# End game in Aleppo **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 28, 2016, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313 "2016-11-28T19:49:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uosdwis_R.Dewoh)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/21 "2016-12-18T11:47:52Z")
Doesn’t really matter who gets to be in charge, in the long term, when the entire region is likely dying. [Syria’s drought ‘has likely been its worst in 900 years’](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/02/syrias-drought-has-likely-been-its-worst-in-900-years) > [@](#): > > War has been the direct driver of the refugee flux and behind that is a complex mix of social and political factors both inside and outside the region. One fiercely studied and debated driver has been a recent dip into a series of severe droughts starting in the late 1990s. > [@](#): > > Drought has had a firm grip on the region since 1998 and Cook’s findings show that the recent bone-dry spell is likely the driest period on record in 900 years and almost certainly the worst drought in 500 years. In either case, it’s well outside the norm of natural variability indicating that a climate change signal is likely emerging in the region. > [@](#): > > The projections for the region show a continued drying trend throughout the coming century as climate change contributes to a shift in circulation patterns. That means what’s happening there now could just be the start of more prolonged, more severe drought. In a region already wracked by water scarcity and conflict, more drying could ratchet up tension even further. It’s too late to change what’s happening. Ousting Assad and installing a democratic government won’t help much when the climate itself is turning inhospitable. This is probably only going to get worse and get better never. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/22 "2016-12-18T12:08:58Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > Ah, but it isn’t naïve to _hope_, however unrealistically, that it ends soon. Since you opened this thread in celebrating the return of the clan Assad death squads control as something good for the population, I think yes it is naïve. As the recent post note there is also the severe climate stress of the long-term drought. As the clan Assad’s corruption and quasi socialism (as a guise for their corruption) strangled the economy, it is not likely the multi-sided struggle will end soon, because there is no sign of any compromise from the bankrupt clan Assad who are reconquering themselves on the basis of the foreign fighters and continue to run their police state and their death squads. No underlying problem has been solved. The origin of the Syrian protest was not merely the Sunni but the general hostility to the corruption and the stagnation. This will not change, it will only continue as a long term factionalism. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/23 "2016-12-18T15:25:13Z")
[This says everything](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38358177) about the kind of people we’ve been supporting in Syria. > [@](#): > > Several buses en route to evacuate the sick and injured from two government-held villages in Syria’s Idlib province have been burned by rebels. It needs repeating time and time again there are no good sides in this war. We need to recognize that Assad is the man to work with. However bad he may be he’s not going anywhere. God knows the US works with some really nasty governments all the time. If we are to have any influence at all in Syria we need to accept facts. Although I guess that ship has already sailed and Putin is waving and smiling at us from the poop deck. ---
**Author:** ![Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8c91f0/32.png) [@Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Throatwarbler_Mangrove)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/24 "2016-12-18T15:32:15Z")
> [@Go\_Arachnid\_Laser](#): > > Wait, wait, wait, wait. I thought Putin and Erdogan were all buddy-buddy since the military uprising? So after 25 years I’m starting to get the feeling that whatever he says in public, Vladimir Putin isn’t your “buddy”, buddy. :eek: It was Nusra that attacked the buses. Nusra rules over Idlib, wants to kill all Shias, and are not particularly worried about whether infidel “moderate” rebels or civilians in Aleppo live or die. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/25 "2016-12-18T15:41:02Z")
> [@Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](#): > > It was Nusra that attacked the buses. Nusra rules over Idlib, wants to kill all Shias, and are not particularly worried about whether infidel “moderate” rebels or civilians in Aleppo live or die. The evacuees from Aleppo include al Nusra fighters and their families. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/26 "2016-12-18T15:46:09Z")
Somebody burned the buses. Maybe. We have only the Syrian state media’s word for it, which means we have absolutely no reason to believe it. ---
