Syria: The "Rebels" Are Terrorists

[Aqueous Id]

Nobody wants Assad out of power except Sunni nationalists.

Considering that 74% of Syrians are Sunni, this would imply that his enemies are mostly Sunni. I'm not sure how you would calculate the demographic of his opponents since he has presumably murdered people somewhat indiscriminately.

Or would you rather have Sunni nationalists in power, massacring everybody else, like they have historically done?

I don't think Sunnis in Syria have much experience with massacre other than at Assad's hands. So yes, they will probably eventually take control. After that is anyone's guess, but retaliation against him and his generals would not be surprising.

A revolution spearheaded by the non-Sunnis, and by the proletariat.

That is highly improbable. Even if you armed the minorities you could not convince the Sunnis to let this go.

There is no reason to believe that their present feigned concern for the Syrian people is any different.

Presumably military attacks on civilian targets are appropriate concerns for people on all sides, and across all borders. It violates the rules of war, and the human rights declarations.

You misunderstand the delicate balance of power in Syria. Syria is not like the United States. Sectarian differences can become problematic. Syria needs a minority leader in power in order to protect the non-Sunnis, which constitute 30% of the population (and Christians about 40% of that)

Dictatorship, state-sponsored terrorism, violations of international law, and massacres of civilians are generally not what we equate with "protection" By what calculus does democracy not protect minorities?

As I've said, I've visited Syria, and honestly, there were no problems in the country when I visited and it was under Assad's government.

Every country has problems. What you did or did not see can not erase Assad's guilt, and that of his generals.

It was a safe and largely open country.

Safe for who? Did you visit the prisons, or any mass graves? Did you check the outbound shipments for material support to international terrorists? Did you visit Hama?

Now, these "revolutionaries" are murdering people (and yes, they have been shown to murder civilians) for no good reason.

You know for a fact that none of the executioners lost a loved one to Assad and his generals.

Nobody wants a Sunni theocracy

You mean no Islamophobe does. I imagine some number of Sunnis are happy with the idea.

and I guarantee you the Muslim Brotherhood will get into office if there was no Assad.

The same fear was voiced in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. How much of it came to pass?

 

[Aqueous Id]

And those KKK members think "Fuck Obama"

Not just the Klan, but racists and bigots in general, oppose this president on account of his complexion.

I think "fuck the CIA

In general? The CIA has done nothing in your interest (I'm assuming you're American)?

and the US business interests"

In general also? There is no such thing as "responsible business"?

and "fuck radical Islam"

So Sunnis are OK, just not radicals?

I'll have to side with Assad.

You endorse the shelling of civilian enclaves? And how do you reconcile such a view with any atrocities you blame on the US/CIA/business interests? You think Assad doesn't have his own version of the CIA, or of business interests?

I'm a Marxist-Leninist

I understand Marxist. What is a Leninist?

The Alawites of Syria have long been oppressed, brutalized, and murdered by the majority Sunnis.

When was the last incident of Sunni brutality on an Alawite, for any reason other than reprisal for atrocities by Assad? When was the last time Alawites were oppressed?

I don't trust this movement.

Would you, if they were operating under the Red flag? Other than your proprietary political views, what gives a people the right to self-determination without having to be subjected to the "trust" question? (Yet you trust the man who committed mass murder of civilians.)

My conception of liberty doesn't include the liberty for religious extremists to murder minorities

Religious extremists operate within the US (or any free world country). So do we need to put the tanks on the streets in the US and lock down all areas designated "extremist"? (And who would determine that? The CIA?)

people on the international stage have already recognized the movement as the foreign-backed sham it is

Compare what you're saying to the foreign-backed (esp. Iran/Iraq) Assad regime, shelling civilian Syrians. How does your issue even match up to this in severity, scope and duration?

How free and legitimate are American elections

Have you ever been denied the right to vote? (Wherever you live. Or: what Americans can't vote?)

Syria has had one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

Syria has one of the least credible government reporting services in the world. If you believe them, then I have a bridge for sale.

and has been one of the safest countries in the Middle East for ages now.

Ages? Besides the ongoing civil war, you just got through claiming the Alawites are being targeted for violence. And places like Hama have been the site of massacres for decades. Syria has been sponsoring global terrorism. You call that safe?

So why did the United States support Saddam Hussein and Fulgencio Batista

Hussein was probably not your enemy when he was sending Scud missiles into Iran (I'm following your remarks on extremists and theocracy). So when did you first discover he wasn't your friend? Now, using that same logic, when would you have befriended Batista - when he embraced Communism and the unions? And when would have disavowed him - when he was in cahoots with the Mafia and sugar magnates? You mean, like Kennedy did, in 1960:

Fulgencio Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in seven years ... and he turned Democratic Cuba into a complete police state—destroying every individual liberty. Yet our aid to his regime, and the ineptness of our policies, enabled Batista to invoke the name of the United States in support of his reign of terror. Administration spokesmen publicly praised Batista—hailed him as a staunch ally and a good friend—at a time when Batista was murdering thousands, destroying the last vestiges of freedom, and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the Cuban people, and we failed to press for free elections.

