Selective attention

I ' m certainly not going to let this blog get bogged down in discussion of the Syrian civil war. If you want to read reasonably detailed but succinct accounts there is this from the BBC, which uses data from various sources including the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights;The Council on Foreign Relations; and for a more international view, theInternational Institute for Security Studies. They are all in agreement on the main points. The war began with peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in March, 2011, which the Assad government violently repressed, sparking widespread uprisings nationwide that quickly evolved into armed conflict. Over time, many foreign actors intervened in various ways, and various factions within Syria organized and entered into conflict with government forces, and with each other. Turkey and Israel also intervened directly on Syrian territory. The U.S. is among the outside agencies that played a role, but it was a relatively small one. By far the most important outside participants are Iran, which backs the Assad regime with weaponry and financing to the tune of billions of dollars, and has also imported militias is sponsors from Lebanon and elsewhere; and Russia, which essentially serves as Assad ' s air force. The U.S. has played a comparatively small role. Initially, the U.S. and its allies provided support for what they thought were " moderate " rebel groups, but as I have said before this turned out to be a mistake as these groups were ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs