Trump surrenders to Putin on Syria

[O]nce again, President Trump — after extended personal contact with Vladimir Putin and the complete surrender to Russian interests in Syria — acts precisely as though he has been bought and sold by a strategic rival. The ignoble cutoff of aid to American proxies means that “Putin won in Syria,” as an administration official was quoted by The Post. Concessions without reciprocation, made against the better judgment of foreign policy advisers, smack more of payoff than outreach. If this is what Trump’s version of “winning” looks like, what might further victory entail? The re- creation of the Warsaw Pact? The reversion of Alaska to Russian control?

…. Trump is the Henry Wallace of the populist right (which more than occasionally finds common cause with the populist left). “We should recognize,” Wallace argued following World War II, “that we have no more business in the political affairs of Eastern Europe than Russia has in the political affairs of Latin America, Western Europe and the United States.” The difference now is that Russia has made the political affairs of the United States very much its business. With almost no serious American response. Russian interference in America’s self-defining civic ritual has been almost costless.

… It now seems that the Russians — by meddling in a presidential election and by playing down such aggression — have achieved an intelligence coup beyond the dreams of the Soviet era. The result is an America strategically and morally disarmed.

Original Quill wrote:We told you it was happening.  We told you Trump is betraying NATO.  Right before your own eyes you saw him insult Angela Merkel.  He's working up to lifting sanctions on Russia, which has added incentive for him in that he has been given a 19.5% piece of Russian state oil.

The guy is no politician...he's no statesman.  He's a businessman.  He's in it for the money.  The whole world has been hoodwinked.  He's the patsy of Putin, politically, but he's making more money than even he has ever seen.

Curious that you post this in the UK/Irish section.  What are y'all going to do about it?  The only one of you Europeans with any balls is Angela.  You Brits have been sitting on your ass, saying Oh my-my, American politics bore me.  Ta ta...

Have some tea and some of those delicious lemon cakes...

Tommy Monk wrote:Syria was peaceful  and secular befor the islamists started kicking off...

Tommy Monk wrote:Whats your point...?

Tommy Monk wrote:Was there any war going on before the islamists started kicking off...!?


The constitution of the Syrian Arab Republic guarantees freedom of religion... Syria identifies itself as secular, and does not follow Islamic law.
Freedom of religion in Syria - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Syria‎


Is it illegal for the US to be training and supplying the rebels and trying to cause regime change in Syria...!?


Plus...

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2016/11/27/shocking-admission-secular-syrian-rebels-dont-actually-believe-in-secular-democracy/

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439161/lets-support-moderate-Muslims-means-figuring-out-which-ones-are-real-deal

The minorities referred to in this discourse are religious minorities (Christians, forming 10% of the population before the uprising, as well as Shiites, Alawites, Ismailis, and Murshidies, forming around 13% of the population before the uprising). However, the persecution of ethnic minorities, mainly the Kurds (no official numbers available but the estimation is 2 – 2.5 million Kurds in Syria, forming 10-15% of the population
before the uprising) as well as Turks, Assyrians, Armenians, and Circassians has never raised the concerns of the international community nor ignited any criticism of the Syrian regime despite numerous reports supported by facts and figures about the systematic persecution suffered by the Kurds and other ethnic minorities. Among the manifestations of the persecution of ethnic minorities was denial of citizenship (more than 300,000 Syrian Kurds do not possess citizenship and are thus deprived of state services), denial of ethnic and lingual rights (national laws prohibits non-Arabs from teaching in their own languages), and applying restrictions to the right to work (Statute of the Baath Party, the leader of state and society as per the constitution, prohibits nonArabs from teaching in universities).

Raggamuffin wrote:Syria wasn't exactly a seething mass of civil wars before the rebels kicked off was it? If you looked at a list of the wars the UK and US have been involved in, you could also accuse them of not being peaceful, but they have stable governments and are relatively peaceful internally.

The civil uprising phase of the Syrian Civil War was an early stage of protests – with subsequent violent reaction by the Syrian Arab Republic authorities – lasting from March to 28 July 2011. The uprising, initially demanding democratic reforms, evolved from initially minor protests, beginning as early as January 2011 and transformed into massive protests in March. The uprising was marked by massive anti-government opposition demonstrations against the Ba'athist government of Bashar al-Assad, meeting with police and military violence, massive arrests and brutal crackdown, resulting in hundreds of casualties and thousands of wounded.

Raggamuffin wrote:Didge, stop spoiling for a fight. You're wrong and you know it.

Thorin wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:Didge, stop spoiling for a fight. You're wrong and you know it.

Calm down snowflake, its not your fault you are a tad thick on history.

Raggamuffin wrote:

Thorin wrote:

Calm down snowflake, its not your fault you are a tad thick on history.

It's not my fault you're completely thick, and so bored that all you want to do is fight on a forum.

Thorin wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:

It's not my fault you're completely thick, and so bored that all you want to do is fight on a forum.

It takes two to have an argument or fight, so by your methodology, you would have to be the same right?

You do this everytime I continually show you up on being wrong.

Learn to have some backbone and admit when wrong.

The fact you blamed the rebels after what Assad did to peaceful protests shows how out of touch with reality you are

Now you silly snowflake, get a grip of yourself

Tommy Monk wrote:They werent peaceful... it was the start of the islamist uprising..

