The questions which are damn intersting, but we're not likely to get answers to, but nevertheless we could get a lot of intersting discussions about..

Did U.S. actually restrain it's airstrikes in order to let ISIS to overthrow Assad?
Do Russian airstrikes really don't kill civillians?
Does Russia strike U.S. supported rebels?
Will U.S. be interfering directly vs Assad forces?
Will nebghouring Arab states increase support to the rebels?

When & how will the story end?

Done.

For one, it doesn't seem like anyone on A.CC cares about discussing things anymore.

But for the non-meta: I think it's cool that Russia is coming in. Finally, another world power is going to be in the region and the USA can no longer say words and have nobody criticize them. Suddenly, there's an entire other military there with a different opinion and people will stop taking the USA's opinions at face value.

Unless our leaders are complete idiots, I don't think we have to worry about direct US vs Russia bullets flying. Our leaders are stupid enough to mess with asymmetric wars against tribes and warlords, but not stupid enough to start a symmetric war against someone who could actually kill tens of thousands of us in a month.

Russia is not powerful enough to win against the USA, but they're one of the few countries that are powerful enough to do significant damage so our leaders will actually be careful how they follow through.

As for Syria? I have no expert knowledge about Syria. I know it's a terrible situation and that's all I know. There are like 5 distinct groups there, all with histories dating back hundreds of years, all with combinations of each other.

It's not a black and white scenario, and I know that my opinion means jack all here and at the government, so I just choose to focus on other things.

RACIST!!!

Also, hi I guess I haven't posted in a while.

Then welcome back!

I actually like the story as well. It is scary slightest bit, it after all does bring us close to a potential military conflict..

That's far from worst case.

I'd change thousands to millions & days to minutes. There wasn't, and I don't think there actually can be a conventional conflict between the nuclear superpowers. Unless it's some accidental bombing which could end with apologies & reparations paid. I expect Afghan hospital story to end this way. But then, well.. Doctors don't have rockets.

That sux. I guess we can blame the social networks.

I blame the politically correct party poopers for the radio silence. I think they've taken all of the fun out of this.

In any case, I'm not up to speed on worldly affairs. I honestly have no idea what Syria even is, let alone what's going on there. But of course, I imagine that the so called "good guys" on either side are much more deeply and questionably involved than the average citizen would believe. I do not respect governments. They're meant to organize their own national resources. They have no business conducting military affairs short of localized self-defense, which shouldn't even be necessary. That said, the USA is being such a bully that it would be hard to imagine everybody just leaving them alone when they fall. Which IMO has already begun. Hopefully we can all just settle for punishing the rich and powerful and let bygones be bygones.

That's not failing to keep up on modern events, that's failing basic geography. Syria is a country. It goes back for several millenia in different incarnations, but the modern version dates back to WWI.

For what it's worth, I don't see a problem with not knowing what Syria is. Life is hard enough without also all the pressure to know things irrelevant to one's own life if one doesn't want to - especially when those things are miserable and out of our control.

I don't think so. War in Syria has been going on for like 4 years now and everybody just lost track of it. It's not Asad vs. rebels anymore. Right now there's like 5 sides of the conflict (Asad, Kurds, IS, non-IS rebels, ...) fighting in a large free for all clusterfuck with Iran, Russia, Turkey, Israel and USA having their own interests in that country.

The biggest problem is that Asad survived for all those four years and, as far as I can see it, that's the insurmountable obstacle right now. The general consensus is that we should do something about the IS but we differ in crucial details. For the USA and the so called "West" Asad is a no go while for the Russians he is an ally.

Given that the Russians are indiscriminately targeting all opposition while the USA would target IS and Asad's forces. Meanwhile Turkish forces are taking advantage of the turmoil to hit on the Kurdis. So with Asad alive or not exiled I think there won't be any progress towards tighter cooperation.

Few years back I would post in a lot of threads and discuss a lot of things, but nowadays I seem to lack time and incentive to do it. Got lucky that I caught this thread with so few posts I don't need to skim it through.

+1

I tried to understand what was going on some years ago, and my impression was that there were many more...

This is a very long, but very interesting article, that is one man's view on the creation of ISIS. He went and met with the Kurdish people and took some pictures. He equates Saddam to a lid that, although inhumane, kept things mostly under control. I sometimes wonder if Assad is a lid as well, but I'm no expert in the subject.

From Muhammad to ISIS: Iraq’s Full Story

Yes me too.

So was Gaddafi, so is, to a degree- Putin(especially some governors of Mulsim regions of Russia). It's as simple as 2 + 2, and is absolutely believed in, in Russia. And well, historically.. Did it become peaceful without Gadaffi in Lybia? How peaceful's it in Iraq today?

And of course, in Ukraine the war is totally Russian without any kind of support of locals. They love Poroshenko in Donbass, & they all hate Putin.