USmayallywithregimewewantedto

US may ally with regime we wanted to bomb 11 months ago to fight ISIS

posted at 11:51 am on July 3, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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2013′s old and busted was Bashar al-Assad being a “reformer,” and the new hotness that August was that Assad was a monster that the US needed to bomb after using WMD on his own people. Skip forward eleven months and the field may reverse itself. Josh Rogin reports for The Daily Beast that the Obama administration may ally with Assad as a way to slow down or stop ISIS. That would be a remarkable shift for a White House that has spent the last three years looking for ways to bolster the rebellion fighting the Assad regime:

There’s a battle raging inside the Obama administration about whether the United States ought to push away from its goal of toppling Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and into a de facto alliance with the Damascus regime to fight ISIS and other Sunni extremists in the region.

As President Obama slowly but surely increases the U.S. military presence on the ground in Iraq, his administration is grappling with the immediate need to stop the ISIS advance and push for a political solution in Baghdad. The 3 1/2-year grinding civil war is Syria has been put on a back burner for now. Some officials inside the administration are proposing that the drive to remove Assad from power, which Obama announced as U.S. policy in 2012, be set aside, too. The focus, these officials argue, should instead be on the region’s security and stability. Governments fighting for survival against extremists should be shored up, not undermined.

“Anyone calling for regime change in Syria is frankly blind to the past decade; and the collapse of eastern Syria, and growth of Jihadistan, leading to 30 to 50 suicide attacks a month in Iraq,” one senior Obama administration official who works on Iraq policy told The Daily Beast.

If nothing else demonstrates the checkers mentality of American foreign policy over the last few years, this does. Barack Obama bombed the Moammar Qaddafi regime out of existence on the basis of “responsibility to protect,” creating a failed state in which al-Qaeda and other jihadist networks could flourish. Even while Assad was actively targeting his own people in the way the Obama administration claimed Qaddafi planned, the White House and especially Hillary Clinton insisted that Assad was a “reformer” with whom the US could work to democratize Syria.

When that clearly wasn’t working, the Obama administration switched to a reluctant opponent of Assad’s, boosting the rebels by non-lethal means publicly, and covertly sending small arms — even though we had difficulty in determining who were the “moderates” and who were the extremists. That reached a fever pitch last summer when Assad crossed the ill-advised “red line” drawn by Obama on the use of chemical weapons, at which point Obama at first moved without Congressional involvement to conduct military action against Assad’s regime. When public reaction quickly turned negative on that idea, Obama requested approval from Congress and didn’t get it.

Eleven months later, Obama now wants to work with Assad to defeat the rebellion … or at least the part of the rebellion that the US doesn’t like. The conceptual view of this partnership is a fairy tale that must be read to be believed:

Some administration officials are also suggesting that Iran could be a partner in a post-war Syria, helping to ensure security there during a transition period, after which Assad would negotiate his own departure.

Er, what? Neither Iran nor Assad want Assad to depart at all. Only someone with a rich fantasy life would believe that aligning with Iran and Assad would hasten Assad’s departure, let alone incentivize Assad to arrange for it. All that does is strengthen Assad, and Iran for that matter. It also will infuriate our Sunni partners in the region, who are aligning against Assad and especially Iran. If anything, it will accelerate the sectarian nature of the fight rather than isolate ISIS in the field.

This is what comes from having no foreign policy strategy, other than to get out of Iraq. Obama does not want to return there even to fight ISIS, which is an offshoot of al-Qaeda, even where we have a straight-up fight militarily — and there are good reasons for that, because we probably can’t arrive in time with enough forces to do the job, thanks to the total withdrawal of 2011. He won’t commit air power to it without forcing the Iraqis to dump Maliki either, which again is not altogether unjustified. However, it leaves us with no strategic or tactical way to stop ISIS, no strategic partner in Baghdad, and no other strategic partners from NATO willing to step in and help. Assad is nothing more than a life preserver tossed into an ocean of bad circumstances, and the rationalizations already arising make it look like an even more ridiculous choice.