-JFK, 1960



Imagine making that kind of criticism of a sitting politburo while running for office in the era of Lenin. Or: over an open mike in Syria.

Christian minority in Syria would have a lot less to fear for their safety if they hadn't spent decades supporting a nasty, brutal dictatorship

What gives you the moral high ground to criticize them?

The fact that neither I, nor my Government, is supporting mass murderer in Syria.

Dictatorship is inherently bad. It violates the fundamental right of political self-determination.

You mean, the same way the US backing foreign regimes does the same thing ?

You put that in the present tense. What are some places where US intervention is violating the right of political self-determination? What lessons have been learned, and how were these applied in the US response to the Arab Spring?

A dictatorship of the working class is not bad. Dictatorship means control of power

You earlier complained of something unfair about elections. Here you're willing to surrender that right altogether. Looks like a contradiction.

I trust Russia a hell of a lot more any day of the week.

To do what? Russia has no dirty laundry? They weren't messing around in Cuba, or Syria, or Iraq/Afghanistan? Or any other place we were? Plus the entire East bloc. Russia committed no atrocities in any of satellites? Or against its own people? Of course you did put that in the present tense. So in what ways has Russia rehabilitated itself from its atrocities which the US has not done?

I never said Assad was pure or innocent; only, that he was a better choice than the Muslim Brotherhood and Sharia Law.

So far, neither of those groups/ideologies is known for committing the scale of atrocity committed by Assad. How is that better? How is Sharia Law worse than Leninism?

I can trust the intentions of nations like Switzerland more, who don't have a history of corruption and hypocrisy

Hah! I bet the Swiss would get a kick out of hearing that everything is copacetic on their home front. Talk about big money! And there's their own version of the KKK.

The Alawites have been murdered and massacred for years. Before Hafez Al-Assad, it was they who lived in fear.

You mean during the Batista administration? How about catching up with - I don't know - the 1980s (e.g. Hama)?

I can point out [Russia's] successes without saying "Hey, let's return to an exact copy of Stalin's Russia"

So the variants that existed later were what - more humane? When was that?

I'm not on the side of the US war machine. I'm not on the side of the people who brutalized the Third world.

Presumably most of the Soviet Union's victims were 2nd-word countries, but in nearly every case the US involvement was collateral to Soviet incursion or intervention of some kind. The difference is, in comparison, the Soviet war machine has a legacy of serious war crimes.

I can't tell if you [sg] are trolling or serious when you defend imperialism.

Who said anything about imperialism? Is the US interest in Syria influenced by sugar cane growers? What's the connection?

do you realize how chauvinistic and even Nazi-ish some of your posts defending imperialism and "might makes right"

That's odd - so far Assad is the only one who fits that description. What gives?

 

[Norsefire]

Aqeuous ID, take it from me, an actual Syrian, who has been to Hama. Radical Islam is alive and well in the "FSA", and they are murdering people.

Assad wouldn't have to react this way if they (the FSA) weren't going around trying to destabilize the country. They are mostly foreign fighters, too, from Libya and Saudi Arabia. Everybody knows this.

Before you dare criticize my president for "human rights violations", you had better throw Bush in the slammer and all the generals and commanders responsible for the murder of not 19 thousand, but 3 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

[kx000]

Why not seriously entertain the idea of world domination? Align with Russia. We god East, they go West, meet in the middle. Two states until we can form our perfect utopia, much more doable with two states.

 

[Norsefire]

As if anybody needed greater convincing that this "rebellion" was anything more than a sham,

http://www.rt.com/news/britain-qatar-troops-syria-893/

British and Qatari troops in Syria? Wow, sounds real grassroots

Assad is massing his troops around Aleppo and will soon righteously crush the rebellion. I hope all the rebels and their sympathizers are summarily executed. They have caused untold destruction and death with their shenanigans.

 

[RedStar]

Norse don't even bother. They'll deny reality and continue their bullshit propaganda even though you are Syrian and clearly know what you are talking about.

