Jim's Blog

fourteen months ago, I said that Aleppo would very shortly fall.

Eight months ago I said that it had fallen for certain values of fallen, and its fall indicates that asymmetric warfare only works when the stronger side is fighting with one hand tied behind its back – usually tied by the State Department. My prolific commenter B complained that Aleppo had not actually fallen yet, therefore this failed to demonstrate that asymmetric warfare is bunk.

OK.

Now it really has fallen, and asymmetric warfare really is bunk. The weaker side really was unable to go guerrilla.

Mao’s guerrilla warfare consisted of raiding China from across a border behind the protection of Soviet troops. The terrorists are heading to the Turkish border to repeat this form of guerrilla warfare.

Syria simply has no problem with terrorism in the sense of Somali guy attends college, gets training that white people are microagressing against him, then runs amuck killing white people at the college, then the college apologizes to Islam and the Somali community and gives white people further training in refraining from microagressing. The only terrorism problem in Syria is shells, mortars, and rockets raining down on civilians from terrorist controlled territories, and they have just cleaned up the last terrorist controlled area in or near a big city, after the style of the siege of Grozny.

If Syrians do not have to put up with fourth generation warfare style terrorism, then we do not have to put up with terrorism, with fourth generation warfare, either.

You kill Somali guy. Then you put everyone who encouraged or enabled Somali guy in the gulag. And you don’t let them out until many years have passed since the last terrorist act. You level his mosque and his college, then you put all the instigators at college and mosque in the Gulag, and you make sure no one associated with his mosque or his college ever gets a job preaching or teaching ever again. That is how you do it. And you keep an eye out for anyone who sounds like those who instigated Somali guy. Oh, and you deport everyone who looks like Somali guy. But deportation is only half the answer since those who enabled and encouraged Somali guy’s terrorism were generally white.

The US is theoretically aiding the “Moderate Muslims”, the free Syrian Army, the FSA, which theoretically controls a small and rapidly shrinking patch of Aleppo.

In actual practice, those that control Aleppo will murder any male non sunni Muslim on sight, regardless of age, which makes them less moderate than Islamic State. The US is, as Putin observes, aiding terrorists.

Stuart Ramsay was in Aleppo when those moderate Muslims of the Arab Spring, the movement to make the middle east democratic and progressive, took control, and was there when they almost immediately lost control. It seems that the FSA only existed for a few weeks or months, with rank and file FSA fighters swiftly going over to those fighting holy war for race and religion, and the FSA leadership mysteriously vanishing.

In retrospect it is clear that the Arab Spring was an act of aggression by the Cathedral against middle eastern regimes, no doubt genuinely inspired by the most noble sentiments, but entirely without real local roots.

The “moderates” were, it is now apparent, rootless cosmopolitans who identified ideologically and politically with the “ïnternational community” and expected to get quasi governmental jobs, for example NGO jobs, media jobs, academic jobs, and so forth, provided by the international community, in international places.

Ramsay reports that the FSA made no real effort to set up a governing structure in the areas they controlled, unlike the various groups waging tribal and holy war against various other Syrians minutely different from themselves. This is the typical problem with quislings. They don’t really care because they expect their foreign masters to do the heavy lifting. If they do nothing, maybe their foreign masters will pick up the slack, if they do something, their foreign masters will capture most of the benefit. And if everything goes bad, they expect to be working for an NGO some place else.

The FSA, like the rest of the Arab Springers, were rootless cosmopolitans who acted the way quislings serving a foreign master typically act. And now they are all dead or fled, mostly fled. And they fled four years ago, and are now doing international community jobs like section eighting refugees into your suburb.

Rebel held Aleppo is currently entirely surrounded, and is about fourteen kilometers by four kilometers, meaning every inch of it is within mortar range of Assad’s troops.  It will fall shortly unless there is a rescue mission from outside to relieve the siege.  There have been rescue missions before, each of which ever more blatantly involves some new foreign power directly intervening in Syria ever more directly against the legitimate Syrian government.  There may well be rescue missions again, but right now Aleppo is falling.

