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In Syria, where the death toll in the Arab uprising has reached beyond 7,500, security forces are mounting what appears to be a final assault on the city of Homs, the spiritual center of the uprising.
Syrian forces have launched a ground assault on opposition positions in the city of Homs, reports say, after nearly a month of artillery bombardment.
Security officials said the Baba Amr district would soon be “cleaned”, but reports say fighting is continuing.
Some lines of communication with Homs have now been restored but the scale of the operation remains unclear.
Over 100 died in shelling on Homs today, according to human rights groups, and the rebel fighters in the Baba Amr district have dwindled to about 400. At least three journalists continue to be trapped in Homs. A mass grave has also been found near Homs, with dozens of bodies.
The idea that it’s somehow surprising that the Syrian opposition has split, when under a constant barrage of murder and torture and arrest, makes no sense to me. Of course there’s a split in this time of total chaos and crisis.
The feckless United Nations, hemmed in by promised vetoes from Russia and China, will embark on a new resolution in the Security Council focused mostly on access to humanitarian aid.
That new Constitution in Syria, by the way, the one that allows for multi-party democracy, also allows President Bashar al-Assad to serve until 2028. And the slaughter continues, without much hope for a satisfactory resolution.
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This is slaughter pure and simple. The toothless United Nations can’t help. What is going to stop this tragedy?
The only thing that might stop this is providing the victims the means to shoot back.
I don’tthink anything is gonna stop this. The rebels don’ have enough support and Assad is a despipcable murderer with the military behind him.
I don’twant to sound like Archie Bunker but those Arabs have a really big problem with their leaders and their ability to govern themselves. Revolutions don;t seem to help either. They just get another despicable despot looting the country and killing off anybody who opposes him.
From the article: “…that new Constitution in Syria, by the way, the one that allows for multi-party democracy, also allows President Bashar al-Assad to serve until 2028″
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I’m sorry folks. Biut THAT was just plain stupid.
Syrians are not Arabs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_people
MIC/DHS watches this and other labs of democratic revolution in the ME, evaluates, and hones its 1% response plan to the Occupy spring season.
Six degrees of separation Assad – Obama
The Saudis and the Arab League are screaming for the U.S. and NATO to intervene or at least provide arms to the opposition (yeah, arming Bin Laden really worked out well for us). The Saudis need to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. After all, they have a fabulous air force equipped with really keen F-15s and F-16s flown by U.S. trained pilots and serviced by U.S. trained crews. They are in the neighborhood, and should be able to handle this, but they like to leave the hard and dirty work to their guestworker Filipinos and Bangladeshis (or whatever folks from Bangladesh are called), and they haven’t been trained to fly the jets yet.
Syria is Libya 2.0. Western governments (U.S, Israel, Britain, France) have been arming and backing rebel forces, the same rebel forces that have been attacking civilians. The heavy-handed Syrian gov’t response is due to western agitation, but the media echo chamber on syrian regime change continues, despite being discredited many times.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2012/02/lying-with-pictures.html
“There is so far no proof that any artillery has been deployed at all though it is known that mortars have been used by the rebel side. The State Department obviously knows what the pictures really show but is trying to use the lie of artillery deployment against the rebels as a pressure argument for military intervention.”
Where was the U.N. and the international community when the U.S. was slaughtering the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Oh wait….
By final assault, do you mean there is a convoy of salt trucks? Is Assad going all Guernica on Homs, or is that just MSM hyperbole?
Those permanent Security Council members do tip the balance. Oh wait,…that was only the first resolution.
What those “Arabs” have historically had a really big problem with is colonialism, which accounts for a great deal of their current “leadership” issues. If countries like Syria have “despicable despot[s] looting the country and killing off anybody who opposes him,” perhaps the most accurate thing one could say, unless context and history are to be dispensed with, is that they have learned well from their imperial masters.
To innoculate oneself from such Bunkerisms, Fromkin’s “A Peace to End All Peace” and Said’s “Orientalism” are good places to start.
Absolutely,
Since when, has the Empire’s War on Terror been about “humanitarian” goals for the world? Bullshit.
It’s on to Iran from here, and according to Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs) this will spread to Russia as proposed in a forthcoming study “Putin Again, Implications for Russia and the West,” and our Likudnik, John McCain has warned China “The Arab Spring is coming to Beijing.”
There is no love for Syria, it’s just a pawn in the game.
They are doing their usual Orwellian work. “Humanitarian Intervention” means “War and De-stabilization.”
Look how well things have gone for the Libyans once the “humanitarians” took care of them.