Sometimes, life comes at you fast. One moment you’re moaning over the fact that wanna-be tyrant got elected in the USA, the next you’re watching a wanna-be tyrant getting slapped down in South Korea, and the next you’re watching a full-blown tyrant, Bashar al-Assad, running for a helicopter to flee Syria before the mob gets him. Putin is very disappointed. Chaos reigns! The citizens are looting the palace!
Forgive me, I’m self-centered and too America-centric, but that got me wondering what we could get by descending on Mar-A-Lago with axes and crowbars.
Now we wait and hope that this is a resurgence of democracy and that a peaceful Syria emerges from the wreckage.
I know what you mean about waiting and hoping. Iran had a police state that was overthrown. Russia had the Okhrana under the Czars and I believe that the Cheka were were at least as bad.
A peaceful Syria would be good for the people of Syria, not so good for U.S. oil extraction in east Syria.
This has U.S. State Department written all over it. I’m guessing it will turn out like Libya did.
@beholder This has Turkiye’s fingerprints all over it, not the U.S. I fear your second conclusion is bang on, however.
Overthrowing an oppressive government is comparatively easy compared to the task of rebuilding without becoming the next oppressive government. I can only hope the world produces more people who are up to the task.
Husayn’s iron fist ruled over a fractious “Iraq” composed of Shia, Sunni, and Kurd factions. After the mission of neocons was accomplished things got a bit chaotic given those three poles. Assad’s iron fist ruled over far more fractious factions, so I wonder what Syria might devolve into in this post Ba’ath aftermath…
Bye Bye Assad. You won’t be missed.
Let’s just hope that Syria doesn’t do an Iraq II.
After we overthrew Saddam Hussein, Iraq descended into a civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis. The Islamic state, ISIS, almost took over until the US pushed them back.
Syria is also divided up into many factions, enough for a civil war.
Revolutions quite often don’t lead anywhere good.
We saw that recently with Iran, the USSR, Tunisia, Hungary, Libya, etc..
Raven @6
Hungary? What revolution?
beholder@2,
It was of course your hero Trump who announced in 2019 that American troops would remain in Syria “to keep the oil”. The amounts of oil concerned are tiny in relation to the US’s own production, or that of any of the main oil producers; the American goal is far more to keep Daesh or Assad’s regime from profiting from it than to make money themselves, and it’s most unlikely it could pay for the cost of keeping forces there. Turkey does have a relationship with the forces who have taken Damascus – the HTS and more particularly the so-called Syrian National Army (SNA) (if you consult a map, you’ll see that Turkey is a lot closer to the HTS and SNA base in north-west Syria than the USA is). Erdoğan may have given the go-ahead for the offensive, possibly even have told Biden it was coming, but it’s unlikely they could have expected Assad’s forces to disintegrate so quickly. American troops in Syria are allied with the SDF (the Kurdish-led “Syrian Democratic Forces”) rather than the HTS/SNA forces – fighting between the two is now reported in the northern city of Manbij. But of course in your blinkered view of the world, violent conflict anywhere just has to be a direct result of deep, machievellian scheming by the ebil U.S State Department – no-one else is assigned any agency unless they can be pictured as heroically resisting the machinations of the U.S. State Department.
The problem is not with revolutions, the problem is with violent revolutions. Violent revolutions, sow the seeds for their own destruction because they make the use of violence legitimate as a political tool. The United States, after 260 years, still suffers from this.
Further to #8, as both beholder and adipicacid say, it’s only too likely Syria will see continuing civil war – and foreign intervention from several directions. But the cause of Assad’s downfall is, quite clearly, Assad. The rebels had no airforce, and very little in the way of heavy weapons, while Assad had both. His forces simply fell apart, which doesn’t happen to a trained military unless morale is already at rock bottom. It’s generally a good idea to pay your soldiers reasonably well, not let senior officers steal the money, and promote on merit rather than family/clan/political/religious grounds.
KG @10
Yes, it has echoes of Afghanistan. But the more interesting question is why Russia just let it happen.
Israeli forces have seized a demilitarised buffer zone on the Israeli-Syrian border, ordered Syrians in several villages near the frontier to stay home, and bombed targets in Damascus. Perhaps it’s a cunning plan to bring all Syrians together in resistance to Israeli arrogance and aggression.
@11 not really, they’ve got enough to deal with in Ukraine, as well as Africa etc.
