I'm certainly not going to let this blog get bogged down in discussion of the Syrian civil war. If you want to read reasonably detailed but succinct accounts there is this from the BBC, which uses data from various sources including the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights; The Council on Foreign Relations; and for a more international view, the International Institute for Security Studies.
They are all in agreement on the main points. The war began with peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in March, 2011, which the Assad government violently repressed, sparking widespread uprisings nationwide that quickly evolved into armed conflict. Over time, many foreign actors intervened in various ways, and various factions within Syria organized and entered into conflict with government forces, and with each other. Turkey and Israel also intervened directly on Syrian territory. The U.S. is among the outside agencies that played a role, but it was a relatively small one. By far the most important outside participants are Iran, which backs the Assad regime with weaponry and financing to the tune of billions of dollars, and has also imported militias is sponsors from Lebanon and elsewhere; and Russia, which essentially serves as Assad's air force.
The U.S. has played a comparatively small role. Initially, the U.S. and its allies provided support for what they thought were "moderate" rebel groups, but as I have said before this turned out to be a mistake as these groups were dominated by Islamists, and that support ceased. In 2014 the U.S. switched its support to a Kurdish-led coalition that also included some Arab militias, called the Syrian Democratic Forces, to capture territory held by Islamic State and protect the Kurdish enclave in the north.
The claim that the civil war would have ended in 2012 without U.S. intervention is Q-anon level nonsense. The U.S. role in Syria has been of some importance in reducing IS and maintaining Kurdish autonomy, but it has otherwise had little or no impact on the situation overall. Assad has regained control of most of the country with the overwhelmingly important assistance of Iran and Russia, against forces and in parts of the country in which the United States had no involvement. Whatever you think of the U.S. role in Syria, it has been a fairly small part of the story, and as far as I'm concerned to blow it up into the main plot is a case of motivated reasoning.
And that's all we'll say about that here. It's really not on topic.
3 comments:
You post at length about it, block my replies, then claim you don't want to go into it.
It was nice while it lasted. Give my regards to the gang.
Mo, I'm sorry but it's really off topic. As I say, I don't want to get bogged down in it and it's my blog. But the bottom line is, you can object to U.S. involvement in the Syrian civil war but you first claimed that the U.S. caused it, then you moved the goalposts to claim it would have been over in 1 year if the U.S. hadn't gotten involved. That's just preposterous and I'm not going to waste my time arguing with it, I have better things to do.
And again, you misrepresent my argument. Are you going to block this reply, too?
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