{"id":9333,"date":"2011-11-20T15:11:35","date_gmt":"2011-11-20T21:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/?p=9333"},"modified":"2011-11-20T15:11:35","modified_gmt":"2011-11-20T21:11:35","slug":"syrian-revolt-gathering-steam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/?p=9333","title":{"rendered":"Syrian Revolt Gathering Steam"},"content":{"rendered":"

The rebels in Syria seem newly emboldened, as they just attacked the ruling Baath Party building in Damascus<\/a>. <\/p>\n

One estimate of the death toll since mid-March of 4,500 Syrains killed<\/a>, which strikes me as much too low. <\/p>\n

Barry Rubin says that Syria is no longer a revolution, it’s a civil war<\/a>. He also says that the newly formed Syrian National Council is dominated by Islamists. Lovely. Guess who the U.S. is backing?<\/p>\n

It is hard to overestimate how disastrous Obama Administration policy has been. Not only has it promoted an Islamist-dominated leadership (which might be pushed into power by monopolizing Western aid) but this mistake has fractured the opposition, ensuring there would be several anti-SNC groups. This strategy has also angered the Kurds and Turkmen minorities who view the SNC as antagonistic to their hopes for some autonomy. As a result, these two groups have reduced their revolutionary activities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rubin also recommends Syrian Revolution Digest<\/a> as a source to keep up with the latest developments. And here’s a news scroll<\/a> for events in Syria, courtesy of Lebanon’s NOW. <\/p>\n

How bad has it gotten for Assad? A pro-Syrian demonstration in Beruit only drew dozens<\/a> of supporters, where previously Assad count count on his (and Iran’s) puppets in Hezbollah to throng the streets with tens of thousands. Of course, Hezbollah and Amal are still in Assad’s corner<\/a>. I do wonder if Assad could start importing Hezbollah fighters wholesale, since his own army seems unable to contain the rebellion. I also wouldn’t put it past Iran to send combat troops on to prop him up, though that seems less likely. <\/p>\n

In the Weekly Standard<\/i>, Lee Smith goes so far as to state: “Bashar al-Assad is finished.”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The rebels in Syria seem newly emboldened, as they just attacked the ruling Baath Party building in Damascus. One estimate of the death toll since mid-March of 4,500 Syrains killed, which strikes me as much too low. Barry Rubin says that Syria is no longer a revolution, it’s a civil war. He also says that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":20,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,31,194],"tags":[1391,1392,1086,390,54,51,932,74,2874,64,537,1393,997],"class_list":["post-9333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foreign-policy","category-jihad","category-military","tag-amal","tag-barry-rubin","tag-bashar-assad","tag-hezbollah","tag-iran","tag-islamist","tag-lebanon","tag-middle-east","tag-military","tag-obama","tag-syria","tag-syrian-national-council","tag-unrest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9333"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9382,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9333\/revisions\/9382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}