I’d guess a combination of two things: preoccupation with Ukraine – it would clearly have required Russian ground troops in Syria, and Putin has none to spare – and the sheer speed of the collapse. But it’s a serious blow to Putin’s prestige, and we haven’t yet seen whether he will try to hang on to the Russian military bases in Syria (Hmeimim airbase in Syria’s Latakia province and the naval facility at Tartous on the coast) and if so, how – by negotiation with the new regime in Damascus, or propping up some Syrian faction hostile to it – the bases are in the part of the country principally occupied by members of Assad’s Alawite sect.
And nobody saw it coming. At least, not most of Western media, too preoccupied by the next poll or celebrity.
Good riddance.
Assad used sarin gas against his own people, as a means of suppressing opposition, in defiance of the Geneva convention.
As was noted on the UHC thread, maybe don’t lead the kind of life that has the public cheering in the streets for your death.
@11 Putin has neither the money, manpower or materiél to continue to prop up Assad. The war he picked with Ukraine has gone so badly for Russian that Putin now has to rely on repurposed North Korean “dollar heroes”, who, predictably don’t give a shit about Russia winning the war; they only want to survive. That’s always been the problem with conscripted fighting forces.
Similarly, all war supplies are going to the war in Ukraine; he has none to spare for Assad.
The amount of oil extraction from Syria is a fart in the wind compared to the major oil-producing countries, of which the US is now one. Syria’s real usefulness/interest is in it’s geographic location, as an access point to other countries and a warm water port (in the case of Russia).
Syria also ran Lebanon as a puppet regime, so Assad’s downfall is probably good news in Lebanon. Maybe they will finally get a chance at being a free democracy now.
A more peaceful Syria, maybe. A more democratic regime, fat chance. Most of the rebels actually taking and holding territory are Islamists, and Syria has very little if any foundation for any sort of democratic institutions. As others have said already, there’s a lot of different factions within their population, so chances are whoever takes over will have to at least start with iron-fisted consolidation of power, unless most people turn out to be eager to settle down and work with whoever shows up to take charge.
My next question is: what happens to those Russian bases on the coast? Will Syria’s new leaders be willing to work with the Russians, or will they ask the Russians to vacate the bases? And if it’s the latter, how will the Russians respond?
Offhand, I’m guessing Putin will be willing to reward Syria’s new rulers handsomely for keeping up their relationship with Russia.
wonderpants@12,
I’d have expected Syria to be a higher priority for Putin than his various interventions in Africa – he has important military bases there, and it’s geopolitically more important than anywhere he has troops in Africa apart, possibly, from Libya – but to intervene with confidence of successfully propping Assad up, he’d have needed to take many of his most effective forces from Ukraine.
@3 Maybe Turkey saw this as an excellent opportunity to rid themselves of some Russian influence on their doorstep. Turkey already has Russian influence in Crimea, Georgia, Iran and Syria. Armenia is hostile to Turkey, as is Greece, its other two neighbors. One suspects Turkey’s desire for neutral trading/political partners played a big role in Assad’s fall. I’m sure Turkey has some concerns about being the next target for Russian expansionism.
@17 Perhaps I was unclear. I meant that there was the possibility of an actual democratic government in Lebanon, which has shown signs in the past of actually wanting one.
I have zero hope that Syria will become democratic.
I am merely suggesting that with Syria being preoccupied with Syria, Lebanon might get a chance to break free of being Syria’s sock puppet.
Good riddance, but have a feeling it’s a case of be careful what you wish for.
There’s basically three regions in Syria run by different groups, who now have to form a government together. I’m not super hopeful.
The coast remains under Alawite control though Assad fled; the centre is under mostly HTS and a couple other groups; the east is under mostly YPG and a couple other groups. Plus there’s the Turkmen groups on the Turkish border, and ISIS in the eastern deserts, but they control relatively little.
Until last night the Alawites were at war with all these groups. HTS and YPG seem to tolerate each other but aren’t exactly friends. Choosing a leader is going to be all sorts of fun.
nemerobis @23
The suggestion on German TV that they will have to have some sort of loose Federation for it to work. And PLEASE, no more political presidents. Political presidents are ALWAYS bad news in the end. Power must be distributed, not concentrated. Whatever the temptation.
To add to the fun, Israel and Turkey both have opinions they’re expressing with tanks and bombs.
Herpes.
“what we could get by descending on Mar-A-Lago with axes and crowbars.”
