If Syria has no will to fight thats their prerogative, but you cant equate retreat with no will to fight, the idea that one must never fall back is primal but stupid, Russia withdrew from large areas of Ukraine in 2022 to preserve forces while Ukraine threw men into defending every village, now Ukraine is facing loss of statehood.
We are seeing an army retreating from 2 cities in days to a force mounted mostly on pickup trucks. As the defender with superior equipment, and supposedly the training to fight a war, it is their job is to defend their homeland and people. Their scenario is not equivalent to the Russians in Ukraine, who were the invading force. Ukraine was stupid because they went on poorly strategized major offensives that burned through massive amounts of manpower and equipment.
Russian war industry is far larger than 10 years ago, while Iran just bombarded Israel directly 2 month, 10 years ago Iran was signing nuclear deal with Obama, now both are building drones together to kill NATO troops. Whether or not they can get there in time is one thing, theres no shortage of capability to do so.
But Russia and Iran are much busier with their own crises this time.
None of these are new, we already went through every part of this 10 years ago including claims that SAA has no will to fight, or Iran is too friendly with the west, or Arab spring rebels taking over major cities. If Syria is a lost cause they wouldnt have held out for 10 years and Russia would have left long ago. So far the most important thing is SAA preserved most of their men even if they had to abandon equipment, theres a force imbalance right now, you dont fix that by dying for land
10 years ago, the SAA would have collapsed too if it wasn't for Iran, Hezbollah, and then Russia intervening. I understand that preserving manpower is more important than equipment. But then again, Syria couldn't replenish those equipment like Russia could. Sure, Russia could resupply them, but only if Russia has some to spare, which is not guaranteed in this point in time. Worse still, the enemy can now use those abandoned weapons against the SAA and the Syrian people. Why not? There are Ukrainian volunteers who can help them with that. I can bet that those Smerch launchers that the SAA so hurried left behind would come back to haunt them.
Don't die for land. Trade land for time. Where have we seen this before? It was the same strategy that Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek used to fight the Japanese. That is one of the surest way to lose your mandate to rule the nation. Fortunately, China had the CPC to continue the fight where the KMT had abandoned. For Syria's case, they are not so lucky. The abandoned Syrians are entertaining the idea of switching their allegiance to the rebels instead, because their government as of now, can't even put up a decent fight for them.
