Quote (Skinned @ 20 Jul 2017 00:18)

I'm glad the Founding Fathers didn't have the mentality that peace under a tyrant is better than war.

And it's too late now...Syria is gone. When Assad started murdering his people they fled to Europe. You guys hate this refugee crisis but are endorsing the source of it as a positive. So schitzophrenic of a policy position.

But there is no more Syria. It's most important places and people are all gone.

Quote (Skinned @ 20 Jul 2017 00:44)

Syria is a complete loss.

At least those in Europe from the efforts of Assad survived and will have better lives.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ 20 Jul 2017 01:14)

the war went on for over 6 years and got nowhere. hadnt the russians intervened, assad would still be in a bloody, violent stalemate with the cia-backed islamists while ISIS is spreading chaos and death in every power vacuum left by the other parties.

the civilians fled to the neighboring countries when the whole mess started. and had europe kept its borders closed, they would be still there. yes, the syrian civil war caused massive streams of refugees. but it was merkels idiocy that made it a european refugee crisis, it was her who made it OUR problem.

... until we send them back home. ^_^

Quote (Goomshill @ 20 Jul 2017 01:17)

Anyone remember that time one of the "moderate Syrian rebel groups" who we had given BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missiles was filmed beheading a struggling 10 year old boy while shouting allahu akbhar? And their PR guy said it was an "individual mistake that does not represent the general policy of the group" :cry:

Quote (Goomshill @ 20 Jul 2017 01:17)

Anyone remember that time one of the "moderate Syrian rebel groups" who we had given BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missiles was filmed beheading a struggling 10 year old boy while shouting allahu akbhar? And their PR guy said it was an "individual mistake that does not represent the general policy of the group" :cry:

Quote (ampoo @ Jul 19 2017 05:23pm)

good old days, when the media was still spreading this bullshit

however you will find some guys here who believe that ^_^

Quote (Goomshill @ 20 Jul 2017 00:06)

Arming the Kurds =/= arming the Sunni opposition. We were originally arming the "moderate opposition", a mythical group of freedom-seeking western-government loving sunnis who are right up there with Iraq's WMDs. In reality, we were arming sunni factions that had almost identical ideologies to ISIS and sometimes fought against them and sometimes joined them, and now are completely segregated from them and cut off by hundreds of miles. The Kurds on the other hand are secular and sending arms to the SDF won't bite us in the ass like {every time in history we armed the sunni jihadis}, but it does piss off the Turks who are at perpetual war with the Kurds, and makes things at least a bit more uneasy with Iran. Arming the Kurds was the right thing to do and we should keep supporting them until the wars done, but it was still a flawed solution to a bad situation, and supporting Kurdistan itself would destabilize the middle east even more and cause Turkey to leave NATO and join the Russian sphere of influence. There's a reason we are currently moving our nukes out of Erdogan's country

The refugee stream absolutely was Russia's plan. Perhaps Putin didn't plan it from the start so much as exploit it once it started, but foreign policy strategists have known for some time that Putin was weaponizing the refugee crisis:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/12180073/Nato-chief-Vladimir-Putin-weaponising-refugee-crisis-to-break-Europe.html

Quote (ampoo @ 20 Jul 2017 00:05)

thinking about the whole thing makes me think that it was americas plan....

Quote (Goomshill @ Jul 19 2017 04:24pm)

There are still people who believe Iraq had WMDs because of that nefarious aluminum tubing or whatever

Quote (ofthevoid @ Jul 19 2017 05:27pm)

Ironically the people that were crying day and night afterwards, about intervening in Iraq, for the last few years have been foaming at the mouth that we're not interfering more in Syria.

Power of the media.