Obama and the Syria conundrum

[W.G.Ewald]

Syria chemical weapons sites being dispersed: Wall Street Journal | Reuters

An elite Syrian unit that runs the government's chemical arms program has been scattering the weapons to dozens of sites across the country, potentially complicating U.S. plans for air strikes, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The newspaper, citing unnamed U.S. officials and lawmakers briefed on the intelligence, said on its website on Thursday that a secretive military group known as Unit 450 had been moving the stocks around for months to help avoid detection of the weapons.

U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies and Middle Eastern officials still believe they know the location of most of the government's chemical weapons supply, the Journal said.

But "we know a lot less than we did six months ago about where the chemical weapons are," one official was quoted as saying.

 

[amoy]

Now, that is an excellent repertoire to the news from Syrian by Roger Cohen.

Cohen as a surname, as I was told, has its origin amongst Syrian, or to be precise, Khazarian Jews.

Eli Cohen one of the best known post WW2 spies was a Jew. He even became the Chief Advisor to then Syrian minister of defence.

Is Krauthammer also a Jewish surname?

Sent from my 5910 using Tapatalk 2

 

[pmaitra]

Eli Cohen one of the best known post WW2 spies was a Jew. He even became the Chief Advisor to then Syrian minister of defence.

Is Krauthammer also a Jewish surname?

Sent from my 5910 using Tapatalk 2

Something that I have noticed among German Jews, is that their surnames tend to be meaningfully meaningless.

Krauthammer -> Kraut + Hammer -> vegetable + hammer
Tischbein -> Tisch + Bein -> table + leg
Eisenstein -> Eisen + Stein -> iron + stone

 

[W.G.Ewald]

I'm against any American intervention in Syria for the following reasons:

• There is no "good outcome"
  
• There no end point in mind
  
• We have absolutely nothing to gain
  
• The actual reason for intervention is not justifiable
  

• 
  
  All of those reasons apply to the covert support provided to the Syrian insurgents in the form of weapons from Libya, which began after the American intervention in bringing down Gaddafi. Or to any American involvement in the "Arab Spring."

 

[W.G.Ewald]

BBC News - Viewpoints: Can Russia's chemical weapons plan for Syria work?

A Russian proposal for Syria to put its chemical weapons stockpiles under international control, and then have them destroyed, has been accepted by the Syrian government. Can Russia's plan work?

In response to the developments, US President Barack Obama has put military action against Syria on hold and vowed to pursue diplomacy to remove the regime's chemical weapons.

But US Secretary of State John Kerry said the plan must be "swift and verifiable".

Yes, John. Whatever you say.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Syria: 'Assad must go!' said Obama. But Putin has carved him down to size, and soon it will be 'Assad must stay' – Telegraph Blogs

Nearly two years and two million refugees later, Assad is still there. And Moscow's political ambitions have soared. Back then they merely wanted to block any Western ideas of "regime change" in Syria. That accomplished, they now have an audacious new scheme: to get Western leaders to support Assad as the best available factor for stability in the country.

 

[Energon]

Apropos the part highlighted in blue, you are correct within the precincts of what the Obama Administration has pledged publicly. What they have promised to do covertly and indirectly is a matter of speculation. I have my opinions, and we might not agree on that, but I will not attempt to settle that here.

Apropos the rest of the quote, it is a reasonable assessment by you, as of until this point, and I do not contest that. I will, however, contest that later in this post.

Apropos the remainder of your post that is unquoted, it is a rehash of things we know and what is generally assumed.



Apropos the part highlighted in green, I will have to differ. The "red line" was never about chemical weapons. The "red line" was about alleged chemical weapons use by the Assad government. These two things are different. The reason I say this, is because, there have been reports, including from UN, where the rebels have been suspected of having used chemical weapons, and the Obama Administration has not even threatened to act.

Now, let us go back to the first quote on top, to the portion that is highlighted in red. If the US sincerely did not intend an overthrow of the Assad government, then they would have displayed an equal alacrity in the face of alleged chemical weapons use by the rebels. Therefore, your claim or estimate (or whatever you want to call it), that the objective of the Obama Administration is not removal of Assad, is not reasonable.

