I am an Arabic speaking Muslim who has spent time in Assadist Syria. Where Masjid Imāms would be tortured from Friday to Friday for the slightest of government complaints. Where the locals used to joke that there are spies that spy on them, and spies that spy on those spies. Where decrepit class of godless chain smoking communist wannabes ran every position of power, and looked at any remembrance of God as if it was a curse. Where simple things like growing a beard was something that even the scholars were afraid to do because the heavy-handedness of the government. I saw that state degrade into a country that tortured and killed its own populace. This current civil war isn't the first time. They literally killed thousands of people in Hama, then buried them in a pit in the ground that got paved over the concrete in a hotel built over it. I accord very little value to the analysis of non-muslims who don't speak our language and have never respected us, just because their favorite Putin happens to himself only circumstantially a line against the Syrian people. I record absolutely no value to those secretarian militias who went village to village, city to city butchering Muslims because they're theocratic overlords found more common cause with the heretic Nuṣayrīs than with other Muslims. They will say that this is an Israeli plot. But somehow or another calling Russia to bomb the crap out of the Syrian people somehow helps out Palestine? May this be one of the last nails in the coffin of the Sykes Picot treaty. For all those nationalists out there who are upset that Uzbeks and Uyghurs were part of the liberation of Syria, being illiterate in history, and worshiping at the altar of the nation state has completely scrambled the omelet of your brains. Nūr al-Dīn Zangī, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Ayyūbī, Rukn al-Dīn Baybars & Berke Khān were all heroes in the history of Sham, and not one of them was ethnically Arab. However, their service for Islām something that all Arabs benefit from to this day. We used to be people of broad vision that was handed to us by revelation. Sad to see those people who have traded that for fake countries, passports, flags, and a vision handed to them by Max Blumenthal and Scott Ritter.