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After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

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After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

Unread postby dissident » Mon 26 Jan 2015, 21:38:07

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/worl ... 335355.ece

The White House is giving tacit backing to new Syrian peace talks in Moscow that make no explicit call for the removal of President Assad.

The White House is giving tacit backing to new Syrian peace talks in Moscow that make no explicit call for the removal of President Assad, amid signs of a softening of Washington’s position on the dictator.

Syrian opposition figures met in Moscow yesterday for a Russian-backed peace initiative to end the three-year war in which more than 200,000 people have been killed and millions displaced.


The US should stop the meddling if all it achieves is various forms of blowback, like ISIS and the Taliban.
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Re: After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Mon 26 Jan 2015, 22:05:51

I'm confused. From what I can hear it's the same tune as before: Civilians are being killed and the US has taken no substantial action to prevent it. Not two years ago...not one year ago...and not today. Same tune... just another verse.
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Re: After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

Unread postby dissident » Mon 26 Jan 2015, 23:55:22

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/18/world/isis-libya/

Another stellar achievement to remove "a dictator". Living in an fundie nutbar toilet is so much more free than in a country where you could go to Oxford or any other university in the world for free if you managed to get in. These freedom lovers will soon be shooting any girl who dares to go to grade school. Forget about higher eduction.

Thanks, NATO!
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Re: After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

Unread postby Sixstrings » Tue 27 Jan 2015, 04:23:03

ROCKMAN wrote:I'm confused. From what I can hear it's the same tune as before: Civilians are being killed and the US has taken no substantial action to prevent it. Not two years ago...not one year ago...and not today. Same tune... just another verse.


The White House is giving tacit backing to new Syrian peace talks in Moscow that make no explicit call for the removal of President Assad

The White House is giving tacit backing to new Syrian peace talks in Moscow that make no explicit call for the removal of President Assad, amid signs of a softening of Washington’s position on the dictator.


Mmkay, so Obama just made a major concession to Russia -- without getting anything for it, in return. Figures.

Guess a nuke deal with Iran is up next; will Iran get the nukes done before the new Russian missiles they bought, arrives?

Why are there any talks in Moscow, about anything, considering what's going on in Ukraine. :?:

It's just really so wrong, and Ukrainians are the pawn in it. Obama admin did its "big fancy review" with a bunch of eggheads about "comprehensive Russia policy" blah blah. Wanting to work with Russia on some things.. and Ukrainians just twist in the wind.

Should have at least gotten something for it -- concession on Assad staying is a big deal, there are US interests and blowback that will result from that, there was a reason "Assad has to go" in the first place, so if you're gonna make a deal like that then why is Moscow getting what it wants and still causing problems in the Ukraine too?

How can you make any deal with Russia at all on Syria, yet Russia still sends Iran those s300 missiles?

McCain and Republicans wanted to back the moderates. So what does Obama want to do, de facto back Assad along with the Russians, while at the same time we're mixed up in Ukraine vs. Russia?

Will there be a deal to throw Kiev under the bus, too?

Has Israel been thrown under the bus?

I'll tell ya something, yes we're at war with ISIS, but it won't help to back the dictator Assad either. He's going to have revolution and insurgency one way or another, people don't like a dictator, if it's not moderate rebels it will just be muslim extremists.

And what about the kurds, our old allies, are they just thrown under the bus now -- vs. Assad?
Last edited by Sixstrings on Tue 27 Jan 2015, 04:41:50, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

Unread postby Sixstrings » Tue 27 Jan 2015, 04:38:15

Obama’s troubling counterterrorism allies: dictators

As President Obama stumbles in implementing his own strategy for combating terrorism, the United States is reverting, almost by default, to an earlier, failed approach: a reliance on dictators to do our dirty work.

The latest, and saddest, indication of Obama’s capitulation to this oldthink has been signals sent by his administration that the United States will no longer insist on Bashar al-Assad’s departure as leader of Syria, as Michael R. Gordon and Anne Barnard recently reported in the New York Times.

Obama’s demand that Assad leave was never more than rhetorical. Still, it has to be dispiriting for the president who created the Atrocities Prevention Board (“President Obama has made the prevention of atrocities a key focus of this Administration’s foreign policy,” a White House fact sheet says) to acknowledge implicitly that he has no Syria strategy without Assad.

Assad is the bloodiest butcher of this young century, but he’s hardly the only example of the United States’ reborn love of strongmen. Egypt’s new dictator has killed and imprisoned opponents with a brazenness Hosni Mubarak never dreamed of. The State Department is eager to embrace him in a new partnership.

Obama used to insist that the government of Bahrain “engage in a dialogue, and you can’t have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail.” Now, as Bahrain cracks down on peaceful dissidents, the United States barely notices.