The "red line" was never about chemical weapons. The "red line" was about alleged chemical weapons use by the Assad government. These two things are different.

Actually no, you misunderstand, by definition the "red line" itself specifically refers to chemical weapons as opposed to human rights violations or other conventional weapons; the identity of the party that uses them is secondary (technically). The allegations against Assad are based on the assumption that this extremely dangerous arsenal is under the strict control of the national military. There is of course no proof of this and the simple fact that the rebels can get their hands on chemical weapons reflects more upon the level of anarchy in Syria than anything else. And then of course it raises the serious question as to how Assad can guarantee the elimination of all the chemical weapons stockpiles if he doesn't control them.

Now in regards to the ouster of Assad; as things stand right now the chances of any backdoor promises to the GCC 6 are somewhere between remote and nil.
This whole 'let's depose Assad' mess started when Hilary Clinton still high on Libya openly stated that "Assad needs to go". This rhetoric continued until late 2012 when intelligence agencies around the world started getting a more concrete idea of the portentous nature of the opposition fighters. Now the equation had changed but the Administration couldn't admit this openly. They still persisted with lethal weapons support in order to get Assad to the negotiation table. But that didn't happen.

After the chemical attack however Obama had to intervene due to his silly red line. There was no damning evidence, but at this point a military strike was more about ego than anything else. But by now it was glaringly evident that deposing Assad was simply not an option and this is precisely why the battle plan was designed to keep his administration intact while merely exacting some damage as punitive retribution just because of the red line. If the US is intent upon not dislodging Assad in the short term then they're definitely not going to promise the GCC6 otherwise.

As of right now I get the feeling that the administration wants to extricate itself as much as possible from this mess, and I'm sure the Russians are aware of this. It is hence clear to them that by eliminating the chemical weapons factor will break the only remaining tether. There's a lot of babbling about credibility issues etc. but overall I think getting out of this mess is the best thing for the United States as a whole.

If I had to make a wild guess in regards to any deals with GCC it would go something along the lines of... if you can form an organized coalition that can effectively stabilize the country and not turn upon the US then we might give this another thought. In the mean time we'll do some half assed selective assistance to make sure Assad doesn't win outright.

 

[Bilal]

Assad has become the latest bully in asia,no one has the power to stop him right now unfortunatly,the sahibha and his thugs have made syria a playground of the worse human right violations ever seen.

 

[Energon]

What a cheap remark. Obama has been deceitful about Syria since before he allowed 4 Americans, including the US ambassador to Libya, to die in Benghazi. You in fact are hung up on getting Obama out of the mess he made with his own big mouth with the least amount of embarrassment to his own skinny self. You weave your story so that anything Obama has done, is doing, or will do "benefits the United States." You are the one "hung up on Obama."

I honestly don't know if you have a deficit in comprehension or cognition, either way there's nothing I can do about it. I started this thread with the specific intention of debating this issue from the point of the United States. Everything I have discussed this far is in accordance with what I originally set out to do. Yet you have now turned this into yet another Obama affair, which is something you always do. So no, you're the obsessed one, and projecting your obsession upon me is silly.

Invariably your posts always end up sopping with Fox news style brain cell killing rhetoric, which is fine, but then you need to find another outlet for it.

I suggest you open up your own thread about Obama and transfer all your posts there because as of right now you're derailing mine.

 

[Bilal]

I say Bush was a stronger person than obama,who is unable to process a simple decsion on a strike on Assad,the more his power grows the difficult it will be to kill the medusa.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

I honestly don't know if you have a deficit in comprehension or cognition, either way there's nothing I can do about it. I started this thread with the specific intention of debating this issue from the point of the United States. Everything I have discussed this far is in accordance with what I originally set out to do. Yet you have now turned this into yet another Obama affair, which is something you always do. So no, you're the obsessed one, and projecting your obsession upon me is silly.

Invariably your posts always end up sopping with Fox news style brain cell killing rhetoric, which is fine, but then you need to find another outlet for it.

I suggest you open up your own thread about Obama and transfer all your posts there because as of right now you're derailing mine.

I see, you want to keep Obama out of a discussion of the United States. Good luck with that.

Although, Obama wants to distance himself from being any kind of leader, that is clear. And like you, he dislikes Fox News for not worshiping him.

