A post title on the extremely uninformed Informed Comment:
Syria Quagmire: Has Russia Accomplished anything in a year of Bombing?
I hear that just in the past 3 days there have been group fights between Germans and Syrian refugees in 3 German cities. Orban is being strengthened in Hungary, and the country’s referendum on refugees is making it clear how incapable the EU is to assert its will.
So yeah, Russia has accomplished an enormous lot by those bombings.
Clarissa's Blog 
Yes, alas. The Russian intervention that our feckless, AWOL Commander-in-Chief has allowed to happen — despite the strong warnings by his last two Secretaries of State that U.S. counter-action was needed — has secured Assad’s grip on power, and is rapidly turning Aleppo into rubble.
Hillary’s ONLY good quality is that she’s a reliable warmonger, but by the time she’s elected, it will be too late to undo much of the damage resulting from Obama’s disastrous “lead from behind” foreign-policy failures.
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“has secured Assad’s grip on power”
There was never a realistic option to topple him. An interesting article pointed out the sad truth: Unless the military abandons a dictator there’s no way to topple them apart from full out war with a united opposition.
In Syria the army hasn’t abandoned Assad and factions among the rebels hate each other as much or more than they hate Assad.
The whole Syrian adventure was a sad, doomed failure from day one. Like all neocon policy it creates failure, chaos and dysfunction. Clinton’s neocon connections are her biggest weak point.
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It was doomed by Obama’s gutless failure to adhere to his own red line. After Assad crossed that line with chemical weapons, we had the chance to ground the Syrian air force by cratering the country’s military runways, and then enforcing a no-fly zone. Hillary recommended that (and apparently so did Kerry, according to recent leaks from the staff of our totally humiliated current Secretary of State). Now Putin has rendered such “neocon policy” impossible.
Of course, that wouldn’t have toppled Assad — so what??? It would have stopped the barrel-bombing of Syrian civilians five years ago, and the Russians wouldn’t be in the Middle East.
If “chaos and dysfunction” are the order of the day — far better that the United States be overseeing that chaos, rather than abdicating the world stage to Putin.
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“Orban is being strengthened in Hungary, and the country’s referendum on refugees is making it clear how incapable the EU is to assert its will.”
This can only be put on Putin if you assume he created a flood of refugees from non-Syrian countries secure in the knowledge that Merkel and company would react to it in the most negative, incompetent and dangerous manner possible and that former Warsaw Pact countries would rebel.
Back in the summer of 2015 Orban was advocating for following exisiting international law and Merkel appointed herself Kaiserin of Europe’s borders. Orban was cast as evil incarnate but he was right. The after effects of Merkel’s folly just get worse every day. This is an own goal by the EU.
That Clinton has not disavowed Merkel does not speak well of her current knowledge or intentions regarding US (or any other) borders.
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After all the savage and draining years of becoming the (almost) perfect politician, totally devoid of any emotion or human feeling or principle other than the absolute will to win at all costs, Hillary never makes any statement that in her calculation won’t earn her more votes from one of her interest groups than it will cost her from another.
Thus, she can’t disavow Angela Merkel’s folly of allowing an overwhelming number of refugees into Germany (and trying to force the entire EU to to the same), because that would seem to be supportive of Donald Trump’s “ban the Muslims” xenophobia that has enraged the Democrats.
She can’t say a kind word for the hardships of the Palestinian children in Gaza, because that would imply sympathy for the terrorist butchers whose only goal is to slaughter every single Israeli Jew, one by one, until the Holy Land is Judenrein.
But she is beginning, ever so slightly, to separate herself from the disastrous international failures of the Obama administration by hinting that as Secretary of State she pressed for tougher policies in vain, and by suggesting, again ever so slightly, that her neocon policies as President will be much more RealPolitik.
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This has no connection to Putin or Syria (the entire post is informative about the country in question):
Для начала поздравлю всех с праздником, днем воссоединения и все такое. Ну и праздничная вишенка на торте – этим утром на парковке перед детским садиком в Бранденбурге 17-летний беженец из Гамбии зарезал насмерть 18-летнего беженца из Афганистана.
http://hryu.livejournal.com/188646.html
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Horrible, disgusting people in the comments to the link.
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\Horrible, disgusting people in the comments to the link.
I know. But it does not mean the post is unimportant.
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