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A comment on Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family. Parent comment

Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by foooorsyth on Sunday December 08, 2024 @03:03AM (#42355725)
>Assad wasn’t really a stabilizing force

Questionable statement.

Syria has (had) a secular government that allowed Sunnis, Alawites, Christians, Druze Muslims, twelvers, and Kurds to live there. The status quo for the region is theocratic iron fist of a particular Islamic denomination, with all others persecuted.

Not to mention, Assad is a Ba’athist (as was Sadam) which by definition is all about Arab unity.

Which Sunni warlord group should we hand the country to now? Do you think things will be better? Can you name a single Syrian political figure or interest group (don’t Google!) that you would propose lead the country? Be honest with yourself.

>Almost seven million Syrian refugees might have he chance to return home and rebuild now

They’re not going back.

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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by j_maffe on Sunday December 08, 2024 @03:09AM (#42355745)
> a secular government that allowed ... to live there.

"live" is a strong word to use there.

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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by dyauspitr on Sunday December 08, 2024 @03:13AM (#42355776)
Syria wasn’t a particularly shitty place before all this began in 2013.
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by j_maffe on Sunday December 08, 2024 @03:28AM (#42355841)
It was under a repressive dictatorship with crumbling infrastructure. Sure, it can always be worse, but the people deserve and are capable of so much better.
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by MoreMoore on Sunday December 08, 2024 @04:08AM (#42355987)
They do, absolutely. But Assad's government being toppled doesn't mean they will get better. There's not even any hope of it.
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by j_maffe on Sunday December 08, 2024 @04:17AM (#42356027)
> There's not even any hope of it.

I love it when online commenters display more confidence in their opinions than experts in the field. Really shows how much value their opinion has.

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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by jampekka on Sunday December 08, 2024 @04:47AM (#42356163)
What experts expect Syria to get better? The rebels are led by a rebranding of al-Nusra Front which is widely designated as an islamist terrorist organization.
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by throwup238 on Sunday December 08, 2024 @05:05AM (#42356223)
The rebels aren’t led by any one group and HTS only has control over some northern provinces. There’s at least four major alliances in play between dozens of rebel groups at the moment, and there’s no one frontrunner to take over.
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by sabbaticaldev on Sunday December 08, 2024 @04:39AM (#42356126)
“experts in the field” are a great excuse to manipulate public opinion
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by lukan on Sunday December 08, 2024 @03:51AM (#42355917)
"Sure, it can always be worse"

Yes, I would argue the islamic state was indeed worse. And so far I see nothing preventing them or a similar force taking hold again. I mean turkey is the moderating factor here and turkey under Erdogan has gone the authorian islamic way since a while.

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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by j_maffe on Sunday December 08, 2024 @04:18AM (#42356030)
Drawing analogies between Erdogan and the IS is wild.
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by jajko on Sunday December 08, 2024 @04:46AM (#42356155)
Well his son made hundreds of millions / billions from selling directly oil from ISIS held lands, since nobody else wanted to deal with them. His daughter personally built and supervised hospitals in Turkey specifically built to treat wounded ISIS fighters. These are verified public informations, although they obviously deny it.

Erdogan is as much pro-ISIS as one can be. Maybe just a political game during complex conflict to fight against US-supported kurds at all costs, maybe not. We don't know.

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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by lukan on Sunday December 08, 2024 @04:25AM (#42356065)
Where did I do that?

I said I am sceptical for the outcome, if Erdogan is the moderating factor. Or do you think, he cares much for human rights and democracy?

That is far from saying he is like IS.

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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by AngaraliTurk on Sunday December 08, 2024 @05:31AM (#42356332)
I was giving you the benefit of doubt all this time, but your comments about my country confirms to me that you're misinformed. For all I hate Erdoğan and his attempts to undermine democracy, and I want to see him gone sooner or later, Turkey is as much an Islamic authoritarian state as USA is a Christian authoritarian one under the rule of Trump. There seems to be a tendency to exaggerate the realities on the ground for some reason, and I suspect this is fueled by bots.
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by lukan on Sunday December 08, 2024 @05:57AM (#42356434)
I said going the authorian islamic way, not that you are already a califat. Sorry for the missunderstanding, I am aware that turkey is all in all still quite democratic and secular and we seem to both not like the direction Erdogan is heading. My point was, Erdogans influence over the SNA is not comforting me.