Do the sources I cite in this thread include Fox News?

As for your thread, it wasn't worth a bucket of warm spit to begin with.

You and hello_10 should start a thread together and bloviate with each other.

The fact that Obama stepped on his dick is not a due to "a deficit in comprehension or cognition" on my part.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

John Kerry's Russian counterpart mocks him for talking too much | WashingtonExaminer.com

Secretary of State John Kerry's negotiations with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov got off to a rocky start Thursday, with the Russian mocking Kerry right at the outset.

"They got off to a really bad start yesterday --- partly because of the Putin op-ed and partly because Kerry in the opening remarks spoke at length --- and I mean at length --- compared to the unprepared few welcoming comments from the Russian counterpart," NBC News foreign correspondent Andrea Mitchell said on "Morning Joe."

"And then the Russian minister said at the end, very tartly, 'Sometimes diplomacy demands silence.'"

Energon is like Kerry, in love with the sound of his own words.

 

[Energon]

You and hello_10 should start a thread together and bloviate with each other.

The fact that Obama stepped on his dick is not a due to "a deficit in comprehension or cognition" on my part.

Actually I was going to suggest you form your own thread with hello_10 because neither one of you seem to have the ability to understand prose or think for yourselves... or in other words "a deficit in comprehension and/or cognition". Besides, if you didn't notice I started this thread for a specific purpose which you have now derailed. I'm all for talking about Obama so as long as it's in the context of the Syrian conflict from the American POV. But you are unable to understand this simple concept and relentlessly equate everything as being pro or anti Obama.

If rational debate is beyond your abilities then it's best you stfu and gtfo of this discussion because you have nothing of value to contribute.

 

[pmaitra]

Actually no, you misunderstand, by definition the "red line" itself specifically refers to chemical weapons as opposed to human rights violations or other conventional weapons; the identity of the party that uses them is secondary (technically).

I didn't misunderstand. The "red line" was never about chemical weapons. It was about removal of Assad, and the casus belli was his alleged use of chemical weapons, which the White House has acknowledged was not proven beyond doubt.

The allegations against Assad are based on the assumption that this extremely dangerous arsenal is under the strict control of the national military.

The allegations are based on pictures of victims. Chemical weapons under the "strict control" of Assad would actually remove all concerns. The allegations are motivated by the the following desires:

• Build energy pipelines across Syrian territory to break Russian monopoly over the European gas market.
• Take down another country hostile to Israel.
• Deny the Russians a naval base.

As I walk away from this debate, I'll have the two points above as disagreements with you.

 

[nrupatunga]

I hope no one disputes the following
- GCC nations want assad to be dislodged and replaced with their own lackey.
- GCC aslso knows that inspite of them having much better miltary hardware, they just can't do it. Also they know west not only has the stuff to take out/cripple assad but can do it as well.
- GCC is forcing west to strike assad on any pretext. Since west (esp usa) had publicly told that WMD usage is a red line and hence liable for punishment.
- West including usa has now publicly told that syrian regime has used chemical weapons.
- Usa govt says strikes will happen to punish syrian regime for WMD usage.
- Faced with huge domestic public outcry, POTUS witholds strikes pending approval from congress/senate approval inspite of he himself saying it's not mandatory for him to approach senate.
- By then syrian regime had not agreed to open itself for UN supervision of its chemical stockpile. This meant that whether it's logical or not, the "perception" which went out to globe (esp west asia) was usa "backtrack" its own commitment.
- Now with russian proposal (or some on twitter put it as "face saver"), which syrain regime has accepted on a higher level which is to open itself for UN supervision of its chemical stockpile. Now usa exits out of its "punishing" mode, saying its objective are met.
- No punishment for chemical attacks which have already happened.
- But West's interest in syria is not just chemical stockpile. If so they wouldn't have supported rebels with money, non-lethal weapons and now maybe even lethal ones well(?).

So now
- - In geo politics, not only what is said in public but also what is "discussed" and sometimes even without discussion but acting in a certain manner also matters. West co-ordinated with its allies in the region wrt dislodging assad from syria.
- Since west (esp usa ) had put out a red line without which they could not involve themselves directly, it is but "understood" that without them actually saying that in case of red line being breached, they will directly involve themselves as they did in libya (without putting boots on ground).

