A mix of government aircraft strafing cities and said aircraft being shot down, as well as a rather major confrontation at the airport in Damascus. There's also increased likelihood of direct US involvement.
Last edited by Toph; November 29th, 2012 at 09:27 PM.
Surprising that it took them this long to cut off internet access. Doubt it will do much good for the loyalists, considering how the rebels control areas close to Turkey and probably have quite a bit of US made communication equipment by now.
Every once in a while there is some news that one of the sides is making progress, but there is nothing definitive. Recently the rebels got something of a working international representation which was acknowledged by some states.
An interesting development is that Turkey has requested, through Nato, the deployment of German patriot missile systems. These would be useful for shooting down missiles from Syria which might be equipped with WMDs. And those missiles would only be fired in case of an intervention.
Wait, are you talking about the LFK NG missiles? What is Turkey expecting Syria to launch that would require such a new and expensive missile to shoot down? Spaceships? It seems to me that the half moon and star is overreacting a little bit. Is there even any evidence that Syria's government(or the rebels, for that sake) is armed with WMDs?
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Last edited by Serio; November 30th, 2012 at 07:49 AM.
It's not that surprising, Fancy. They probably saw what happened when Egypt did the same. It garnered huge amounts of sympathy for the rebels. They can only keep it off for so long before doing so become counter productive.
Also, Serio, despite his use of a word that has lost nearly all meaning, their is mounting evidence that Syria is considering using chemical weapons, The thinking is that the missile system will be used to protect rebels close to the border from government attack.
Wait, are you talking about the LFK NG missiles? What is Turkey expecting Syria to launch that would require such a new and expensive missile to shoot down? Spaceships? It seems to me that the half moon and star is overreacting a little bit. Is there even any evidence that Syria's government(or the rebels, for that sake) is armed with WMDs?
From what I know they are talking about US-made patriot missiles bought by Germany. Patriot may not sound like a very new system, but the latest revision is actually the best missile defense technology currently available within Nato (except maybe for the naval Aegis system).
In German media you mostly hear about it as a case of Turkey needing better defense against Syrian jets. People are generally not aware of the implications and how much closer we are moving to a war by reducing Syria's deterrence like this.
As for Syria - it does have stockpiles of chemical weapons, most likely also biological. It also threatened to use them against Turkey, or others, in case of an intervention. One of the primary goals of a Nato intervention would most likely be to secure these stockpiles before Assad uses them in some desperate attack or before they fall into the hands of islamists.
You're quite right about the escalation. It's shifting from a "over there" problem to a situation that will strike very close to home to many. This has the potential to lead to a very nasty war.
And those stockpiles are part of why such a war would be so nasty. It would probably have a rather high cost in terms of human lives, and many civilians would likely be killed in such a conflict. Hopefully, it doesn't come to that, but hoping does little to stop such things. It's going to take some serious luck or a clever group of politicians to resolve this without further bloodshed.
"This is an outrage Jenkins! Do they have any oil?!"
"No sir"
"Oh....well hurry up and bring me my martini, it's 11am and I'm stone cold sober. Now what ever happened to that Gaffadifi bloke?"
I'd rather say "Gaddoffidi FELLA" instead. "bloke" sounds much like coming from an awstrailean dimplemat.
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Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays
And one by one back in the Closet lays
The internet black out occurred as they were launching operations in Eastern Damascus and outlying suburbs where the rebel groups presumably have large areas of support. I think the Syrian government is well aware of the fact that it can't hide what it's doing, and instead has tried to find ways to legitimize its operations. Like Israel and the United States, it is trying to frame the conflict as one of survival against vile islamist groups and have gotten their media has run with that. The internet videos have tried to go around that, which has prompted the Syrian government to find ways around the dissemination of those videos.
It's not that no one remembers Syria, it's just that the situation has stalemated to the point that when something seems to happen, it goes back to the status quo. It's almost a zero sum game currentlyand that doesn't help much with media that have to pay their correspondents to file these reports and it wouldn't be economical for them to be actively filing reports.
I mean the US just recently said it would condemn any use of chemical weapons, which is nice and all but is virtually the same thing it already said several months back. And interestingly like the episode several months back, we're getting into the cycle now about the chemical weapons stockpile that Syria posses and why the US needs to be involved more.
I wouldn't say that those in your OP are universally viewed as such anyways. The US was active in discouraging revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and it's still displeased at the fact that it didn't go the way it wanted in the former two and that it destabilized in the third. The revolution in Syria and Libya is hardly seen as "good" by everyone, Russia and Iran for example would view the situation far more differently than the United States. In fact those two probably didn't even see those events as "revolutions" but rather regime change instigated by foreign elements.
In the past the American revolution was viewed negatively by British press for obvious reasons and I think it was largely like that until the later part of the 1800s when their view became more nuanced. The French Revolution was much more polarized in British press too, with a lot being made of the excesses of the Republicans, especially when they attacked the Catholic Church. Even for years after the events of the French Revolution and its associated terror, opponents of Republicanism would hold up the French Revolution as an example of the dangers of change and the excesses of secularism. Tale of Two Cities is set in this backdrop, decades after the events.
One could say the ancien regime in Europe had a collective sigh of relief when the Republican government was overturned by Napoleon, only to deal with another threat all together. Even when the Bourbons were restored to the throne there would be conflicts over the scope of the Republican cause in France for years, and it wasn't even really resolved until after World War I when monarchists ceased to be a significant political force in that country (though Vichy France would try to go back to some of its values, casting values like secularism and republicanism as reasons for France's decline over the decades). Even later enthusiastic figures of French Republicanism like De Gaulle were from families that supported the monarchist cause in the past.
And regarding violence in a revolution- one can't expect a revolution to not be bloody. Even those that are lauded for being "nonviolent", say the Velvet Revolution or Gandhi, were preceded by periods of violence and/or resistance against repression for sometime that affected the political sphere. In the case of Gandhi's resistance in India, it ignores the fact that before you had violence instigated by several groups long before then like the HSRA that helped make Gandhi's movement possible.
I personally don't think events like the "Orange Revolution" or those in Egypt and Tunisia could be seen as full-blown revolutions but large-scale acts of civil disobedience. Yes, it changes a government without resorting to violence but I think the changes they seek are less pronounced.
The French Revolution was also marked by large campaigns of land reform and confrontations between rural and urban populations, and outright civil war at some point (the republican forces against Vendée armies raised in the countryside, primarily) due to attempts by the republican government to break up land holdings of the church and nobility to get support among farmers. Generally when you have revolutions of this scale you tend to cause a civil war or low-scale civil insurrection of sorts anyways.
Even in "tame" revolutions like the US there were numerous cases of loyalists having their property seized by the Continental Army who then escaped to Canada to escape punishment. It wasn't until treaties settled in the Jay Treaty after the fact that the descendents of these families were partially compensated for their loses.
This also involves the relative scope of a revolution and what it aims to achieve. When you have one like the American one which was directed against only ejecting a government and replacing it with another, then its effects can be more towards combatants and less towards others. It's not drastic when ultimately you just change a government but retain the way the society was made up. When it was like the French or Russian ones where it was not only about government but the very nature of the way society was organized and the role of groups within it (Church, nobility, landowners, labor, intellectuals, businessmen, etc.) then it's likely to become much more violent and divisive in nature.
In my opinion, when a country threatens to use MWDs on anybody, it becomes no longer them vs the rebels, it becomes them vs every civilized country on the planet. Deploying patriot missile systems is the least of what should happen. Militaries need to learn that just waving MWDs around and saying "leave us alone or we kill a million people!" is not acceptable.
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No one ever remembers Syria 
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