, lurching to it's inevitable doom.

Trends which are built into the system will produce it's demise, and one of the signs of this is a return to a more natural mode of being and understanding of personal power relationships, even in areas once considered to be fully sanitized if you will, subject to protocols and structures and full of nods to various artificial and abstract entities of modern politics, like international organizations, nation-states, NGO's etc...

Not what happened in Singapore at all, and not what happened two years in a row in Syria, with two missile attacks to send a message (rightly or wrongly) from one Ruler to another Ruler.

[Patrickov]

Can't see the "overconfidence", they are desperate. For a Sunni to live under Shia hegemony, is like for an American or West European to live next to Communist threat during the Cold War. It's two antithetical way of life. Each despises the other for centuries.

For the Arabs it's a little bit different. If I go fully by your ideas, both should be defeated instead of taking a side.

[Zamuel]

For the Arabs it's a little bit different. If I go fully by your ideas, both should be defeated instead of taking a side.

Ah-ha … a Sufi !

Zam

[annatar1914]

Of all the people who understand this post, I think it would be Victoribus Spolia, perhaps more than I did myself at the time. I brought it back to recall precisely because of what I saw last night in Singapore. No end to the Korean War, two leaders engaged in a very special strain of personalized politics. One the head of a ruling dynasty over a reclusive kingdom, the other a wealthy Oligarch made elected President.

Of course, the modern secular liberal, safely ensconced in their safe spaces from reality, cannot face the facts, which are dawning on me as well, that political Barbarism, by which I mean a personalized and privatized rule on the basis of individual force, wealth, charisma, or spiritual authority, is on it's way back to stay for good.

And in itself, this is not a bad thing, only in certain localized effects. I predict that ISIS/al-Qaida will revive, for example. But anyway, the pre-modern sensibility is the new post-modern.

I'm reviving this post, and thus this thread, because given the Syrian Government's offensive to take back the city of Idlib from the Jihadis, I have the suspicion that a fake chemical warfare attack will again be in the works as part of an effort to save the Islamists from being beaten totally in Syria.

Edit; btw, the Post I mention was from the ''rise of the Islamic state'' thread, a rather epic thread I might add, with contributions galore from Rei Murasame and myself, Abu Rashid and many others. But this is what I said;

"Assad's Regime will fall, ISIS will eventually take Damascus and get Islamic street cred for seizing the capital of a former Caliphate. They're pretty serious, their enemies are not, and the Islamic State operates under an eschatological paradigm that renders their strategic and tactical logic inpenetrable to modern political and military minds.

In other words, what many of us here on PoFo were saying far earlier and much more emphatically."

The enemies of the Islamists are not serious. We use them in our political games, we fight each other more than we fight them, and when the least amount of pressure is released, they start coming back. Everything tells me that nobody in the modern world, not Trump or his foes in the Western World, not the Israelis, not even Assad or Putin, gets the real dynamic here.

This is the End of the Modern Age. This is the End of the Nation State as we have known it for about 300 years now. ISIS is the future of the Middle East. When they first rose up a few years ago, they destroyed Iraq and Syria for good, permanently shattered the borders drawn by Sykes-Picot. What they unleashed has rocked the foundations of what we moderns considered normal. Slavery had come back, executions by beheading, all the surface ephemera of a much deeper crisis.

I still stand by this comment, whether I myself dislike it has no bearing. I cannot but help thinking that this indeed will come to pass, this or something similar.

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

I'm reviving this post, and thus this thread, because given the Syrian Government's offensive to take back the city of Idlib from the Jihadis, I have the suspicion that a fake chemical warfare attack will again be in the works as part of an effort to save the Islamists from being beaten totally in Syria.

Either another "chemical weapons attack" will suddenly appear in Western media followed by "how long will we wait until we do something about evil Assad?" or Western media will release article after article pouring on thick, syrupy sympathy for (based on other Islamist groups in Syria, a large proportion are foreign Islamist adventurers) Al Qaeda fighters in Idlib being killed by Syrian soldiers. Even when the battle lines put the majority of the trapped civilians behind government lines, the freeing of slaves, the freeing of women held in rape centers, and the freeing of civilians slated to be beheaded for not following Shariah law by government forces will be twisted as "civilians suffering in midst of government onslaught on moderate rebels."

Always "moderate" rebels.

[annatar1914]

Either another "chemical weapons attack" will suddenly appear in Western media followed by "how long will we wait until we do something about evil Assad?" or Western media will release article after article pouring on thick, syrupy sympathy for (based on other Islamist groups in Syria, a large proportion are foreign Islamist adventurers) Al Qaeda fighters in Idlib being killed by Syrian soldiers. Even when the battle lines put the majority of the trapped civilians behind government lines, the freeing of slaves, the freeing of women held in rape centers, and the freeing of civilians slated to be beheaded for not following Shariah law by government forces will be twisted as "civilians suffering in midst of government onslaught on moderate rebels."

Always "moderate" rebels.

Indeed. And this is part of the reason why they will win, the ''moderate rebels'' who are anything but, because of the very nature not only of their message, but the utter lack of a message of their ''enemies''. Believe me, I've no sympathy whatsoever with these Devils in human form, but I know where they're coming from in a very primal way and so I know that only peoples every bit as primal can beat them or hold them back.