Syria's Assad shows no willingess to compromise
Source: Reuters
CAIRO (Reuters)- - As the Syria peace talks resume next week, President Bashar al-Assad, backed militarily by Iran and Russia, shows no willingness to compromise, much less step aside to allow a transition Western powers claim is the solution to the conflict.
Threatened by rebel advances last year, Assad is now pumped up with confidence after Russian air strikes reversed the tide and enabled his army to recover lost ground from Sunni insurgents as well as the jihadis of Islamic State.
While Syria experts doubt he can recapture the whole country without an unlikely full-scale ground intervention by Russia and Iran, they also doubt President Vladimir Putin will force him out - unless there is a clear path to stability, which could take years.
Instead, Russia’s dramatic military intervention last September -- after five years of inconclusive fighting between Assad and fragmented rebel groups mostly from Syria’s Sunni majority -- has tilted the balance of power in his favour and given him the upper hand at the talks in Geneva.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-insight-idUSKCN0X50O0?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=twitter
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Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)Putin has given him the advantage, and despite Russia's staged withdrawal they've invested too much in Assad to leave him to his own devices. Assad probably thinks he can win back control of the whole country.
bob1314
(2 posts)Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)The only realistic scenario where he leaves is if the Allawite community decides to ditch him. (There has been some movement there, but not enough.)
JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,363 posts)I don't think he has much to fear from the Hague.
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)He'll try to stay on as long as possible and failing that get exile somewhere like Russia or Iran.
Joe Chi Minh
(15,229 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)
leftyladyfrommo
(18,870 posts)Last edited Fri Apr 8, 2016, 02:05 PM - Edit history (1)
It's all blown to hell. They are fighting over blowing desert sand.
Someone who really loved his country wouldn't have let it be destroyed.
NobodyHere
(2,810 posts)yourpaljoey
(2,166 posts)He knows he cannot trust the US.
He will stay unless Russia has offered him
an agreeable alternative.
This is the correct course of action.
leftyladyfrommo
(18,870 posts)There's no place left for the refugees to go home to. All the utilities are gone. All the buildings are blown up.
It will take billions to rebuild it.
Joe Chi Minh
(15,229 posts)set about recasting your political system first ? Eh ? How about it ? (And keep on asking them...don't take 'No' for a really definitive answer)
Replace your machines with pencil and paper ballots, and heavy, unappealable, hard-time prison-sentences for any persons found to have even tried to suppress the vote, or to have illegally interfered with the proper functioning of the electoral process in any way. Make corporate lobbying a felony to be punished by appropriately draconian prison-sentences (as described above), with minimal financial amounts allowed for TV advertising. Finally, a law for all time, prohibiting any change to any of the above.
As regards taxation, as that 'Pinko', Commie, Adam Smith prescribed, it should be levied according to a person's means. Corporations may not be deemed to be persons (nor dogs, unicorns). There should be just the one federal income tax and one corporation tax, i.e. no state or local taxes of any kind and no highwaymen or A-A death squads masquerading as police. We'll let you know if we think of some other plans to stem the extraordinary and ever-growing corruption and anarchic governance, inevitably ensuing from your speciously labelled, 'free market' economy : your federal and state governments having been bought and paid for, and the large corporations swallowing or pressuring smaller ones out of their markets.
maxsolomon
(33,390 posts)It's possible to cast a stone at Assad even if your house is glass. Jeez Louise.
Joe Chi Minh
(15,229 posts)that's not strictly-speaking true, is it ? It's the favoured route for the oil pipeline, really, isn't it ? Favoured by us Western interlopers and agents of chaos.
What did you think the topic was ?
maxsolomon
(33,390 posts)Which is one of DU's most popular topics, regardless of the OP.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)jamzrockz
(1,333 posts)All along to destroy Syria if they can't take it over. Sad but I really hope Syria can fight it off cos it would be a disaster for Syria. The other solution the US and its allies would never agree to is to leave Syria alone and stop supplying ISIS/rebels with weapons.
polly7
(20,582 posts)I've posted many articles here from people in Syria who know exactly what's going on. They also want Assad to stay.
Wtf should he compromise for? Those who aided and funded IS to decimate the country?
oberliner
(58,724 posts)You should take a look at the Panama Papers.
polly7
(20,582 posts)oberliner
(58,724 posts)Just saying that Assad is also awful.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)We and our gulf allies send in the terrorists, things get infinitely worse.
moondust
(20,003 posts)Does this assclown really think he can ever effectively govern a country he has destroyed, after millions of its citizens have fled his barrel bombs seeking refuge in neighboring countries and risking their lives in rafts just trying to get someplace safe?