 

[Sock puppet path]

Wait you actually watch irans state sponsored news AND believe it?? Wow, that's as bad or worse than getting your news from Fox.
The theocrats in Iran are the syrian regimes main allies, of course they are biased.
There are many groups in the mix of the resistance from what I have seen on democracy now, al Jazeera etc. As spider pointed out almost any combatant in the middle east will shout "allah akbar" for the camera.
I am still unsure but the scope of the resistance including defectors from assad's own regime doesn't tell the story of a revolt solely or mostly instigated from the outside. I mean they are fighting tanks and helicopters with IEDs and AKs

 

[Norsefire]

Wait you actually watch irans state sponsored news AND believe it?? Wow, that's as bad or worse than getting your news from Fox.
The theocrats in Iran are the syrian regimes main allies, of course they are biased.
There are many groups in the mix of the resistance from what I have seen on democracy now, al Jazeera etc. As spider pointed out almost any combatant in the middle east will shout "allah akbar" for the camera.
I am still unsure but the scope of the resistance including defectors from assad's own regime doesn't tell the story of a revolt solely or mostly instigated from the outside. I mean they are fighting tanks and helicopters with IEDs and AKs

Huh? RT isn't Iranian, and all news is biased one way or another.

I've actually been on the ground in Syria. The rebels are mostly extremists and fundamentalists. They are terrorists, plain and simple.

And they are losing.

 

[Sock puppet path]

Not you Norse I was replying to the OP.

 

[kx000]

Don't let the Syrians fall. Don't let the 99% fade. Rise up!

One people.

 

[Norsefire]

Not you Norse I was replying to the OP.

He's right, though. I'm only glad Assad is winning.

 

[Bells]

My point is that we don't know what is the "real news" coming out of Syria. So our thoughts about what is happening there are severely restricted since we have no clue what is actually happening on the ground

By carefully looking at the news we can only come to two firm conclusions:

1. Most of the action, real or fake is not happening in the Sunni neighborhoods but in places like Aleppo and Homs which have large minority sect neighborhoods. So we are to believe that Assad is generally pounding the neighborhoods which support him and the FSA are defending these neighborhoods to the extent that, in some cases, 200,000 residents have fled their homes. Do we believe the FSA loves minorities so much and Assad who has favoured all minorities above Sunnis has decided to pound them for unfathomable reasons?

2. The general pattern of the news is geared to creating an impression that pro-Assad parts of the country are falling and turning against Assad.

How far one can believe this - in the face of disclosures of fake news and demonstrations - remains to be seen.

I don't know that the news released by the RPS was disseminated from Washington. I only know that a prodemocracy site [it is cited in the Israel Matzav blogger article and the link over there is what takes you to the RPS site] with a password protected news website accessible to Israel Matzav bloggers seems a bit...weird. Even more so since they are based in Washington. You'd think living in the United States would give them the confidence to have a publicly accessible pro-democracy website. Wouldn't you?

And you'd think someone other than a pro-democracy website in Washington would have noticed car bombs going off in Aleppo during a visit by the US ambassador to Syria, right?

Are you saying that Assad is not a chip off the old block?

Norse don't even bother. They'll deny reality and continue their bullshit propaganda even though you are Syrian and clearly know what you are talking about.

Ah of course. You support the mass murder of innocent civilians by a leadership that has managed to amass it's riches over the backs of a suffering populace. The irony of this is that you call yourself a communist.

That is the reality.

A true communist would support the poor workers being massacred by the very wealthy leadership who only wish to ensure the continuation of their line in positions of power. Here is how the FSA formed:

The Free Syrian Army traces its origin to early defectors from the Syrian army who refused to shoot on unarmed protesters during the Syrian uprising.[29] The first defections occurred when the army was sent into Daraa to quell ongoing protests. There were reports that different units had refused to shoot on protesters and had split from the army.[30] Video footage showed civilians helping defecting soldiers who had been shot for refusing orders.[31] Defections continued throughout the spring as the government used lethal force to clamp down on protesters and lay siege on protesting cities across the country such as Baniyas, Hama, Talkalakh and, Deir ez-Zor. Many soldiers who refused to open fire against civilians were summarily executed by the army.[32] In July 2011, seeing the need for action Riad al-Asaad and a group of officers announced the formation of the Free Syrian Army with the goal to protect unarmed protesters and to help overthrow the regime.​

A true communist would be supporting those protesting civilians, not the despotic regime whose only intent is to ensure succession along the family line and murdering thousands of civilians in a bid to secure that goal.

 

[RedStar]

Actually a true communist would support neither, since both are reactionary. I choose Assad over the rebels because I am against imperialism. And you ignored Norse's posts.

 

[pjdude1219]

I do find it funny how their are a bunch of americans acting like they a have a firm grasp on what is going on here. sorry but we americans don't( those of you accessing foriegn are excused from this) have a firm grasp of it. their are all sorts of details going on that we will never know and they can be rather important and big ones. I'm not saying your not allowed to have any opinion or what not but just remember even if you have torn through all available sources state side your not speaking from a fully informed postition so just be careful about assuming certain things. I know firsthand the information gap that can occur to foreign events from where they are happening and stateside. I know we all want to support the rebels going against the bad dictator but just remember their could be a whole slew of ugly underneath that we don't know about.



though anyone who uses the army to shoot protestors needs to not be a leader.

