Syrian woman owns John McCain on the US's Syria policy. He couldn't even look into her eyes. pic.twitter.com/HwYNOMtCxI

— Schopenhauer (@BasedBilal) January 19, 2017

For many years, western supporters of the opposition simply denied its counterrevolutionary bent. If you asked them to name the progressive or moderate groups that held sway in the opposition, they tended to call you an Assadist and name leftist activists. Yet no anti-imperialist has ever denied that there were activists who opposed — and faced persecution from — the Syrian government. At issue, of course, was and is the armed opposition. Zahran Alloush had a militia; Omar Aziz didn’t. Eventually, (most) leftist supporters of the opposition couldn’t deny its ideological makeup. Yet they fashioned several bogus arguments to rationalize their continued support for it.

1. Al Qaeda is, actually, fine. Among the more bizarre byproducts of the war in Syria is the embrace of Al Qaeda by some socialists, like Louis Proyect and Michael Karadjis.

2. Assad himself “jihadized” the opposition. The key “proof” for this assertion is Assad’s release of jihadists from prison in 2011. One big problem with the assertion is that Assad released them as part of general amnesty demanded by the opposition. “Too little too late,” one opposition spokesperson said in response. Another big problem with the assertion is that the number of jihadists released from Syrian prisons is [a] fraction of the number ushered into Syria by other countries, which is itself only a portion of the material support they’ve provided to Al Qaeda and ISIS. And let’s pretend that Assad were solely responsible for the sorry state of the opposition, that would still be the state of the opposition.

3. A “Third Way” progressive force will prevail. An extension of the activist-for-armed-opposition bait-and-switch I discuss above, the notion that an anti-Assad, anti-official-opposition force might emerge and take power is utterly fantastical. To be ideologically opposed to both the government and opposition is, of course, valid — surely, this describes a number of Syrians aligned with both camps — but to hope that a movement representing that point of view will take power is magical thinking.

4. Syria is actually Palestine. The people who employ this analogy tend to object to the notion that Syria in any way resembles Iraq or any other country targeted by western imperialism. The western left should support the reactionary Syrian opposition just as it supports Hamas, they argue. Their goal, beyond scoring quick debating points, is to try to transfer the moral credibility of the Palestinian liberation movement onto the Syrian opposition. Erasing imperialism, geopolitics, history, and common sense, the analogy usually gets the rhetorical job done on Twitter but disintegrates if you venture beyond 140 characters. Here’s the analogy corrected: Hamas teams up with Al Qaeda and with the support of the United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar tries to overthrow the Syrian government.

5. A lack of US support for “moderate” groups allowed Salafists to rise. If only the United States had given more and better arms — especially MANPADS — to the Free Syrian Army, then Al Qaeda and its ilk wouldn’t have come to dominate. This is an especially strange claim when it comes from people who purportedly oppose American imperialism. It perpetuates the myth that the armed opposition included ideologically admirable factions and ignores the collaboration between U.S. proxies and Al Qaeda (collaboration that the United States encouraged). It also ignores the well-known frequency with which Al Qaeda and other Salafist factions acquired the arms that the U.S. had sent to its “vetted” groups. The US was well aware that it was strengthening Al Qaeda by sending arms into Syria.

Amnesty International are now claiming that the Grand Mufti of Syria, Sheikh Badreddine Hassoun of all people (met him in person, lovely human being), signed off on up to 13,540 secret executions in Sednaya prison in Damascus (p. 17).
The report, titled 'Human Slaughterhouse', claims to have interviewed (p. 5):
- 31 men who were detained at Saydnaya
- 4 prison officials or guards who previously worked at Saydnaya
- 3 former Syrian judges
- 3 doctors who worked at Tishreen Military Hospital
- 4 Syrian lawyers
- 17 international and national experts on detention in Syria
- 22 family members of people who were or still are detained at Saydnaya
Of those 84 people they claim to have interviewed, 81 are anonymous, and only 3 come with names (p. 34).
Assuming these prisoners are being executed in complete secrecy as per the report's claims, to the point where alleged doctors, judges and prison guards can't provide any evidence that these prisoners even exist aside from their own testimony, how would the family members of these prisoners know they're being held at Sednaya?
The report also alleges (p. 28) that there are secret mass graves in Damascus, only to finish up by saying, "not having access to Syria, Amnesty International has been unable to independently verify these statements". Really, Amnesty? You couldn't get your alleged sources, especially the prison guards, to take one photo?
The second time they use the key-word 'verify' or 'verified' in their report is in a very short section titled 'Documented Deaths' (p. 40) which doesn't even refer to work they've done, but to allegedly verified deaths in Sednaya prison according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights which claims that 375 prisoners died of torture from March 2011 to October 2016.
But hang on, if SNHR knows enough about what happens inside Sednaya to the point where they know for certain that 375 prisoners died of "torture and other ill-treatment", and assuming therefore that they're capable of monitoring the transfer of prisoners to Sednaya in the first place, how on earth did they manage to miss up to 13,165 executed prisoners?
Amnesty International claims to have "obtained the names of 36 additional individuals who died as a result of torture and other ill-treatment in Saydnaya" which were "provided to Amnesty International by former detainees who witnessed the deaths in their cells". So in other words, the people that AI either met or called told them 36 names with no evidence backing up their claims, and yet we're supposed to believe them when they claim over 13K secret executions?
Finally, why would 'international and national experts' need to remain anonymous? If they really were experts they'd have literature to their name so we can check their credentials. Nope, anonymous.
If you believe this you'll believe anything.

From Jay Tharappel's (some Australian socialist or something I'm not sure) Facebook.

Left high and dry, the CIA's man in Syria dishes on how US weapons went to Al Qaeda and ISIS https://t.co/fuuSzkg9YM pic.twitter.com/P0nkIJsFEr

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) February 9, 2017

your_not_aleksandr posted:

the West is trying to kick it down because stopping the Kurds from formalizing more is the only concession they might be able to ge tout of this whole shitshow.

i think this is a good point. it seems to me that the obama-'supported' formation of the SDF was actually an attempt by the US to dismantle the kurdish project by making territory liberated from daesh open to non-YPG political control, even if it's kurdish soldiers doing the fighting. thus, for instance, the YPG is to not have any control of raqqa. (i can't remember which RT article stated this, but it's out there.)

your_not_aleksandr posted:

thirdplace posted:
that's just wrong, right? I know the Syria gov't/YPG ceasefire was under some stress, but it's still basically in place?
the West is trying to kick it down because stopping the Kurds from formalizing more is the only concession they might be able to ge tout of this whole shitshow.

What do the US and their allies stand to lose if the Kurds formalize more?