Aiding Syria
"We are determined that the Syrian opposition is not going to be dangling in the wind wondering where the support is or if it's coming. And we are determined to change the calculation on the ground for President Assad. What has happened in Aleppo in the last days is unacceptable. It's pretty hard to understand how, when you see these Scuds falling on the innocent people of Aleppo, it's possible to take their notion that they're ready to have a dialogue very seriously."Actually, it's pretty hard to take John Kerry and the Obama administration seriously. They've designated the al-Nusra Front as a terrorist group. And these are the very most successful of those groups aiding and supporting the Syrian Free Rebel Army. Just as the Alawite Baath regime of President al-Assad is guilty of atrocities, so too is the al-Nusra terror group. And in aiding the rebels where is the cut-off point where al-Nusra won't be helped?
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
But from Berlin Mr. Kerry is indicating that he's washing his hands of Bashar al-Assad. "If the president of the country decides he isn't going to come and negotiate and he's just going to kill his people, then you at least need to provide some support for the people who are fighting" for their freedom. Mr. Kerry doesn't come right out and declare the American administration will begin providing weapons to the rebels, but the intent is clear enough.
Saudi Arabia is already putting its money where its mouth is, and has been for over a year. But things have ramped up, with arms being purchased from Croatia and shipped to the rebels on a larger scale; multiple planeloads of weapons including Yugoslav-made recoilless guns, assault rifles, grenade launchers, machine guns, mortars and shoulder-fired rockets to be used against tanks and other armoured vehicles.
Arming the rebels will also arm Palestinian Gazan terrorists who have been flocking to Syria to help liberate it from its tyrant. They are on a jihad roll, joining the much-admired Jabhat al-Nusra, with the intention of creating a pan-Islamic state ruled by Sharia laws. And on the other end of the equation is the regime's military, with its Iranian Republican Guard advisers and with the dedicated strategic assistance of Hezbollah.
As though the situation is not horrifically, absurdly grotesque enough, with a regime succeeding in slaughtering an estimated 70,000 of its population and creating refugees of about a million Syrians, there is the added lunacy of the United Nations in all of this. With Ban Ki-moon on the one hand, wringing his hands in despair over Syria, and then standing by as the country was elevated to sit on two UNESCO human rights committes in November 2011.
But the absolutely most incredible was the more recent assignment of Bashar al-Assad as Rapporteur of the UN's Decolonization Committee. A recent decision to unanimously re-elect the Assad regime to a senior post on that committee charged with upholding fundamental human rights by opposing the "subjugation, domination and exploitation" of people.
There is John Kerry standing alongside British Foreign Secretary William Hague at a London news conference to speak of President Obama's "significant mandate" resulting from his re-election, and that the president "has been engaged in examining exactly in what ways we may be able to contribute."
"We have a lot of ideas on the table and some of them I am confident will come to maturity by the time we meet in Rome", he said. Other, unstated ideas "will take a little gestation period, but they're no less part of the mix." Russia and the United States appear to be unusually comfortable in their diplomatic efforts, in discussing Syria, of late.
Remember, Russia going out of its way to defend and support the Assad regime, inclusive of weapons transfers and Russian strategic instructors, and vetoing UN sanctions. In direct opposition, in fact, to what Mr. Kerry is proposing. Their meeting, however, was extremely agreeable; evidence to be seen in the photo-op that followed.
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| US Secretary of State John Kerry (R) meets Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on February 26, 2013 in Berlin. (AFP Photo / Maurizio Gambarini) |
With so much sweetness and light it is difficult to envision the dreadful plight of Syrian civilians whom the regime attacked a few days back with ballistic missiles, killing an estimated 141 people, over half of whom were children, in the northern province of Aleppo. But why blanch, why flinch, this is life in the Middle East, where Islamists of one sect are at the throats of Islamists of another sect.
Labels: Atrocities, Conflict, Controversy, Crisis Politics, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Social Failures, Syria, United States
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, February 28, 2013
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