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More Disarray In The Syrian Opposition
Moaz Khatib, who was installed by Hillary Clinton to head the Syrian opposition, just resigned. In his resigning statement he explained:
[T]there is a bitter reality [to] tame the Syrian people and besiege their revolution and attempting to control it.
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Those who are willing to obey [outside powers] will be supported, those who disobey will offered nothing but hunger and siege. We will not beg for help from anyone.
If there is a decision to execute us as Syrians, then let’s die as we want.
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Our message to everyone is that Syrians decisions will be taken by Syrians, and Syrians only.
I had promised our people, and vowed to God on that, to resign if the situation reaches certain red lines. Today, I honour my promise and I resign from the National Coalition to be able to work with freedom not available through official institutions.
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Khatib is clearly pissed that Qatar installed the U.S. citizen and Muslim Brotherhood favorite Ghassan Hitto as prime minister of a Syrian exile government.
While Khatib had offered talks with the Syrian government Hitto has rejected them.
There is more disarray. As predicted the so called Free Syrian Army has also rejected the premiership of Hitto saying that his nomination was not consensus based. Meanwhile Iraq, Algeria and Lebanon vetoed Qatar’s attempt to give the Syrian seat in the Arab League to the exile government.
Qatar’s plans to install the Muslim Brotherhood as the new authority in Syria are clearly not welcome.
Secretary of State Kerry is on a visit in Iraq where he rather comically “warned” Prime Minister Maliki to stop flights from Iran over Iraq to Syria. Maliki will of course not do so.
Kerry also said that U.S. lawmakers and the American people are watching what Iraq is doing and “wondering how it is a partner.”
Maliki, and likely all Iraqis, will show Kerry the finger over such statements.
What is Kerry threatening to do? Invade Iraq again? Arrange for a coup by some Sunni strongman? Hold back weapon sales to Iraq so Moscow can make the big deals with an again rich Iraq?
Kerry clearly has no leverage over Iraq. Maliki will of cause help Syria wherever he can. It is necessary for his own survival. Is Kerry too stupid to see that?
Don Bacon is correct.
Frustrating as it may be, both the Russians and China are very happy to watch the “west” exhaust itself, discredit itself and generally remind the world that the self appointed global policeman is an incompetent, racist, bully and barely literate to boot.
Both Russia and China have centuries of experience in dealing with this maritime empire and, by now, they know exactly how to lure it deeper and deeper away from its real interests.
Those who govern the empire are the most ignorant fools in it, oblivious to the rapidly growing alienation of the metropolitan population who would have to be collectively brain dead not to understand that the longer these oriental adventures go on the poorer they will be.
Does Washington imagine that the people of Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, France or the UK have any commitment to their cause? To the war on terror? To the wahhabi campaign against Shi’ites? To the grudge match between the Brothers, now sponsored by the State dept and the Saud family, and the baathists?
For the first time since 1945 rapidly increasing poverty, unemployment and insecurity is settling like a suffocating fog on the people: the young have no hope, no stake in the system, no alternative but to assert themselves. The old realise that they are likely to be abandoned, left to die, stripped of their savings. Before long there will be an explosion to which the ruling class has no answers.
It has played with revolution, with scripted uprisings in the streets of Minsk and choreographed riots in Tashkent and Tbilsi, for so long that it has forgotten that, beyond the CIA dilettantism and the colour coded T-shirt campaigns, there are real explosions. Televised or not. Real grievances. Real issues. Millions of angry, cheated victims with nothing to lose and self respect to reclaim.
And it is that which gives both Russia and China pause because, while they are quite happy to see the empire acting like a wounded godzilla on acid, they are aware that when the volcano blows the fallout will blot out the sun in central and east Asia too. This makes them very cautious as becomes nations which have, in recent memory, suffered real casualties in war, tens of millions whose existence the “west”, which knows nothing of Leningrad or Nanking, except what its Japanese and Baltic allies tell it, has blotted out of its memory.
As to the Empire, its rulers really see foreign policy as a videogame, fun to play, devoid of risk in which the blood, chlorine gas, suicide bombers and beheadings are distant spectacles. And the victims, just the latest on a long list of aliens who might as well be insects for all Congress cares.
When the people come for them they will probably be interrupted in the middle of their fun, so absorbed by the game and its thrills that they won’t hear the door being kicked in or smell the smoke of the cars burning. They will have mistake the screams and the gunshots for the sound effects in their earphones.
Posted by: bevin | Mar 25 2013 2:19 utc | 27
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