1- Nobody is the good guy in this war, I agree. Everybody is a piece of shit bully on the world scale, including America. IS and Assad are two different types of shit heads though, I believe. Russia simply has its own agenda just like America. Syria is way closer to Russia than one might think, a stable Syria benefits them not only from a safety/fighting terrorism standpoint but it also would benefit the oil pipeline they want to run through Africa.
More or less. You're right, the main reason Syria was destabilised in the first place (and why Russia came in to support them) is because it's a transit country - being allied with Russia and Iran, they support the development of the development of an Iran-Iraq oil pipeline instead of the west's favoured Qatar-Saudi-Turkey line -
this is a good article on the matter. The other main aspect would be to
aid israel by breaking Iran's allies.
The thing you've got to keep in mind though is that it's not about 'bringing democracy' or 'Assad's crimes'; virtually all western actions in the middle east are either about exploiting resources or creating instability to make it easier to exploit resources.
Assad's government is brutal, but it's secular and stable. It's also far closer to a 'western' democracy than any of the west's allies in the middle east.
The 'Free Syrian Army', on the other hand, is not a contiguous group, rather a name given to a certain set of rebels. Regardless of what the media presents, they are not concerned with and do not care for democracy - the one thing that unites them is their will for a Sunni-Islamic government. This is probably best evidenced by the conditions of the recent ceasefire - rebels were ordered to cease working with the Al-Nusra Front or whatever they call themselves now; the Syrian arm of Al-Qaeda and just as brutal as ISIS (though they aren't nearly as good at courting the western media). They flatly refused, stating that they were brothers.
Here's a video of some 'moderate rebels' parading women and prisoners about in a cage.The problem with all this 'Assad is a bad man/Assad must go' rhetoric is that there's no alternative. What would happen if he were dethroned tomorrow? Exactly what's happened in Libya, a power vacuum filled with the worst the region has to offer. The rebels will tear the country apart fighting amongst themselves and the only stable pocket will likely be the Kurds' semi-autonomous zone in the north... Up until Erdogan uses the confusion as cover to pulverise them once and for all.
I have read your entire post twice thrice rice over but it's too early in my day for me to think clearly enough to write out a well thought out response or research these things. I would very much like a source for the chemical weapons thing as well as why the hell you think barrel bombs aren't real. There's plenty of combat footage, plenty of eyewitness reports, I don't know why anyone would go through all the trouble of fabricating this. I don't know why you believe anybody involved in this war wouldn't use them.
Seymore Hersh wrote an excellent article on the Ghouta sarin attack. It's very long though, so the general gist of it is this:
- In 2012, President Obongo stated that Assad using chemical weapons on the rebels would justify direct US military intervention in Syria.
- August 2013, sarin nerve agent was deployed in the city of Ghouta. Assad is immediately blamed as it is not believed rebels are able to manufacture nerve agents.
- Facilitated by Russia, Assad offered to relinquish all of his chemical weapons stores to avert military action.
- British intelligence demonstrates the sarin used in Ghouta does not match samples from Assad's stores.
- From 2013 onwards, it became obvious that Al-Nusra Front and affiliated groups had access to sarin through laboratories found in attacks and men arrested attempting to smuggle it into the country.
- Direct interviews with doctors and locals made it clear the government did not mount the attack, but these went unreported.
The rest is mostly just detailing the progression of the war from that point.
Here is a video of the head of the UN inspection team discussing the matter.Here is an interview with a Turkish MP, currently facing charges of treason for publicly detailing the transit of chemical weapons and associated components through turkey and implying state support:
Erdem revealed that five Turkish citizens had been arrested by the Adana Chief Prosecutor's Office as a result of an investigation coded 2013/139. A Syrian national was prosecuted in Turkey for procuring chemical agents for Islamist groups in Syria. At the same time, Erdem noted all the persons arrested within the framework of the 2013/139 investigation were released a week later.
As for the last bit about recent attacks, I recommend doing a news search on 'Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki'. Keep in mind these people are actively supported by the US and are held in high enough regard to be part of the negotiating committee for the 'peace process'.