In Central Asia’s Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, 76, presides over a closed society of prison camps and forced labor. But immediately after he announced he would rule for five more years — after all, he’s been in charge only since 1989 — the United States approved a shipment of weaponry for his government and counseled “a certain amount of strategic patience in how change can take place.”

From Azerbaijan to Saudi Arabia, where Obama will visit Tuesday, the United States is cozying up to dictators who share some key attributes. They agree with the United States that Islamic extremism must be fought. But they also go after nonviolent opponents — and they are most ferocious against secular, liberal critics. By destroying any moderate forces, they can present themselves as the only alternative to religious fundamentalism.

If partnering with these people offered an effective defense against terrorism, maybe it would be worth overcoming any moral qualms.

In fact, though, their actions will create more trouble down the road — as Obama himself explained in 2011.

“Societies held together by fear and repression may offer the illusion of stability for a time, but they are built upon fault lines that will eventually tear asunder,” the president said.
“[S]trategies of repression and strategies of diversion will not work anymore. . . . The status quo is not sustainable.”

Obama promised a historic shift in policy, away from the short-term comfort of alliances with dictators and toward promoting “self-determination and opportunity.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fred-hiatt-obamas-troubling-counterterrorism-allies-dictators/2015/01/25/56ad3d76-a288-11e4-9f89-561284a573f8_story.html
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Re: After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

Unread postby Sixstrings » Tue 27 Jan 2015, 05:17:40

And another thing -- it's not "the US" that changes its tune, it's the Obama Administration.

He's going along with Putin on everything, has done that the whole time in office, I've tried to tell the pro Russia posters before that O is your greatest friend there is -- so OK you have your Assad concession, you may as well stop calling him the Dark Lord and start calling him Comrade.

This is a major, major shift from Republicans on foreign policy.

Now it makes sense to me, because the other day I saw one of O's former foreign policy people talking about handling ISIS by "turning it over to regional governments and more of a hands off approach."

So now I see what that means, it means backing dictators doesn't it? That will oppress everyone, not just the jihadists, the liberals too right? How does that make us any different from Russia, then?

At least George Bush and Dick Cheney never would have done this. A Bush team would have removed Assad and supported the moderates, and solved the ISIS issue while simultaneously checkmating Russia and therefore preventing the Ukraine crisis before it could have ever happened.

I don't know anymore -- is this Democrat foreign policy -- to support dictators. :?: If so, then who is left for democracy in the world, Republicans?
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Re: After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

Unread postby Sixstrings » Tue 27 Jan 2015, 05:35:19

From a Saudi news channel, "betrayal, Obama style:"

Betrayal, Obama style

One could see the contours of a hellish Faustian deal in the making. To put it bluntly, the Obama administration today, almost four years after the Syrian people began their peaceful uprising against the depredation of an entrenched despotic rule, is desperately relying on Russian ‘diplomacy’ and Iranian ‘muscle’ to extricate it from its disastrous policy in Syria.

...

While Russia and Iran have been adamantly consistent in their support of the Assad regime, even after its outrageous use of chemical weapons against its own civilians, and after its systematic use of siege and starvation as tools of war against civilian areas under the control of the opposition, the Obama administration kept muddling through from one concession to the next compromise to another retreat and now to outright betrayal of its early promises to the Syrian people, not to mention its own solemn red lines and commitments to punish the Assad regimes for its war crimes.

...

What makes Obama’s position as the ‘immovable object’ in this tragedy morally depraved, is the simple fact that he was, in part, responsible for allowing the early horrors of Syria to multiply exponentially, when he would not or could not deliver on his promises or threats.

...

Russian diplomacy and Iranian muscle

The U.S. is increasingly relying on Russian ‘diplomacy’ to contain the conflict in Syria, so that Assad’s forces with considerable Iranian ‘muscle’, in the form of advisors, special Revolutionary Guards forces and the storm troopers of the Lebanese Hezbollah to do battle against ISIS and other radical Sunni groups. There is a diabolical unstated arrangement whereby, the Syrian air force will continue to terrorize the civilians with its barrel bombs
, and at the same time sharing Syria’s air space with American and other allied air forces conducting raids against ISIS forces and positions.

...

Betrayal, Obama style

President Obama is very defensive when he is asked whether his retreat from his threats to punish the Assad regime has contributed to Syria’s agony. And every time he addresses this issue, he engages in exaggerating, dissembling and spinning.


...

