r/chomsky • u/Diagoras_1 • 8d ago
Image US drops $10M terrorism bounty offered for capture of Syrian rebel leader who ousted Assad
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u/Shaami_learner 8d ago
Now that Assad is out. The US will eventually start to really attack the terrorists and stop helping them just to put an Israeli/US puppet at the head of the Syrian state.
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u/TooManyLangs 8d ago
now, can we know the amount of $ in weapons and training that they gave him in last few years?
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u/Diagoras_1 8d ago
Reminder that the US stated that it was impossible to negotiate with Assad because of how evil Assad was. But they're fine with "former" Islamic State and al-Qaeda member al-Julani who - unlike Assad - planed attacks that killed and maimed US soldiers in Iraq.
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u/magkruppe 8d ago
I don't understand this sub. Are you suggesting that Jolani is worse than Assad? Are American soldiers lives worth more than Syrian?
No matter how many US soldiers was killed or maimed, they pale in comparison to the Syrians
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u/Diagoras_1 8d ago
I don't understand this sub. Are you suggesting that Jolani is worse than Assad?
I never said that nor did my comment suggest that. For the record, they are both horrible.
Are American soldiers lives worth more than Syrian?
Did you mean to reply to someone else but accidently replied to my comment instead? Because I definitely never said anything remotely close to that nor would I.
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u/esro20039 8d ago
You don’t even know how al-Sharaa’s transitional government is going to turn out. The Syrian people deserve a chance to govern themselves for the first time this century. You just want to shit on the US for no reason. Give the Syrians a fucking chance.
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u/IwantitIwantit 7d ago
The transitional government are not the Syrian people, not even remotely close.
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u/hellaurie 8d ago edited 7d ago
Are American soldiers lives worth more than Syrian?
Did you mean to reply to someone else but accidently replied to my comment instead? Because I definitely never said anything remotely close to that nor would I.
Your words:
But they're fine with "former" Islamic State and al-Qaeda member al-Julani who - unlike Assad - planed attacks that killed and maimed US soldiers in Iraq.
There's an implication in you bringing up the killing of US troops here - it suggests you think the US should hate HTS because their leader was formerly aligned with a group that killed US soldiers, but that Assad killing and maiming Syrians doesn't matter. Bringing them up in the same sentence equates them.
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u/lucash7 7d ago
You assume that he is formerly aligned.
It isn’t like we haven’t seen cases where “former” XYZ were not so much “former”.
But, I guess if you want to be naive?
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u/hellaurie 7d ago edited 7d ago
No, I want to look at the evidence rather than be naive like you: in recent years HTS were literally hunting down and killing isis and al qaeda in idlib, including by working with the US to do so. I don't think isis or al qaeda would love for him to rejoin an alliance with them after killing, detaining and deporting hundreds of their members.
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u/Anton_Pannekoek 8d ago
It was a civil war, it's not like Assad just killed people randomly. Saying he killed hundreds of thousands of people and led a genocide is like saying the Confederacy committed a genocide of their own people, killing hundreds of thousands. It was a civil war.
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u/esro20039 8d ago
He fucking locked them up in state prisons and then tortured them to death. Assad wasn’t just fighting a civil war, he was engaging in essentially a fascist state where people were disappeared for criticism and convenience. Do you really want to defend 50 years of Assad dictatorship?
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u/Anton_Pannekoek 8d ago
Yeah I know, I'm not defending Assad, I'm saying Jolani is no better.
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u/esro20039 8d ago
We don’t know that yet. The Assad family literally had a 50-year dictatorship. Look at the videos of people celebrating in the streets. You are defending Assad, who he is one of the worst and most brutal leaders in world history. Trying to compare an ostensibly reform-minded Islamist to him is laughable. Why do you want to defend Assad so much?
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u/Anton_Pannekoek 8d ago
How is a former member of Al-Qaeda reform-minded? HTS are extremists.
There is a one-sided propaganda campaign against Assad. It's clear to me, but maybe because I'm older and not an American.
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u/esro20039 8d ago
You haven’t followed the Syrian conflict outside of this, have you. Again, Assad literally imprisoned a US journalist for nothing. He killed thousands of his own people. The new regime couldn’t make up for the terror Assad presided over in a decade, much less being condemnable right now. al-Sharaa has had a very long, very public break with the transnational terror groups.
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u/Anton_Pannekoek 8d ago
Oh I know about how Assad was bad. The funny thing is, he collaborated with the West, until they decided he wasn't suitable anymore. As bad as Assad was, the West's hypocrisy is even worse.