*** Hence now usa saying that we are "happy" with UN supervision and we never "publicly" told that we would "help" our allies in west asia in the manner these countries expected help, except for the war weary public in usa nobody in global community will buy this version. Esp its own allies in Syria (i.e. rebels)and west asia. Even if "technically" usa has done no wrong, this will be seen as usa's "backtraking" by its allies in west asia. This also means the other side will spin it in their own ways
-So now even after acceptance of usa itself over the breaching of its own set red line, usa thinking twice, thrice or much more before saying it won't or need not act for other reasons (as of now) or it needs more time will send out a message of some sort of it's "weakness".
-How does it's allies in west asia take this?? Maybe they will encourage its proxies for example Taliban to hit nato in Afghanistan. It may radicalise even more the southern shores of mediterranean, which will soon hit the northern shores of Mediterranean. But it may be diplomatically and also asymmetrically. How so definitely, time will tell.


Though there were indications that congress/senate not approving strikes, vote is yet to be done. Who knows inspite of all things being said, it may finally vote in favour as well. Which means usa may still go ahead with strikes.


P.S Due to net issues couldn't login to DFI. Now let me go through the last 2-3 pages.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Actually I was going to suggest you form your own thread with hello_10 because neither one of you seem to have the ability to understand prose or think for yourselves... or in other words "a deficit in comprehension and/or cognition". Besides, if you didn't notice I started this thread for a specific purpose which you have now derailed. I'm all for talking about Obama so as long as it's in the context of the Syrian conflict from the American POV. But you are unable to understand this simple concept and relentlessly equate everything as being pro or anti Obama.

If rational debate is beyond your abilities then it's best you stfu and gtfo of this discussion because you have nothing of value to contribute.

You are all for talking about Obama as long as he is not criticized for his words and actions (or lack of action). That position is extremely unrealistic. You cannot separate the foreign policy of the US from the president and the secretary of state, both of whom have shown themselves to be quite incompetent in the Syria matter. Do you mean the "American point of view" differs from Obama's policies?

By the way, since when did rational debate include "stfu" and "gtfo"?

 

[pmaitra]

Barack Obama's Faustian pact with Vladimir Putin over Syrian chemical weapons brings despair to allies

Barack Obama has staggered his way to a face-saving deal with Vladimir Putin after a week that left the president diminished at home and abroad, says Peter Foster.

Barack Obama seems to be under a lot of pressure (from Telegraph UK's main World News page)

Barack Obama with Vladimir Putin at last week's G20 summit Photo: ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO/AP

Kerry and Lavrov announce their plan in Geneva. (AFP)

As John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov sat together in Geneva on Saturday to announce agreement between the US and Russia on how to disarm Syria of its chemical weapons, the sense of relief in Washington was almost palpable.

Kerry and Ladrov announce their plan in Geneva. (AFP)

After a week in which Barack Obama's political fortunes and reputation appeared to lie almost entirely in the hands of Russia's President Vladimir Putin, America's top diplomat had managed to wrest something from the chaos.

The deal sets a tough, and some would say unachievable, deadline for the elimination of the Assad regime's chemical arsenal, and holds the door just ajar to the possibility - but no more than that - of armed intervention if Syria breaches the agreement that has now been struck.

But to have arrived at this point apparently accidentally after so many zig-zags along the way does not look like the mark of a presidency that is resolute on the international stage.

If the Obama administration's original script had been stuck to, the world would by now have seen US missiles rain down on military targets across Syria as a lesson to its regime - and the wider world - that American warnings are more than mere bluster.

No-one could have predicted the twists and turns of a momentous week of global diplomacy that would leave both America and Mr Obama seriously diminished at home and abroad - but in Washington DC last Sunday night, there were dark omens of what lay ahead.

Behind closed doors at the Naval Observatory, the official residence of US vice-president Joe Biden, a little-noticed prologue was unfolding to a drama whose script would be written in Moscow and Damascus, with Vladimir Putin in the starring role and the US president relegated to part of bit-player.

There, in the Queen Anne-style mansion, Mr Biden was sharing a "family-style" Italian supper with six Republican senators who were crucial to White House hopes of winning a resolution authorising Mr Obama to take military action against Syria.