 

[kx000]

Actually a true communist would support neither, since both are reactionary. I choose Assad over the rebels because I am against imperialism. And you ignored Norse's posts.

Either give me the world, or I must take it.

Imperialism, yay.

 

[Bells]

Actually a true communist would support neither, since both are reactionary. I choose Assad over the rebels because I am against imperialism. And you ignored Norse's posts.

You call yourself a communist but you support a regime that only allows those from a particular religious sect within the Assad family to rule and/or hold positions of power... Really?

Thankfully for you, you do not live in Syria. If you did, you would not be posting on this site and you would mostly likely find yourself imprisoned or murdered by the Assad regime because you declare yourself a communist.

In a 2006 report, Human Rights Watch reported on the continued detention of "thousands" of political prisoners in Syria, "many of them members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood and the Communist Party." According to the Syrian Human Rights Committee that there were 4,000 political prisoners held in Syrian jails in 2006.​

So please, do not give me the "I'm a Communist" line and then support someone like Assad. If you do, as you are now, it means only one thing... You are a fake. A poser. A wannabe who does not understand the true implications of your words and political beliefs when declaring support for someone like Assad.


As for Norse's post. What of it? He, like you, supports a murderous regime that is shaping itself up as being a type of system one would see in Monarchist of old, the only difference here is that Assad is not a King, just a self appointed leader after an election where there were no opposition parties or members.. And ensuring succession to other family members who may one day take over from him.

However Norse may have an excuse. He may possibly still have family remaining there and for their safety, may be supporting Assad.. unlikely, but you never know. However, we do know that internet use in Syria is not only very much censored, but it is very closely monitored.

But make no mistake, this is what you are supporting when you are sitting here and hoping that he is victorious:

The United Nations, meanwhile, has documented that Syrian security services officers had gang raped boys as young as 11 years old during the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. The report also documents over 250 children killed - some as young as two years old.​

And you have the nerve to call yourself a Communist.. As I said before, you are nothing but a fake.

 

[Bells]

Another one bites the dust...

At this rate, he won't have anyone left..

AMMAN, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab has defected to the opposition seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, a spokesman for Hijab said on Monday, marking one of the most high profile desertions from the Damascus government.

Syrian state TV said Hijab had been fired, but an official source in Amman said the dismissal followed his defection to neighbouring Jordan with his family.

"I announce today my defection from the killing and terrorist regime and I announce that I have joined the ranks of the freedom and dignity revolution. I announce that I am from today a soldier in this blessed revolution," Hijab said in a statement read in his name by the spokesman, which was broadcast on Al Jazeera television.

Syrian state TV announced Hijab's dismissal as government forces appeared to prepare a ground assault to clear battered rebels from Aleppo, the country's biggest city.

Assad appointed Hijab, a former agriculture minister, as prime minister only in June following a parliamentary election which authorities said was a step towards political reform but which opponents dismissed as a sham.​

 

[RedStar]

It's the lesser of two evils approach. I didn't say I liked Assad; I said he is better for the country than the rebels. And that's true. The rebels are murderers, terrorists, and extremists. How can you call yourself a humanitarian when you support them?

 

[superstring01]

Does anyone seriously believe the "rebellion" in Syria is an actual grassroots effort at political reform?

Yes. A great many intelligent, compassionate and informed people. I'm one of them.

The "rebels" are openly Islamic fundamentalists supported by NATO and the United States, for Pete's sake.

Source.

I'm not asking. I'm actually gonna be a dick here and offer you the opportunity to support that or request that you leave this subforum.

From what I've read, most of them are Islamic fundamentalists

Where. Can you identify a source of reasonable repute?

I would agree, except for all the times the United States has conveniently ignored crimes of dictators for political gain.

Which doesn't mean that those fighting Assad are in the wrong.

You are genuinely naive if you think the CIA is interfering in Syria out of the benevolence and goodwill of their hearts.

Did Tiassa make such a statement?

~String

 

[Bells]

It's the lesser of two evils approach. I didn't say I liked Assad; I said he is better for the country than the rebels. And that's true. The rebels are murderers, terrorists, and extremists. How can you call yourself a humanitarian when you support them?

Better for the country how? By silencing any dissenting voice? How is that better? How is imprisoning and murdering one's political opposition better? Over 4000 political prisoners, many of them without charge, some detained, tortured and imprisoned (others murdered) for expressing a contrary view to the Assad regime. You consider that to be better? Ordering your troops to fire on peaceful protests and marches, this is better for Syria? How is this better? How is a corrupt and despotic regime which favours family connections amongst its leadership and where succession is guaranteed better?

Assad is following directly in the footsteps of his father and his type of regime will continue until he is forced from office and free elections held. And you deem this to be the lesser of two evils?