The US used Assad's Syria as a blacksite to torture people, and collaborated with him on intelligence.
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u/finjeta 8d ago
How is a former member of Al-Qaeda reform-minded?
Because people can change their views as time passes. Your line of thinking is more or less exactly what I hear whenever people try to claim fascism is a leftist ideology because Mussolini used to be a communist.
Jolani has become more and more pragmatic over the last few years which is how he managed to unite the many factions of Syria under him in the first place.
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u/Anton_Pannekoek 8d ago
Yeah his pragmatism includes embracing Israel.
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u/hellaurie 8d ago edited 7d ago
He is not embracing Israel.
Edit: downvotes but no one wants to offer any evidence that he's embracing Israel lol. Go figure
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u/magkruppe 8d ago
I didn't say he killed hundreds of thousands of people. Or that he committed a genocide. Are you a bot?
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u/Anton_Pannekoek 8d ago
I'm a moderator here. The point is that yes, Jolani is worse than Assad.
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u/Relevant-Low-7923 5d ago
Reminder that the US stated that it was impossible to negotiate with Assad because of how evil Assad was. But they’re fine with “former” Islamic State and al-Qaeda member al-Julani who - unlike Assad - planed attacks that killed and maimed US soldiers in Iraq.
You’re literally criticizing Americans for breaking bread with a group of former Arab enemies after we both realized we have no reason to be fighting against each other.
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u/luomodimarmo 8d ago
While also funding them through SETF. Israel has also supplied them with weapons while calling them terrorists.
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u/hellaurie 8d ago
Could you quote where in that article it actually suggests that SETF funds went to HTS?
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u/hellaurie 8d ago
I expect no response to this because even that grubby propagandist article doesn't actually make the claim that SETF funded HTS.
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u/Delicious_Ad_9374 8d ago
The enemy of my enemy, amd all that jazz
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u/ZealousidealClub4119 8d ago
Just like the Mujahideen in Soviet occupied Afghanistan. What could possibly go wrong?
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u/Relevant-Low-7923 5d ago
The Afghan mujahideen were never the problem. The Taliban have nothing against the US, because they’re ultimately more of an Afghan/Pashtun nationalist group that has no interest in attacking the West.
The problem was with radical Arabs like Bin Laden who went to fight in Afghanistan as foreign fighters against the Soviets. But those radical Arabs, like Bin Laden, had a hater boner for the US and the West well before they arrived in Afghanistan.
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u/Diagoras_1 8d ago
News articles
- After Damascus meeting, US drops $10 million terror bounty for new Syrian leader https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-damascus-meeting-us-drops-10-million-terror-bounty-for-new-syrian-leader/
- US drops $10M terrorism bounty offered for capture of Syrian rebel leader who ousted Assad https://apnews.com/article/syria-united-states-austin-tice-assad-de71dc4920d4677fcfb2d31a2b6e6e54
the Wikipedia pages of some of the organizations in the picture:
- Islamic State of Iraq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq
- Al-Qaeda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda
- Al-Nusra Front https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Nusra_Front
- Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hay%27at_Tahrir_al-Sham
and his Wikipedia page: Ahmed al-Sharaa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_al-Sharaa
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u/Delicious_Ad_9374 8d ago
I don't think it's a matter of being "fine" with it, as much as it is a matter of pragmatism and opportunist. The ME is complex, and the political landscape is in flux. Russia supported the unpopular and repressive Assad regime, and having them kicked out of Syria would be a feather in the US's cap worth way more than 10M.
It's too early to say whether it will come to that (my money is on russia being able to negotiate something with heavy concessions to keep their bases). However, if the Russians are forced out of Syria, it'll be a big problem for them. The only other puppet master who will lose more is iran
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u/hellaurie 8d ago
This is such a reasonable and clear comment but it's been down voted heavily by the goons here for some reason
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u/Anton_Pannekoek 8d ago
No it's a take that is completely ignoring the US/Israeli role in supporting terrorism and the fact that this guy is way more of an extremist than Assad ever was.
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u/hellaurie 8d ago
What value does the word 'extremist' have if it's used to morally exculpate the man who killed over 250,000 of his own civilians, ran a state-level torture dungeon, and suffocated people to death with chlorine gas?
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u/esro20039 8d ago
The person you responded to is a genocide-denier. They simply don’t understand Syria, and they think Assad was a good leader. Do not engage, because they are incredibly, unbelievably stupid.