If we want to fight ISIS, we’d be better off fighting ISIS ourselves. Propping up Assad through Iran is a complete reversal of American foreign policy of the last 35 years, in service to nothing except desperation.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Bashar al-Assad, foreign policy, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, Nouri al-Maliki, Syria

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Hillary:Youknow,theAmericanpoliticalsystemis

Hillary: You know, the American political system is the most brutal in the world

posted at 9:21 am on June 16, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Let’s face it — there was never going to be a good time for a gaffe of this scale, but it’s hard to think of a worse time for it. In Iraq, where Hillary Clinton signed off on the zero option rather than push for Barack Obama to reach an agreement for residual forces, an al-Qaeda spinoff marches on Baghdad in its effort to establish a new Islamist caliphate. In Afghanistan, fifty people died in what is largely considered a successful election campaign. In Burma, which Hillary claims as one of her crowning achievements, the winner of an election from two decades ago has finally been released from home imprisonment while the military junta tries to balance its need for commerce with its desire for power. Syria just held a mockery of an election, which resulted in the continued despotism of the man Hillary once hailed as a “reformer,” Bashar al-Assad. The country to which she gave a “reset” button is overrunning Ukraine.

But you know which country has the most brutal politics? Er, the one her husband dominated for almost a decade:

“Who is the viable woman of either party who could win a primary nomination in 2016, if who not you?” CBS Sunday host Jane Pauley asked Clinton in yet another interview the former First Lady has given during the week of the release of her latest memoir, “Hard Choices.”

“Politics is so unpredictable,” Clinton responded. “Whoever runs has to recognize that the American political system is probably the most difficult, even brutal, in the world.”

Brutal. Hillary wants to run on her record as Secretary of State, in part based on the amount of travel she undertook in that role. It’s indisputable that she traveled around the world, but she doesn’t appear to have learned anything from her travels. Aung Sang Suu Kyi might have a different perspective on brutal in relation to political systems, or perhaps the anti-Chavistas in Venezuela could have informed Hillary of what the word actually means. For that matter, nearly everyone in Syria could have explained it to her back in 2011. In fact, Bob Schieffer tried to do so himself, but she apparently wasn’t listening:

Hillary needs to answer for Iraq too, writes National Journal’s Alex Seitz-Wald:

It’s not fair to blame President Obama or Clinton entirely for the lack of U.S. troops in Iraq, since Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refused to sign the Status of Forces treaty needed to maintain a military presence. But as America’s top diplomat during the failed negotiations, Clinton’s role is sure to be scrutinized.

In an October 2011 interview with CNN, the then-secretary of State downplayed the importance of keeping troops in Iraq, saying American forces would still have plenty of capacity to deal with situations that might arise. “We have a lot of presence in that region,” Clinton said. “In addition to a very significant diplomatic presence in Iraq, which will carry much of the responsibility for dealing with an independent sovereign democratic Iraq, we have bases in neighboring countries.”

Some analysts predicted al-Maliki’s crackdown on the Sunni minority in the country would revive a dormant insurgency, but on Thursday, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations, Clinton said the insurgents’ success was unforeseeable. “I could not have predicted, however, the extent to which ISIS could be effective in seizing cities in Iraq and trying to erase boundaries to create an Islamic state. That’s why it’s a wicked problem,” she said.

Voters will have to debate that one, to determine if it’s a satisfactory answer for someone who likely wants to be commander in chief.

If Hillary argues that the American political scene is the most brutal in the world, then this question should be moot. This ignorance and flat-out whining should be a disqualifying event, in a rational world.

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Tags: 2016 election, Bashar al-Assad, hard choices, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, Syria

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Could intervention in Syria have prevented meltdown in Iraq?

CouldinterventioninSyriahavepreventedmeltdownin

Video:Gatesbelieves“Assadiswinning” posted

Video: Gates believes “Assad is winning”

posted at 6:31 pm on May 11, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

Just a brief hit for the end of the weekend showing just where things are heading in Syria.

The Obama administration’s handling of the situation in Syria “one of the sad stories of the president’s foreign policy,” according to former secretary of defense Robert Gates.

“I think last fall was a real low point where we went in the space of a week from saying ‘Assad must go’ to ‘Assad must stay’ in order to fulfill the agreement sponsored by Putin to get rid of the chemical weapons that Assad had used against his own people,” he said on Face the Nation. “If ‘winning’ means remaining as president of Syria, I think [Assad] is winning.”