Just how crucial, however, only became clear just after 7pm when Mr Obama's presidential motorcade – unannounced and unscheduled – came howling out of the gates of the White House to make the three-mile journey up Massachusetts Avenue, past the Lutyens-designed British Embassy, to his deputy's house.

It was an extraordinary breach of protocol that, in hindsight, heralded an even greater loss of face for Mr Obama on the world stage.

White House officials tried to brush off the dash across town by saying that Mr Obama had just "dropped by" Mr Biden's place, but no-one was fooled: American presidents just don't "drop by" to see US senators at zero notice. For all the spinning, it was clear that the White House sensed the real possibility of defeat in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Not for the first time in the Syria crisis, Mr Obama had telegraphed he was playing a weak hand.

It was against this dismal background that Mr Obama awoke on Monday morning, mulling a potential defeat in Congress that, as one commentator put it, would have left him the most emasculated US president since Jimmy Carter went fishing in Georgia and was attacked by a "killer rabbit".

In London John Kerry, the US secretary of state, was still beating the drums for an intervention that Mr Obama and his aides knew they could not sell.

Stentorian as always, Mr Kerry warned of the damage that would follow if Bashar al-Assad "was free to rub out countless numbers of his own citizens with impunity".

So was there anything that Assad could do to avoid the threatened attack, he was asked? "Sure," he responded, "He can turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week." To make clear that he wasn't serious he added:

"But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously."

Those 20 words, uttered in exasperation, offered Mr Obama a domestic political lifeline, but one that undermined the notion – as Mr Obama himself would put in his address to the nation later in the week – that "for nearly seven decades the United States has been the anchor of global security."

The 12 hours of breath-taking diplomacy that followed was a testament to the shrewd statecraft of Mr Putin - and to the desperation in Washington to save face.

Back on his plane Mr Kerry swapped his hand-tailored Harvard Square suit for a faded-orange sweatshirt, and took a call from his Russian counterpart, Mr Lavrov, who told him that he had heard his remarks in London and was now preparing to make an announcement.

What only an hour earlier had been belittled by State Department aides as a mere "rhetorical flourish" was suddenly morphing into a "diplomatic solution" that White House aides now said had been under discussion for "months" (a version that Mr Kerry repeated at the closing Geneva press conference).

The clinching moment came just before 4pm, when Mr Obama sat down for a series of pre-planned US television network interviews. How would he respond to the Russian overture?

The chats had originally been billed as the part of an intensive 24-hour push to win backing for air strikes. Now Vladimir Putin had offered a political lifeline, and Mr Obama seized it with both hands. "I think you have to take it with a grain of salt initially," he said, but reluctantly accepted that the Russian offer was "a potentially positive development."

However it was, as countless members of the foreign policy establishment instantly knew, a Faustian pact in which Mr Putin saved Mr Obama's blushes at home in exchange for a dramatic loss of American face abroad.

On Capitol Hill, Harry Reid, the Democrat leader of the Senate, announced the postponement of the planned Senate vote on the use for force - and America's credible threat had effectively been withdrawn until further notice since – as one senior Republican senate aide told The Sunday Telegraph - "Folks here will do almost anything to keep the Russian proposal alive and avoid a vote on using force."

In that moment, the "big stick" that US presidents have carried since the days of Theodore Roosevelt could be heard slipping from Mr Obama's grasp as much of the US breathed a collective sigh of relief.

"The moment the president gave his interviews, everything shifted," a Democratic senate aide told The Sunday Telegraph. "It became clear what the president was thinking and John Kerry's comment wasn't a throwaway."

That meant Moscow rejecting US and French demands that any UN resolution contained the threat of force, confident in the knowledge that the British parliament and now the US Congress, had made clear such threats were empty.

In a sign of who would be in the diplomatic driving seat in the days ahead, Russia called a meeting of the UN Security Council, and then abruptly cancelled it when it became clear that the French would demand any resolution carried the threat of force – something Moscow had no need, or desire to accede to.

It was a clearly weakened Mr Obama who found himself still making the case for intervention in a prime-time address to the nation on Tuesday, even as everyone in the room, in Congress and watching at home knew full well that events had already overtaken him. Even his wife wasn't persuaded, Mr Obama had admitted injudiciously to NBC.