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u/hellaurie 8d ago
I know, but I've spent years reading and writing about Syria and it just fundamentally pisses me off when I see people say this stuff. I can't help but respond.
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u/esro20039 8d ago
I’m the same way. They’re trying to tell me that al-Sharaa (Jolani) is just as bad as Assad. It would be funny if it wasn’t so despicable.
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u/hellaurie 8d ago
Honestly don't understand why these people can't even give the new leadership a moment to prove themselves or at least give the Syrian people a moment to celebrate escaping 54 years of brutal assad rule before screaming about Syria being lost to Jihadis or assad being better. I would love to see Anton go to Damascus and tell a Syrian Assad was better.
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u/esro20039 8d ago
I’m not confident Anton knows that Damascus is the capital of Syria. He’s either a Russian opposition bot or an insanely uninformed and hubris-filled outsider.
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u/Anton_Pannekoek 8d ago
Like I said in my other comment, it's not like Assad just killed all these people. There was a civil war.
Regarding the chemical weapons charges, you should read what Aaron Maté wrote on the topic. Assad is at least a secular leader, who tolerates religious minorities, whereas ISIS led a genocide against the Yazidis for being christians, they hate Shia muslims or anyone who doesn't subscribe to their beliefs. That's extreme.
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u/hellaurie 8d ago
No you absolutely should not read Aaron maté and his total bullshit about assad never having used chemical weapons. He is an atrocity denialist and a genuinely disgusting human being. The chemical weapons incidents he's spent years denying are being openly talked about again by Syrians who want investigations reopened. Who do you believe, the survivors of chemical weapons attacks, or an American guy called Aaron who claims that the attacks never happened?
BBC News - 'I want justice': Victims of Syria chemical attacks speak freely for first time https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4xyd1yx0go
Guardian - their bodies had turned to black: Syrian chlorine victims can finally speak out https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/14/their-bodies-had-turned-to-black-syrian-chlorine-victims-can-finally-speak-out
For more general reading look at the summary of the more than 300 chemical attacks in Syria since Assad began murdering his people: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_chemical_weapons_in_the_Syrian_civil_war
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u/Anton_Pannekoek 8d ago
Chomsky praised Maté. I haven't really seen a refutation of his work, which exposed the fact that there was a massive whistleblower in the OPCW which casts doubt on the whole affair.
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u/hellaurie 8d ago
Oh one whistleblower talked about the investigation of one attack not going how he thought it should have gone. Ok right. So no need to look into it further, now you'll just ignore the testimony of families that survived - sound logic, I'm sure Chomsky would be so proud of you. Do you think these people are lying about their children suffocating to death? If so, why? What do they have to gain now? The claim you always made in the past of "they want Western intervention!" doesn't fly anymore does it.
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u/Anton_Pannekoek 8d ago
I don't mean to sound trite but you should actually look into this a bit deeper.
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u/hellaurie 8d ago
You do sound trite, and condescending actually but that's Dunning-Kreuger isn't it... because I literally research Syria for a living and have spent the last decade closely following the conflict and even reading Maté's disinformation narratives. There is zero credibility to the OPCW whistleblower narrative anymore I'm sorry, the OPCW JIT clearly addressed it all in their final report. If you think the narrative of one Russia aligned American guy is more credible than the OPCW and the victims of the attacks, you really should look into this a bit deeper - or you might just be so blinded by your ideology that you can't see reality.
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u/big_whistler 8d ago
The Assad family has been torturing people to death in prison for 50 years. Don’t let him off the hook that easily, this was going on before the civil war.
How does a civil war excuse the use of chemical weapons?
Jolani isn’t part of ISIS.
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u/hellaurie 8d ago
The civil war also only happened because Assad used his intelligence forces to crush democratic protests and kill protesters. They even recently found the intelligence playbook outlining how to do it.
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u/Anton_Pannekoek 8d ago
Yeah, they were also an ally of the West for much of that period. The US used Syria for a black site to torture people and collaborated with them on intelligence after 9/11.
Jolani is part of HTS which is the rebrand of Al-Qaeda. So yes you're right, not ISIS but Al-Qaeda.
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u/snapplepapple1 8d ago
The US will call literally anyone a terrorist so that word has lost all meaning. In fact typically if the US calls someone a terrorist it probably means they simply dont agree with American imperialism. The US media is even more flagrant with the word so at this point any time I see them claiming someone to be a terrorist it basically tells me theyre the opposite. The US has absolutly zero credibility in government and media.