Gates said there may have been an opportunity for the United States and others to oust Assad early in the conflict, but now sees it as too difficult to really change the situation in the country.

Let’s go to the video.

Don’t expect this situation to get better any time soon. Syria has fallen out of the news cycle with all the other disasters taking place, but it’s not getting any better. This is one failure which the international community will be paying for well into the future.

Tags: Bashar al-Assad, Bob Gates, Syria

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Video:Syriakeepingremainingchemicalweaponsasleverage?

Video: Syria keeping remaining chemical weapons as leverage?

posted at 8:01 am on May 1, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

After Russia intervened in the dispute over chemical weapons in Syria and averted a Western strike on its client Bashar al-Assad, the matter has largely disappeared from the headlines. Late last month, however, rebels in Syria accused Assad of launching new chemical-weapons attacks on civilian populations. News reports of casualties have been accelerating, such as in this AP video:

Today, the Washington Post reports that Assad has retained 27 tons of sarin ingredients, hoping to use that as leverage:

The months-long effort to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons program has ground to a halt because Syria is holding on to 27 tons of sarin precursor chemicals as leverage in a dispute with the international community over the future of facilities used to store the deadly agents, according to U.S. officials.

Having turned over all but an estimated 8 percent of its chemical arsenal to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Damascus missed a deadline Sunday to relinquish the remnants of its arsenal, which are stored in 16 containers in Damascus, U.S. officials said.

The OPCW is insisting that a network of tunnels and buildings that were used to store the weapons must be destroyed. The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has argued that the facilities should be repurposed.

“They’re just stalling for time to hold on to some of these facilities,” said a U.S. official familiar with the matter who would discuss the issue only on the condition of anonymity. The official said he expects that Syria will ultimately give up the material.

In part, they’ll give it up because they have an alternative — chlorine. They’re using it now, which suggests that they may be doing so to increase their leverage over the status of their current facilities, too. The international community can’t do much about chlorine, and so far they’re not even willing to concede that Assad is actually using it:

A senior U.S. intelligence official said U.S. intelligence agencies have little doubt that the attack was carried out by the government and that the toxic substance that led victims to choke was “likely chlorine.”

The use of chlorine as a weapon in Syria, if confirmed, would pose a dilemma for Washington, since it could not conceivably seek to rid Syria of a widely available chemical with numerous legitimate uses.

“There’s reluctance to call attention to it because there’s not much we can do about it,” a senior U.S. official said. “You can’t ask a country to get rid of all its chlorine.”

Another analyst quoted by the Post called the use of chlorine gas “puzzling,” because it has a very limited military value. But Assad isn’t using it for its tactical value; he’s using it as a weapon of terror. He wants to flush the rebels out from civilian areas where they get support. This isn’t difficult to figure out, but the twist here is that the rebels in many cases are terrorist groups too, who hide in civilian areas to keep from being attacked frontally by military units. Given half a chance, they’d use chlorine gas, and worse — which is another good reason to get the sarin components before the rebels get their hands on them.

The UN may investigate the use of chlorine, but, er … don’t expect much more than a strongly-worded memo, especially with Russia and its veto staying at Assad’s disposal.

Tags: Bashar al-Assad, chemical weapons, Russia, Syria, terrorism, United Nations

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WHordersSyrianembassyandconsulatesshuttered

WH orders Syrian embassy and consulates shuttered

posted at 2:01 pm on March 18, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Did a UN report on atrocities in Syria prompt the Obama administration to order Syria to close its embassy and consulates and their personnel to leave the US? Or is this a warning signal to the Syrian regime’s chief protector, Vladimir Putin? The timing is curious, to say the least, and the State Department explained that a decision by the Bashar al-Assad regime to suspend consular services in the US:

The Obama administration ordered the Syrian government on Tuesday to suspend its diplomatic and consular missions in the United States, requiring all personnel who are not legal U.S residents to leave the country.

