This is just like the opening to Sum of All Fears.

I hope it's LA or SF instead of Boston.

And you should change your avatar back. This one's cool but I liked the old one better.

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You two start your own thread. That is unrelated and getting personal. YOU WILL BE BANNED IF THIS KEEPS ESCALATING.

I bet Obama's CIA or Iranian SF killed the crew and launched the missile.

Just saying.

So what does it all mean? Another bout of skirmishes or do we here in the U.S. Wake up to an initiated Samson option? Thus a different world later on in the AM....  We live in such interesting times.... All will probably quite before next escalation or maybe not...

Well,  We wouldn't lose any valuable insight by seeing you get a timeout either.

Op Should rename this thread something like Blands bland opinion on everything and start a new thread.  But I am sure you would help to screw that thread up too.

Didn't you ever play football? It's the guy that swings *second* that gets the penalty

@IsraelBreaking is a fairly fast-moving feed, FYI to all.

This was an interesting thread before the teener purse fight.

Yep.

Honestly, I hope its nothing, not even LA or SF.

Israel blows up some Syrians, Syria blows up some Israelis, and we and Russia just chill and let them go at each other, like they have for... 7 thousand odd years. Same Song, different verse.

pit thread

Syria has been in this position before, getting hit with Israeli airstrikes. Hezbollah and IRGC too. So i doubt they'll lose too much sleep. Likely like attacking the Kurds/USSOCOM the other night, they're testing the waters, seeing how far they can go.

Israel intercepts Iranian drone, an IAF F-16 is hit while striking Iranian target in Syria. Pilots eject safely

1973 War? Can't remember shitty movie but book starts out with lost bomb from Yom Kippur and i thought Denver got nuked.

But Israel has bombed Syria a shit load of times over the years, this is not really big news. Neither had a strategic play they can use to win anything decisive, they'll all have to disengage quickly lest it spins out of control and actually turns into something bad.

I'm not expecting WWIII by the A.M. but Israel is pissed, as they should be and will retaliate with even more aggression, as they should. Things could escalate with time, or things could end up with outside talking head influences de-escalating the situation with what-if's, this is why's, and here's why you can'ts. Just too early to say

Denver in the book, Baltimore in the shitty movie.

None of this is strategic in nature. IRGC/Hez got caught spying on IDF in Golan Heights with a drone, which they shot down. They'd warned them before, so retaliation was to destroy the controlling station. But they lost one bird on the attack. So it appears they retaliated against that too.

IDFAF has giant list of target packets to hit as they see fit. Times like this, they pick one, give brevity code to subordinate unit who already has attack aircraft in standby with live ordnance, they're wheels up in minutes, over target site very quickly.

Syrians know the more they fight back, the worse they will get it.

Assad being an Arab Nazi has absolutely nothing to do with the US and Russian presence in Syria. We'd be cool with Hitler himself running things in Syria, as long as he had our back on the Petrodollar, gas pipelines, oil, KSA, and overall strategy in the region. The rebellion may have been brewing, but the reason shit kicked off was because Hillary and Obama targeted him for regime change. Google and Al Jazeera were accomplices.

This is my problem and questions that led to a certain someone losing his mind.

Why does Israel have a right to unilaterally strike another sovereign nation?

Why do they expect not to be shot at when doing that?

Why do Americans care when they are?

Israel Breaking (@IsraelBreaking)
BREAKING: Israel conducts broad assault on targets in Syria targeting a total of 12 sites, including 3 Iranian targets in the past few moments.

Twitter

Interesting. Says drone control site attacked was in Palmyra. People in Damascus reporting explosions, that's nowhere near Palmyra. So two separate IDFAF air attacks into Syria, minimum.

It was not a unilateral strike. And they've been in a state of war with each other since 1973

They do expect to be shot at, which is why they fly F-16s and not Cessnas.

Cause it's the internet and everyone cares about everything on the internet.

Remember, over the last week WW3 has started about 3 times according to GD. Doesn't mean it actually did.

Well we knew that they would take the loss of aircraft at all. I didn't think they would be so fast at it.

I'm honestly going to go pop some popcorn.

Indeed, all while they never actually use their air defense systems in full capacity and but for token action takes the hits and does nothing, this odd flutter is a tactical escalation that feels more like the imitation of probing each other's readiness and capacity to escalate... Syria knows what's capable of coming down on them... And this time they acted with more force than previous incidents... We shall see...

this is interesting.