Btw. I just read, a pro SNA news source:

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/politics/russia-astana-format-meeti...

It seems the war will continue.

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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by j_maffe on Sunday December 08, 2024 @06:31AM (#42356547)
Why are you relating authoritarianism with "Islamic way" or even the Caliphates? I've never seen anyone make this claim before, which is, to be honest, quite absurd.

Edit: Also your linked article no longer reflects the current stance of Russia.

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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by lukan on Sunday December 08, 2024 @06:39AM (#42356579)
That link I gave is propaganda BS. It claims the syrian army gave the terrorists( SDF) control over the new areas, while in reality they fought with US support against iranian and syrian regime militias. So that iran could not send support without fighting their way through it, maybe a turning point in this war.

It was just to illustrate that Erdogans goals are not peace, after Assad is gone.

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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by j_maffe on Sunday December 08, 2024 @08:26AM (#42356991)
That's all well and good. Could you please reply to my other question? I'm very curious where this notion is coming from.
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by j_maffe on Sunday December 08, 2024 @09:34AM (#42357348)
The sentence "I said going the authorian islamic way,", implies that there is an "authoritarian Islamic" way. What is that? Because it sounds like you're implying that the religion has intrinsic authoritarian aspects to it.
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by lukan on Sunday December 08, 2024 @11:07AM (#42357877)
"Because it sounds like you're implying that the religion has intrinsic authoritarian aspects to it."

No, it implies the focus on the authorian aspects of Islam, just like certain groups in the US would like a authorian christian rule of law.

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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by lukan on Sunday December 08, 2024 @09:15AM (#42357269)
The claim that Erdogan is more open towards being a sultan and open towards more influence of Islam into the government?
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by kwerab on Sunday December 08, 2024 @09:47AM (#42357421)
The issue is that in the West people hear one of Erdogan's pep-talk speeches against Israel on CNN and assume that he means everything.

They don't know that Turkey has been delivering oil to Israel all the time and that Israel is in favor of the current events in Syria.

If all of Turkey, the U.S. and Israel support the Syrian rebels, we may assume that the goal is to install a U.S. friendly government (perhaps supervised by Turkey) and have more buffer states against Iran.

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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by ssijak on Sunday December 08, 2024 @03:23AM (#42355817)
Yes, it must be much better now after all the devastation. Same with Lybia, much better place now, no?
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by j_maffe on Sunday December 08, 2024 @03:30AM (#42355845)
Why do you insist that it will go the way of Libya? The rebels are calling for a peaceful and democratic transition of the government and the protection of all minorities. They've stopped using Islamist rhetoric for almost 10 years. This is as good of a regime change in Syria as it gets.
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by blub on Sunday December 08, 2024 @04:00AM (#42355950)
There is no counter-example of thriving democracies developed after western regime change projects. On the other hand, there’s Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by throwup238 on Sunday December 08, 2024 @04:14AM (#42356011)
> There is no counter-example of thriving democracies developed after western regime change projects.

Except Germany and Japan, the third and fourth largest economies in the world…

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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by grumple on Sunday December 08, 2024 @07:58AM (#42356864)
Also Italy and Austria.
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by roenxi on Sunday December 08, 2024 @08:49AM (#42357129)
If the examples springing to mind were in 1945 then that says a lot about how US efforts are going in the modern era. There is no real comparison to how the US handled defeated powers in WWII and how the State Department handles regime changes from ... I want to say the 60s onwards. All the people involved in Germany or Japan's reconstitution are dead (Ed Deming, we miss you; heros of the peace are the most impressive ones).

Which is a shame because the 1950s strategy of investment and prosperity made the world much better and the modern strategy of destabilisation tends to make it worse.

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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by Apocryphon on Sunday December 08, 2024 @02:26PM (#42359652)
The modern Balkans seem better now than they were at the early ‘90s.
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by Apocryphon on Sunday December 08, 2024 @02:25PM (#42359643)
Tunisia
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by ssijak on Monday December 09, 2024 @12:15PM (#42368053)
It is not a democracy https://time.com/7020023/tunisia-kais-saied-democracy/
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by ssijak on Monday December 09, 2024 @07:09AM (#42365459)
I don't know what the future will bring, I said it in retrospect of the last 15 years.
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Re:Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad f... by tptacek on Sunday December 08, 2024 @03:25AM (#42355826)
That feels like a claim that might be news to the residents of Madaya, Yarmouk, Douma, and Idlib, right?
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