#if you’re still buying the zionist propaganda by this point i have nothing to say to you except block me

[fapangel]

Thoughts on Thomas Wictors musings on some kind of middle eastern wunderkin spec ops force? I'm unsure it even exists.

The contention of it certainly makes sense.

For starters, we must remember that the well-known truth about Arabs being terrible at warfare applies due to social and cultural norms that simply cripple their ability to compete against modern liberal democracies for a wide variety of reasons, prime among them being a complex social honor code that hamstrings both hierarchical command structure, honest criticism and junior officer initiative - the very cornerstones that make modern liberal democracies armies so effective. That’s in addition to the totalitarian nature of these theocratic shitholes, where the army itself is the greatest threat to the rulers, and thus are carefully limited in equipment, training, and operational assignments, based on relative trust in their loyalty - and of course, loyalty takes precedence over competence. 

None of this really applies to comparatively small special operations forces, especially for the filthy-rich, Western-allied nations like the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. These countries have been rolling in shit-tons of oil money for decades - and they intelligently invested it in various overseas businesses to prepare for the oil glut we’re in currently, so they’re still sitting pretty. They have the US/NATO selling them all the weapons they want in exchange for regional bases to counter the Soviet - er, Russian Federation, they’re screwing us over with OPEC, and in general they’ve got everything they want. 

The psychopathic jihadists in Iran and Syria threaten to spoil everything for them - especially with Iran pointing chemical-tipped missiles at everyone in sight and shoveling money and weapons into the pockets of every miserable murdering fuck in the region. The Saudis et al have everything, everything to lose by ignoring them, and everything to protect by fighting them. They don’t buy those shit-tons of American weaponry for grins and giggles - it’s logical to assume that anything they can do to fight these people, they will do. So the idea of the western-aligned Arab coalition forming a special operations group that they absolutely stagger with money, gear and training - augmented by co-operative training from the US (their ally) and Israel (who desperately needs allies, what with their backs to the sea and surrounded by bloodthirsty Arabs) isn’t far-fetched at all. 

As for Saudis and their motives, this thread of  Wictor’s is one of the most insightful I’ve seen in a long time - he explains, at length and in detail, how the current leadership of Saudi Arabia is very, very different than the people who were in charge when Sept. 11th happened. For the reasons Wictor advances, as well as my own point vis a vis jihadists above, the reason why their leadership changed is pretty damn clear-cut - it was in their best interest not to piss off their sugar daddy and patron, the United States. An anti-western coalition exists in the Middle East, defined roughly by NATO/US and the UAE/Egypt/Saudis et al on one side, and Iran/Syria/Pakistan/Turkey/Russia/China on the other - with North Korea backed by both Russians and Chinese, and serving as a long-distance arms trader/tech collaborator with Iran and Syria. Saudi Arabia is filthy rich, but tiny - they’re basically one guy in white robes with a nice credit card facing down a massive horde of savages. If the gun store won’t sell him LMGs and ammo, he’s hosed, simple as that - and we own the best gun store in town. You can always buy from Le Jaques Discount Arms Emporium, but his stuff can be knocked over by a few advanced toys from Russia - unlike American gear, which does the same to Russia’s best tech. The last time this came up (vis a vis tensions between Saudis and Quatar) I pointed out that Qatar is well-known as an active and ideologically motivated supporter of terrorists, and alleged that Saudi Arabia, by contrast, simply doesn’t care about what their citizens do as long as it doesn’t threaten their safety and stability.

What Wictor’s saying is something I should’ve concluded myself - that after 9/11, with a very angry America looking to break off their foot in someone’s ass, anyone with jihadist sympathies very much qualified as a threat to Saudi Arabia, which needs a positive long-term relationship with America to survive. 

Now, Wictor’s evidence might be so-so, but when you’re working with what you’d call “open-source intel,” you’re mainly working on logical suppositions and gut instincts anyways. The evidence at best hints in the direction you’re looking, and at worst demonstrates a conspicuously constant failure to disprove your theories, or even hint in the other direction. You can certainly quibble with his eyeball analysis of various propaganda videos of jihadis firing TOW missiles at people and tanks in the desert - I have, myself - but those criticisms are entirely aside from the point, which is that they’re propaganda videos. For instance, the video of a Syrian T-90 (newly gifted from Russia) being hit by a TOW before the gunner bails out at high speed struck Wictor as suspicious enough to be staged (tankers motto is “death before dismount,” because dismount usually IS death,) but I thought it could be legitimate - a poorly-trained Syrian recruit used to explosion-prone T-72 monkey models losing his nerve in his first real engagement….

