© Syrian Presidency OfficeSyria’s President Bashar al-Assad visits the front lines in the East Ghouta region
Yesterday he made a surprise visit to the frontlines of East Ghouta where the Syrian Army are currently smashing terrorist forces. This was in an effort to thank the brave soldiers for their duties on behalf of all Syrian people and to motivate the troops to continue their successful struggle against terrorist formations.
After meeting soldiers, he then met civilians who fled the war zone in East Ghouta, to the east of Damascus city center, he was widely praised and held by the people.
© Screenshot YoutubeSome of the families of Eastern Ghouta met with President Bashar al Assad during his field visit.
In addition, he only drove a simple Honda Accord to reach his destination, far removed from western leaders who are chauffeured and escorted in luxury vehicles.
Elsewhere in Syria, after 58 days of combat between the Turkish-led Olive Branch forces and the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), the former have captured 75% of the Afrin region in northwest Syria. Full details and a map can be found here.
"But the battle is bigger than Syria. You are fighting a global war. It's a global conflict and every bullet you fired to eliminate a terrorist and kill a terrorist, you were changing the international balance of power. Each tank driver was advancing a meter, he was changing the political map of the world. We loved to be with you because sitting in front of the map is not as being with you in the fields. If we do not go to the field and sit down with you, we do not taste the victory or achievement nor the real dignity and morals that we take from you. My regards to you."
From Prof. Astore's article today here at SOTT:
"Societal degradation and democratic implosion, caused in part by endless phony war and the lies associated with it, are this country's real existential enemies, even if you can't find them listed in any National Defense Strategy. Indeed, the price tag for America's wars may in the end prove not just heavy but catastrophic."
Pres. Assad may have lost a generation, he fears, to reactionary thinking and lack of education and awareness (as he remarks in the above video), but the United States of America lost its soul many decades ago.
For Mr. Assad and all Syrian soliders, I send these words from our Pres. Lincoln's famous Gettsyburg Address:
"The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."