Meanwhile in Syria

Fighting continues around Hama, with the rebels attempting to surround the town rather than directly assault it,

Background to the rapid fall of Aleppo to the rebels. And more here, emphasizing the years of careful organizing and planning. 

Troops from the Syrian army's 25th Division, supposed to be one of their tougher units, just surrendered a base full of tanks and other gear with hardly a fight. People are starting to wonder if much of the army has effectively gone over to the other side.

Mass surrender of regime troops at al Safira. And the rebels call on the rest of the government army to surrender, saying the battle is already over.

Among the hundreds of military vehicles the rebels have captured are multiple Smerch rocket launchers with a range of 120 km, which means all of Russia's air and naval bases in Syria are within rebel range. Assuming they can find someone who can operate them, but I suspect Ukraine would be happy to lend them a couple of techs. And we do know that Ukraine has ties of some kind with the rebels, since Kyiv sometimes reports on battlefield events before anybody else. In related news, all the Russian warships have left port in Syria for "exercises."

Learning from the old US playbook, Kurdish forces announce they are advancing into regime-controlled territory to fight terrorism.

And Now in Syria, US Involvement

Osint guys on Twitter/X (and here) are reporting US air attacks on Iran-supported Iraqi militiamen in Syria:

Over 50 Iranian-Backed Militants were killed, and at least a dozen Military Trucks and Technicals were destroyed yesterday in the Deir ez-Zor Governorate of Eastern Syria, after a Convoy entering from Iraq was targeted by several A-10 “Warthog” Close-Air Support Attack Aircraft of the U.S. Air Force. In addition, several Iranian Sites near the Town of al-Mayadin were also targeted by Coalition Aircraft, resulting in the destruction of a Command Center and Barracks. These Strikes were likely carried out in support of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) [Kurds], who have begun to advanced into Assad Regime and Iranian-Backed Territory along the Euphrates River; in preparation for a possible Large-Scale Offensive in Eastern Syria, similar to the one ongoing now in the West of the Country.

But I can't find any official US statement about this. Not that this is really anything new; if you do a quick search for "US air attack Syria" you will see that we launch one every month or so, in response to the regular drone attacks on our troops there: November 12, October 30, September 29, etc.

Some US military types are laughing, saying that since those militias attack US forces all the time, when the Air Foce saw that column strung out along a road they just yelled "yee-ha" and dove in.

So I can't tell if this is just the same-old same-old, or if it really is a US attempt to aid this rebel offensive. Any reinforcements moving from Iraq to Damascus would have to cross areas of eastern Syria where the US and our Kurdish allies are active, so this might be a statement that large-scale movement of Iranian-backed forces into Syria will not be ignored.

But what a bizarre place Syria is, with American and Russian troops both present, trying to help their respective clients without fighting each other, so many active armed groups that you need a glossary to keep all the acronyms straight, a government everyone despises that stays in power only because of foreign support and the fact that some Syrians fear the opposition even more.

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The Institute for the Study of War has started issuing regular updates on this fighting.

Some links on Twitter/X:

Summary of recent fighting.

Staggering material losses of the Syrian government army.

Very interesting Russian post on how messed up the Syrian government is.

And meanwhile the Russian air forces responds to the rebel advance according to their own traditions, by bombing hospitals.

David Brooks on MAGA Values

David Brooks in the NY Times:

It’s not sufficient to say that Trump is leading a band of morally challenged people to power. It’s that Trumpism represents an alternative value system. The people I regard as upright and admirable MAGA regards as morally disgraceful, and the people I regard as corrupt and selfish MAGA regards as heroic.

The crucial distinction is that some of us have an institutional mind-set while the MAGA mind-set is anti-institutional.

In the former view, we are born into a world of institutions — families, schools, professions, the structures of our government. We are formed by these institutions. People develop good character as they live up to the standards of excellence passed down in their institutions — by displaying the civic virtues required by our Constitution, by living up to what it means to be a good teacher or nurse or, if they are Christians, by imitating the self-emptying love of Christ. . . . We know our institutions have flaws and need reform, but we regard them as fundamentally legitimate.