The order, three years after the start of Syria’s bloody civil war, essentially shutters the Syrian embassy in Washington and its honorary consulates in Troy, Mich., and Houston, Texas. It comes in response to a decision by President Bashar Assad’s government to suspend consular services for Syrians living in the U.S.

On the other hand, State also declared that it wants to keep diplomatic relations in place with Syria:

This week marks the three-year anniversary of the Syrian revolution. For three years, Bashar al-Assad has refused to heed the call of the Syrian people to step aside. He has directed a war against his own people and created a humanitarian catastrophe in order to hold on to power and protect his narrow interests.

Following the announcement that the Syrian Embassy has suspended its provision of consular services, and in consideration of the atrocities the Assad regime has committed against the Syrian people, we have determined it is unacceptable for individuals appointed by that regime to conduct diplomatic or consular operations in the United States.

Consequently, the United States notified the Syrian government today that it must immediately suspend operations of its Embassy in Washington, D.C. and its honorary consulates in Troy, Michigan, and Houston, Texas. Syrian diplomats at the embassy and Syrian honorary consulates are no longer permitted to perform diplomatic or consular functions and those who are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents must depart the United States.

Despite the differences between our governments, the United States continues to maintain diplomatic relations with the state of Syria as an expression of our longstanding ties with the Syrian people, an interest that will endure long after Bashar al-Assad leaves power.

The United States will continue to assist those seeking change in Syria, to help end the slaughter, and to resolve the crisis through negotiations – for the benefit of the Syrian people.

It took three years to reach this conclusion? Some might find it a surprise that we still have diplomatic relations at all with Assad, but that’s been a relic of the initial conclusion by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that Assad was a “reformer.” Even after demanding Assad’s resignation, freezing his assets, and threatening to bomb Assad’s forces for crossing the “red line” of chemical-weapons use, the US and Syria have maintained diplomatic relations. Suddenly closing off consular services seems like small potatoes in comparison.

It’s possible that this report from UN human-rights investigators could have prompted this, but it’s just as condemnatory on Assad’s enemies as the Assad regime:

Jihadist rebels have carried out mass executions of detainees in Syria, UN human rights investigators say.

The commission of inquiry’s latest report documents several incidents blamed on the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).

Government forces are meanwhile accused of sharply increasing their use of indiscriminate weapons, such as barrel-bombs, against civilians. …

In addition, the UN investigators found that after 20 January the government ramped up its campaign of dropping barrel-bombs – explosive-filled cylinders or oil barrels – onto densely-populated residential districts of Aleppo, with devastating consequences.

The unceasing bombardment – at the same time as representatives of the government were attending peace talks with the opposition in Geneva – caused extensive civilian casualties and led to the large-scale displacement of people from targeted areas, the report says.

It’s awful, and the Syrian civil was has been especially horrific on Christians caught in the crossfire. That’s nothing new, either. We’ve known about atrocities since the beginning of the conflict, and in fact it has been one of the pretexts for intervention cited by Obama himself with his red lines and members of both parties in Congress. Until now, we haven’t demanded the expulsion of Syrian diplomats over it.

This seems like a broader message, and one for an audience not limited to Bashar al-Assad. The US may well be sending a not-so-subtle signal of intervention in Syria as a counter-threat to more action by Putin in Ukraine. It certainly seems to indicate the end of the Russo-American partnership on bringing that conflict to an end.

Tags: Barack Obama, Bashar al-Assad, Syria, Vladimir Putin

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VenezuelanPresidentMaduro,wesaluteyou!…saysSyria’s

Venezuelan President Maduro, we salute you! …says Syria’s Assad

posted at 1:21 pm on February 20, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

Two peas in a pod, these guys. Via Syria’s state news agency (h/t NRO):

President Bashar al-Assad expressed Syria’s support to the approach of the Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro in running Venezuela ”that he draws from the world heritage principles and the historical legacy of Latin America’s great leaders.”

In a letter he sent to the Venezuelan President on Wednesday, President al-Assad expressed the Syrian people’s solidarity with President Maduro and the Venezuelan people in the face of the “ferocious onslaught that is replayed today in several safe and stable countries, in an attempt to whip up chaos, spread foreign hegemony and seize the riches of these countries and their sensitive geopolitical positions.”

