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Leon



Joined: 31 May 2010

PostPosted: Tue Feb 23, 2016 5:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fox wrote:
I finally got around to reading Leon's "Give War A Chance" article. I liked it. The portion on refugees and how they are handled was especially insightful. But, it seemed to be focused mostly on the obvious and overt aspects of international involvement while not paying enough attention to the more destructive, covert aspects. If we are to "give war a chance," then restricting the covert elements of international involvement is if anything more important than how we go about handling the overt elements.


I am glad you liked it, and I thought you might. It was influential to my own thinking when I first read it. I agree very strongly about with your last sentence. I think in general we have a similar view, but perhaps not about the specific scenario in Syria.
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Titus2



Joined: 06 Sep 2015

PostPosted: Fri Feb 26, 2016 8:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Leon wrote:
Titus2 wrote:
stilicho25 wrote:
Absolute madness. Why is a democratic administration supporting al Qaeda? Why isn't it a big deal? Plain meaning? Leon? Sirius?


Because of the deep-state. The American regime uses and has used for a long time sunni savages as a hammer to hit governments it finds insufficiently submissive. http://i.imgur.com/c2qgIh.jpg

You want MG out? Send in the sunni headchoppers. You want Assad out? Send in the sunni headchoppers? You want the soviets out? Same. Now Putin is blowing them up and sending Chechens to shoot them. Russia is a force for civilization and America for barbarism.


It's interesting how you can call out the us bs, but miss/ignore Russia's.


It's worse than that. I support Russia's.
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Leon



Joined: 31 May 2010

PostPosted: Fri Feb 26, 2016 8:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Titus2 wrote:
Leon wrote:
Titus2 wrote:
stilicho25 wrote:
Absolute madness. Why is a democratic administration supporting al Qaeda? Why isn't it a big deal? Plain meaning? Leon? Sirius?


Because of the deep-state. The American regime uses and has used for a long time sunni savages as a hammer to hit governments it finds insufficiently submissive. http://i.imgur.com/c2qgIh.jpg

You want MG out? Send in the sunni headchoppers. You want Assad out? Send in the sunni headchoppers? You want the soviets out? Same. Now Putin is blowing them up and sending Chechens to shoot them. Russia is a force for civilization and America for barbarism.


It's interesting how you can call out the us bs, but miss/ignore Russia's.


It's worse than that. I support Russia's.


Well, as long as you acknowledge it's b.s....
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Titus2



Joined: 06 Sep 2015

PostPosted: Fri Feb 26, 2016 8:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Clever.
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maximmm



Joined: 01 Feb 2008

PostPosted: Sat Feb 27, 2016 6:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Leon wrote:
Fox, the Afghan rebels were sponsored by isi, the us and the Saudis, but the foreign fighters were sponsored by wealthy individuals like bin laden, and existed independent of the west largely. Just like ISIS and al nursra are independent of the west. It's clear that we have largely different views on this, and to me it seems that you are basing yours on a dislike of us foreign policy. That is a reasonable instinct. Its just that it has led you to a bizarre conclusion that Russia and Iran can kill enough people in Syria that Assad can resume power, as if the past 5 years had not happened, as if families do not have memories, as if other powers will not react, as if Iran, Russia and Syria had the resources to rebuild the whole country despite each have sever financial restraints, as if the Russians and Iranians would allow their leaders to make the epic sacrifices that your plan would require, and as if they had the capacity to do what the us couldn't in a decade, as if Sykes picot was anything but a flawed colonial idea, as if the Syrian people were not already fleeing the country now, but under Russia's expanded rules of engagement would stay?

Local grievances created this, grievances that have grown independent of outside influence, and would grow as outside influence increases, both towards Assad and the outside power.

I simply cannot accept your viewpoint, for various reasons, but thanks for sharing and challenging mine.


Yet, one has to wonder just how legitimate the whole civil war is to begin with.
The past 5 years - who sponsored the insurgence? Several big states in the middle east and the west. Who is sponsoring them now? Same.

