Human Rights Watch and others have documented that 90% of civilians killed in the Syrian Civil War have been killed by Assad's forces. The butcher must not escape justice.
In the West Wing, or more likely, on a golf course on one of his properties, is it unthinkable that Trump looks with admiration on al-Assad?
Bashar al-Assad is a vicious, genocidal despot, one of the most despicable people on this planet, yet it's not a stretch to imagine him having an admirer on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
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Yes, Assad is a dictator and has plenty of blood on his hands. So does EVERY party in this brutal war. We have tried the 'take out the dictator' routine in Iraq and Libya with horrendous consequences.
I have spoken with Iraqi refugees who fled by car and were shot at by several different militias on the way to the Syrian border. Each militant who assembles a group of people around him becomes the next 'would-be' commander, killing indiscriminately.
In that picture Assad is the lesser evil - and the Russians will probably have been on the right side of history, certainly not we.
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Syria has been bombed back to the stone age, Assad is still in power, it is time to encourage the factions that still are waging war against Syria/Assad to give up their weapons and attempt to rebuild what was once a beautiful country.
May God bless the long suffering people of Syria.
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For all the critics against Assad I want to remind them a few things about Syria pre-civil war. Syria was the most developed, civilized, secular country in the Middle East. Syria has history that goes back thousands of years. Syria, and Damascus in particular, was a centre of learning unrivaled by any other in the Middle East. Syria had the most developed health care system in the Middle East. Then along came the so called "Arab Spring", a concoction of the West and Israel to radically change the status quo with bloodthirsty neocons leading the way. Since then, Christians in the Middle East have been reduced by 50% and have had to escape terror. All thanks to the West. As Reagan famously asked us, "are you better off today?". There is blood on our hands and at least Assad is trying to keep that country in one piece, at the same time that we are trying to dismember it, emasculate it. Is the process brutal? Yes, as the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen are. And lets not forget who started them!
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"Then along came the so called "Arab Spring", a concoction of the West and Israel to radically change the status quo with bloodthirsty neocons leading the way."
Just to be accurate: I think you'll find that the Israelis, at least, were less than enthusiastic about the Arab Spring.
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Right, it's the West's fault Assad dropped chemical weapons on the people of Syria and destroyed generations. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and the most advanced nation. They build hospitals in the North to treat Syrians. Moderate Arab nations are their allies.
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Well said.Thank you
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Nowhere in the report is the reader made aware of the fact that had Assad lost the war to the al Qaeda-connected “Syrian rebels,” the minority Alawite and Christian populations would have been massacred and extruded. Obviously the lives of those populations don’t matter and are of little interest.
Nowhere is there any mention that together with the Russians, the Syrians liberated Aleppo from al Qaeda.
Finally, no effort is made to provide us with documentary sources for various casualty figures ( for instance, "1,500 civilians killed in eastern Ghouta” recently). It looks as though we’re just supposed to believe this stuff because it’s printed.
I am weary of news media bias.
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