Though US and other Western officials continue to talk up the idea that the Vienna talks on Syria are going to soon yield a broad peace deal and a transition plan, comments today from both President Obama and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad suggest such a deal is far away.
Russia has been leading the charge for the deal, calling for constitutional reforms leading up to an election in 18 months. This has faced some resistance from nations insisting Assad can’t participate in the elections, and Obama today reiterated that sentiment, saying he would never allow Assad to run for election.
Assad’s own comments were less hostile to the idea of elections in general, but he noted today he doesn’t see how an election will be possible with most of the country out of the control of the government. Though it’s possible an election could be held with some territory in participating rebel hands, that’s not really the case either, as ISIS holds more than half of the country.
Assad says he thinks defeating ISIS should come ahead of any political solution, though he also suggested he doesn’t trust UN observers to monitor the elections at any rate, which points to there not being much chance that he’s going to go willingly into elections with a realistic chance of losing.
Assad is absolutely right. Obomber's talk of elections under the present circumstances is malicious and idiotic.
In fact, it was Putin's talk, not Obama's and was much hyped on the American internet until today.
So while Ben Rhodes is saying the USG does not want to "take ownership" of Syria, his boss Obama is declaring Assad can't stand in Syrian elections.
I do wish the denizens of DC could agree on the propaganda they want to catapult. At least they wouldn't appear to be such a complete pack of blithering idiots.
The problem is that, as always, this is "about" Israel and there is a split between the neocons and the more moderate mainstream of the Israel Lobby. They are thus acting at cross purposes to each other and cutting accross each other's policies. The neocons are trying to use Putin to prop up US global hegemony, the mainstream sees Putin as a threat to Israel's security. The US government, the EU and, indeed, Russia itself are caught in the middle of that fight.
It is hypocritical for Mr. Obama to preclude Bashar al-Asad from running for office. If it wasn’t for our regional pals like Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia as well as ourselves and former imperial powers of Britain and France, the chaos that is now Syria would not exist. For ten years, Hafiz al-Asad battled jihadists, the Muslim Brotherhood, which ended in the bloody fight for Hama. Once the Salafists were defeated, Syria had nearly three decades of peace. When chaos gripped Lebanon and later Iraq, Syria was a stable country. In fact, in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq invasion, Iraqi Christians became targets of Sunni Salafists. These Christians fled to Syria for protection.
We we and our followers had left the March 2011 disturbances as a domestic problem, there would be no ISIS in Syria, there would be no al Qaeda in Syria, there would not be hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, there would not be the destruction of cities and towns, there would not a Syrian refugee crisis, there would not terrorist training camps in Syria so as to attract jihadists from around the world to learn their trade and return to attack their own country (Paris), there would be Russian troops and planes in Syria.
Mr. Obama’s policy of staying the course of regime change has been a failed policy that has open a Pandora’s Box of woes and troubles.
ISIS suddenly emerged from the shadows when Obama failed to stand up firmly to Putin in Ukraine. ISIS thus sees the US as being on the run and is seizing the window of opportunity. An insurgency cannot be defeated militarlly and the first step to getting negotiations going with ISIS is to inflict a defeat on Putin so unequivocal that even his American supporters cannot spin it into a victory.
"… [had] we and our followers [ ] left the March 2011 disturbances as a domestic problem,
Stop right there. The March 2011 "disturbances" were never a domestic problem. It was a full-blown Neocon/CIA/StateDept regime change operation, same as Libya, same as Ukraine: see Wesley Clark's "seven countries in five years". A simple "Cui bono?" analysis leaves no doubt that Israel is behind it all, "Securing the Realm" by subverting the USG and using the US military as Israel's attack dog.
"… there would be no ISIS in Syria, there would be no al Qaeda in Syria, there would not be hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded…"
"***MULTI-MILLIONS*** now of dead, wounded, cities destroyed, whole countries-worth of refugees fleeing, … all to "secure" an ever-greater Israel.
You all need to stop being scared to say it out loud: Whether you call them the Zionists, the Neocons, the Israel-firsters, Likudniks, the Israelis, or quite simply, the Jews, this is their work. They've pulled this crap for five-thousand years, and now they're at it again, in spades. And we all know how it ends up.
I'm an American and a Jew, and out of patience. I refuse to be complicit or silent, or even merciful, when confronting Jewish/Zionist criminality. The Holocaust "get-out-of-jail-free" card has expired. The solution to the subversion of the US and to perpetual war in the Mideast is clear: Terminate Zionism. Cleanse the planet of the failed, criminal Zionist project.
"It was worse than a crime, it was a mistake"
Assad's point is quite good. I don't see how a free and fair election could be held with foreign troops operating in the country. Thus, this suggests that it has dawned on Putin that he can't have an election without first withdrawing from his precious naval base, even if, officially, it is only temporarily to allow the election to be held under normal conditions. Equally, there's no way that an election, with or without Assad, would be accepted by any side unless it was certified by international observers accepted as neutral by the UN and the various parties, Syrian or otherwise. Once again, Putin has shot himself in the foot and demonstrated that he has no alternative to abandoning the naval base or getting irreversibly bogged down in an unending and unwinnable guerilla war with ISIS. Thus, the US has no need to make concessions to him. He's stuck no matter what.
What's a "kibosh"?
Much like a "stymie"
(Something that restrains or serves as a check)