David, I must admit that on most occasions I don't agree with what you have to say, but this time, I am in complete agreement. You are right on the money. There is absolutely no point in the Yanks and the Ruskis waging a defacto war in Syria. The whole place seems to have been reduced to rubble and people will have absolutely nothing to go home to if something doesn't change.

David

Yeah same.
I don't usually agree with David either but I will on this topic.
I note the author said the same thing just over 2 years ago to the day.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=15506
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=15479

You ALL do realise that in hindsight we've all been taken for a BIG RIDE.

Just stop for a second and envisage the complete devastation that has been caused in the last decade or so.

I mean seriously after Libya did anyone really think pushing for regime change helps any of these countries at all? REALLY?

There were no WMD's in IRAQ
The Arab Spring was a lie.

All US policy has done has turned these nations into complete sh*tholes (sorry I really cant find a more appropriate word) where there is no government infrastructure left, and they are havens FOR TERRORISM.

I don't know if US policy acts for Israel wanting to remove nations who support the Palestinians and/or Hezbollah and the supply of arms from Iran or it's got to do with US relationship with Saudi Arabia and or oil pipelines into Europe, or whether its just the US acting as a superpower to undermine Russia in general, take the oil crisis and sanctions against Russia as examples.

But our nation supported it. All this.
The only reason they've changed their tune recently is because they are now faced with the realisation that Russia holds all the cards and they cant win.
-China's also sending its military to shore up Assad now.

How did western powers think China would act after the US's own strong-arming tactics against China in the South China Sea?

Clearly its time the world stopped all this folly.
How many people are homeless or dead or orphaned because of it all?

Another point to note is that Russia has to act because ISIS is selling oil cheap (as well as the Saudis) and this is undermining their economy.

Europe has been bum-rushed by refugees and its all their own fault (EU governments) as well for supporting the mess.

US policy is foolish but we're even worse for following along.

It's breathtaking really, the gall of the Singer.

Here he is, a vocal supporter of the terrorist nation of Israel (which regularly carries out war crimes on the Palestinians, steals their land, burns them in their homes, shoots their children in the head as they play, grabs their kids in the night and tortures them, demolishes their homes and towns, starves them, denies them medicines, etc) daring to heap condemnation on Islamic State.

It's called hypocrisy, Singer!

Here's an interesting point of view.

So Assad will stay on indefinitely.
What happens if Assad says you all took part in supporting the destruction of my nation and I want reparations.
What happens then?
Will Australians be asked to pay Syrian reparations for what our government supported?
The war against him and his removal from power?

David Cameron says Assad should face a criminal court.
What if Assad says YOU ALL should go to the criminal court for seeing weapons fall into the hands of ISIS and for making war against my nation?

Interesting situation we have with Assad now staying and the West are forced to work with him and Russia to defeat Islamic State.
Even the Chinese got an invite and now have their carrier in Tartus.

The US lead coalition comes out of this looking like a bunch of incompetent retards with some blame for creating the mess I'm sorry to say.

Europe will almost have to support an end to the Russian sanctions for Crimea and everything the US tried to do has blown up in their face.

Why on earth would we support the US anymore?

And the problem with taking the refugees is this:
We may have a moral obligation as we supported actions in Syria.
But how are the Syrian refugees going to feel about us when we supported the destruction of their nation?
Think about it.

Armchair Critic,

>>US policy is foolish but we're even worse for following along.<<

This is certainly true especially if the “we” are Europeans. (Written from Germany suffering from the tsunami of refugees and pseudorefugees.)

Armchair Critic-<But how are the Syrian refugees going to feel about us when we supported the destruction of their nation?>

The Syrian war was between Assad and the rebelling population.
It really had nothing to do with America or the West until
Isis got involved, because we were already fighting Isis.
And they then turned their Barbarity on the people of Syria
Using the war there, to further their territorial conquest.

I said on one of these sites very early in the piece, when Putin
refused to let America go in on the side of the rebels against Assad,
that America may find in the end, that Putin was reading the situation
more accurately than the West.

And Syria is also the home of the people around Assad, who support him.
As usual America looks at the side who seems to be the most military
dominant when these wars break out but the the other side is also just as guilty of causing the conflict. After all they were staging
big rebellions against Assad, and as we have seen in Europe you cant
drive big mobs back when they know you are too weak, or you have been
castrated by the United Nations so they can just walk in and take over.

It is actually the armchair critics
that contributed to the war we
now see in Iraq. Attitudes to war and trying to apply civilian law courts to a war event. The rules of engagement in wars are different to peace time civilian laws and if you try to fight abiding by these rules you will find yourself in the ridiculous situation America
and the West now find themselves in,fighting all the prisoners they let go,(because of the do-g00ders) all over again.

