Thursday, December 15, 2016

The Aleppo Massacres - Has Anyone Cornered Obama?

Okay, so the Syrian army of Bashar al-Assad seems to be painting the streets of Aleppo red with blood and while everyone seems to be trying to find solutions, I would like to know WTF Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have to say about it.

Here's where I'm coming from - Barack and Hillary called out the forces of the U.S. and NATO to take out Ghaddafi in Libya awhile back ....why?  Because of the THREAT of violence and death to civilians.  Remember, there were NO attacks on civilians by Ghaddafi...we went to war ONLY because there MIGHT be threats to civilians.  But now, with documentation of civilians in Aleppo being slaughtered, Barack Obama is sitting in a corner sucking his thumb or off golfing. 

Hillary's probably too drunk to remember Libya.

The story comes from Haaretz.


Analysis:  Aleppo Massacre: U.S. and World Failed Syrians, Giving Assad His Greatest Military Achievement

Bashar Assad's regime is currently in the process of realizing its greatest military achievement in its battle against Syrian rebels: the re-conquest of the eastern part of the city of Aleppo, following four years of continuous war there.

The Syrian tyrant has focused his efforts on that northern city in the last few months, and it is now buckling under the enormous pressure it has been subjected to. Since Monday, reports have been streaming in of atrocities in the streets, as forces identified with the regime (including Hezbollah fighters, according to some sources) are executing civilians and medical personnel in the neighborhoods the forces are taking over. It’s likely that such incidents will only increase in the coming days and weeks.

The fall of Aleppo comes as the result of a well-planned campaign based on laying siege and systematically starving its inhabitants, as well as exhausting and deliberately killing civilians among whom rebel fighters had dug in. What started with the dropping of barrel bombs containing fuel and explosives on the city's neighborhoods – carried out by outdated Syrian air force planes – was complemented by precision bombing by Russian fighter jets. And the strategy and brutal methods remained the same: Moscow also did not shrink from deliberate targeting of civilians, and according to human rights groups and Western governments, it even marked clinics, hospitals, schools and lines of people outside bakeries as targets.

The collapse of Aleppo would not have happened without massive Russian support. Russia’s military intervention, which began in September 2015, stabilized the Syrian regime’s defensive lines, subsequently enabling Assad to recover control over areas he had lost. His greatest gain so far is Aleppo, and the Russian-Iranian-Syrian alliance may now turn towards Idlib, west of Aleppo. Taking complete control of this city will remove the ongoing threat to the Alawite enclave in the Western part of the country – indeed, it is particularly important for the regime and its Russian patrons, who have a naval and air base there.

This is the same Russia that Israel has been trying to getting along with, over the last year and a half, during which four meetings have taken place between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Vladimir Putin. Israel, of course, is not responsible for the horrific massacres in Aleppo, other than by being part of the international community that has displayed total impotence in face of these brutal bombings.

Netanyahu is playing the cards he has and so far it seems he’s been doing this well. Israel has managed to avoid getting embroiled in the civil war and to a large extent has managed to stick to the red lines it has defined during this conflict (i.e., immediate responses to firing into Israel's territory, efforts to prevent the smuggling of chemical weapons and advanced fighting capabilities to Hezbollah in Lebanon). At the same time it has avoided getting into aerial battles with the Russians over Syria.

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