Why would you believe that the rebels would bomb several of their own hospitals, with their own soldiers, with their own people? Really, what do they have to gain? Assad had everything to gain by bombing hospitals containing rebel soldiers and generally people who are against his cause. I don't believe they would take their push for propaganda against Assad that far.
I honestly don't know who bombed the hospitals. Those field hospitals largely cater to local populations, not rebels though - it's long been reported that
Turkey,
Israel and others operate covert medical facilities that cater to rebel fighters. The only point I was making there was that a person would need to be prepared and trained to recognise specific aircraft in order to determine who committed such a strike, that obviously biased witnesses make strong but unproven claims and the western media parades it as truth.
I also don't understand why you trust Russian media which is blatantly controlled by the government (as opposed to America's subtle control of media) on things like this, why is western media not trustworthy but Russian media okay? They're both liars, though I would believe Rebels, Assad or IS could have destroyed it. I don't see why the rebels would have done it on purpose though (not that you're claiming they did.) I admit I haven't looked into the convoy thing much.
I'm aware that no media is completely accurate or transparent. I read news from a few different sources, mostly Reuters, BBC, RT and Sputnik (though that last one's mostly for the opinion pieces/essays, the news articles read like a pro-russian Daily Mail), and I've found that by and large, the Russian media present far more direct evidence for their claims. The MH17 incident over Ukraine - Russia immediately released satellite imagery indicating there were fighter jets within range of the plane when it was shot down; this was denounced as 'fake' or 'incorrect' by the US, but neither they nor Kiev have released any telemetry of their own to this day.
On the topic of the aid convoy specifically, the instant reaction was 'Russia or Syria did it'. When pressed on why they thought that, the response was 'I don't know'. The UN will no longer even verify that it was an airstrike that destroyed the convoy.
I'm not taking RT's proposal at face value; it's plain to see (even to someone without knowledge of how modern missiles work) that there is little to no structural damage to the convoy which would be impossible if it were in fact struck by any current missile - explosive, HEAT, kinetic, submunition or whatever else... Nevermind the complete lack of surrounding environmental damage.
Of course the Syrian government wants a ceasefire. Of course IS and the rebels don't want it, they want to be the government. Syria already is the government and they have no need to fight other than to retain power. I understand the accidental killing of civilians by Assad, I understand he probably doesn't want to kill his civilians as its essential to regain support, but this isn't a war against armies anymore. The line has been blurred and now hospitals can be rebel hospitals and not just hospitals. It's the nature of shit weapons and city war. I firmly believe Assad has bombed hospitals.
Like I said, I don't think there's any solid or irrefutable evidence available that proves who's been attacking field hospitals so I'm not going to try to argue the point - I do find it odd that neither Russia nor the US has been able to provide satellite telemetry of any of the attacks though.
The core of the matter is this - Assad operated a brutal, but efficient regime. He enjoyed majority support of the population (and does to this day). There has always been and will always be a portion of the population who dislikes the way the government operates; the US has taken advantage of this fact 50+ times, inciting, expanding and arming opposition with the aim of installing a 'friendly' regime since the end of WWII. This is no different.
Their goal has nothing to do with democracy* or empowerment, it's simply to turn a strong oppositional state into a subservient mess. Today's 'Radical Islam' was largely created by the US as a weapon against the Soviet Union and later, Russian Federation
(this is a long read, but important if you're interested in the topic). They will and do (covertly) support any group that opposes the legitimate government in Syria, be it Islamist groups they are able to rebrand as 'moderate opposition', the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, who they publicly blame for the deaths of ~3000 Americans, or ISIS, the media execs who are able to dominate media coverage through creative brutality.
If this wasn't the case, ask yourself why ISIS and ANF continually made huge advances all through the 'coalition's' 3+ year bombing spree, up until Russia joined in and actually started destroying their assets.
*As of late I'm of the belief that US-style democracy isn't flawed, it's designed to create a large surface area for corruption, meaning that the political system falls directly under the control of the financial system. This is a discussion for a different thread though.