Tommy Monk wrote:The islamists were behind it all... you say they just wanted more democracy, but what they really wanted was to be able to vote in some islamist regime that would then impose islamist sharia on everyone and completely remove secularism and all democracy...!!!

The civil uprising phase of the Syrian Civil War was an early stage of protests – with subsequent violent reaction by the Syrian Arab Republic authorities – lasting from March to 28 July 2011. The uprising, initially demanding democratic reforms, evolved from initially minor protests, beginning as early as January 2011 and transformed into massive protests in March.

The uprising was marked by massive anti-government opposition demonstrations against the Ba'athist government of Bashar al-Assad, meeting with police and military violence, massive arrests and brutal crackdown, resulting in hundreds of casualties and thousands of wounded.

Despite Bashar al-Assad's attempts to pacify the protests with massive crackdown and use of censorship on one hand and concessions on the other, by the end of April, it became clear the situation was getting out of his control and the Syrian government deployed numerous troops on the ground.

The civil uprising phase created the platform for emergence of militant opposition movements and massive defections from the Syrian Army, which gradually transformed the conflict from a civil uprising to an armed rebellion, and later a full scale civil war. The rebel Free Syrian Army was created on July 29, 2011, marking the transition into armed insurgency.


Syrian opposition groups formed the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and seized control of the area surrounding Aleppo and parts of southern Syria. Over time, some factions of the Syrian opposition split from their original moderate position to pursue an Islamist vision for Syria, joining groups such as al-Nusra Front and ISIL. In 2015, the People's Protection Units (YPG) joined forces with Arab, Assyrian, Armenian and some Turkmen groups, to form the Syrian Democratic Forces, while most Turkmen groups remained with the FSA.

Tommy Monk wrote:Isamists caused the problems in what was a secular and largely peaceful country... egged on by Pres Osama govt, supporting islamist militants for regime change...

Tommy Monk wrote:
You keep forgetting that there are no moderate opposition groups... just islamists who want full on islam imosed on everyone...

Thorin wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:Whats your point...?

Its hardly had a history of being peaceful when it has started and engaged in aggressive wars Tommy.

SHOCKING CONFESSION OF AN ARMY SOLDIER FROM AFGHANISTAN – THIS IS THE TRUTH!
By George Christophans - January 30, 20170342
solider – Afghanistan & Iraq. We in the United States no nothing…..I was asked to share this by the author: I don’t typically go on rants or express my political beliefs here, but I just have to get this off my mind. As some of you know, I’m active duty Army. Aside from that, I am a medic. I’ve spent 3 years of my life overseas in both Afghanis caused by war, from both sides. I’ve picked up blown up body parts of friends and I’ve saved the lives of guys who were trying to kill me and my guys right before I was keeping them from their 72 virgins or whatever they believe awaits them on the other side. Here is an unbiased truthful view to the Syrian refugee situation. My first deployment to Iraq, in 2006, my unit voluntarily ran a children burn clinic outside of the FOB. It was a constant target for attacks. You would think that people wouldn’t shoot mortars or rockets at their own children, but you would be wrong. We saw hundreds of children, from infants to 18 year old. The overwhelming majority of the kids we saw (90% or better) were clear cases of abuse. These parents were literally dunking their kids in boiling water, or throwing hot chai at their kids faces… Yes, we’re talking about babies, toddlers, kids not even old enough to understand why their parents would do these things to them. HUNDREDS of kids… We saw quite a few of these kids that were sexually abused, both girls and boys. Their parents acted if nothing was wrong with this, even when confronted by our doctors. This is the mentality of their society, not the viewpoint of a few individuals… these beliefs have been accepted to the vast majority of these people. Many were educated, well dressed, well spoken men, but yet, they still raped their own children, and kept chai boys (if you don’t know what that means, google it.) During that deployment, we also captured the 3rd largest EFP cache that had ever been captured. There were hundreds of copper plates, homemade explosives, fake curbs to house the EFP’s, hundreds of mortars and rockets and howitzer rounds, even an anti-aircraft gun. All of these things came from one place, Syria. Almost every single IED or EFP we found or hit could be traced back to Syria… A lot of the terrorists we captured were from SYRIA… Imagine that. Fast forward a couple years, and I find myself in Helmand Province, in Afghanistan… We had a group of Afghani’s that were paid to help guard our little mud hut in the middle of an Afghan village (I wasn’t on a fob) These guys also kept a “chai boy” A boy, about 11 years old, who was there to serve these guys sexually. We heard him being sexually assaulted many times, but there was nothing we could do about it. We asked the police, the Afghan Army, and we were told the same thing every time…. it’s their culture, and accepted as the norm…. Once again, we captured Syrian made explosives, weapons, and other items… We found Syrian passports during raids… And people out there want us to let these people into the US, with our kids, and near our wives. Near our schools, near our churches, synagogues, malls. Places where we should never have to fear being blown up, shot, kidnapped and tortured… Don’t forget what they did to the Egyptian Coptic Christians, or the Jordanian pilot… Don’t forget about what they do to rape victims! They stone these women to death for being raped! They behead their own people. Do you think they will show mercy to you? Look at the rape statistics in Denmark, Sweden, Belgium. Facts don’t lie… 97% of rapes committed in Sweden were committed by Muslim immigrants… And you want 10,000 of these people here? Even if just 1% of these so called “refugees” were ISIS supporters or active ISIS terrorists, would that be acceptable to you? Chew on it… think about it. Take a good look at your kids or your wife and decide if the risk is worth taking.