After have shot, strafed, barrel bombed and mowed down 250,00 Syrians and making over 50 million homeless with millions more of Syrian refugees knocking at Europe’s and America’s door, dictator Bashar al-Assad cannot not even guarantee the security of his goons in his own Damascus stronghold.
Well put.
It’s also interesting that Assad’s forces are reliant on crude, homemade barrel bombs, and have been for some time. Of course, during the 1973 war against Israel, they started with nearly 1400 tanks and wound up with something in excess of 300.
We had 30 times Assad's military budget and couldn't protect our people in Iraq. Assad's fighting rebels recruiting from a population of 20m Sunni Arabs, actively funded by the wealthy Gulf state governments. We were fighting rebels recruiting from a population of 6m Sunni Arabs, mainly funded from within Iraq. Bottom line is that given his financial and manpower limitations, and the rebels' funding advantage, he's doing an excellent job. The question is whether his adversaries' manpower and material advantages will start to overwhelm even pretty good generalship.
They stirred up the hornets nest and it’s been festering since Assad Senior came to power in the ‘70s; they also fostered terrorism, adventures in Lebanon.
And probably had a role in the bombing of the Marine Barracks during Reagan’s term. Should anyone disagree, look it up.