Where's NATO? Putin, Assad win Syrian war

The Kurdish YPG still control a staggering 25% of Syria according to one recent report on RT news (here, here or here) and in their midst are US 'advisers' and military bases. Even if the United States' ISIS/Daesh footsoldiers have been militarily defeated elsewhere in Syria, how can we seriously expect that those United States forces, still remaining illegally in Syria, and their SDF/YPG vassals, won't use every possible opportunity in coming years to again sow chaos once they judge it politically expedient? Given that, by one estimate - possibly dated by now - that 400,00 Syrians, including 80,000 soldiers have been killed in the Syrian conflict of the last six and a half years is far more a tragedy, for the Syrian people and the rest of humanity, than a triumph. Only when those in the West, who have fomented this and other bloody conflicts, are held to account for their crimes and removed from office and prosecuted, can we be able to say that Syria has truly won this conflict.

From the PressTV article 400 US Marines to leave Syria after Raqqah operation: Coalition (1/12/17):

The US-led coalition, which has purportedly been fighting Daesh, says it is to pull more than 400 American Marines out of Syria, where they helped Kurdish militants capture the northern city of Raqqah from the Takfiri terror group.

"With the city liberated and ISIS (Daesh) on the run, the unit has been ordered home. Its replacements have been called off," the coalition said in a statement.

"We’re drawing down combat forces where it makes sense, but still continuing our efforts to help Syrian and Iraqi partners maintain security," Brigadier General Jonathan Braga, the director of operations for the coalition, said in the statement.

Last month, the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an anti-Damascus militant group backed by the United States, took control of Raqqah, which had served as Daesh’s main stronghold in Syria since 2014.

The Syrian government, however, rejected claims by the SDF and its foreign sponsors that Raqqah has been "liberated."

Information Minister Mohammad Ramez Tardjaman said in late October that no land is considered liberated in the country unless national army forces regain control of it and raise the Syrian flag atop its buildings.

The statement further said, "Our remaining forces will continue to work by, with, and through partner forces to defeat remaining ISIS, prevent a re-emergence of ISIS, and set conditions for international governments and NGOs to help local citizens recover from the horrors of ISIS' short-lived rule."

... Read more

From the start, the brutal barbaric crimes of ISIS/Daesh as well as being part of the United States' proxy war against the Syrian people, also served as a cover story to allow US forces to enter Syria, ostensibly to fight ISIS/Daesh, but, in reality, to help overthrow the popularly elected government of Syria which, unlike most other countries in the region, refused to become subservient to the US.

I posted the comment below to a discussion beneath the article Pentagon: US Forces To Stay In Syria “As Long As We Need To” (5/12/2017) | South Front.

Starlight, whilst I continue to be appalled by the scale of the overt and covert crimes of Israel against the Arab peoples and the rest of humanity, it is wrong to imply that every jewish person is complicit. I beleive that this sort of language only helps Israel and the United States' government.

President Vladimir Putin made Russia a sovereign country again after almost nine years of misrule by his drunken predecessor Boris Yeltsin. In Syria, Russian military intervention almost certainly saved the government of the popular and democratically elected Presdident Bashar al-Assad which was facing an invasion by hordes of terrorst mercenaries from all corners of the world.

President Putin should rightly be viewed alogside the likes of United States' Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and John F Kennedy and President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt.

Nevertheless, I think President Putin has shown surprisingly poor judgement in a number of critical conflicts. Even the Syrian conflict has been dragged out needlessly because of Putin's wish to reach a compromise with some of the 'rebels', instead of acting in concert with Syria, Iran and Hezbollah to finish off the terrorists altogether. (How many of the estimated 400,000 dead Syrians, including 80,000 soldiers, would be still be alive today had President Putin acted more decisively?)

Whilst Vladimir Putin was off attending the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics from 7 to 23 Feb 2014, the CIA and their local neo-Nazi Svoboda footsoldiers overthrew the democratically elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych. Had Russian government acted more proactively, I beleive there is a good chance that the coup could have been prevented. Unless this coup is reversed, how is NATO to be prevented from eventually placing conventional weapons and even nuclear weapons right on Russia's border?

President Putin's bizarre reconcilatory tone towards the American hegemonists is reflected in much of the reporting and discussion on its RT news service, which is surprisingly tame, given the scale of the criminality of the American government in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine and elsewhere. At least tens of thousands have died in each of these conflicts and the total number of dead is several millions. Why should the tone of RT be any less strident in its presentation of the truth than that of the lying corporate newmedia?

Nowithstanding this critique of RT, RT's Crosstalk discussion "Distrusting the News" (6/12/2017, 27:13 minutes) at https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/412064-media-journalistic-standards-deal/ is well worth a watch.