The cause of helping the Syrian people free themselves from the tyranny of the Assad regime is no longer urgent or a priority. President Obama would have been in a much better position, morally, had he not betrayed his own commitments and promises to the Syrian people. Obama will try to cover his betrayal by claiming that he is still helping the Syrian people. He may be immune to any moral anguish, because of his betrayal and because of his actions or inactions in Syria. But he cannot escape Syria’s sorrows being part of his legacy.
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2015/01/24/Betrayal-Obama-style.html
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Re: After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

Unread postby Sixstrings » Tue 27 Jan 2015, 05:43:28



I'm not familiar with this source, but good editorial:

Obama’s casual sacrifice of America’s security and moral standing in the Middle East

In President Barack Obama’s penultimate State of the Union address last Tuesday, there was no reference to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. This was the first time since 2011 and the eruption of the brutal Syrian civil war that Obama had not mentioned, or even obliquely alluded to, the Syrian dictator’s crimes against humanity.

This was no accident. Little more than one year after the President of the United States addressed the American people in a prime time address aimed at shoring up support for a humanitarian intervention in a war in which Assad had deployed weapons of mass destruction against civilian populations, America’s regional doctrine has evolved dramatically.

...

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has noticed that the White House is signaling its acceptance of the status quo in Syria. That disturbing development in concert with the administration’s conciliatory approach to a rapidly nuclearizing Iran has prompted the paper to sound the alarm bells.

...

In Eastern Europe, Russia is casually deploying combat troops into adjacent nations in a flagrant effort to reconstruct the former Soviet sphere. In East Asia, a rising China is acquiring territory in the South China Sea in preparation for what many believe will be an attempt to follow in Moscow’s footsteps in the Spratlys. In the Middle East, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey are engaged in a terrifying and increasingly overt contest to carve the region up into spheres of influence in preparation for a contest that will determine which power will enjoy regional hegemony.

This is all quite destabilizing and will inevitably lead to the return of great power conflict. Whether the president has intentionally embarked on a course designed to reshape America’s approach to foreign alliances or is merely pursuing the path of least resistance, the results will be catastrophically similar. And the verdict of history will not be kind.

http://hotair.com/archives/2015/01/26/obamas-casual-sacrifice-of-americas-security-and-moral-standing-in-the-middle-east/


I would say the Obama foreign policy has just been the latter -- the path of least resistance, no strategy at all -- and the author is right, it's just going to leave a big huge mess of regional wars and then great powers wars for the next president and the one after that to do deal with.

Obama’s Policies Bring the Golan to a Boil

Among those killed were high-ranking Iranian officials connected with Hezbollah’s use of Iranian-supplied ballistic missiles, and with Iranian Special Forces units that focus on raids and small-unit tactics. In the words of a retired Israeli general (see first link, and below), this was a very high-level convoy, clearly preparing for serious incursions against northern Israel.

...

The point is that passivity, lack of leadership, and ally-hopping have consequences. Part of picking allies is shaping who they are and what expectations they have. It starts with having common and enduring goals with those allies, which keep both sides committed. These things matter to a responsible power, at any rate. The Obama administration has consistently failed to exhibit signs of being one.

The failure has had a game-changing result in the Golan.
http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/analysis/obamas-policies-bring-the-golan-to-a-boil/2015/01/25/


P.S. I've just provided some other views on this in the above links, Turkish and Jewish and Saudi, but I won't get into this like the Ukraine topic and argue with everyone.

My personal opinion bottom line on it is that the republican Syria policy was the right way to go. Obama had the Navy out by Syria and then he waffled on it, and followed Putin, *and it has all been downhill since then* and he continues to follow Putin -- in the middle east.

But I shall leave it at that. The R policy was the right one.
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Re: After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

Unread postby davep » Tue 27 Jan 2015, 07:08:39

The R policy was the right one.


Make another basket-case state? Why?
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Re: After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

Unread postby Sixstrings » Tue 27 Jan 2015, 08:09:56

davep wrote:Make another basket-case state? Why?


edit: rephrase for brevity, and I want to stay out of this topic

* Obama should have removed assad regime as Republicans wanted him to
* If he had done that then that would have gotten at a root instigator of ISIS and what has sunni so mad to start with -- Assad (who is shia) massacring so many sunni (his population in Syria).

As long as Assad stays, and keeps doing what he does, the problem is never resolved.

* Assad kills too many sunni, they were not just ISIS rebels they were secularists and moderates too, and just his ordinary citizens that happen to be sunni

* checking Russia in Syria would have prevented Putin moving on Ukraine, it was O's weakness on Syria that invited Russian pushing

* so there you go -- Republican policy -- should have kept some troops in Iraq, and removed Assad, and Ukraine crisis AND ISIS would have both been prevented.
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Re: After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

Unread postby Theedrich » Tue 27 Jan 2015, 08:27:52

My guess is that the U.S. powerholders are finally recognizing that their false-flag operation in Syria has simply failed, at tremendous human cost.  That strategy has worked so well for so long that our cutthroat overlords did not realize that some opponents would be determined to resist it at all costs.  One wonders what the D.C. madmen would do if the U.S. itself were put under the same kind of pressure.  Murder half of the population?
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Re: After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

Unread postby Withnail » Tue 27 Jan 2015, 08:57:23

The whole idea of 'regime change' is simplistic idiocy, as though you just slot a new guy in like a replacement light bulb.