Syria was fairly peaceful until that happened. You think that it was fueled primarily by local grievances, but I would disagree with that assessment.
Can Assad remain in power? He might and he would keep the country stable (again, that's possible only if the sponsorship of the terrorism were to suddenly stop, which is unlikely unless something goes terribly wrong in Saudi Arabia and the war front shifts elsewhere leading to re-channeling of the money and military equipment to another part of the region).
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Plain Meaning



Joined: 18 Oct 2014

PostPosted: Tue Mar 15, 2016 8:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Russia to withdraw most of forces from Syria

Quote:
Just six months after he threw international relations into a tailspin by launching airstrikes in Syria, Putin on Monday declared that "the tasks put before the defense ministry have been completed over all,” adding that he had ordered that "the main part" of Russian forces in Syria would be withdrawn.

. . .

Russia's air campaign in Syria has undoubtedly bolstered Assad, Moscow's only close Middle East ally, who was in danger of falling to advancing rebel forces — including relative moderates backed by the CIA — before Russia began bombing them last fall.

. . .

"The timing of this announcement, which coincides with the start of the Geneva talks, is a clear signal to Assad that he better enter the negotiations in good faith," said Randa Slim of the Middle East Institute. "This decision is the result of a growing Russian exasperation with Assad. Putin has just equalized the power relations inside Geneva's negotiating room.”

Farkas also backed the notion that Putin’s latest move is geared toward the diplomatic talks. "He never wanted a long- term military engagement and is hoping to get a deal at the table," she said.

Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Putin appears to be showing his pragmatic streak.

"If Putin makes good on a withdrawal, it could incentivize the Syrian government to negotiate an end to the conflict rather than use the process to buy further time for military advances," he said.

Putin's move "may be calculated to downsize Russia's role before the costs of the intervention become too steep or extrication more difficult," Schiff added. "The abruptness of the decision may also be a reflection of growing displeasure with Assad, and the degree to which Russian air power has emboldened the despot to reject a negotiated end to the civil war.”
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Titus2



Joined: 06 Sep 2015

PostPosted: Fri Mar 18, 2016 8:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Joschka Fischer states Saudi has a nuclear weapon:

https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/481

Two portions:

Quote:
Talking of regime change, of course, undermines the cause of regime change. It is a gift to the regime. The opposition is a new factor in the Iran equation that must be taken into account on the political and moral level. Pushed to the wall, the regime may feel compelled to repress, which might involve thousands or tens of thousands of politica,killings.

OK

Quote:
On Saudi Arabia, Fischer points out that if Iran develops nuclear weaponry the Saudis already have their own bomb. The Saudis invested in Pakistan's nuclear weaponry partly for this eventuality; that's their bomb in reserve.
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Titus2



Joined: 06 Sep 2015

PostPosted: Tue Mar 22, 2016 7:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

http://newobserveronline.com/clinton-destroy-syria-israel/
Quote:

A newly-released Hilary Clinton email confirmed that the Obama administration has deliberately provoked the civil war in Syria as the “best way to help Israel.”

In an indication of her murderous and psychopathic nature, Clinton also wrote that it was the “right thing” to personally threaten Bashar Assad’s family with death.

In the email, released by Wikileaks, then Secretary of State Clinton says that the “best way to help Israel” is to “use force” in Syria to overthrow the government.

The document was one of many unclassified by the US Department of State under case number F-2014-20439, Doc No. C05794498, following the uproar over Clinton’s private email server kept at her house while she served as Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013.

Although the Wikileaks transcript dates the email as December 31, 2000, this is an error on their part, as the contents of the email (in particular the reference to May 2012 talks between Iran and the west over its nuclear program in Istanbul) show that the email was in fact sent on December 31, 2012.

The email makes it clear that it has been US policy from the very beginning to violently overthrow the Syrian government—and specifically to do this because it is in Israel’s interests.

“The best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad,” Clinton forthrightly starts off by saying.

Even though all US intelligence reports had long dismissed Iran’s “atom bomb” program as a hoax (a conclusion supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency), Clinton continues to use these lies to “justify” destroying Syria in the name of Israel.

