i'm going to do a very quick write-up on the situation in syria because, once again, the strawmen and red herring are coming out. i keep asking you to look up what i've actually said about any specific topic, rather than assign me to a side in your narrative, which i don't even uphold.

your narrative is fucking bullshit.

regarding iran, i'll state for the thousandth time that i would support targeted strikes to remove the leadership, and would oppose an invasion or occupation. i stand with the atheists and socialists on the ground in iran that want to overthrow the fundamentalist state and bring in a secular democracy. suggesting this is some kind of alliance with the saudis is retarded; i would also support targeted strikes to remove the leadership in saudi arabia and might suggest it would be most efficient to do both at the same time. for that reason, i don't necessarily oppose strikes against iran, but i would only support them in a very specific manner which is probably unlikely to actually happen in reality. i would no doubt oppose any actual plan to attack iran, but i cannot rule supporting it out, a priori.

if you refuse to consider strikes against iran, you're an apologist for the ayatollah and aligned with the theocracy and all of the oppression that entails. it's not going to go away on it's own, it must be destroyed. you should be ashamed of yourself - and you cannot call yourself a leftist, in good faith. you're a damned fucking liberal.

i am not a pacifist liberal, i am a revolutionary leftist. i understand the need for revolutionary overthrow, and the fundamental place of violence in the struggle against capitalism. if you renounce violence, you're just letting them win. and, that's one of the differences between being a revolutionary leftist and being a milquetoast progressive. it's a neat trick to attack the people on your left as being on your right, but these fake left "progressives" do it all of the fucking time.

that said, an attack on iran is not on the table and pretending that it is is disingenuous.

i do not believe that iran has the scientific or technical capability to build nuclear weapons, nor that it is likely to gain that capability any time soon, whether it wants to or not. the only way that iran will get a weapon is if some other country sells it one, and threats against it's sovereignty are more likely to make that happen, rather than less.

i oppose sanctions against iran.

but, back to syria. 

what's actually happened in syria? it doesn't matter what side of the bullshit narrative you're on, you almost certainly have no real idea what's actually happened in syria. the person closest to having some kind of clue in the public spotlight is tulsi gabbard, but i am far more pro-assad and far more pro-russia than tulsi gabbard is.

to understand how syria ended up the way it ended up, you have to go back to before the "arab spring", the pro-secular, pro-democracy & anti-religious uprisings that happened in egypt and north africa in early 2011. at the time, the younger assad had not been in power very long and was actually trying to orchestrate his way in to stepping down. it is really the story of the younger assad trying to turn the country over to a parliamentary democracy that grounds the real narrative in syria, and grasping it is fundamental to understanding why i take the positions i take.

so, the younger assad was not supposed to take over; he had an older brother, and it was the older brother that was groomed as the heir. as such, the younger assad spent much of the 90s in london, earning a phd in ophthalmology. at the time of his brother's death, he ran a successful ophthalmology practice in london. but, due to his brother's death, and then his father's death a few years later, he found himself in charge of the country.

whatever his father's character, and whatever his father's crimes as a puppet of the soviets and harbinger of arab socialism, assad the younger initially seemed, at best, disinterested. he seemed to want to go back to london, where he met his wife, from the start. fate's a bitch, though. i mean, did he have a choice? whether he did or not, he seemed intent on leaving power in a responsible fashion, so he set up a series of constitutional reforms over the course of the 00s that were supposed to be put to referendum over 2011. while these reforms were incremental, they would have ultimately set up a presidential election - allowing him to step down, and potentially return to london.

as this was coming to a conclusion, pro-democracy uprisings in tunisia & egypt started - uprisings that were viciously suppressed, ultimately culminating in a saudi-backed coup in egypt. it is with this backdrop that the the primarily saudi-backed foreign invasion of syria that happened after 2011 needs to be properly understood. 

there never was an uprising or a civil war in syria. it seems that there may have been some demonstrations by far-left secularists - communists, anarchists - that wanted the process sped up. but, unlike in egypt, syria was in the process of reform, and had a leader that was both eager to deliver and actively engaged in doing it. but, the saudis will not tolerate democracy in the region. fearful that a democratic syria may reignite protests in egypt and the greater region - including on the peninsula itself - they essentially invaded syria from the south with foreign mercenaries, then created an onslaught of fake news making it seem like there was some kind of uprising in the region. reinforcements were then sent in from iraq, under the isis banner. but, this was fundamentally a saudi invasion of syria to stamp out democracy in the region.

so, if you're pro-secular, pro-democracy & pro-socialism, where do you stand here? the answer is that you stand with assad against isis.

over time, the conflict became very complicated. the turks stepped in to stop the saudi advance, and it became a proxy war between the saudis and turks. when the turks started winning, the americans stepped in to restore the balance of power. and, then the russians had to step in to protect their client state - and ended up winning the war, outright. and, we can talk about that, strategically and tactically  - and i will.

but, as a leftist, my concern is the struggle on the ground, which pits the secular syrian state against the saudi theocracy - and i will stand with the syrian people against the islamic terrorists and condemn those that support these terrorists, either concretely or abstractly, absolutely, to the end.

to a leftist, that is the fight worth fighting - democracy v authoritarianism, self-ownership v tyranny, freedom v religion. and, it's complicated, but it's not ambiguous; it's crystal clear what the right side is and what the wrong side is.