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Syria – Another Short Note On The Recent Developments
After the confusion caused by the sudden stand down of Russian forces in Syria and the following Turkish drone attacks everything seems to be back to normal.
Russian planes are again bombing Jihadis and Turkey has been told by Russia that none of its planes or drones will be safe within Syria's sky.
The Pentagon announced that it will not provide air support to Turkey. It will also not send any Patriot air defense to Syria but President Trump promised to ask other NATO countries to do so. They are likely to deny the request. It seems that Pentagon has won the fight with the State Department which supported the Turkish push for protection.
The Turkish president Erdogan said that Turkey has no "particular problem" with Russian and Iran aligned forces in Idleb. This comes after Iran and Hizbullah had warned that Turkish troops in their now surrounded 'observation posts' would be easy targets. The Turkish units which have invaded Idleb were quiet today.
Source: Peto Lucem – bigger
The Syrian army has again regained the areas that were lost during the last week. The city of Saraqib is again liberated. Russia let it be known that its military police will take care of security in the city. This means that it is off limits for another Turkish Jihadi attack. The M5 highway can now be reopened and will be secure.
There is another large supply operation from Russia underway. During the last three days two Russian landing ships, which usually carry heavy weapons like tanks, passed through the Bosporus on their way to Syria. Eight Ilyushin Il-76 strategic airlifters landed at Hmeymim, Latakia during the past three days. These likely carry additional air defense systems or additional fighter planes.
The resupply should silence any talk that Russia has given up on Syria.
Erdogan wants Idleb but neither Syria nor Iran nor Russia will let him have it. President Putin will meet Erdogan during the commong days and will make sure that the point is understood.
It is so easy for any of us to sit back and praise the Russian actions as being sensible hardheaded realpolitick but imagine for a moment you are a Syrian bloke of the same ‘baby boomer’ generation as many of us are (albeit of the whitefella variety) and your son or grandson was butchered by the Turks when russian prez Putin decided to put the Russian cue in the rack for a couple of days so as not to further endanger Russo-Turk commercial dealings. You would be ropeable and have every right to be, the notion of only being half in on a conflict is ludicrous and almost always leads to the type of chaotic butchery that occurred this weekend past.
I’m going to use as an example, parts 1 & 2 of the 20th century great european war to illustrate this point.
During the first part, the majority of the action was shared between the England empire & the France empire as they fought Germany & the Austro-Hungarian empire. France was the chief operating territory although Belgium also featured many of the 14-18 killing fields and was the excuse for england entering, Belgium wasn’t included in much of the decision making. France was deemed to be the primary protagonist on the ‘allies’ side and throughout the war the ultimate leader and chief decision maker was always a French general, initially General J Joffre, who led the regroup of the allied forces at the Marne river in 1914 which caused the first defeat of the German army in a century.
Even though Joffre was foolishly promoted out of his command in 1916 following the debacle at Verdun (the forts system had been stripped of all heavy cannon and only left with a contingent of old men by pen pushers and bean counters eager to save money on the arming of the ‘more modern’ Western Front’s trench system plus the French military old boys network who resented Joffre being made commander in 1911 when he wasn’t even a graduate of the French war college, just a provincial engineering school) and the British defeat at the Somme, ultimate leadership of the allies always remained with a Frenchman. The amerikans jacked up about that and this was largely the root cause of amerika failing to get boots on the ground until March 1917.
The allies took years to understand how to wage trench war and lost millions of men gaining that lesson but their actions were properly deliberated and co-ordinated, essentials missing following the armistice, when A Hitler played france and england off to make the territorial, strategic & resource gains at a time when Germany couldn’t possibly have succeeded in a full on conflict.
Then, when WW2 kicked off properly, the lack of co-ordination between france & england, guaranteed that a success such as the Marne 1914 could not be repeated, caused the french army to be routed and the englanders to end up in Dunkirk at the mercy of Goering’s Luftwaffe and only saved by A Hitler’s moronic belief that as fellow aryans, england would eventually side with the nazis.
All through WW2 – especially once Roosevelt had manouvered amerika into that blue, and insisted Eisenhower be big bossfella, ratshit coordination between the allies caused increased casualties and big screw ups as england & amerika competed rather than co-operated.
The most obvious and long-running example of that was the difference in tactics between englander bombers & amerikan bombers.
The englanders who had been developing bomber tech since the conflict kicked off believed in high altitude night raids where technological evolution would give them the edge, which it eventually did.
Meanwhile the amerikan bomber command led by Lemay went for low altitude daylight ‘carpet bombing’ raids, which hugely increased the number of civilian casualties (French & Italian as well as German).
Lemay’s strategy where his aircraft were treated as disposable (keeps Detroit in business) led to thousands of unneccessary amerikan aircrew deaths.
As you can see here if you scroll to the bottom of the page,
“The casualties suffered by the Eighth Air Force were about half of the U.S. Army Air Force’s casualties (47,483 out of 115,332), including more than 26,000 dead.”
The eighth airforce was amerikan bomber command in the ‘european theater’.
As many will know this was what got Yossarian so het up in “Catch-22”.
The englanders, who like present day Syrians compared to Russia, were the under-resourced ‘poor relation’ compared to Amerika, evolved far more efficient ways of attacking enemy resource and transportation facilities well before the euro war ended and before Lemay was sent to do the same to ‘the japs’. A combination of radar pathfinders (usually plywood mosquito fighter bombers that was ‘stealth’ 1942) plus innovative bombsight development meant that the englander airforce could achieve better results from altitude at night than the amerikans were getting with their low altitude daylight raids. Far fewer aircrew casualties and much less collateral damage.
Ideas were not being exchanged because A) amerika retained supreme command over a region where they had SFA skin in the game & B) aside from the initial Normandy landings, inter force communication & co-ordination was poor.
It could even be argued that perhaps USuk would have been first to Berlin if the englander scuzzbag Montgomery and amerikan wannabe politician Eisenhower had co-operated rather than competed against each other.
It has been Russia’s nonchalant refusal to go all in, balls to the wall that has made this conflict so drawn out.
IMO the supreme military leader should always be from the region that is being fought over as not only to they have the biggest interest in the result, that nation will always have the best human intelligence and knowledge of prevailing conditions.
Right now, it must seem to the average Syrian in the street, that Russia is playing silly buggers sacrificing long term gains (victory) for dubious short term advantage (swapping cheap hotel rooms for cheap tomatoes).
And that will make Russia’s position in Syria after victory has been achieved, a lot less tenable than it need be.
Posted by: A User | Mar 3 2020 2:55 utc | 66
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