Quote:
She specifically links Iran’s mythical atom bomb program to Syria because, she says, Iran’s “atom bomb” program threatens Israel’s “monopoly” on nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

If Iran were to acquire a nuclear weapon, Clinton asserts, this would allow Syria (and other “adversaries of Israel” such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt) to “go nuclear as well,” all of which would threaten Israel’s interests.

Therefore, Clinton, says, Syria has to be destroyed.

Iran’s nuclear program and Syria’s civil war may seem unconnected, but they are. What Israeli military leaders really worry about — but cannot talk about — is losing their nuclear monopoly.

An Iranian nuclear weapons capability would not only end that nuclear monopoly but could also prompt other adversaries, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to go nuclear as well. The result would be a precarious nuclear balance in which Israel could not respond to provocations with conventional military strikes on Syria and Lebanon, as it can today.

If Iran were to reach the threshold of a nuclear weapons state, Tehran would find it much easier to call on its allies in Syria and Hezbollah to strike Israel, knowing that its nuclear weapons would serve as a deterrent to Israel responding against Iran itself.

It is, Clinton continues, the “strategic relationship between Iran and the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria” that makes it possible for Iran to undermine Israel’s security.

Quote:
This would not come about through a “direct attack,” Clinton admits, because “in the thirty years of hostility between Iran and Israel” this has never occurred, but through its alleged “proxies.”

The end of the Assad regime would end this dangerous alliance. Israel’s leadership understands well why defeating Assad is now in its interests.

Bringing down Assad would not only be a massive boon to Israel’s security, it would also ease Israel’s understandable fear of losing its nuclear monopoly.

Then, Israel and the United States might be able to develop a common view of when the Iranian program is so dangerous that military action could be warranted.

Clinton goes on to asset that directly threatening Bashar Assad “and his family” with violence is the “right thing” to do:

In short, the White House can ease the tension that has developed with Israel over Iran by doing the right thing in Syria.

With his life and his family at risk, only the threat or use of force will change the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s mind.

The email proves—as if any more proof was needed—that the US government has been the main sponsor of the growth of terrorism in the Middle East, and all in order to “protect” Israel.


http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-syria-rebels-defection-hillary-clinton-emails-wikileaks-a6946121.html

Quote:
An interactive tool created by Google was designed to encourage Syrian rebels and help bring down the Assad regime, Hillary Clinton's leaked emails have reportedly revealed.

By tracking and mapping defections within the Syrian leadership, it was reportedly designed to encourage more people to defect and 'give confidence' to the rebel opposition.

It was allegedly described as a “pretty cool idea” by senior Clinton adviser Jake Sullivan, and Google said it had enlisted the help of Al Jazeera to broadcast the tool in Syria.

Please note that Al Jazerra works with State to further Regime goals.

Also note "proxies".

Whom at Google?

Quote:
The email detailing Google's defection tracker purportedly came from Jared Cohen, a Clinton advisor until 2010 and now-President of Jigsaw, formerly known as Google Ideas, the company's New York-based policy think tank.

Cohen.

Hillary is a traitor and a zionist tool.

I was right about this all along. It is entirely, fully and completely about Israel. Period, full stop, final answer.
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trueblue



Joined: 15 Jun 2014
Location: In between the lines

PostPosted: Wed Mar 23, 2016 6:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Titus2 wrote:
http://newobserveronline.com/clinton-destroy-syria-israel/
Quote:

A newly-released Hilary Clinton email confirmed that the Obama administration has deliberately provoked the civil war in Syria as the “best way to help Israel.”

In an indication of her murderous and psychopathic nature, Clinton also wrote that it was the “right thing” to personally threaten Bashar Assad’s family with death.

In the email, released by Wikileaks, then Secretary of State Clinton says that the “best way to help Israel” is to “use force” in Syria to overthrow the government.

The document was one of many unclassified by the US Department of State under case number F-2014-20439, Doc No. C05794498, following the uproar over Clinton’s private email server kept at her house while she served as Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013.

Although the Wikileaks transcript dates the email as December 31, 2000, this is an error on their part, as the contents of the email (in particular the reference to May 2012 talks between Iran and the west over its nuclear program in Istanbul) show that the email was in fact sent on December 31, 2012.