**Author:** ![ganthet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de0a6/32.png) [@ganthet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ganthet)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/27 "2016-12-18T16:15:32Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > It needs repeating time and time again there are no good sides in this war. We need to recognize that Assad is the man to work with. However bad he may be he’s not going anywhere. God knows the US works with some really nasty governments all the time. If we are to have any influence at all in Syria we need to accept facts. Although I guess that ship has already sailed and Putin is waving and smiling at us from the poop deck. This bears repeating too - you’re wrong. “There are no good sides to work with” tries to obscure the fact that Assad and his forces have killed more people and more civilians than anyone else, including Da’esh. Suddenly supporting Assad means rewarding all of his war crimes, his use of chemical weapons, means abandoning the YPG and Syrian Kurds, and also isolating the U.S. from every other Arab country in terms of Syria policy. Given that rebels still control significant areas in the south, virtually all of the north and Idlib province and that there is still Da’esh around, Assad will almost certainly commit many more war crimes before this is over. I’m pretty sure we don’t want to be a part of that or associated with that. And Putin has proven time and time again that he is not someone to work with, he is someone who exploits weakness and opportunity. Working with Russia would also mean rewarding all of their war crimes in Syria as well as their espionage and sabotage attempts with the U.S. election. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/28 "2016-12-18T16:37:33Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Somebody burned the buses. Maybe. We have only the Syrian state media’s word for it, which means we have absolutely no reason to believe it. [Maybe…](https://southfront.org/syrian-rebels-burn-buses-en-route-to-evacuate-sick-injured-civilians-from-govt-held-villages-in-idlib-province-video-photos/) ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/29 "2016-12-18T16:42:11Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > [Maybe…](https://southfront.org/syrian-rebels-burn-buses-en-route-to-evacuate-sick-injured-civilians-from-govt-held-villages-in-idlib-province-video-photos/) I’m not familiar with that site. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/30 "2016-12-18T16:44:10Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I’m not familiar with that site. It’s a heavily biased site but just watch the video. ---
**Author:** ![voltaire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voltaire/32/313_2.png) [@voltaire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/31 "2016-12-18T17:00:40Z")
I’m not sure biased is the right word. It smells like borscht. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/32 "2016-12-18T17:03:25Z")
> [@ganthet](#): > > This bears repeating too - you’re wrong. “There are no good sides to work with” tries to obscure the fact that Assad and his forces have killed more people and more civilians than anyone else, including Da’esh. Victors usually kill more people than losers, that’s why they’re victors. And to compare Assad with Da’esh is absurd. He’s not the one hurling homosexuals off rooftops and forcing women back into the middle ages. He’s certainly no worse than Saddam and the US was an ally of his for years. We need a little more _realpolotik_ here and a little less wishful thinking. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/33 "2016-12-18T17:10:37Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I’m not familiar with that site. by every sign and content in its focus, it is Russian state dezinformatisia > [@Latro](#): > > It’s a heavily biased site but just watch the video. What does the video tell you? > [@ganthet](#): > > … Given that rebels still control significant areas in the south, virtually all of the north and Idlib province and that there is still Da’esh around, Assad will almost certainly commit many more war crimes before this is over. I’m pretty sure we don’t want to be a part of that or associated with that… indeed. Why the USA should want to dip its hands into the sewer that is the clan Assad… ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/34 "2016-12-18T17:21:17Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > Victors usually kill more people than losers, that’s why they’re victors. Ah that must be why the Americans won in their wars they murdered more of the innocent civilians and the non combattans. It was then your famous ue of the murdering of the civilians… interesting lesson. A great justification for your using the war crime trials against the Japanese and the Germans > [@](#): > > And to compare Assad with Da’esh is absurd. He’s not the one hurling homosexuals off rooftops and forcing women back into the middle ages. no of course he is famously defending the women by disappearing their brothers, their husbands and their sons by his death squads for the greater crime of opposing his corruption. It is the great defense of the civilization, the use of the blow torch and the power drill on the young children writing slogans against the Assad. I am sure the mothers and the sisters will rise up to thank the Assads for this tender regard for their rights. > [@](#): > > We need a little more _realpolotik_ here and a little less wishful thinking. Then it is perhaps time to sw this is a solution that helps your long term interest. and not jumping in the fear of the Daesh bogeyman. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/35 "2016-12-18T17:26:06Z")