Considering The US has more guns than people, the goobers for Trump would probably get a sudden rush of blood to their AR-15 penis extensions and the result would be more like the carnage of Syria than the relatively polite counter-coup in South Korea. I’d point out though that the South Korean leader is still in charge (for the moment) while the thought of Trump packing his sh*t-filled diapers onto Marine 1 and fleeing to parts unknown does have an Assad vibe to it.
All you would find at mar-a-largo is classified documents.
@27 — But where would DT flee to? All of his relationships are so transactional and fickle that I can’t think of anywhere that would want to shelter him. Maybe if Florida were to secede…
I look forward to the opening of the Putin Memorial Home for Usurped Puppets.
Interesting point of information from the Guardian:
According to Wikipedia’s article about Deraa, it is known as “the cradle of the revolution”, because the 2011 uprising against Assad started
So, are these fighters from Deraa going to accept the leadership of the HTS leader Al-Jolani (or Ahmed al-Shaara, his birth name to which he has now reverted)?
@ 30 Well, it would appear he would already have a roommate.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/syria-latest-syrians-celebrate-bashar-assads-fall-whereabouts-116571190
Maybe Assad will leave him half the closet space and some wire hangers, since he got there first.
Yeah our successes worked so well in Libya and Iraq, I’m sure it will help the people here just as much.
This isn’t “our success” at all. Much of the West considers the main rebel group to be a terrorist organization. We haven’t been helping them. Indeed, we let Assad and Russia cross all of Obama’s red lines when they were fighting them — bombing hospitals, starving out the civilians, dropping chemical weapons on them.
A large part of the problem in “Syria” is that its borders, as accepted a century ago when the Ottoman Empire was partitioned by European decree (largely France and the UK), have no apparent relationship to reality. The borders both divide historical peoples, tribes, territories, and religious sects (obvious example: the “Kurdish” region in the northeast, divided among Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and with substantial overflow elsewhere) in the name of administrative convenience and economic-as-understood-in-1919 Western interests. Simultaneously, some of the inclusions within borders are, umm, “historical tribal enemies prepared to exterminate before compromise.”
Syria — indeed, every “nation” in what is often called the “Middle East” (and that name is a red flag in itself) — is historically a horrible example of the map becoming the territory becoming the map again. Looking at the rise of Hafez Assad only reinforces that.
So I suspect that Syria has a better chance of looking like Cambodia c. 1976 (remember, the Khmer Rouge took power away from a military dictatorship that only a few years previously had itself deposed a royal family that was itself no paragon of tolerance or virtue) than Greece at about the same time. Even the latter would get some interesting dissent from the significant Turkish minority near the Bosporus and from the far northwestern Flavic and other minorities.
There are quite a few outside influencers acting as vultures here it seems. I had Iraq pegged better. I can’t even pretend to understand Syria as it has way too many moving parts. But fuck Turkey and Russia from the get go. And I suppose the Revisionist Zionist hellhole known as Israel is not disinterested either. Fuck them too. They collaborated with Syria to have their flying monkeys shit upon Lebanon, Phalangists in the case of Israel. Thanks Arik. And fuck you.
PZ
If you went out on your campus to recruit people to “descend on Mar-A-Lago with axes and crowbars”, you would not find enough to fill a short bus.
Where do you think you are?
When do you think you are?
@37 I would love to think this was because we are smarter than that, but… Seriously though, the sound strategy is to let the monsters eat each other, than march in after to clean up the mess. If you march in yourself, especially with a bunch of people that have “axes and crowbars”, all the crazies that you want to get rid of will show up in far greater numbers holding AR-15s to defend it, and most of the people that you think should be helping will be too busy either a) at home trying to make enough money to pay rent, or b) at home trying to avoid the stupidity of it all.
Now, this may, on one hand, but a huge part of the problem, but on the other hand, if/when the, “just leave me the F alone”, crowd finally has no way to avoid doing something (either through convincing, or actions by the crazies), you at least know that the end result, if they win, will be something closer to peaceful when its over, and not oppression. I get real nervous about people who are “certain” that the anvil is hot, and its “time to strike”. They often have a very different view than me about what happens after they are not merely the leader of the movement, but have become the leader of a nation.
A peaceful Syria would be … not so good for U.S. oil extraction in east Syria.
Yeah, like “US oil extraction in east Syria” is enough to be worth fighting for.
This has U.S. State Department written all over it.
How so, exactly?
Ersatz chic.