The email makes it clear that it has been US policy from the very beginning to violently overthrow the Syrian government—and specifically to do this because it is in Israel’s interests.

“The best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad,” Clinton forthrightly starts off by saying.

Even though all US intelligence reports had long dismissed Iran’s “atom bomb” program as a hoax (a conclusion supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency), Clinton continues to use these lies to “justify” destroying Syria in the name of Israel.

Quote:
She specifically links Iran’s mythical atom bomb program to Syria because, she says, Iran’s “atom bomb” program threatens Israel’s “monopoly” on nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

If Iran were to acquire a nuclear weapon, Clinton asserts, this would allow Syria (and other “adversaries of Israel” such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt) to “go nuclear as well,” all of which would threaten Israel’s interests.

Therefore, Clinton, says, Syria has to be destroyed.

Iran’s nuclear program and Syria’s civil war may seem unconnected, but they are. What Israeli military leaders really worry about — but cannot talk about — is losing their nuclear monopoly.

An Iranian nuclear weapons capability would not only end that nuclear monopoly but could also prompt other adversaries, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to go nuclear as well. The result would be a precarious nuclear balance in which Israel could not respond to provocations with conventional military strikes on Syria and Lebanon, as it can today.

If Iran were to reach the threshold of a nuclear weapons state, Tehran would find it much easier to call on its allies in Syria and Hezbollah to strike Israel, knowing that its nuclear weapons would serve as a deterrent to Israel responding against Iran itself.

It is, Clinton continues, the “strategic relationship between Iran and the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria” that makes it possible for Iran to undermine Israel’s security.

Quote:
This would not come about through a “direct attack,” Clinton admits, because “in the thirty years of hostility between Iran and Israel” this has never occurred, but through its alleged “proxies.”

The end of the Assad regime would end this dangerous alliance. Israel’s leadership understands well why defeating Assad is now in its interests.

Bringing down Assad would not only be a massive boon to Israel’s security, it would also ease Israel’s understandable fear of losing its nuclear monopoly.

Then, Israel and the United States might be able to develop a common view of when the Iranian program is so dangerous that military action could be warranted.

Clinton goes on to asset that directly threatening Bashar Assad “and his family” with violence is the “right thing” to do:

In short, the White House can ease the tension that has developed with Israel over Iran by doing the right thing in Syria.

With his life and his family at risk, only the threat or use of force will change the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s mind.

The email proves—as if any more proof was needed—that the US government has been the main sponsor of the growth of terrorism in the Middle East, and all in order to “protect” Israel.


http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-syria-rebels-defection-hillary-clinton-emails-wikileaks-a6946121.html

Quote:
An interactive tool created by Google was designed to encourage Syrian rebels and help bring down the Assad regime, Hillary Clinton's leaked emails have reportedly revealed.

By tracking and mapping defections within the Syrian leadership, it was reportedly designed to encourage more people to defect and 'give confidence' to the rebel opposition.

It was allegedly described as a “pretty cool idea” by senior Clinton adviser Jake Sullivan, and Google said it had enlisted the help of Al Jazeera to broadcast the tool in Syria.

Please note that Al Jazerra works with State to further Regime goals.

Also note "proxies".

Whom at Google?

Quote:
The email detailing Google's defection tracker purportedly came from Jared Cohen, a Clinton advisor until 2010 and now-President of Jigsaw, formerly known as Google Ideas, the company's New York-based policy think tank.

Cohen.

Hillary is a traitor and a zionist tool.

I was right about this all along. It is entirely, fully and completely about Israel. Period, full stop, final answer.