Rights don't come into play here. There is no world-wide Bill of Rights of country on country strikes. What gave Japan the right to attack us?

They don't expect not to be shot at. Israeli's are not the least bit stupid. Why do Americans care? Israel is our ally and American patriots have their friends/allies backs. And if that's how you feel, why do you care what we think? Why do you care about any of it if it doesn't affect you?

I have that book around here somewhere, I believe it was a Clancy book, silver cover, damned if I can remember the name of it.

The point if Arab Nazi comment was for someone else who didn't understand Arab history, Syrian history. Suggesting that Assad was the right man for the job,  AFTER a massive rebellion started is like saying nobody can run a business like Ken Lay, after Enron collapses. Assad leadership and the bullshit that was Ba'ath Party caused this war. Not Russia, not US.

Syrians see themselves first and foremost as tribes. Americans see clean shaven Assad, hot wife, hear no hijab are mandatory, think he can be our semitic Pinochet. But Assad is Alawite, 12'er Shia, minority ethnic group. And hes a key leader of a tribe, and his govt is largely filled with members of that tribe and Alawites and some Christians who typically side with Shia over Sunni when ut comes to Syria (little guys stick together).

Ba'athist took control at a time many Arabs were eager to modernize, when the idea was that Islam and tribalism had held them back (sound familiar). A mix of nationalism, socialism, Arab centric mania, racism, lwd to a movement that unified Syria. Then Assad's dad, an Air Force colonel and Ba'athist from very politically connected family because grandpa, just took over. It worked because he was modernizing things and he wasn't being stupid at first and oppressing the majority population,  the ones not exactly known as being peaceful. By the end though, the truth was apparent. No Pan Arab unity, they were in it for power, money and to enrich those they cared about in their family, tribe, ans Alawites, with middle finger to Sunni Arabs.

At the same time, globally since 90s there has been a major Sunni Islamist religious revival, as many discard "western" concepts like democracy and Ba'athism to fall back on traditional Islamic culture and govt (same). Assad did nothing but dumb fuck things dealing with this. This war would likely have kicked off last decade of not for Iraqi War, when most fervent and extreme Syrians went to Iraq for jihad.

Arab Spring kicked off, which like the Baltimore Riots was purely people flipping out by calls for mass protests on social media, and thanks to many Syrians having phones and internet, small protests over corruption and basic rights, simple shit, spun out of control when Assad's secret police start blatantly snatching people, then his security forces shot up a few major protests. At that point rioting turned into most of the Syrian Arab Army deserting, looting their armories, and that kicked off the violence. We talk about the SAA now but its the new one. The original one was made up mostly of Sunni Arabs who deserted to become insurgents in various groups, factions. The faction lesders were generally former senior officers in the SAA.

While that was happening Hillary was busy in Libya working to overthrow Gsddafi which took longer than she hoped, which is why we ended up militarily intervening. I don't want to get into the Why's for Libya and Syria, I just want to establish a timeline. Gaddafi was dead by October 2011. Syrian armed uprising kicked off four months earlier in July. US support to Syrian FSA started after Libya, with arms bought from Libyan rebels and then shipped to Syria, through Turkey. By the time this happened, it was late winter spring of 2012 and the rebels had gone from a Phase 1 insurgency to strong phase 2. When Libyan weapons for there, including heavy weapons, plus ATGMs courtesy of CIA and Gulf States, that firmly turned the tide, turning Phase 2 insurgency into Phase 3, when they're strong enough to fight conventionally. From that point until Russia intervened, the FSA and other factions, mostly Islamists, looked like they were going to be able to drive into historically Alawite controlled areas, meaning Assad would fall.

As it is now, even with Iranian and Russian help, there is no way those regions that are mostly Sunni Arab will ever come back under the fold. Syria as a unified nation is gone, dead as disco.

The quagmire that is Syria is far more complex than most people realize unfortunately. Is Assad a good guy? No. That said, Syria was (prior to civil war) largely a secular nation where Christians/Muslims lived in relative peace by Middle East standards. It should be noted that the shit-show in Syria was started, IMO, because the Saudis and Qataris wanted to run a gas pipeline through there to Europe. Problem with that is, Russia is currently the largest supplier of natural gas to Europe, so they have a vested interest in not letting Syria fall for that alone; furthermore, Russia also has one of their only naval bases that isn't frozen most of the year there, again, another major reason they won't let Syria fall. Then there's the Shia aspect between Iran and Syria, as such, Iran is not going to let the single other shia majority country in world fall easily. Then there's the Israel aspect, where I'm sure they like to grab some of that land if Syria fell into failed state like Libya. Syria is not worth the money or the bloodshed for America, as the only people who would benefit would be the same entities who've benefited from every other intervention in the middle East.

