Very true. Though at the same time there’s a lot more discussion of Kurdish rights in Turkey than Afrin, despite the Turkish government having largely pulled back their most violent methods in recent years. I mean there were literally pictures of Turkish soldiers and allies looting homes in Afrin. I’m still confused…

It only would’ve been before 2013. By then the axis was shifting. JaN gained a lot of power quickly, no doubt in part from Gulf money, and was able to displace the better FSA structures in a lot of places. Now the FSA is a mixture of tattered remnants fought over by various factions looking for legitimacy, almost none…

I’ve long said there was a window before groups like Jabhat al-Nusra were able to boss around most of the non-Islamist opposition when the US should’ve taken action. That’s a take that gets a lot of heat in places like this, but I still firmly believe it from watching it in real time and retrospection. At that point,…

Your man here is an incredibly bad-faith troll. This is a good lesson, on an article about Gabbard and her awful politics, about how the conspiratorial fringe of the left behaves and how unsubstantive their ideological positions remain. 

Yeah, they’ve sent a lot of sons to die in a war they weren’t that interested in. Once Sunni extremists took a bigger role they felt forced into it, but in the early days there were a lot of Alawi willing to stand up against the regime. Alawi get some advantages now, but they mostly accrue to those closest to the…

Yeah, Gods forbid someone get angry over the mass-murder of human beings. You’re doing so much work proving you’re the troll here. I suppose I should thank you. 

Rather than defend an awful take, my posts are getting dismissed. Again, helping my point about the credibility you lack.

Yes, I suppose actual knowledge on Syria might be threatening to whatever the hell you just posted. Thank you for so clearly abdicating. Your lack of credibility is really something I wanted to stress here and I feel like that’s been done. 

So you are an apologist as well. Not shocking.

That’s a piss-poor excuse. If you don’t want to defend awful comments like that don’t write them. This sort of preemptive tone-policing really underscores the lack of substance behind your position.

Yes, she explicitly repeated his talking points about using chemical weapons on his own people. You’re repeating the rather dishonest interpretation her campaign has been using to try and justify the indefensible. 

She is definitely not “right on Syria”. “Let’s ignore Assad murdering his own people” is neither a moral position nor a useful one in pure realpolitik. 

That definitely sums up Gabbard. Her “anti-imperialism” is the type weaponized by disinformation ops like RT. She’s a representative of the conspiratorial fringe of the left, mirrored in type if not influence by the QAnon types on the right. Her apologia for Assad alone is disqualifying.

The thing to be ashamed about is a fake PhD thesis so comically bad that it wouldn’t pass in undergrad at a real university. 

Everyone involved is awful. I do enjoy Trumpworld eating it’s own. Haley is awful and anything that derails her unearned redemption tour is good. 

Completely unqualified. His entire resume was counter-terror cases he played no role in. Just the fact that he lied on something so easy to check proves he couldn’t handle the DNI role.

So not only does this promote a racist trope about “irrational violent Muslims”, it’s also completely divorced from actual reality. India and Pakistan make belligerent statements while consistently seeking quiet actions to deescalate. Both are belligerent ideologically but far less so in practice, as is generally the…

It’s just going to get worse, most likely. We’ll all haveto figure out how to deal with more heat. I wouldn’t be surprised by a general movement of people northwards though. 

Creepy pseudo-science is probably the least disgusting part of this whole case. That’s a terrifying thing to write out. 

The general perception is that the usage of nuclear weapons in defensive actions is acceptable, though in truth the barrier to using them at all is so high it’s a realistic question whether even in such a case a state would. The harm to any state’s reputation would be significant, so the military advantage needs to…