Forget it, asshole. Maybe your godfather will let you live in Siberia with the wolves.
daleo
(21,317 posts)He knows where compromise leads.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)French spies operating in Sirte, Gaddafi's last refuge, were able to set a trap for the Libyan dictator after obtaining his satellite telephone number from the Syrian government, they said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/9577628/Bashar-al-Assad-betrayed-Col-Gaddafi-to-save-his-Syrian-regime.html
jamzrockz
(1,333 posts)And even if it was true, so what? these is the kind of stuff I get from my very racist right wing friends who try to justify slavery by telling me that African people sold their own brothers and sisters out to slavery themselves. This is ignoring what the slave traders to do communities who resist.
Maybe Assad was put in a difficult situation and he thought selling out his friend would spare him and his country men from invasion but no, the US and its allies want it all, they would come back to kill and destroy you after you have helped them out. They used the weapons, fighters and the same playbook as in Libya to go into Syria. Gaddafi paid off for the bombings he was accused off doing, removed his chemical weapons (which no country who wants to resists invasion should do from now on) and the west still came for him.
Sorry but even if this article was true, it still doesn't make what they are doing right.
Victory for Syria and defeat for all the fucking racist, neocolonial interventionist who want to destroy and divide it.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)S9 Hillary can gloat?
oberliner
(58,724 posts)He seems to want to retain rather than relinquish his power.
jamzrockz
(1,333 posts)Are you Syrian? my guess is that you are living comfortable in your air conditioned house posting articles about why Syria should be destroyed because their leader refuses to leave for an American installed president.
The west destroys countries kills people left and right with its democracy and somehow people should listen to them? They only demand democracy for the countries they want to take over, why is that? no democracy for Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey(not a democracy), Saudi Arabia, UAE etc etc but they have to force their brand of democracy on Syria. Sorry but I think he is doing the absolutely right thing by rejecting their advances.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)than any world leaders at the moment.
840high
(17,196 posts)oberliner
(58,724 posts)Make it illegal for people to run against him in elections, rule for 30 years, and then pass leadership of the country on to one of his sons.
After all, it's his country.
840high
(17,196 posts)not worked out well for the people.
NobodyHere
(2,810 posts)
pampango
(24,692 posts)heading into existential negotiations would be the end of him. He is a smart man and knows that. Any dictators simply cannot enter negotiations if one on of the topics is whether he will continue to be the dictator. That subject has to be off the table.
Dictators rule by fear. The secret police and security services do not arrest, torture and execute people in order to 'compromise' with them over the future of the dictator. The purpose is to reinforce fear.
Openly expressing a willingness to negotiate the terms of his continued rule is a death sentence for a dictator since his power is based on the perception that he and only he (until he dies then his son can succeed him) is capable of ruling his country. Negotiating "the terms of his continued rule" would be 'compromising'. From a dictator's point of view that cannot happen.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Dictators who compromise, sometimes can escape with their life and live out their years in relatively peaceful exile somewhere.
pampango
(24,692 posts)rather than negotiating the terms of their departure. Recently, Ben Ali in Tunisia and earlier Idi Amin were dictators who decided to get of of Dodge while the getting was good and live a long life enjoying the wealth they had stolen. Many others, Gadaffi being a recent example preferred the "you can take my job when you pry it from my cold, dead hands" approach.
Assad certainly has billions of dollars to take care of his friends and family if he ever decides to flee. It would seem that he will only leave if Mr. Putin says it is time for him to go. He cannot announce his willingness to compromise now but if and when Vlad tells him it is time, he will retire in Russia. Saudi was the retirement location for Amin and Ben Ali but I doubt they want Assad no matter how much money he brings with him.
jamzrockz
(1,333 posts)Written by a person who thinks the people they elect have the right to be the dictator of the world. Assad has called for elections but the imperialist west knowing that he would win a clean and fair election in Syria are not going to have that. They want the country and these kind of imperialist dictators cannot negotiate. They know that "openly expressing a willingness to negotiate the terms of his continued" campaign of terror on smaller countries will lead to even more countries standing up to them.
The good thing about this is that just like dictators, empires do come to an end. And the world cannot wait till the US goes the way of Rome. I don''t know the world would be but I doubt it could be any worse than it is now for the people being tormented by the US regime.
