Syria: The "West's" Muddled Policy
We know that the CIA is long involved in distributing weapons and intelligence to the Syrian insurgents. The CIA organized weapons from Croatia and Libya and distributed those. The bills for those weapons were payed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. New weapons are still arriving. There are also U.S. military special operation detachments in Jordan and Turkey training some of the insurgents. As this involvement is already well known and has been reported on by several outlets it is a bit weird that the Obama administration is now somewhat agonizing about "officially" delivering weapons to the insurgents:A month ago Obama administration officials promised to deliver arms and ammunition to the Syrian rebels in the hope of reversing the tide of a war that had turned against an embattled opposition.There is a lot of whining in that piece about "legal restrains" and question of who the weapons should go to. The legal restrains, which the Wall Street Journal explores in detail, are not the real issue. As usual international law means nothing to the U.S. and Obama simply ignores it. The real reason the weapons are a no go is that some grown ups are holding them up in fear of putting them into the wrong hands:But interviews with American, Western and Middle Eastern officials show that the administration’s plans are far more limited than it has indicated in public and private.
The plan — made possible after Mr. Obama signed a secret “finding” that circumvents international laws prohibiting lethal support to groups trying to overthrow a sitting government — continues to face bipartisan skepticism in Congress.
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“One of the biggest impediments has been the cohesion and the organization of the opposition relative to the Assad forces,” Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said in an interview.
The Free Syrian Army is nothing but a marketing front for a whole bunch of disunited criminal and jihadi groups. Weapons flowing to it would certainly end up in hands of those the "west" would not like to be armed too much or to win the war. The administration has no real plans for Syria. It has no strategy and no idea who it wants to come out winning the war. But as long as the country gets destroyed it seems to be fine with the war proceeding endlessly.
While Washington is still hand wringing over the issue London has decided and prime minister Cameron will not, for political resistance in his own party, give any weapons to the insurgents:Mr Cameron has been told by Tory whips that there is little prospect of winning a vote on arming rebels in the Commons.Good luck finding those "moderate elements". They are an illusion.
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A source close to Downing Street last night confirmed that Mr Cameron is not planning to arm Syrian rebels.British forces will instead draw up plans to help train and advise moderate elements of the opposition forces fighting the regime.
But at least the Brits have lost two other illusion. The first is that the U.S. knows what it is doing, the second one is that the Syrian government will lose the fight:
John Kerry, the US Secretary of State is attempting to push rebels and the regime to the negotiating table.The "west" has somewhat recognized that its policies on Syria were deeply wrong. But it seems difficult to publicly acknowledging that and to openly change course. We therefore get a muddled policy with a lot of agonizing and, like in other cases, no real strategy behind it. From Syria's perspective this muddled "western" policy is not as bad as others could be.However, British government sources have expressed frustration that they have little idea what he is seeking.
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Ministers believe it could take 18 months before President Assad is forced to the negotiating table, although it could take significantly longer after the advance of the Syrian government forces.
Posted by b on July 15, 2013 at 17:25 UTC | Permalink
« previous page@Fernando&RB, #84&85:
Kurds bear as much responsibility for the Ethnic Cleansing of Assyrians as Turkey does for the Genocide of Armenians. Assyrian and Kurdish villages were dispersed throughout the regions that are now Kurdish. Most of the particular Kurds and Turks who committed the atrocities in WWI and its aftermath are long dead. Even so, Armenian and Assyrian communities have been seriously wronged and they deserve at least an apology. Although many Assyrians eventually immigrated to the US and elsewhere, some of them languished for decades in refugee camps in countries bordering Turkey.
Posted by: Rusty Pipes | Jul 19 2013 23:20 utc | 102
@Don Bacon, Bevin, Billy Boy, re:
"Syria is all about Iran.""And for Israel entirely about Hezbollah."
It is all about hegemony: what Hezbollah represents is the principle of communal resistance. The enormous power that the determined solidarity of even a small, totally surrounded and impoverished community, emerging from decades of fascistic rule by its enemies and centuries of marginalisation, produces.
Evo Morales represents the same principle. A people united can never be defeated.
