The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) along with their allies are pushing into ISIS territory and the terrorists are in full retreat. Syrian government forces backed by Russian air strikes took rebel ground near Aleppo and now have their sights set on Raqqa.
On Saturday, the geopolitical world was shocked when Turkey began shelling Aleppo, where the Syrian opposition has its back against the wall in the face of an aggressive advance by Hezbollah and the IRGC supported, of course, by Russian airstrikes.
To be sure, everyone knew Ankara and Riyadh would have to do something quick if they wanted to preserve the rebellion. Their proxies are being rolled up rapidly by Hassan Nasrallah’s army and Vladimir Putin’s air force juggernaut. But few expected the escalation would come so quickly.
Dan McCarthy comments on the significance of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s passing on Saturday:
Scalia was the embodiment of conservative opposition to the liberal jurisprudence of the ’60s and ’70s, and that opposition was the glue that held the conservative movement together over the last 40 years, as the end of the Cold War and the waning electoral power of welfare liberalism attenuated other sources of unity.
I met Justice Scalia only once. He spoke at Washington University in St. Louis while I was president of the College Republicans there, and I attend a lunch with him and a half-dozen faculty and other students. What stands out in my memory is Scalia’s answer to a professor who asked whether he objected to demographic quotas on the Supreme Court—that is, whether the idea that there now had to be at least one black justice, at least one female justice, etc., was a problem. Scalia cheerfully said it was not, as long as those who filled the quotas were qualified.
As we documented last autumn in “Syria Showdown: Russia, Iran Rally Forces, US Rearms Rebels As ‘Promised’ Battle For Aleppo Begins,” Syria’s largest city has been among the hardest hit of the country’s urban centers over the course of the last five years.
Newsweek documented the destruction in a series of stark and profoundly indelible images in 2012, perhaps the most striking of which was this:
Recapturing the city is critical to restoring Bashar al-Assad’s grip on power.