Obama may not see the end of the Syrian crisis before he leaves office after next year; Defense Secretary Ash Carter certainly doesn’t think so.
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Then there’s the complicating fact that Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters have flocked to Syria to combat ISIS. Bipartisan support in Canberra for the war in the Middle East is paralleled by the transformation of Australia into a central base of operations for the USA military build-up in Asia, in preparation for conflict with China.
Hamzeh Ghadban is a Syrian with an aid agency called Assistance Coordination Unit.
An injured man walks amid debris as residents reacts at a site hit by what activists said were barrel bombs dropped by forces of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, at al-Thawra neighborhood in Idlib city April 20, 2015. Now Russia’s getting more involved. Let them fight each other and pick up the remnants. Since 82% do agree that “IS is USA and foreign made group“, Syrians are clearly anti-American, by overwhelming majorities: they blame the U.S. for something that they clearly (by 78%) consider to be not “a positive influence”. “And we want freedom”. Some were recent arrivals in Turkey, which hosts 2 million Syrians.
By any measure, President Obama’s effort to train a Syrian opposition army to fight the Islamic State on the ground has been an abysmal failure.
ISIL terrorists, with members from several Western countries, have been active in Iraq, Syria and Libya over the past years, notorious for its acts of terror and atrocities against people of different religious and ethnic communities, including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, Christians and others.
The aftermath of a government bombing in the coastal province of Latakia, provided to BuzzFeed News by a local photographer.
The numerous predictions that Assad and his regime would fall have proven incorrect time and again. What are you going to do beyond dropping bombs?
It’s little wonder so many Syrians have decided that after more than four years of war, with no end in sight, a risky and expensive journey toward Europe is their only option.
For the USA officials, “if they cooperate with the Syrian army, this is like recognition of our effectiveness in fighting ISIS“, Assad said. In other words, a no-fly zone is created to prevent military aircraft from targeting civilians.
“This is about the only reason for the refugees“, said a smuggler in Istanbul, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his work is illegal.
There’s also an argument to be made that taking away Assad’s air power could pressure him to come to the negotiating table. Mohammed, is a 30-year-old Syrian who has fled the country with his pregnant wife. It operates more than 30 large camps in northern Syria, where refugees sleep in tents, listening to the sound of airstrikes and artillery in the distance.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who favored military action in Syria, questioned Obama’s commitment to using force. “Most of them were women, children and the elderly, trying to secure food for their families”, he said. She dreams of becoming an engineer, to help rebuild her country.
In one of his first pronouncements after ousting Tony Abbott in an inner party coup on September 14, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull raised the banner of the fraudulent “war on terror” and hailed the Australian military in the Middle East for “putting themselves in harm’s way to stop the spread of a violent ideology”. “Accordingly, we’ve just announced we’re going to start talking to the Russians about Syria”. He is concerned about increased Russian involvement in the conflict. In many ways, we’re largely past the stage of nuclear proliferation unless it was provided by a state, and that isn’t likely to happen. General Keane said we need 10,000 in Iraq versus 3500.
But he worries about a buildup of military might from Moscow.
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“It is true that we have found this to be a hard challenge,”[White House Press Secretary Josh] Earnest said.
