Re:Remarks on the Decline of American Empire
by ashark on Monday November 27, 2017 @01:01PM
(#15789436)
Sure, but Syria would have burnt out before that got started if we hadn't half-assedly propped up the opposition, just enough to ensure they couldn't be defeated but not enough to actually make them win. Year after year. Iraq was really bad and contributed to all this significantly, but in no way did it force us to turn the brief fire in Syria into a years-persisting human misery factory and radicalization engine of a smoldering brush fire as part of a proxy war with Russia.
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Re:Remarks on the Decline of American Empire
by nikdaheratik on Monday November 27, 2017 @09:20PM
(#15793724)
We don't actually know that. From what I've seen, the Syrian government faction was maybe a third of the fighting force, but they had air power and the other factions were never able to unite for various reasons. The arms from the U.S. didn't make that much difference, and the war dragged on because the government didn't have a good way to end it without losing alot of soldiers in the cities (and massacring even more civilians). That left siege warfare and massive bombing as their only options, and both of those are slow and ineffective.