President al-Assad voiced Syria’s support to the ”road of peace charted by President Maduro in Venezuela,” wishing him success in shouldering the uphill tasks assigned to him at a critical stage the world is passing through.”

If I was going to write up a parody letter pretending to express solidarity from one villainous authoritarian to another, this is pretty much exactly what it would sound like. Applauding a fellow dictator for drawing from the “historical legacy of Latin America’s great leaders,” like, say, Chavez, Castro, and Che Guevara? Defying reality and deceitfully labeling a country with egregious inflation and outrageous murder rates “safe and stable”? Asserting that a corrupted, impenetrable government and the deteriorating rule of law is charting a “road of peace”? Check, check, and check. Really, these tyrants are like caricatures of themselves.

At least five people have now been killed in Venezuela’s massive student protests, and the latest death is that of a young former beauty queen. The tragedy is likely to fuel the same outrage that helped to ignite the protests when the highway murder of another young beauty queen last month put a spotlight on Venezuela’s murder and crime rates (to which Maduro oh-so-helpfully responded that he would crack down on “violence in soap operas,” gee whiz). Via Reuters:

Venezuelan security forces and demonstrators faced off in streets blocked by burning barricades in several cities on Thursday in an escalation of protests against President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government, witnesses said. …

The demonstrators, mainly students, blame the government for violent crime, high inflation, product shortages and alleged repression of opponents.

In affluent east Caracas overnight, security forces fired teargas and bullets, chasing youths who threw Molotov cocktails and blocked streets with burning trash, witnesses said. …

The latest direct victim of the unrest was a college student and local beauty queen, Genesis Carmona, 22, shot in the head during a demonstration in the central city of Valencia.

Tags: authoritarianism, Bashar al-Assad, Nicolas Maduro, protests, Syria, Venezuela, violence

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Kerry:We’reshocked,shockedthatRussiaisenabling

Kerry: We’re shocked, shocked that Russia is enabling Assad to stay in power

posted at 10:01 am on February 17, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Talks in Geneva between the combatants in Syria’s civil war broke down earlier today. US Secretary of State John Kerry marched to a podium to express his dismay over the situation, and put the blame on three forces that are enabling Bashar al-Assad to remain in power and “double down” on a military solution to the conflict. To the surprise of exactly no one, those forces are Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia:

“Right now, Bashar Assad has not engaged in the discussions along the promised and required standard that both Russia spoke up for and the regime spoke up for,” Kerry said during a press conference in Jakarta.

He said the Syrian leader’s team “refused to open up one moment of discussion” of a transitional government to replace Assad’s regime. “It is very clear that Bashar Assad is trying to win this on the battlefield instead of coming to the negotiating table in good faith,” Kerry added.

Kerry also had harsh words for Assad’s allies in Moscow, saying Russia needs to be a part of the solution, rather than contributing aid and weapons to him which, “are in fact enabling Assad to double down.”

Russia has told the U.S. it was committed to helping create a transitional government, Kerry said, but has not delivered “the kind of effort to create the kind of dynamic by which that could be achieved.”

And this surprises … whom, exactly? Let’s start with Iran. We’re currently negotiating with Tehran on an end to their nuclear-weapons program, while Hezbollah is intervening on behalf of Assad in Syria, whom we oppose. In what world, diplomatic or otherwise, does this make any sense at all? Iran and Hezbollah need Assad in their camp in order to leverage Syria against the West and Israel. The only reason we’re not sold on an outright intervention to blow Assad out of Syria is because the alternative is worse, with al-Qaeda controlling ground in Iraq and Syria now thanks to American retreats in the former country.

Russia, meanwhile, wants to keep up its arms sales, prevent the West from creating another failed state on the Mediterranean, and to stick his thumb in the eye of NATO. One of those three is actually a good idea, and perhaps we should be asking ourselves how we got to this point in the first place. But the other two make it very clear that Russia is no ally, and that the Obama administration’s “reset button” to Moscow sent a very clear signal that the White House has no idea what it’s doing in the Middle East any longer. No one, and I mean no one, who has read any history at all could possibly be shocked, shocked that a Russian autocrat is ready and willing to exploit a Western failure in this part of the world.