> [@Ramira](#): > > What does the video tell you? > . That ‘someone’ burned the busses, maybe. Or maybe it was that nefarious villain, with the eye patch, that eats babies, after he has thrown them out their incubator, after he has gassed his own people and then attacked a ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. ---
**Author:** ![Go\_Arachnid\_Laser\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b2d939/32.png) [@Go\_Arachnid\_Laser\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Go_Arachnid_Laser_1)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/36 "2016-12-18T17:51:35Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > [This says everything](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38358177) about the kind of people we’ve been supporting in Syria. > > It needs repeating time and time again there are no good sides in this war. We need to recognize that Assad is the man to work with. However bad he may be he’s not going anywhere. God knows the US works with some really nasty governments all the time. If we are to have any influence at all in Syria we need to accept facts. Although I guess that ship has already sailed and Putin is waving and smiling at us from the poop deck. It depends. If it was DAESH, nobody in the west has been supporting them. And yeah, the US has supported awful governments at the time. Never quite worked out, did it? It’s not working out with the ones you are supporting now, either. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/37 "2016-12-18T18:30:14Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > He’s certainly no worse than Saddam That’s a very telling comment you know. Because, realpolitik aside, Saddam was pretty fucking awful. > [@](#): > > and the US was an ally of his for years. Ally probably isn’t the proper word in this case, but even if so this really shouldn’t comfort anyone. I’m not typically a big American basher, but the number of truly vile assholes we’ve supported over the years in the name of expedience is long and disheartening. ---
**Author:** ![Okrahoma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90db22/32.png) [@Okrahoma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Okrahoma)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/38 "2016-12-18T18:43:27Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > I’m not typically a big American basher, but the number of truly vile assholes we’ve supported over the years in the name of expedience is long and disheartening. True, but it a lot of places, if you could not support a truly vile asshole, you’d have no one to support at all. ---
**Author:** ![Salvor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Salvor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Salvor)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/39 "2016-12-18T19:01:08Z")
This just goes to show, if you are willing to murder/genocide your enemies, you can win quite easily and decisively. This is a path states like the US and Israel are loathe to go down. Even with the atomic bomb drops on Japan, the goal was to get them to yield, not annihilate them. Russia/Putin and Iranian Mullahs have no such reservations about mass murder of civilians. And so, they can more easily win strategic objectives. It is an interesting question whether this kind of strategy inspires admiration in people for people like Putin? Make people think he is a strong leader. Does that make him strong? He literally took the easiest, and bloodiest path to victory. It is a smart strategy, in the same way Tywin Lannister orchestrating the red wedding and murdering his enemies while they were at a feast under the cover of hospitality was smart, but I find the entire enterprise utterly immoral and vile. It is EASY to murder your way to victory. If you literally kill all those who oppose you, and rely on larger foreign states to prop up support for the regime to quell any internal dissent, you get the result in Syria. The infinitely harder path is to achieve a victory without wanton blood shed, and we’ve usually failed, but there were some successes where annihilation was not needed, and the result was that the populations we were engaged with thrived. But they were asian. Japan and S. Korea. The middle east is more of a cesspool of blood feuds and a religious sewer, to win there without annihilation might require decades, and no western power wants to commit to that, no western people wants to bother. And so our left and new/alt/paleo right aligns on creating fortress America, where the rogues of the world run more free, but at least we don’t have the chaos and strife linked directly to us. Human rights, the concept of the rights of all mankind that extend across all of… wait for it… Humanity and not just nation states, is burned on a funeral pyre. Not a surprise from the right, ME and MINE has always been the rotten core of their ideology, but from the left? To so quickly move from human rights to a mode of mere human interests… utterly devoid of a concept for the general good, not just for us but for all of humanity. My former neocon sympathies are showing. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2016, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313/40 "2016-12-18T19:17:26Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > My former neocon sympathies are showing. Indeed. Your ramblings have little bearing on reality. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-game-in-aleppo/773313.md?page=3)