They’ve finally ‘liberated’ Aleppo. Hooray. The good guys marched in and outed the bad guys and they’ll all live happily ever after. That can only be good news. But for whom?

Well its good news for Assad, because he gets his country back. What’s left of it. And its good news for Russia, because they’ve backed him all the way and formed a wonderful alliance in which they’ve both proved world masters at ‘acting one way and speaking another’. Which is pretty easy really. Here’s what you do:

You send in 47 top grade fighter jets, the most sophisticated in the world. You pin-point your target, maybe something military, possibly a ‘rebel stronghold’ or arms depot, and then you use the amazing precision of the air-power to bomb the shit out of every building in 9 square miles. That way you can say ‘ve vere bombing rebel targets’ whereas in fact you’ve destroyed 3 hospitals, 14 schools and 22,000 homes of just kind’a regular Syrian civilians. Women, children, priests, doctors, nurses, policemen, just so much collateral damage. Because as we all know, the only way to really single out the rebels is with the chemical weapons that Assad swore he didn’t use. And use them liberally. Because those chemicals are so special that they only actually affect rebel fighters. They just, kind’a, sort of, ‘bounce off’ normal people who aren’t rebels. You could see it on the news, hosing down children, hundreds of them in the hope that you might save their sight, their lungs, their lives.

Assad is unquestionably a horrible and bad person. He is the motherfucker’s motherfucker.

Which is why America and the UK and others were supporting the rebels 6 years ago when all this shit started. ‘Our side’ in the hope that the rebels would see off ISIS in the East, and defeat all round bad buy Assad in the West. Then Russia joined the ‘war on terrorism’ and hooked up with Assad’s government against ‘our’ rebels.

Yet somewhere down the line the rebels changed. From being merely anti-government, in which ‘we’ supported them, they morphed into an all round rogues gallery of non-ISIS extremist hit squads. Al Quada, the Nusra Front and their ilk, who are radical Sunnis. They were joined by Shia militia. And that was never going to work. So they spent their days (and nights) killing each other. There were also a few Kurds knocking around, just to spice up the already explosive mix.

Blah, blah, blah, and Assad won. Assad and Putin won. ‘Liberated’ Aleppo from the rebels.

I wish I knew whose side I was on and whether to be happy with relief or devastated with sorrow.

One way or the other Friday

A xxxx