National Journal’s Ron Fournier beat me to the punch in awarding John Kerry the Captain Louis Renault Award for today, which shows just how well-deserved it is.

By the way, here’s the alternative in Syria (NSFW):

ISIS arrived in Addana about a year ago, initially welcomed in the conservative town by Islamist fighters. But within a few months, ISIS had entrenched itself and begun exerting its harsh order through what one fighter calls “terrorism and punishment.”

“ISIS came in and took over one area and announced it was an Islamic state and did whatever they wanted,” Abu Sa’ed says.

In the passenger’s seat, fellow fighter Abu Jaafar sighs, his AK-47 trained out the window.

“They used to leave the bodies of people they executed at the checkpoint for days,” he says. “The corpses would rot. No one could avoid looking at them.”

Amid the civil war in Syria, another war is taking place — one that pits moderate and Islamist rebels against radicals from ISIS, a group so radical that even al Qaeda has reportedly distanced itself from it. Both groups of fighters are opposed to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Tags: Bashar al-Assad, Hezbollah, Iran, John Kerry, Russia, Syria

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KerrytellsCapitolHillthatObama’sSyriapolicies

Kerry tells Capitol Hill that Obama’s Syria policies have failed

posted at 12:01 pm on February 3, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Josh Rogin gets this bombshell from two of the Senators in the closed-door meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry, who briefed them and thirteen other members of Congress on progress in Syria. In short, it doesn’t exist. The chemical-weapons inspection regime set up by Russia to protect Bashar al-Assad is nothing short of a joke, and the peace talks are going exactly where everyone else knew they would … nowhere. Kerry told his former colleagues that he has lost faith in Obama’s policies, and now the US must intervene to stop Syria from being taken over by radical Sunni terror networks:

Secretary of State John Kerry has lost faith in his own administration’s Syria policy, he told fifteen U.S. Congressmen in a private, off-the-record meeting, according to two of the senators who were in the room.

Kerry also said he believes the regime of Bashar al Assad is failing to uphold its promise to give up its chemical weapons according to schedule; that the Russians are not being helpful in solving the Syrian civil war; and that the Geneva 2 peace talks that he helped organize are not succeeding. But according to the senators, Kerry now wants to arm Syria’s rebels—in part, to block the local al Qaeda affiliates who have designs on attacking the U.S. (Kerry’s spokesperson denied that he now wants to supply weapons, but did not dispute the overall tenor of the conversation.)

“[Kerry] acknowledged that the chemical weapons [plan] is being slow rolled, the Russians continue to supply arms, we are at a point now where we are going to have to change our strategy,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, who attended Kerr’s briefing with lawmakers on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. “He openly talked about supporting arming the rebels. He openly talked about forming a coalition against al Qaeda because it’s a direct threat.”

Kerry’s private remarks were a stark departure from the public message he and other top Obama administration officials repeatedly have given in public. Shortly after the meeting ended, Sens. Graham and John McCain described the meeting to The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, and Bloomberg News. Given newly-released intelligence on the growing al Qaeda presence in Syria, as well as shocking new evidence of Syrian human rights atrocities, the senators said they agreed with Kerry that the time had come for the United States to drastically alter its approach to the Syrian civil war.

How drastically? It depends on whom one asks. McCain and Graham said that Kerry wants to go forward on arming the rebels, but the State Department said that they heard what they wanted to hear, and not what Kerry was actually telling them:

Kerry’s spokeswoman, Jennifer Psaki, called it a “mischaracterization.” …

Psaki, who attended the meeting, said Kerry did not raise the prospect of lethal assistance for the rebels. “This is a case of members projecting what they want to hear and not stating the accurate facts of what was discussed,” she said.

Fred Hiatt reminds readers at the Washington Post that Kerry’s impulses have been more in line with McCain and Graham than Barack Obama all along, though:

In fact, more than a year ago Kerry openly advocated changing the dynamics in Syria so that dictator Bashar al-Assad would have an incentive to negotiate. But the White House vetoed any serious training or arming of the rebels. That left Kerry beseeching Russia to persuade Assad to make concessions even as the dictator was gaining on the battlefield. Not surprisingly, that hasn’t worked.

