Trying to unpick who is responsible for what in this conflict is a nightmare. There are certainly more than two ‘sides’ involved, with the rebels ranging, to begin with, all the way from ‘actually not that bad’ to ‘unspeakably savage IS extremists’. Assad, with Russian backing, started out by attempting to eliminate the reasonable end of the rebel spectrum (at which he has been pretty successful). So now the going’s getting tough and foreign opposition is mounting to his increasingly brutal ‘endgame’ tactics he can ask whether the foreigners really want to replace him with the remaining rebel psychopaths. Clearly the Russians don’t want to, and I reckon that if it came to it the Americans wouldn’t either.
Doesn’t help when the US approach to Islam is like Eurasia and Eastasia in 1984, swapping seamlessly from hating Shia when Iran is public enemy no 1 to Sunni now IS has that accolade while not acknowledging the change.
I think that Hezbollah (Shias) are supposed to be supporting the Assad government aren’t they ? The refugees who were killed were Shias, coming from government held towns which were being beseiged by the Sunni rebels. So I’d be a bit surprised if Hezbollah attacked them (unless they did it covertly with a view to blaming the other side). Or when you say ‘Hezbollah rebel faction’ do you mean a faction within Hezbollah which has rebelled against its own command (more-or-less Iran) ? Jeez, this is a mess.
With hindsight, aimlessly lobbing in 54 cruise missiles was perhaps not the most nuanced response last week although it played well on the US rolling news channels which, after all, is what really matters.
Apparently there’s a story going round, that the USA detonated the last missile test upon launch, and that they’ve got an inside track into their defence IT systems…
If that were true would it make sense to let them know ?
It weren’t true then you might be able to cause a good deal of mayhem by suggesting that it was. Brother Kim appears to believe that he’s surrounded by traitors and this might be quite a good way of getting him to use some of his better IT guys as anti-aircraft gun fodder.
If it were true then you’d probably keep quiet about it until the fireworks were set off in anger. Then you’d arrange for them all to crash in the suburbs of Pyongyang and you’d solve all your problems at a stroke (shame about the civilians though).
Of course the idea that US hackers could usefully penetrate a defence IT system in one of the most inaccessible countries on the planet is just laughable. Oh … hang on … Stuxnet - Wikipedia.