The phrase also serves to obscure the fact that what is going on is actually just good old fashioned war.

* Assad kills too many sunni, they were not just ISIS rebels they were secularists and moderates too, and just his ordinary citizens that happen to be sunni


We were told the Libyan rebels were moderates too, and that turned out to be a lie.

All the Syria rebels I've seen look and sound like Islamists.
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Re: After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

Unread postby GHung » Tue 27 Jan 2015, 10:11:24

Gosh, Six, like to see yourself type much? Our resident armchair Commander in Chief? Afraid to admit that MENA is a total clusterfuck and that there are no right moves here?
Blessed are the Meek, for they shall inherit nothing but their Souls. - Anonymous Ghung Person
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Re: After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

Unread postby davep » Tue 27 Jan 2015, 10:41:28

Obama should have removed assad regime as Republicans wanted him to


Under what jurisdiction exactly? He had no mandate.

And there are plenty of allied regimes as brutal as Assad's.
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Re: After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

Unread postby BobInget » Tue 27 Jan 2015, 11:45:48

S-300 is a defensive ground to air missile. Israel needs to find just cause to attack
Iran prior to S-300 delivery. Israel may attack Lebanon first triggering a Hezbollah
response. Or, Israel may try to kill another top Iranian military leader in Syria.

1/20/15
(Reuters) - Russia might deliver a long-overdue S-300 air defense missile system to Iran, honoring a contract that was canceled in 2010 following strong pressure from the West, Iranian and Russian media said on Tuesday.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is visiting Tehran and signed an agreement with Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan to boost cooperation, Iran's Fars semi-official news agency said.

Fars said the two countries would resolve problems with the delivery of the advanced missile system, while Russia's RIA state news confirmed the issue was once again under discussion.

"A step was taken in the direction of cooperation on the economy and arms technology, at least for such defensive systems such as the S-300 and S-400. Probably we will deliver them," RIA quoted Colonel General Leonid Ivashov as saying.

1/27/15

MOSCOW, January 27 (RIA Novosti) – Iran expects Russia to meet its contractual obligations to deliver the S-300 air defense systems, canceled by Moscow after international sanctions were imposed on the country, Iranian Ambassador to Russia Mehdi Sanaei told RIA Novosti in an interview Tuesday.
“Iran continues to view the S-300 contract as legitimate and not a subject of international sanctions as it was signed before the introduction of sanctions and the [S-300] is a defensive rather than an offensive system,” Sanaei said.

Russia agreed in 2007 to accept $800-million from Iran to deliver five S-300 surface-to-air missile defense systems.

“Iran is still expecting the implementation of the contract. We hope that the [recent] visit of [Russian Defense Minister Sergei] Shoigu to Tehran is a good sign,” the Iranian ambassador said.

Russia suspended the contract in 2010 following a UN Security Council resolution to stop the sale of arms to Iran due to its controversial nuclear energy program.

In the wake of the canceled contracts, Iran sued Russia's state arms exporter Rosoboronexport at the OSCE Court of Conciliation and Arbitration in Geneva, Switzerland. Moscow has offered Tehran a settlement, promising to deliver additional Tor-M1E SAM missile systems at a later, unspecified date.

According to the Center for Analysis of World Arms Trade, Russia has lost out on $11 —13 billion for the sale of arms to Iran because of the sanctions.
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Re: After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

Unread postby americandream » Wed 28 Jan 2015, 01:28:33

Good move as we need to get secular rationalists to manage the ME whilst we take social economy to the next level. Being distracted by bronze age twits is an utter waste of resources.
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Re: After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Wed 28 Jan 2015, 06:09:41

6/ there are no moderates to support. My daily newsfeed includes atrocities being committed by every team with a name in Syria. You swallow propaganda without chewing, its amazing you don't drown on your regurgitations.
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Re: After 200,000 dead the US changes its tune on Assad

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Wed 28 Jan 2015, 10:02:05

gypsy - One man's atrocity is another man's "unfortunate" collateral damage. That's how it's always been rationalized by all the players. The critical component is whether you care very much about folks being hurt. It's like the story of a young 3 stripper who long ago refused to call arty in on a vill where there "might be" some enemy forces. Fortunately he got a pass with a less than honorable discharge instead of a general court marshal and time in the brig. I heard that he had hung that discharge letter on his wall with pride for many years afterwards. He eventually took it down because almost no one really gave a sh*t one way or the other.

Unfortunately we don't have as many such fools in the game today. LOL.
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