The intervention I am thinking of comes from the sky and does not involve troops on the ground.

I can understand your argument that in terms of force in international relations there are no "rights", however, isn't it well established that the Japanese acted "wrongly" in doing so? I mean even aside from "Victors Justice"? Whats the difference here?

I disagree that Israel is our ally, but I'll set that aside.

As to how this affects me.

Well, seeing as how most are outraged by the Syrians defending their airspace from attack, and a segment of the populace demanding War with Assad even before this, I have an interest in seeing that their wishes are non fulfilled and war doesn't happen, or at least not a war between the US and Syria, or worse yet, Russia.

As I stated in another thread, the setup for this is eerily similar to WWI, with slight modification.

No country would tolerate another country invading their airspace and killing their soldiers defending said airspace.

You still forget to mention the military drone over Israel is what started it. If Syria don't want to get fucked up then keep their hardware out of Israel's space. Its a simple concept and dummy can understand.

Hey, I got no argument if you wanna go all the way down that road, but I ain't willing to fight Russia over it, if I catch your meaning.

You would be wrong!!!

Ok, but to go back to where we were beforehand:

When the US was overflying the USSR with U2s and SR71s, should the Russians have done the same thing the Israelis just did? Of course not, that would have led really bad places really quick.

Civilian airport reportedly resumes regular operation....

No country would tolerate a military drone in their airspace either. Syria is to blame for this one. I hope they pay.

They could have and they should have. The reason they didn't is because they knew it would result in extreme retaliation by the U.S. that would not end well for them. Syria gambled and they will lose. The Russians made a wise choice back then and decided not to gamble.

I suppose it's possible the series of events is out of order but I was under the impression this spat started from Iran/Syria sending their UAV into Israeli airspace, no?

Solid second post

So you blame the US when we overfly countries we don't have agreements with with military drones? I mean we even killed people doing that (Pakistan right?)

I mean we overflew the USSR for a couple decades with Military Aircraft right?

First and foremost, Islam sucks. Does anyone else question why the West is programmed to hate Syria/Iran, yet the likes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar seem to get a pass? Does anyone else find it odd that the majority of Islamic violence/female suppression/terrorism is exponentially carried out by radical Sunni muslims (Saudi Wahhabism), not Shia? Maybe it has something to do with the petrodollar? Again, not taking sides, as I think they all suck, but I think we need to look at the bigger picture.

Way to bury the lead.

WaPo material right there.

Hey come on man, what do you have against nuking Boston?

We really need to stop repeating this. Pan Arab unity = Ba'athist Arab nationalistic socialism = about 30 good years in Syria, 10 in Iraq before the majority populations getting fucked over by typical Arab tribal corruption caused nations to fracture. In Iraq, the Ba'athist controlling things were Sunni under Saddam, he fucked the Shia over bad enough that he essentially forever destroyed Iraq doing so much to try to keep them in check after. In Syria, once papa Assad took over the Ba'ath govt it became Alawite, specifically their tribe running it and being typical corrupt as fuck tribal dictator who managed to piss off his majority, who were Sunni Arabs.

Both Saddam and Assad courted religion nuts on their own side. When the Sunni revival started in the early 90s, Saddam started his Faith campaign, promoting religious piety, hajibs are back, religious schools catering to Wahhabists/Salafists spring up at Saddam University for Islamic Studies (alma matter of most of ISIS cadre). And Assad courted 12'er Shia nuts, like Hezbollah, Iran, Lebanon.

So stop with the secular crap already. Thats as true as suggesting a communist country is actually a worker's paradise. Its propaganda and bullshit.

That's my understanding.

Syria slipped a Iranian Drone into Israeli Airspace.

Israel saw it and shot it down.

Syria shot down a Apache, that shot down the drone (Maybe wrong here, Apache was in Lebanese Airspace)(this whole line is debatble).

Israel hit the Drone Launching Station with F-16s.

Syria shot down a F16 (presumably during the attack of said Station).

Israeli F16 crashed in Israel, all Pilots recovered.

ETA:

But even with that sequence of events, why launch the attack? This kinda stuff goes on constantly (back to my Cold War example).

Israel escalated.

At least we know the S400 works.