Russia Derangement Syndrome: Syria Edition. By David Archibald, who doesn’t have enough enemies so here he puts the boot into the CIA.

That spark [in 2011] set off the Arab Spring.

A number of Arab regimes changed; some remained resilient. That wasn’t good enough for David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy, the then leaders of the UK and France respectively. Their armed forces starting bombing the Libyans loyal to Colonel Gaddafi, which is a pity because Colonel Gaddafi had got religion from the 2003 invasion of Iraq. That invasion didn’t find the nuclear weapons program that was promised but Colonel Gaddafi closed down his nuclear weapons program that nobody had been aware of. The lesson that the world’s dictators learnt from the Cameron and Sarkozy adventure is that you don’t give up your nuclear weapons, so the effect of the Iraq invasion was completely undone. …

It is wrong to thing of people in the Middle East as either good or bad — the correct categories are bad, worse, and yet worse. ISIS was the worst of the worst. Assad is following in the footsteps of his father, trying to hold the country together as best he can. In fact the current death and destruction in Syria had a prequel in 1982 when the Muslim Brotherhood tried to take over the city of Hama. Assad’s father ordered the destruction of the city by artillery fire. The death toll from that was estimated to be in the range of 10,000 to 40,000. The Saudis have been doing similar to some Shia-dominated towns in Saudi Arabia in the last year, but nobody is concerned about that.

It is morally wrong to attempt to depose Assad because what would replace him would be worse — it would be head-choppers. And it would really be a case of women and minorities being the worst affected …

The CIA thinks that in attacking Assad they could defeat Russia by proxy, because Russia had decided in 2015 to be loyal to a long term client. The CIA, in Syria, has been fighting a war that was won 28 years ago when the Soviet Union fell apart. The CIA’s mindless battle with its own demons has prolonged the Syrian conflict and caused unnecessary death and destruction. Shame on the CIA!

Read it all.