Once again, we’re back at the intervention point against al-Qaeda in Syria, even though the situation appears more dire in Iraq. Furthermore, we’d be intervening into a civil war within a civil war in Syria in order to support the supposedly more moderate native opposition, even though they’re fading into irrelevancy. Why not attack al-Qaeda in Iraq in support of a government with much closer ties to the US? That would force AQ back into that front and take some of the pressure off of the native rebels in Syria, and force AQ into a straight-up fight with potentially much less confusion between groups on the battlefield.

The bigger news here, though, is that there appears to be a split on foreign policy in the Obama administration, although the size of the split may be difficult to size up. Obama himself wanted an intervention in Syria when his hand was forced on the chemical-weapons “red line,” but not on the scale demanded by McCain and Graham. Either way, this looks very similar to the Western intervention in Libya, where arms shipments (mostly but barely covert) was preceded by a bombing campaign against the regime in service to a coup d’etat. That left a huge vacuum in which the radical Islamists could exploit the failed-state environment and export their jihad into Mali and, er, Syria too.

How much distance is there really between Kerry and Obama now? I’d doubt that it’s much, but the fact that Kerry is talking about Obama’s policy failures in Syria is bad enough for the administration.

Tags: al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Bashar al-Assad, John Kerry, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Syria

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Video:BombingsinBeirut,Kabul postedat

Video: Bombings in Beirut, Kabul

posted at 8:31 am on December 27, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Today’s news starts off with two bombings in war zones. In Beirut, it appears that Hezbollah has taken revenge for an earlier bombing by al-Qaeda on the Iranian embassy by targeting a political opponent of the Iranian proxy terrorist group. A car bomb assassinated Mohamad Chatah, a former finance minister and ally of pro-Western anti-Assad activist Saad Hariri:

A strong car bomb tore through a business district in the center of the Lebanese capital Friday, setting cars ablaze and killing a prominent pro-Western politician and four other people.

The bomb targeted Mohamad Chatah, a former finance minister and a senior aide to former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, in his car as he drove through central Beirut, Lebanon’s National News Agency said, confirming what security sources had told numerous foreign news agencies. Chatah was also a former ambassador to the U.S. …

Hariri heads the main, Western-backed coalition in Lebanon, which is engaged in bitter feuding with the militant Hezbollah group, which is allied to Syrian President Bashar Assad. Several recent bombings have targeted senior Hezbollah figures or districts where the Shiite group dominates.

In a statement Friday, Hariri implicitly accused Hezbollah of killing Chatah in the explosion and warned, “Those who assassinated (Chatah) … want to assassinate Lebanon.”

It’s not the only car bomb in the news. In Kabul, the Taliban conducted a suicide car bombing attack on a NATO convoy. At least three ISAF troops were killed, with an American reportedly among them according to NBC, although that has not yet been confirmed.

The two bombings are not connected. Both show, however, that the conflicts in their respective regions are at risk of spiraling further out of control. Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai has all but sabotaged any effort by the Obama administration to negotiate a continuing NATO presence after the 2014 stand-down date on combat operations. As this shows, trusting the Taliban to negotiate isn’t a winning strategy.

The situation in Beirut is worse. Lebanon struggled for years to rid itself of civil war, only to find itself under the thumb of Assad in Syria. Now with Assad under fire, Lebanon finds itself a proxy battlefield for the fight between the Iranian satellites of Hezbollah and Assad on one hand, and the Sunni terrorists of al-Qaeda and its allies on the other. The assassination of high-ranking political figures sounds very much like a return to chaos for Lebanon, unless the Lebanese can push both sides out of its country quickly — which would take a miracle. The cancer of Syria’s civil war is metastasizing.