The same goes to Oberline, you two are some of the most wicked and devilish people I know. Your good intentions to bring peace and democracy to the world would end up killing millions of innocent people and the few that survived would live in a country whose infrastructure and building have been destroyed.
pampango
(24,692 posts)I lived under the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines in the 1970's. His was an American-sponsored dictatorship if there ever was one. He, like every other dictator (Assad is not unique in any way), relied on his secret police and security services, to arrest, torture and 'disappear' people who opposed him. He held plenty of "clean and fair elections" (that description being subjective, I suppose) which he always won with 90% or more of the vote.
Everyone knew that it was terror that is what kept him in office. Like Assad's terror, it is the hidden kind of terror in which people are arrested at night, tortured and 'disappeared' in government jails out of sight of the rest of us. The terror is not broadcast on TV nor posted to youtube. No buildings are destroyed. No infrastructure is damaged. So I suppose it is a 'superior' form of terror. But it is very effective.
There is no doubt that the American empire is ending. The vacuum will be filled as it always is when empires decline. We can hope that the future will be better.
You know me so well.
Now I'm confused. Do I want the American president to be 'dictator of the world' or do I want to "bring peace and democracy to the world?" (Perhaps there should be air-quotes around "peace" and "democracy"?)
jamzrockz
(1,333 posts)and I would not have wanted to see what is going on in Syria happen to Nigeria. The terrorists like ISIS, FSA and Boko haram are 1000x worse than any thing a dictator can deliver.
I have been reading your posts for years now and I have to say that you are worse than Dick Cheney when it comes to foreign policy and I would beg you to reconsider your views especially when it comes to supporting US interventions around the world. The reason is that no matter how good their intentions are, the results are devastating for the locals.
Btw, do you have any problem with CIA training and arming "rebels" to achieve regime changes in sovereign countries?
pampango
(24,692 posts)Nor would I have wanted to see what happened Syria happen in the Philippines back in the day. Marcos, of course, claimed that the alternative to his dictatorship (in those days it was communist rebels) was worse than him. Once Marcos was deposed, it turned out he was the problem not the 'alternative'.
Or how do we decide which dictators are worse than the alternative and which are just plain ol' dictators who crave power and are smart enough to tell the world that the 'alternative' to them is worse so we should support them?
Kind words indeed. I am worse than Dick Cheney? Which interventions around the world have I supported that even Dick Cheney would not support? What makes you think that I support US interventions? I do hate dictators but I assume most liberals do. I do understand that my hatred of dictators has to be tempered by the reality that intervention can make the situation worse.
jamzrockz
(1,333 posts)while start your reply with a question. But do worry, I'll the bigger man and I will answer your question.
Do we support all dictators because the alternative may be worse?
No, I don't support all dictatorships the same way I don't support all democracies. There's going to be an exception here and there where I would not support or oppose the leadership respectively. In Syria's case, the country was targeted by outside forces and the Syrian govt fought back and because they did not allow themselves to be run over and destroyed like the west did in Libya, that makes Assad a bad guy? So the Syrian govt under Assad is one of the few dictatorships that I can say that I did not oppose. And even for the ones that I oppose, I do not wish violent foreign supplied and funded Jihadists upon them.
You also talk about Marcos in the Philippines with him saying that his replacement would be worse than him and that may have not been the truth in that case. But we have seen the people that are fighting the govt now, we know the people (US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, NATO) behind them and we have seen the results they have produced in Iraq and Libya where there left the both countries in disaster. You can go a few decades back and just see how bad they screwed Afghanistan up. These people are fight their darnest not to end up like those countries with their son and daughters dying to rid their countries of these foreign mercs
People are worried about Assad the dictator when we have a dictator of the world in POTUS. Sorry but you should be more worried about that than Assad.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Are you talking about Obama?
oberliner
(58,724 posts)I said that Assad was a bad guy and that I am generally opposed to the idea of dictatorships.
How does holding those views lead you to conclude that I am "wicked and devilish" ?
That is a pretty nasty and baseless accusation to hurl at a person.
I made no statement in support of any kind of military intervention, just expressed a desire to see Assad step down from power.
I would respectfully ask you to apologize for calling me those names.
EX500rider
(10,849 posts)You think Assad would actually win a clean election in Syria?? HAHAHAHAHAHa, good one!
The country is not in the middle of a civil war because they all love Assad so much.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)and has the backing of Russia, Iran, and a lot of useful idiots of influence in the west...
I guess the one saving grace is that eventually, all Syrians will have fled or been killed, so Assad will be running a country of a couple hundred people....