"If you ask Michelle, 'Do we do we want to be involved in another war?'" he said, "the answer is 'No'."

Addressing the nation with the air of a quietly despairing professor who cannot understand how the class is not catching the force of his argument, Mr Obama explained what was at stake and then publicly acknowledged his failure to carry the nation with him.

"What kind of world will we live in if the United States of America sees a dictator brazenly violate international law with poison gas and we choose to look the other way?" he asked plaintively, even as the answer to that question was becoming clear in Moscow, Damascus and Geneva.

For those on Capitol Hill who had taken a political risk and put partisan considerations aside to help Mr Obama win the argument, his performance that engendered nothing but despair.

Bob Corker, one of the Republican senators present at the Biden dinner where Mr Obama had pressing the case for limited intervention for more than an hour with such apparent conviction, couldn't contain his frustration.

"He just cannot follow through," he told CNN of Mr Obama, "He cannot speak to the nation as a commander in chief. He cannot speak to the world as a commander in chief. He just cannot do it... He's a diminished figure here on Capitol Hill."

Just how diminished became clear on Thursday when the New York Times ran a gloating article by Vladimir Putin, scorning Mr Obama's notion of American exceptionalism and scolding the US for its determination to threaten force.

If there had been any doubt that Mr Obama's domestic political fix would come with a heavy international price, it evaporated as soon as Mr Putin's finger-wagging article hit the newsstands.

Sen. John McCain, the hawkish Republican who has called for US intervention in Syria, said the article was "an insult to the intelligence of every American", while Sen. Robert Menendez, the chair of the Senate foreign relations committee said he had "almost wanted to vomit" after reading it.

But the indignation could not deflect from the scale of the Russian president's diplomatic triumph, nor from Congress's role in handing it to him.

"One gets the sense vodka and caviar are flowing heavily these days [in the Kremlin]," said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, on MSNBC. "This is his moment after decades of Russian humiliation to remind everyone Russia is back."

And so, when John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov met in Geneva to discuss the Russian plan to put chemical weapons beyond use, it was clear that British, French and American bluster that any plan must be accompanied by the threat of force and strict 15-day deadlines was slipping under the pressure of Russian realpolitik.

"The US is ready for a resolution that does not have the use of force included because it is determined to ensure the UN demonstrates Syrian culpability for chemical weapons attacks," said one US official, implicitly acknowledging that US cannot credibly threaten force if Congress has already made clear it will not authorise it.

And so it was when Mr Kerry yesterday emerged from the third day of Geneva talks. The plan hammered out was full of urgent-sounding deadlines - a full inventory of Syria's weapons by next week, first inspections by November. But it contained no clear commitment to use force to ensure they happen, just talk by Mr Lavrov of the possibility of a "Chapter 7" resolution in the future.

A tired-looking Mr Kerry said there could be "no games, no room for avoidance of anything less than full compliance by the Assad regime" - but stopped short of saying America would punish non-cooperation with military strikes and instead talked vaguely of consequences.

As was so painfully demonstrated in Washington last week, the political reality is that neither he nor Mr Obama is in a position to dictate what those consequences would be.

Additional reporting: Raf Sanchez in Washington and Philip Sherwell in New York

Source: Barack Obama's Faustian pact with Vladimir Putin over Syrian chemical weapons brings despair to allies - Telegraph

 

[pmaitra]

Please do not use 'STFU' and 'GTFO' in a debate. Disagreement is part of a debate. If all were to agree on everything, there would be no debate. Also, everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. It is easier to agree to disagree.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

When the video from which this photo was taken was analyzed by a "body language expert" on CNN, the expert crowed about how Obama overpowered Putin by his presence. The political reality is obviously quite different. Really, Americans are poorly served by US news media which remain completely devoted to Obama. In fact CNN and the like shield Obama from reality to the point where it inhibits him from becoming a real leader.

Here is the CNN video.

 

[dhananjay1]

There is no comparison between Obama and Putin. Obama is a smooth talking career politician, a sort of cross between an orator and a bureaucrat. Putin is a product of sheer power politics, he can chew and spit out thousands like Obama.