Wednesday, October 16, 2019

HOW TO RESPOND TO FB TROLLS WHO DON'T UNDERSTAND THE MESS IN SYRIA

Thinking that this was a smart thing to do, one of my FB friends posted this "not ready for prime time" commentary from conservative radio troll and washed out CIA "analyst" Buck Sexton ... 
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The ignorance and lack of historical perspective here says as much about my FB friend (who doesn't know squat about the Middle East) as it does about Sexton, so I posted the following ... 
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FFS, ***, the Syrian civil war is multi-sided civil war fought between Ba'athist groups led by President Assad, along with domestic and foreign allies (i.e. Russia), versus various domestic and foreign forces opposing both the Syrian government and each other in a number of confused combinations.

The roots of the Syrian war run even deeper, though.

There was a drought in Syria from 2006 through 2011 which resulted in mass crop failures, which pushed people into the cities. This made an already bad situation in Syria much worse because 1.5 million refugees from the Iraq War (which was such a brilliant and strategic success for the Bush administration, right?) were already creating socio-economic challenges which the west wanted to turn its back on (we created the Iraq refugee mess, so why not walk away, right?).

What's happening in Syria can also be traced to a wider wave of Arab Spring protests (2011), which was going to take advantage of discontent with the Syrian government, but unfortunately turned into armed conflicts after protests calling for Assad to be removed were violently suppressed.

IGOs have accused virtually all sides involved - the Ba'athist Syrian government, ISIL, opposition rebel groups, Russia, and the U.S.-led coalition - of severe human rights violations and massacres.

Here's the point, ***. You shouldn't be quoting a washed out "security" analyst like Sexton (from the Bush era; tough CV time there for an ideologue) who doesn't speak another language (kind of hard to understand the ME if you don't know another language). The guy is now shilling for conservative talk radio, trying to cover for Trump's stupidity with the Kurds in Syria. The issue is more complicated than simply trying to blame Obama for a mess that Bush's Iraq blunder made worse and - apparently - Trump is going to turn into a complete clusterf**k.

Try again.


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Message of the day: Push back against Trump's supporters. 

Yes, the ignorance is never ending, but the world was confronted with the same condition in the Dark Ages. The Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment followed soon after. 

Trust me. It's worth the effort.

- Mark

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