September 7, 2018

Syria Is About To Go Pear Shaped

Samer Bouidani/DPA via ZUMA

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It looks like the Syrian/Russian attack on Idlib isn’t far off:

The Russian, Turkish and Iranian presidents convened Friday in Tehran in a high-stakes and apparently tense summit that promised to shape one of the final battles of the Syrian conflict and potentially determine the outcome of the war….Iran and Russia back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Turkey supports the Syrian opposition.

…..But Putin on Friday rejected the Turkish leader’s call to halt the fighting. And this week, Russian warplanes carried out strikes on militant positions in at least one city in Idlib, a British-based war monitoring group said. It was unclear Friday whether the three leaders had agreed to tamp down the violence or whether a military assault was imminent.

Meanwhile:

Back in March, President Trump seemed to announce a new Syria policy without notifying anyone else in government. “We’re coming out of Syria, like, very soon,” he said. “Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon — very soon we’re coming out.”

….On Thursday James Jeffrey, a retired senior Foreign Service officer who was recently named Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s “representative for Syria engagement,” told reporters there’s been a change of plans. “The new policy is we’re no longer pulling out by the end of the year,” he said. As the Washington Post explains, the Trump administration has adopted a broader mission that could keep troops in Syria indefinitely.

….Jeffrey said the U.S. is taking a tougher stance and will not tolerate an all-out attack on the region.

Great. Russia and Iran are almost certainly going to mount an all-out attack on Idlib. The US now says it will not “tolerate” this and plans to keep troops in Syria forever. I guess Trump learned nothing from Obama’s bobble on red lines in Syria.

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From the desk of Mother Jones CEO, Monika Bauerlein...

Newsrooms can be funded in many ways. One of the most controversial (and volatile) ways is by a for-profit corporation or a billionaire owner. We see it across the headlines on a weekly basis: the claw backs in public media, the gutting of The Washington Post, the bending over backwards to appeal to Trump and his allies.

But not here.

When Mother Jones first started publishing 50 years ago, our founders made a critical decision: to be a reader-supported nonprofit. They knew that no corporate owner would be interested in a muckraking newsroom; they also knew that no muckraking newsroom would be interested in following the agenda of a corporate owner.

And so, we’ve been reader-funded for half a century. We rely on contributions from our readers—readers like you—whether it’s $50, or $15 a month, or whatever fits your budget. People give what they can, and every donation makes a difference for our newsroom, which has grown tremendously—in size and reach and renown—since its inception in 1976.

You may be wondering: What does it take to publish an investigation? And what does my donation actually fund? The answers are one and the same: It takes people, resources, and time. And that’s what your donation funds directly.

Every donation Mother Jones receives from readers fortifies our newsroom, whether we’re covering underreported scandals out of Washington, DC, or the most important news of the day. And right now, each donation will be doubled because of our $50,000 match. So when you make a donation—$5, $50, any amount—it’ll go twice as far.

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