There is nothing wrong with Assad by middle eastern standards.  In Assad controlled regions people of all religions and ethnicities are free to go about their business, whereas all the rebels except the Kurds want to kill or exile every religion and every ethnicity different from their own.  (The Kurds just want to partition the Kurdish regions off into Kurdistan)

The problem with Assad is that during Arab Spring, the US, aka “the international community” capriciously and whimsically decided he should fall, and he did not fall, which is a slap in the face to “the international community”.

If regimes deemed problematic by “the international community” always fall, then it is a self fulfilling prophecy.  If people believe a regime will fall, it will fall.  So if Assad does not fall, then other regimes could potentially get away with being deemed problematic by “the international community”.  This is Russia’s objective – to deny “the international community” the power and authority to overthrow any regime that displeases it.   Russia does not really give a damn about Syria in particular. While “the international community” weeps sad salty tears telling us what a horrid person Assad is for fighting back against people who want to kill him, kill every member of his family, and kill every member of his race and religion, and tells us that because of this horrid crime, it is utterly unacceptable that Assad continues to rule, Russia tells us they want to set a precedent, and Syria just happens to be the place to set it.  The precedent that Russia wants to set is that legitimate regimes should not be overthrown by external forces.

And in fact, since Syria became a problem, the “international community” has quietly stopped deeming regimes problematic.  Which is likely to lead to more and more regimes becoming problematic.  That Assad remains has already led to a domino effect, and should Aleppo fall and “international community” give up, there will be a lot bigger domino effect.

If Aleppo falls, then Assad controls all the significant urban areas of Syria, in which case it is kind of obvious that “the international community” has been defeated and should just give up.  It could escalate the war by putting US soldiers on the ground, but this would undermine the pretense that the “the international community” is just the spontaneous outrage of all right thinking people, and make it look too much like the US empire.  Also putting US soldiers on the ground would be war with Russia.

Of course everyone except “the international community” knows that “the international community” is just the US empire, but the US empire does not want to know it.

Whereas Islam can coexist with Christianity by making Christians second class citizens, Liberalism cannot coexist with Christianity.  Christians must cheer at gay weddings, demonize fathers, and enthusiastically celebrate single mums. The existence of Christianity anywhere in the world is an intolerable threat and insult to liberalism.  In Russia, the Russian orthodox are allowed to be Russian orthodox, which generates ever increasing outrage and aggressive war talk among liberals.   We are moving towards internal civil war, or external nuclear war, and it is hard to say which will come first, though I expect civil war.

In war, the stronger party prevails.

Asymmetric warfare only works when the weaker party has political protection.  Perhaps like the Taliban, the weaker party is fighting soldiers required to operate as heavily armed nursemaids.  Perhaps like Mao after the long march or the communists in Greece, the weaker party is launching raids from across a border that the stronger party is reluctant to cross.

The usual scenario where asymmetric warfare works is that the State Department fears the Pentagon more than it fears America’s enemies, and requires US troops to operate by police rules, while those the Pentagon is fighting operate by the laws of war.

When Russia intervened in Syria to rescue their ally and preserve their Mediterranean base, the usual suspects, in particular President Obama announced Russia was getting into a quagmire.  Instead Russia has, as I predicted, been decisively and thoroughly winning, largely through shelling, bombing, blockade, and siege – slow but thorough tactics that deny the weaker party any opportunity to do even a small amount of damage to the stronger.  Less sweat that way than taking strong places by storm.

The Turkish controlled parts of Aleppo and west of Aleppo have now been cut off from Turkey, and are now already conserving food and ammunition.  Short of an open land and air intervention by Turkey, short of open non proxy war between Russia and Turkey, will wither on the vine and fall in a few months.

Russia is also bombing the hell out of Islamic State’s Turkish supply lines, but has as yet made no attempt to cut them off on the ground.  Once Aleppo falls to siege, will probably turn its attention to laying siege to Islamic State.

The current peace talks illustrates asymmetric warfare in a nutshell:  The weaker losing side rather than the stronger winning side is laying down preconditions and making demands, the primary demand being that Russia stop advancing.   In other words, they are asking the State Department to stop the Russians from winning in the same way the State Department has so regularly stopped the Pentagon from winning. The State Department indignantly blames Russia for the failure of the peace talks, which supposedly failed because the weaker side is getting hammered so hard and is suffering so badly.

Russia informed the US approximately when and where Russia would be bombing terrorists, as part of their agreement to avoid incidents over Syria that might lead to World War III.

According to Russia’s account, shortly before the pre-announced Russian bombing near the border, Turkey put up two F16s which loitered near the border, awaiting the bombing run near the border. When the bombing began, one of the Turkish F16s crossed into Syrian territory and ambushed a Russian bomber – direct conflict between Russian armed forces and Turkish armed forces without the fig leaf of a proxy, an attack conducted outside Turkish territory.

How do we know the Russian account is true and the Turkish account is false?

We know it is true because the Turkish media got a professionally edited video of the jet coming down faster than the Russians got their rescue mission – which means the Turkish media and Turkish forces on the ground inside Syria knew what was coming, while the Russians did not know what was coming. Therefore this attack was undertaken in response to notification that the Russians would be bombing Turks inside Syria near the border, therefore not undertaken in response to a bomber straying over the border. Note also that Obama’s speech was all about Russia bombing the good terrorists instead of the bad terrorists, not about the supposed border crossing.

Therefore official NATO forces have already attacked official Russian forces in Syria without the fig leaf of proxies. Therefore B already owes me a bottle of Ardbeg.

Where you have a substantial Islamic minority, the only stable solution is for Islam to rule or to be violently and brutally crushed. Nothing in between works, despite over a thousand years of governments, peoples, cultures, and religions trying to find something in between, and endlessly failing. Where you have several different substantial Islamic factions in a single country, the only solution is a brutal dictatorship to keep the Islamics in line. That, or genocide. It is the nature of Islam to make war till it conquers or is very thoroughly conquered. Very thoroughly conquered.

Aleppo is about to fall. The fall of Aleppo will be the defeat of the “moderate” (“Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave”) opposition.

The difference between the “moderate” opposition and Islamic State is not their position on Christians and Alawites. They both intend to kill every Alawite everywhere. It is their position on the royal families of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The “moderate” opposition supports and is supported by royalty. Islamic State is republican and intends to overthrow the royal families. Thus the defeat of the “moderates” is likely to cut off royal aid for the overthrow of Alawite rule in Syria.

The “moderates” are at present transferring large amounts of American and Saudi military aid to Islamic State, with a wink and a nod from the State Department, making the war in Syria a major profit center for Islamic State. With the defeat of the “moderates” Syria becomes a cost sink, so Islamic State (which needs to make war pay) will retreat, likely under cover of some face saving formula that pretends Islamic state is not defeated, pretends that Sunnis are not being ruled by Alawites, and pretends the State Department has not suffered a humiliating defeat.

The Pentagon, the red empire, the empire of the bases, supports the royal families of the Middle East. The State Department, the blue state, the empire of the consulates, opposes the royal families of the Middle East.

Putin will be reluctant to humiliate America by rubbing it in the way America was humiliated in Vietnam, since that is likely to destabilize the world, and will therefore try to maintain some pretense of Sunni autonomy. On the other hand, the American government is getting aggro, responding to its defeat in Syria by pushing for war with China, much as Hitler, when up to his neck in alligators, declared war on America.

Thus while Putin would likely favor some compromise that allows the State Department to save face by pretending it is still destabilizing Syria, the US, to judge by its behavior towards China, is not in the mood for saving face, but rather, believing that history is on its side, wants victory and to be seen to be victorious, where victory means at minimum maintaining Syria a chaotic bloody hell hole, with the final objective of expelling the Christian minority and exterminating the Alawite minority, thus making possible a “Democratic” Syria. Democracy requires a Syria with a single religion, Sunni, and a single ethnicity, Arab, and the State Department has repeatedly demonstrated that it so loves democracy that it is willing for other people to pay the price.

There is a significant risk that the State Department will regard peace, stability, and order in Syria as an intolerable affront, and will do something drastic to ensure that history proceeds as it is supposed to.

The American government is now spiritually in the same position as the Soviet government used to be. It believes it is destined to rule the world, being the voice of truth, light, and history, while it buggers its economy and its technology stagnates, undermining its power to rule the world.