There is a lot of what he said that was dishonest or mischaracterization or criticizing Obama for doing exactly the same as he is. If I had the time and a transcript, I’d take it apart piece by piece. It was a great propaganda speech. I’m sure his people thought it was a wonderful answer, and that’s what matters to him, so he got it right from that pov.

Excellent article Paxton. Thanks for posting. The Southern Front mentioned at the end is the group that Vice News was embedded with when they produced the video I put on the Heather’s Homilies Facebook page on 2 October: https://news.vice.com/video/the-battle-for-syrias-south-full-length

This article is clearer than the one above, and has a couple of really good maps of the situation, which I think always help: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/military-game-changer-number-places-135735909.html

It exists, but is not as big or strong as US propaganda has led us to believe. I was certainly sucked in for a while. There have always been around thirty opposition groups, but never more than a third were moderate. Also, DAESH simply pays its soldiers a lot more, and many left the FSA and joined DAESH just to survive. The moderate groups have been successful in their areas, and they have political leaders outside the country, but I can see them being bombed out of existence by Putin.

It then becomes a Sunni/Shi’a battle in Syria that will be presented to the outside world as a secular/extremist battle. Then the Western allies will have no choice but to align with Russia to defeat the DAESH and the Al Qaeda affiliates. So within the Arab world Shi’a wins, and the West is on the side of Shi’a, creating difficulties in relationships with all the Arab/Sunni nations.

As usual religion is making a bad situation worse.

The attacks are where rebels are encroaching on regime territory – basically the spots that are where the biggest threat to the regime is, plus a couple of bombings within DAESH territory in order to enable the propaganda that they’re only attacking DAESH.

Good article Ken. As the authors conclude “If political leaders, media reporters and think-tank specialists share a vision of Syria that is partisan, propagandist and over-simple, there is no chance of a solution to the great Syrian tragedy.” Our knee-jerk reaction, Iran is bad, Russia is bad, lead us to ally ourselves with states like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which are just as bad.

Here’s a NYTimes article which updates Heather’s post and has some excellent maps. It’s hard to see how Syria can survive as a country. Most of the non-ISIL rebel groups are still Islamist. Sunni Islamist, like most of the jihadis. The country is majority Sunni, and if a democratic election could be held, Sunnis would come to power. But there is no viable Sunni group other than ISIL that could establish a government. I think we’ll have to accept a compromise that keeps Assad in power, over the western part of the country anyway.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/09/30/world/middleeast/syria-control-map-isis-rebels-airstrikes.html?_r=0

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-crisis-the-west-wrings-its-hands-in-horror-but-it-was-our-folly-that-helped-create-this-a6677621.html

Consulting Heather’s Russian attack maps. it appears that most within regime controlled territory, though on the edges, so probably targeting insurgencies from ISIL and the rebels. Applebaum’s article suggests that Assad and Russia will be satisfied with securing western Syria and leaving the desert east to the desert Sunnis, ie ISIL or DAESH. Iraq’s government also might be persuaded to cede most of Anbar to a new state in that region, since it can’t control it anyway. Maybe call it the caliphate of the desert. In the same deal a Kurdistan might be carved out of Iraq and Syrian territory. I doubt that either Turkey or Iran would be willing to give up territory to a Kurdish state. It appears, that as in Egypt, the pro-western rebels don’t have the power to stand up to either the military (Assad) or the Islamists.