Posted by: bevin | Jul 15, 2013 11:04:42 PM | 19@bevin
Agree on hegemony, which is why "negotiations" over the Iran "nuclear threat" is a farce, and is why the assault on Syria is solely because it is a perceived essential ally of Iran and so destroying Syria will cripple Iran and incidentally help Israel by hurting support for Hez -- farcical thinking but that's what drives these criminals.Syria: The "West's" Muddled Policy --Yes
I would not presume to know what Israel's strategy is ALL about, but a big piece of its regional strategy regarding Hezbollah and its stronghold in Southern Lebanon is about water. Israel's cluster-bombing of Southern Lebanon at the close of the 2006 war was an attempt to ethnically cleanse swaths of the region. Israel has long coveted Lebanon's land and water up to the Litani river and even the West Bank's aquifers will not satisfy its swimming-pool loving settlers. Hezbollah is the only Lebanese party or organization that has been able to successfully challenge Israel's ambitions.
Posted by: Rusty Pipes | Jul 19 2013 23:47 utc | 103
b49
ttp
*A senior commander who sits on the shura or ruling council of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) told AFP there was no tactical shift and no decision had been made to send forces to Syria.
"There is no reality in these reports, we have far better targets in the region,
NATO troops headed by the Americans are present in Afghanistan," he said on condition of anonymity.*
looks like they'r too busy killing chinese. !
*An anti-American Islamic fanatic is arrested in Afghanistan, flown to Guantanamo Bay and then released back to Afghan authorities. He’s supposedly seething with anti-Americanism. But after crossing the border and returning to Pakistan, his first mission is to kidnap and kill a Chinese engineer* [1]
what did they do to mehsud in gitmo other than water boarding, an offer he couldnt refuse like *u want a pot of gold or a bullet in ur head *, mk-ultra [5] ?
recently the ttp murdered a chinese lady in pak to *avenge the killing of uighurs in xinjiang* [2]
wait a min, the *killing of uighurs* , hans , mongolians etc were perpetrated by axe wielding uighurs !
if ttp's beaf are with *oppressed muslims*, i wonder why they have never heard about kashmir [3] or gujarat [4] , just to name a few ?
in the latest twist, the ttp slain dozens of tourists *in retaliation for fukus drones killing in pak * [10]
wtf !
for the crimes of fukus, the ttp made it a point to hunt down n massacre chinese n russians -- who oppose the great satan, in cold blood !
makes lots of sense eh ?
[1] http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=45b29e17d940b2adc7bfa13ed6ab40b2
[2] http://registan.net/2012/03/12/whats-behind-the-taliban-killing-of-a-chinese-student-in-peshawar/
[3]
http://www.countercurrents.org/ipt130910.htm
[4] http://www.countercurrents.org/puniyani051107.htm
Posted by: denk | Jul 23 2013 10:12 utc | 104
There is a very good, quite newish blog about the New Great Game in Central Asia:
http://christophgermann.blogspot.co.uk/
I found this via Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Post.
Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Jul 23 2013 11:19 utc | 105
Rowan Berkeley 105
thats a very good site u recommend.
hmmm, so im not the only one [1]
asking this question....?
http://diggchina.blogspot.sg/2009/02/is-china-target-of-global-sponsered.html
[1]
+yet post 911, the yanks got its foot in all the *stans* around china under the cover of gwot, china's frontyard become uncle sham's backyard overnite.
thats when a series of mysterious "terrarists" attacks against chinese started to occur, inexplicably, china seemed to have become the target of the *jihadists*, china became the new "great satan" , all the while when the *original article * was busy bombing and strafing at "terrarists" in af-pak and beyond+
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2012/09/open-thread-2012-23.html#c6a00d8341c640e53ef017d3c1c26ea970c
Posted by: denk | Jul 24 2013 8:07 utc | 106
The comments to this entry are closed.
@Don Bacon#53:
And even at NPR, it's helpful to know the name of the reporter or editor. The main reporting has ranged from the outright propaganda of Kelly McEvers (formerly reporting from Beirut or embedded with insurgent fighters), to the CFR-affiliated Deborah Amos to the Turkey-based Peter Kenyan (whose Syrian coverage is the best of the lot). Also, a few of the hosts who introduce segments or interview non-NPR reporters (if they want to talk to someone who's actually been in Damascus) show strong bias or use loaded terms. Steve Inskeep's series of reports from inside Syria a few weeks ago was the best coverage from one of the hosts.
Posted by: Rusty Pipes | Jul 19 2013 23:00 utc | 101