Yet, she is running for president. Even further, people in the U.S. think she is a good candidate.
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trueblue



Joined: 15 Jun 2014
Location: In between the lines

PostPosted: Wed Mar 23, 2016 6:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

maximmm wrote:
Leon wrote:
Fox, the Afghan rebels were sponsored by isi, the us and the Saudis, but the foreign fighters were sponsored by wealthy individuals like bin laden, and existed independent of the west largely. Just like ISIS and al nursra are independent of the west. It's clear that we have largely different views on this, and to me it seems that you are basing yours on a dislike of us foreign policy. That is a reasonable instinct. Its just that it has led you to a bizarre conclusion that Russia and Iran can kill enough people in Syria that Assad can resume power, as if the past 5 years had not happened, as if families do not have memories, as if other powers will not react, as if Iran, Russia and Syria had the resources to rebuild the whole country despite each have sever financial restraints, as if the Russians and Iranians would allow their leaders to make the epic sacrifices that your plan would require, and as if they had the capacity to do what the us couldn't in a decade, as if Sykes picot was anything but a flawed colonial idea, as if the Syrian people were not already fleeing the country now, but under Russia's expanded rules of engagement would stay?

Local grievances created this, grievances that have grown independent of outside influence, and would grow as outside influence increases, both towards Assad and the outside power.

I simply cannot accept your viewpoint, for various reasons, but thanks for sharing and challenging mine.


Yet, one has to wonder just how legitimate the whole civil war is to begin with.
The past 5 years - who sponsored the insurgence? Several big states in the middle east and the west. Who is sponsoring them now? Same.

Syria was fairly peaceful until that happened. You think that it was fueled primarily by local grievances, but I would disagree with that assessment.
Can Assad remain in power? He might and he would keep the country stable (again, that's possible only if the sponsorship of the terrorism were to suddenly stop, which is unlikely unless something goes terribly wrong in Saudi Arabia and the war front shifts elsewhere leading to re-channeling of the money and military equipment to another part of the region).
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Fox



Joined: 04 Mar 2009

PostPosted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 4:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

National Security
Trump ends covert CIA program to arm anti-Assad rebels in Syria, a move sought by Moscow
.

Quote:
President Trump has decided to end the CIA’s covert program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-Assad, a move long sought by Russia, according to U.S. officials.

The program was a central plank of a policy begun by the Obama administration in 2013 to put pressure on Assad to step aside, but even its backers have questioned its efficacy since Russia deployed forces in Syria two years later.

Officials said the phasing out of the secret program reflects Trump’s interest in finding ways to work with Russia, which saw the anti-Assad program as an assault on its interests. The shuttering of the program is also an acknowledgment of Washington’s limited leverage and desire to remove Assad from power.

...

Some current and former officials who support the program cast the move as a major concession.

“This is a momentous decision,” said a current official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a covert program. “Putin won in Syria.”


Meaningful news of America taking a small step back away from a policy of promoting chaos in the Middle East. The tone and theme of the Washington Post article make clear enough the Obama-era view on the entire Syria debacle and the way it subordinated Syrian lives and welfare to anti-Russian geopolitical gamesmanship, but I for one am content enough to see Vladimir Putin "win" if it means Syria could become a livable place again in my lifetime. We'll see, though: the President was gulled into bombing a Syrian facility not long ago, so it's hard to say whether meaningful progress towards peace will arise out of this.
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Kuros



Joined: 27 Apr 2004

PostPosted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 8:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fox wrote:
The tone and theme of the Washington Post article make clear enough the Obama-era view on the entire Syria debacle and the way it subordinated Syrian lives and welfare to anti-Russian geopolitical gamesmanship


Obama withdrew from enforcing a red-line on chemical weapons. He then made a deal with Putin.

https://tcf.org/content/report/red-line-redux-putin-tore-obamas-2013-syria-deal/

Quote:
Instead of striking the Syrian government in retaliation for a nerve gas attack near Damascus, Obama took Russian President Vladimir Putin up on an offer to peacefully dismantle the Syrian chemical weapons program and craft a United Nations resolution2 to make sure no gas attacks ever occurred in Syria again.

Alternately described as one of the former president’s greatest successes or as one of his worst failures, what remains of Obama’s red line deal is now under attack. After a UN-appointed panel determined that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces are still using poison gas, albeit at a much more limited scale than before, Putin refused to abide by the September 2013 deal, which promised joint U.S.-Russian efforts in the United Nations to punish all violators.


Russia's management and supervision of Syrian compliance has failed.
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