
Originally Posted by
harrybarracuda

Originally Posted by
Neverna

Originally Posted by
harrybarracuda
The breakup?
It's already a failed state; without Putin and Iran supporting him, Assad would be long gone.
As I said, it would be much worse than it is now. IS would be in charge of most of it, Kurds would want their own state, Turkey would get militarily involved (even more so than has been) to prevent any Kurdish state emerging, just for starters. Putin has said that supporting Assad is the best option of the poor options available.
That's just bullshit. The best option would have been to replace the government early on with a more inclusive one, but he fucked that up.
The Sunni will never, ever forgive Assad.
Of course they won't forgive him, he's not Sunni, or Shia, so they never forgave him for that anyway. But to say the region would be better off without Assad displays a typical clipped western view that if you continue making increasingly outlandish blunders eventually you'll end up making one small enough to hail as a success.
As Neverna said, create yet another vacuum and Turkey will use the opportunity to take on the Kurds under a false flag, Jordan becomes IS's next and only plausible direction for retreat giving the Israelis no choice but to get involved, and even a novice western mind should be able to figure out some of those implications. I don't think even a Clinton on her most vicious day could claim to find a bunch of 'friendly' rebels in that mix. And as that fun's taking our attention, Iran and Russian spheres reach right across Iraq and Syria to the Med with direct land threats to Kuwait and the Gulf states.
Could be you don't mind wild rides and hundreds of thousands more civilians killed under the pretext of saving them with another 6-8 million displaced, many of which will end up on heading for Europe, because then you could ease back in your armchair and dismiss it as another wog generated event.
And what do you suppose mad dog NATO's obligations would be if member Turkey takes on Turkish Kurdistan as a defensive engagement, or EU/US/Russian positions while the Israeli's are moving through Jordan (both non-NATO) to engage the IS with or without an invite?