MAGA morality is likely to regard people like me as lemmings. We climbed our way up through the meritocracy by shape shifting ourselves into whatever teachers, bosses and the system wanted us to be. Worse, we serve and preserve systems that are fundamentally corrupt and illegitimate — the financial institutions that created the financial crisis, the health authorities who closed schools during Covid, the mainstream media and federal bureaucracy that has led the nation to ruin.

What does heroism look like according the MAGA morality? It looks like the sort of people whom Trump has picked to be in his cabinet. The virtuous man in this morality is self-assertive, combative, transgressive and vengeful. He’s not afraid to break the rules and come to his own conclusions. He has contempt for institutions and is happy to be a battering force to bring them down. He is unbothered by elite scorn but, in fact, revels in it and goes out of his way to generate it.

In this mind-set, if the establishment regards you as a sleazeball, you must be doing something right. If the legal system indicts you, you must be a virtuous man.

In this worldview, a nominee enshrouded in scandal is more trustworthy than a person who has lived an honest life. The scandal-shrouded nominee is cast out from polite society. He’s not going to run to a New York publisher and write a tell-all memoir bashing the administration in which he served. Such a person is not going to care if he is scorned by the civil servants in the agency he has been hired to dismantle. . . .

The corrupt person owes total fealty to Donald Trump. There is no other realm in which he can achieve power and success except within the MAGA universe. Autocrats have often preferred to surround themselves with corrupt people because such people are easier to control and, if necessary, destroy.

In other words, MAGA represents a fundamental challenge not only to conventional politics but also to conventional morality. In his own Substack essay, Damon Linker gets to the point: “Trumpism is seeking to advance a revolutionary transvaluation of values by inverting the morality that undergirds both traditional conservatism and liberal institutionalism. In this inversion, norms and rules that counsel and enforce propriety, restraint and deference to institutional authority become vices, while flouting them become virtues.”

I would note the connection of this “values system” to a belief that something is terribly wrong with the world. The system has to be smashed because everything is going to hell. Why?

Really, why? So far as I can see, the world is better for most people than it has ever been, and it continues to get better. Why the rage, that insistence on blowing everything up? It isn't just MAGA people, it's anarchists and communists and cultural leftists who think that everything has to be decolonized. You no doubt remember all the people who supported Bernie but then switched to Trump; they said that the world needs a dramatic shake-up, and they don't much care who does it so long as it gets done.

I remember a conversation I had with my sons a few years ago, when they were really down on America. I said, if you think our country is collapsing, you should go to Venezuela and see what that really looks like.

Syrian Civil War, 1 December

The big news is that government forces regrouped and retook Hama from the rebels. The rebels had only a small force in the town and withdrew without serious fighting when government forces approached, so it was not much of a battle, but this shows that Assad regime forces have recovered some of their organization and nerve. The rebels have continued to advance in other areas but nothing like the blitzkrieg of the previous few days.

HTS, the Turkish-backed, Sunni Muslim group leading the offensive, has seized land from Kurdish groups and its soldiers have looted Kurdish homes. Doesn't bode well for unity among anti-regime forces. More here.

A claim about captured equipment: "The amount of captured Assad regime weapons, ammunition, tanks, IFVs, and trucks is sufficient to rearm an entire rebel army." More pictures here from Special Kherson Cat, one of the most reliable Ukrainian bloggers. The captured stuff includes a couple of aircraft, a helicopter, and Pantsir SAM systems.

Russia has sacked the commander of their forces in Syria and replaced him with one of their top generals. Ukrainian intelligence reports that Russian forces in Syria have taken serious losses, but nobody else has confirmed this. Putin promised aid to Syria but nobody has yet reported on Russian forces or equipment arriving.

As I was saying about the anti-Assad, anti-Putin community, who believe all the evil in the world is run from Moscow: 

What’s happening in Ukraine, Georgia, Syria all shows we need a global plan to counter Russia and its “allies.”

More on the political background from Ruth Sherlock, notes that in recent weeks Israel has been bombing Iran-backed militias in Syria.

And this, from Oz Katerji: 

Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow and anybody who says so is lying. The truth is nobody, not even the most analytical minds with the best contacts, foresaw any of this, and the experts are sitting around as dumbfounded as you are, hitting refresh on their Telegram feeds just like you are. There are two types of Syria analyst right now, the type saying “man I have no idea what’s going on”, and liars. You aren’t going to find any answers.