The Islamic civil war inside Syria

Washington Times:
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Sunday that Hezbollah, or “Party of God” in Arabic, should change its name to “Party of Satan,” blaming the terrorist organization for killing thousands of civilians in Syria.

“Those who stand by the Assad regime and kill their own Muslim brothers and indiscriminately kill women and children in the battlefield should not appeal to Islam and the Quran to legitimize their actions,” Bozdag said, according to Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman.

Bozdag made the remarks on Sunday at an international symposium in Ankara, titled “Problems of the Islamic World and Solutions,” Today’s Zaman reports. The deputy prime minister also said Hezbollah, which has bolstered support behind Assad’s regime, should change its name to Hezb al-Shaitan — the Party of Satan.

“The pharaoh gave orders for the killing of innocent children and their mothers to maintain power. What is the difference between what the Pharaoh did and Assad is doing?” he asked.

...
At its heart this war in Syria has always been an Islamic civil war with Sunnis on one side and Shia entities supporting the Alawite Assad regime.   As much as the war is an existential struggle for Assad and his followers, it is also the same for Hezballah which exist as an Iranian proxy force against Israel.

The US should seized the opportunity to destroy Hezballah, but Obama may have waited too long.  The war has devolved into a battle between al Qaeda on one side and Hezballah on the other.  Under those circumstances the best outcome is for both to lose.  How to make that happen appears to be a challenge beyond the capability of the US and its allies.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more