Tags: Afghanistan, al Qaeda, Bashar al-Assad, Beirut, Hamid Karzai, Hezbollah, Syria, Taliban

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Reuters:WestwarmsuptoAssadregime

Reuters: West warms up to Assad regime

posted at 9:21 am on December 18, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Just four months ago, the question in the West was whether to bomb Bashar al-Assad’s military assets after finally acknowledging that the Syrian regime had crossed the “red line” on chemical weapons after an attack so blatant that ignoring it was no longer an option. That led to the stunning display of indecision and retreat by the US and the UK this summer that all but eliminated the threat of Western intervention.  Now Reuters reports that the retreat may be complete, as the opposition coalition complains that the West has begun to embrace Assad and the Alawites as a bulwark against al-Qaeda:

Western nations have indicated to the Syrian opposition that peace talks next month may not lead to the removal of President Bashar al-Assad and that his Alawite minority will remain key in any transitional administration, opposition sources said.

The message, delivered to senior members of the Syrian National Coalition at a meeting of the anti-Assad Friends of Syria alliance in London last week, was prompted by rise of al Qaeda and other militant groups, and their takeover of a border crossing and arms depots near Turkey belonging to the moderate Free Syrian Army, the sources told Reuters.

“Our Western friends made it clear in London that Assad cannot be allowed to go now because they think chaos and an Islamist militant takeover would ensue,” said one senior member of the Coalition who is close to officials from Saudi Arabia.

Noting the possibility of Assad holding a presidential election when his term formally ends next year, the Coalition member added: “Some do not even seem to mind if he runs again next year, forgetting he gassed his own people.”

In fact, it’s not just the West that seems to be giving up on fighting Assad and his regime now.  An unnamed “Middle East diplomat” told Reuters that his advice to the opposition was to be “creative” and accept that Assad and his regime will control Syria for at least the short- to middle-term future.  Both the US and Russia are now on the same page, according to this diplomat, in keeping Assad in charge of the military and government for an undetermined “transitional” period.  A refusal now would leave the opposition with only a handful of allies — Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Turkey.

That represents a triumph of the first order for Russia.  They have opposed the veiled and not-so-veiled attempts of the West to force regime change in Syria as part of their “Arab Spring” strategy, a strategy which produced the deadly debacle of the failed state in Libya. In just four months, Moscow (and reality) has forced Obama and David Cameron to commit humiliating reversals and submit to their preferred policy outcome — a chastened West reluctantly supporting their client dictator.  The most galling part of that triumph is that Russia was largely correct in preventing a repeat of what happened in Libya, even though that means keeping an Iranian satellite in place.  As a bonus, the exercise has weakened Western relations with Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which will boost Iran’s influence in the region as well as Russia’s.

It was obvious two years ago that there were no good outcomes in Syria, only variably bad outcomes.  This won’t even be the worst of those — a failed Syrian state serving as an al-Qaeda safe zone would be that — but the manner in which this appears to be resolving is hardly the optimal outcome even from a bad set of choices. If the US and NATO had admitted its failures in Libya, it would never have repeated them in Syria, but at least we will probably be spared the spectacle of the West explicitly creating a failed state before our eyes.

If anyone wonders why the opposition will stick around after hearing this, Jamie Dettmer explains clearly why they still need the West … and why they may end up joining Assad themselves:

Last weekend, Al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters in northern Syria executed a prominent moderate rebel commander—a slaying that has exacerbated divisions between Islamic militants and degraded morale inside the beleaguered Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), which is facing a defection crisis.

The slaying of Ammar al-Wawi by jihadists linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams, or ISIS, is the latest in a series of targeted abductions and assassinations of leading moderate rebels. FSA sources say they suspect that al-Wawi was executed on Saturday after being cornered three days earlier, along with three of his men, near Bab al-Hawa as he crossed back into Syria from Turkey. …

Al-Wawi, a former Syrian government intelligence officer who defected to the rebel cause in July 2011, was a regular interlocutor with the international media, often serving as the FSA’s spin-doctor in videos uploaded to YouTube and in interviews with Arabic-language television channels.

More than a year ago, al-Wawi was apparently upbeat about the prospects of the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad, saying that the regime was “like the walking dead.” Now, his execution has added to a sense of foreboding among brigades still aligned with the FSA.

The end result of this may be a big outbreak of Syrian nationalism, which would ironically suit Iran’s purposes as well as the West’s.

Tags: al Qaeda, Arab Spring, Barack Obama, Bashar al-Assad, David Cameron, Russia

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Source from: hotair

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