The Reporter named Weir,
said in an interview on Television recently
that a couple of the well known men, who rose up to become
well known leaders of the Sunni insurgence and Isis were
American prisoners along with thousands of others but
they were all let go by the Americans, in the last days of
American occupation.

One of these men said to him, I'll see you in New York.
He was telling him what he intended right there.
If they let me go I am going to form an army and fight.

Civil law courts, cant be used as a criteria in war.
Now we in the West have to fight the same war all over again
because the do-gooders were always bleating on about
the American treatment and unlawful holding of those prisoners

You seem to forget that the war in Iraq was shortly after 911 and Iraq wasn't even involved in this nor did they have WMD's.
The US should not have gone into IRAQ.

US foreign policy created this problem for itself.
Perhaps they should not have been torturing those people that should have never been there.

And heres your prisoners...
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/omar-al-shishani-isis-commander-and-us-2015-9
http://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-trained-by-israeli-mossad-nsa-documents-reveal/5391593

Hi Cherful,

Armchair Critic is right - we are being taken for a ride.

Here is a Youtube of General Wesley Clark describing what he called a "policy coup" that took place during the Bush Administration. He says neo-conservatives like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld were influenced by a think tank called PNAC - Policy for a New American Century. They argued for a more interventionist US foreign policy. Clark recalls a meeting with neo-con Paul Wolfowitz, and PNAC member, who said that after the 1st Gulf War in 1991 they realised that Russia would not intervene and that they had 10 or 15 years until the next superpower emerged to take down old Soviet client states in the Middle East. Clark says that soon after 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan they drew up plans to invade 7 countries in 5 years - Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia and Sudan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUCwCgthp_E

Let's look at Islamic Fundamentalism - we are against that right? Wrong. Since the late 1970s the CIA covertly poured billions of dollars into funding the Mudjahadeen which morphed into Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to help oust the Soviets. They also funded Islamic training schools in Pakistan - Taliban means student.
Here is a clip of Hillary Clinton saying the US is responsible for Al Qaeda including encouraging the Saudi's to bring their Wahhabism (the most extreme form of Islamic fundamentalism) into Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. Look up Operation Cyclone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqn0bm4E9yw

I know this sounds crazy, but stay with me.
cont'd

ISIS is like Al Qaeda version 2.0. Thanks to leaked documents and interviews for senior US Pentagon officials like ret Lieutenant general Michael T Flynn, we know the US and it's allies such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey were responsible for ISIS. Here is an interview Michael Flynn gave stating that as head of Intelligence, he saw an intelligence report in August 2012 that the US was supporting radical muslim groups eg the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Nusra, Al Qaeda (the so-called moderate Muslims the US was assisting) to help oust the Assad regime in Syria - as well as the risk these groups might form a calaphate, but nothing was done - not just ignored, but worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG3j8OYKgn4 - need to go 8 minutes into interview.

If you still think we are in the Middle East to spread freedom and democracy, look at this 1994 interview with Dick Cheney explaining that US was right not to take out Saddam Hussein as it would have been disastrous and could have destabilized the whole region - not just Iraq, but Iran, Syria and Turkey. If only he had been around in 2003 to stop the Iraq War - oh that's right he was Vice President in the George W Bush administration. We have now taken out Hussein in 2003, Gaddafi in 2011 and we have spent 4 years backing "moderate Muslims groups" (read Al Qaeda and ISIS) to oust Assad. It hasn't worked. Assad may be a tyrant, but he still has the support of the majority of his people, as they know what's coming if he goes - they've seen what has happened in Iraq and Libya, war and chaos, and they don't want that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YENbElb5-xY

Good article. A copy should be sent to Barack Obama, and our Julie Bishop who appears inclined to believe that BO is not a problem.

The problem is America's use of covert regime change.
The US was acting to destabilise Syria at least as early as 2006.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/washingtons-longstanding-plans-to-implement-regime-change-in-syria/5478035

Right now I'm half expecting some kind of false flag.
Israel/Hezbollah or Israel/Iranian forces in Syria or US/Russia.
Assad, ISIS, the US backed Rebels...
Don't know what it will be but just waiting for it.

With its arrogant pursuit of regime change in country after country – Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine - America is furthering its Project for a New American Century (PNAC), extending its imperialist Monroe Doctrine to the rest of the world.

Not only does it now find its Project between a rock and a hard place, but it has manoeuvred its faithful Middle East cat’s paw, Israel, into an uncomfortable and potentially precarious position in a dangerously destabilised region.

World peace depends on the decent elements in the USA abandoning the PNAC and its ambitions to foist NATO on to Russia, sloughing off the remnants of the treasonous Confederacy, and returning its attention to growing into a respectable and respected world citizen.

Its first task will be to show genuine good faith in working to broker a deal between Israel and Palestine based on two independent states west of the River Jordan founded on genuinely equivalent constitutional rights and access to land and natural resources. Ethnic and religious supremacism being what they are, it’s going to be a tough sell.