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Bulletins and News Discussion from December 9th to December 15th, 2024 - Assad Must Go

Image is of Assad and his family.


After less than two weeks of retreating with few shots fired and little resistance, the SAA has retreated into, well, a state of non-existence. This thereby ends a conflict that has been simmering for over a decade. With the end of this conflict, another begins: the carving up of what used to be Syria between Israel and Turkey, with perhaps the odd Syrian faction getting a rump state here and there. Both Israel and Turkey have begun military operations, with Israel working on expanding their territory in Syria and bombing military bases to ensure as little resistance as possible.

Israeli success in Syria is interesting to contrast against their failures in Gaza and Lebanon. A short time ago, Israel failed to make significant territorial progress in Lebanon due to Hezbollah's resistance despite the heavy hits they had recently taken, and was forced into a ceasefire with little to show for the manpower and equipment lost and the settlers displaced. The war with Lebanon was fast, but still slow enough to allow a degree of analysis and prediction. In contrast, the sheer speed of Syria's collapse has made analysis near-impossible beyond obvious statements like "this is bad" and "Assad is fucking up"; by the time a major Syrian city had fallen, you barely had time to digest the implications before the next one was under threat.

There is still too much that we don't know about the potential responses (and non-responses) of other countries in the region - Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and Russia, for example. I think that this week and the next will see a lot of statements made by various parties and an elucidation of how the conflict will progress. The only thing that seems clear is that we are in the next stage of the conflict, and perhaps have been, in retrospect, since Nasrallah's assassination. This stage has been and will be far more chaotic as the damage to Israel compounds and they are willing to take greater and greater risks to stay in power. It will also involve Israel causing destruction all throughout the region, rather than mostly localizing it in Gaza and southern Lebanon. Successful gambles like with Syria may or may not outweigh the unsuccessful ones like with Lebanon. This is a similar road to the one apartheid South Africa took, but there are also too many differences to say if the destination will be the same.

What is certain is that Assad's time in power can be summarized as a failure, both to be an effective leader and to create positive economic conditions. His policies were actively harmful to internal stability for no real payoff and by the end, all goodwill had been fully depleted. By the end, the SAA did not fight back; not because of some wunderwaffen on the side of HST, but because there was nothing to fight for, and internal cohesion rapidly disintegrated.


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  • cuck n chad ranking: 14 years of Syrian meltdown

    Note: temporary removal of the first RUS vs UKR row, this edition is fully dedicated to Syria and related conflicts

    GigachadChadNeutralBeta (Fe)MaleVirgin Cuck
    Abu Mohammed Al Jolani (bro started last week with a little zone in Idlib and ended this week as conqueror of Damascus)SDF (what started as a little militia to control some Kurdish neighborhoods runs more than a third of Syria today)Bashar Al Assad (the lion himself, strong independent dictator who dazzled us for years, but one day the lion couldn't do it anymore, so it was over)Iraqi Shia militia guys (spent years dying for Assad, went home to chill as the war calmed down, suddenly their life's work is gone)Syrian statue quality (Saddam's statues in Baghdad needed tanks and advanced rope to be pulled down, one guy that has gone to gym once can break a Hafez statue in two, very low quality work)
    Hezbollah (this collapse proved that were truly the backbone of all resistance in the region, everything is gone without them)Suheil Al Hassan (his Tiger forces leave the war as undefeated in actual combat, he deserves his gay harem)Iran and Russia (they deserve credit for somehow keeping a deeply unpopular regime alive for years, in the end they can't force the SAA to fight if they don't want to)Saudi Arabia (supported the rebels until they lost, then supported Assad until he lost, you're fucked if the Saudis are on your side)ISIS and Baghdadi (if Jolani gets gigachad for his powerful end to the race, then ISIS get virgin cuck for going on a generational run for like two years before getting destroyed)
    The people of Syria (endured absolute hell for years, with millions leaving and hundreds of thousands dead)Erdogan (I hate that this watermelon seller gets so many Ws in life, but I can't deny that he masterfully executed his role in this war)Iraq (suffered the worst ISIS spillover, the country almost collapsed because of it, but it came out as a mature leadership in the region)the World collectively (it never needed to be a massive war, everyone from the US to Russia to the Arab World are responsible for ruining a beautiful country)The people of Syria (14 years of pain, half of the population is gone, for what in the end, getting duped into accepting israeli control of the south and americans stealing oil in the east and jihadists in the capital)
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