… but that doesn’t mean the whole video wasn’t spliced together out of a few different clips by Russian propagandists before adding the appropriate jihadist graphics in the corners. Remember who benefits from videos of ebil terrorists using US-supplied TOW missiles against the Righteous Assad Regime - that’d be Russia, who’s openly and loudly accusing America of “supporting ISIS” every chance they get. Apply this also to our views of Saudi Arabia in general - never forget that Russia is turning its well-honed and experienced propaganda machine against them, as they’re a regional proxy of the United States (their enemy.) Additionally, Wictor’s arguing from the weight of evidence - he’s pointed out plenty of videos that are indubitably laughably bad fakes made strictly for propaganda. It’s not just the incompetence on display, but the lack of urgency - we all had a good giggle at the hapless idiots in the Abu Hajaar video, but I personally stopped laughing at the end, when two men (cameraman included) copy a third they see trying to roll his way out of the firefight. That’s exactly how untrained, panicking irregulars fleeing for their lives usually respond - and as the video shows, it’s also how they die. There’s nothing funny about that. That’s what combat looks like, and the gormless, bored assholes in the artillery shelling videos Wictor criticized (who’re engaging with direct-fire missions, i.e. well within range of the ever-present ZU-23s and Dushkas) reflect none of that. They don’t even have the energy for Aloha Snackbars after every shot. And that reflects the overwhelming majority of the videos I’ve personally seen in /wsg/ “war threads” and elsewhere. 

So, to review: 

1. There’s every reason to believe the western-allied Arab coalition would create a force like this: it’s in their best interests to fight jihadists, and it’s the same tactic used by their regional enemy, Iran (through their own spec-ops proxies like Hezbollah.) 

2. There’s no reason to believe they’d be as incompetent and incapable as Arab armies in general tend to be, since spec-ops is a very different beast. 

3. There’s clear-cut evidence of major Saudi leadership changes away from jihadi sympathizers, and correspondingly very good reasons for Saudi Arabia to treat jihadists as a threat to their very existence (as exemplified by Saudis recent pressure on Qatar.) In turn this means NATO and Israeli governments would be much more likely to provide spec-ops training to them - and they’re the best in the world, hands-down. 

4. The above is doubly reinforced by the threat Iran poses to Israel - consider this latest tirade from the zealous fundamentalist run government armed with chemical-tipped IRBMs that warns the Zionists that they’re absolutely going to be wiped out in 25 years, but they might be wiped out much sooner, so they should just sit back and quietly accept their doom, lest their final days be cut short. This, right here, is why Israel just nailed an Iranian missile factory in Syria with cruise missiles - a factory that was parked right under the defensive umbrella of that S-300VM unit Russia shipped in to Tartarus late last year (which is precisely why Israel was publicly warning Russia not to try shielding their asshole buddies with those AA systems.) Israel won’t tolerate Iran on their doorstep, since it’s life-and-death for them, and Russia needs Iran’s help in Syria, which is precisely why Israel and Russia are on a collision course concerning Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah. The Israelis have the best reason of all to team up with Saudi Arabia to fight these bastards - their very survival.  

4. There’s both direct evidence of, and very good reasons for, most of the combat imagery we see coming out of the middle-east war zones being faked propaganda footage. This doesn’t prove that Arab spec-ops are looting and shooting over there, but it does tell us what is not happening - the superficially accepted narrative of the war as it’s presented to us. 

5. Ergo, if the Syrians aren’t doing the real fighting against ISIS, who is? 

Conclusions? The Arab coalition has the means to create these spec-ops forces, they have very strong motivations, and they’ve had the opportunity for years now. On the balance, it’s harder to believe that the western-aligned Gulf states haven’t created a force like this. What you see on Twitter is Wictor pointing out ripples on the surface and telling you there’s a shark in the tank - but that’s only because he’s watched people dumping whole sides of beef into it for a decade or better. 

We don’t know what’s in there exactly, or just how big it is - but we do know that it sure as hell isn’t a goddamn guppy.