The fight in Iraq was clear cut and simple. Syria? Dazed and confused...

via Almasdarnews.com

An astonishing four T-72 tanks were watched from afar by Failaq Al-Rahman (Free Syrian Army branch) as its militants struck the front end of the convoy with a guided anti-tank missile, causing one of the armored vehicles to plunge into a nearby river.

According to a military source based in Damascus, the incident took place on Sunday afternoon and forced the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) tank crew to ‘abandon ship’ and leave the vehicle faceplanted in a small river in the embattled Ayn Tarma suburb.

Shortly after, three other SAA tanks moved in to cover the site, likely to allow infantry units and mechanics to mop-up the area and recover the partially damaged vehicle.
The SAA military source added that five of the FSA’s TOW crews have been killed in the Ayn Tarma suburb alone while some 400 insurgents have been killed or injured over the past 25 days alone across the eastern Damascus frontline.

Counter-insurgency efforts in the Ayn Tarma, Zamalka and Jobar suburbs in east Damascus are spearheaded by the 105th and 106th Brigades of the Republican Guards who are battling the FSA and its staunch ally Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), considered a tacit Al-Qaeda franchise group.

Story and a vid of the action (along with some terrible music) here. 

Now I get it.

Now I understand why the Obama Admin and military leaders said the fight in Syria to destroy ISIS would take so long.

We're dazed and confused there.

In Iraq their was a singular purpose.  To destroy ISIS.  A clear military objective that was clearly achievable led to a clear victory.  Don't get me wrong.  It took longer than it could because the Iraqi civilian leadership was a bit stubborn, but still it got done.

Syria on the other hand is faced with a muddled battlefield with conflicting objectives and allies that are either terrorist, terrorist connected or have agendas of their own.

What do I mean?  The Syrian Free Army.  Who are these guys?  From everything I've read they're just allies that we're gonna have to kill at a later date.  So what do we do?  We give them freaking TOW Missiles!  They're allied with ISIS that we say we're trying to kill, and while we're trying to kill ISIS we're also trying to kill Assad and by extension his troops that are also trying to kill ISIS.

Russia is trying to kill ISIS and help Assad, but they're also trying to kill the Syrian Free Army which are terrorist that we will have to kill later, and the terrorist named the Syrian Free Army are also aligned with ISIS that we're trying to kill now.

To make matters worse we have a military airfield inside Syria now (widely reported in Arab news...even photographed much to my annoyance...how long before they get hit in a Camp Leatherneck rerun?), the Kurds are trying to setup a separate nation and Turkey has made incursions into Syria and claimed territory.

We won't win in Syria this year because the policy is still fucked up beyond recognition.

The Deep State, Neo-Cons, Military Establishment, Foreign Policy Hawks and Generational War Zealots win again.