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The New York Times has obtained a recording of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry voicing his frustration over the Syrian civil war:
Secretary of State John Kerry was clearly exasperated, not least at his own government. Over and over again, he complained to a small group of Syrian civilians that his diplomacy had not been backed by a serious threat of military force, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times.
"I think you're looking at three people, four people in the administration who have all argued for use of force, and I lost the argument."
The 40-minute discussion, on the sidelines of last week's United Nations General Assembly in New York, provides a glimpse of Mr. Kerry's frustration with his inability to end the Syrian crisis. He veered between voicing sympathy for the Syrians' frustration with United States policy and trying to justify it. The conversation took place days after a brief cease-fire he had spearheaded crumbled, and as his Russian counterpart rejected outright his new proposal to stop the bombing of Aleppo. Those setbacks were followed by days of crippling Russian and Syrian airstrikes in Aleppo that the World Health Organization said Wednesday had killed 338 people, including 100 children.
At the meeting last week, Mr. Kerry was trying to explain that the United States has no legal justification for attacking Mr. Assad's government, whereas Russia was invited in by the government.
"The problem is the Russians don't care about international law, and we do." [...] "We're trying to pursue the diplomacy, and I understand it's frustrating. You have nobody more frustrated than we are."
Also at Reuters.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Sunday October 02 2016, @02:12AM
So it sounds like John Kerry is bitching about his inability to get us into yet another war in the Middle East. Democrats, the New GOP.
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Sunday October 02 2016, @03:13AM
I haven't heard the recording, but one of the quotes could be read that way. However, in two of the quotations Kerry does seem to be noting that war has disadvantages:
“The problem is that, you know, you get, quote, enforcers in there and then everybody ups the ante, right? Russia puts in more, Iran puts in more; Hezbollah is there more and Nusra is more; and Saudi Arabia and Turkey put all their surrogate money in, and you all are destroyed.”
[...]
“A lot of Americans don’t believe that we should be fighting and sending young Americans over to die in another country.”
In the early 1970s, he was a prominent opponent to the war in Vietnam:
[...] Kerry joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization in which he served as a nationally recognized spokesman and as an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He appeared in the Fulbright Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs where he deemed United States war policy in Vietnam to be the cause of war crimes.
[...]
Kerry participated in the "Winter Soldier Investigation" conducted by VVAW of U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and he appears in a film by that name that documents the investigation. According to Nixon Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, "I didn't approve of what he did, but I understood the protesters quite well", and he declined two requests from the Navy to court martial Reserve Lieutenant Kerry over his antiwar activity.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kerry#Anti-war_activism_.281970.E2.80.931971.29 [wikipedia.org]
In 1964, the Democratic Party platform praised the intervention in Vietnam:
In 1960, freedom was on the defensive. The Communists—doubting both our strength and our will to use it—pressed forward in Southeast Asia, Latin America, Central Africa and Berlin.
President Kennedy and Vice President Johnson set out to remove any question of our power or our will. In the Cuban crisis of 1962 the Communist offensive shattered on the rock of President Kennedy's determination—and our ability—to defend the peace.
Two years later, President Johnson responded to another Communist challenge, this time in the Gulf of Tonkin. Once again power exercised with restraint repulsed Communist aggression and strengthened the cause of freedom.
-- http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29603 [ucsb.edu]
In 1968, the party's platform said the war ought to continue unless certain conditions were met:
Our most urgent task in Southeast Asia is to end the war in Vietnam by an honorable and lasting settlement which respects the rights of all the people of Vietnam. In our pursuit of peace and stability in the vital area of Southeast Asia we have borne a heavy burden in helping South Vietnam to counter aggression and subversion from the North.
We reject as unacceptable a unilateral withdrawal of our forces which would allow that aggression and subversion to succeed.
-- http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29604 [ucsb.edu]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @03:29AM
In the early 1970s, he was a prominent opponent to the war in Vietnam
That's easy to explain - he's above the age he can be drafted. It's ok when you send other people's kids out to die. Not ok when they come get you to send you to die.
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Sunday October 02 2016, @04:36AM
CNN have uploaded a brief snippet of the audio. It does sound as though he's favouring military intervention in Syria.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBw9t3Mpk38 [youtube.com]
Kerry needn't rue having "lost the argument" as the U.S. military is in Syria already.
"U.S. forces struck ISIL targets near Turkey's border in Syria last night via newly deployed HIMARS system," Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy for the coalition to counter Islamic State, said on his official Twitter account.
-- https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-forces-hit-islamic-state-targets-syria-u-141632824.html [yahoo.com]
Turkish special forces, tanks and jets backed by planes from the U.S.-led coalition launched their first co-ordinated offensive into Syria [...]
-- http://www.businessinsider.com/turkish-tanks-special-forces-launch-first-major-push-into-syria-to-battle-is-2016-8 [businessinsider.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @03:31AM
Democrats, the New GOP.
Well democrats kept telling me the parties flipped sides... I missed the meeting, but it *MUST* be true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @07:21AM
They flipped positions back in the 60s, where all the racists left the DNC and joined the GOP due to Nixon's "Southern Strategy". Nowadays, the GOP has gone into outright fascism, and the DNC has filled the "moderately right wing conservative authoritarian" position the GOP used to fill, before they took it to extremes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @03:45AM
> So it sounds like John Kerry is bitching about his inability to get us into yet another war in the Middle East. Democrats, the New GOP.
If only it were that easy.
Europe is fucking falling apart because of the refugees. Too many new brown people is flaring the white nativism over there. Proto-hitlers are on the rise in nearly every EU country. Just look at the absolute fucking freak-out in the US over taking 10,000 refugees. Europe's looking at millions. That's pretending that all the refugees and the slaughtered themselves have no value to speak of.
There are simply no good choices. Only different kinds of bad choices and they aren't easily measured and weighed against each other.
Maybe we just give Putin something to make him walk away from Syria. But any bribe big enough to accomplish that is going to be flat-out opposed by all the republicans and probably a hefty number of democrats too.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday October 02 2016, @04:57AM
So it sounds like John Kerry is bitching about his inability to get us into yet another war
TFS is at least HALF giving that impression:
he complained that his diplomacy had not been backed by a serious threat of military force
...
Mr. Kerry was trying to explain that the United States has no legal justification for attacking Mr. Assad's government
To be fair those were the journalist's characterizations, not exactly Kerry's words. I'm too lazy (and bored by Kerry) to listen to or read the total transcript.
But yeah, any justification would be only to stop Assad from massacring his own population. But since that's already happened, and anyone with any sense has already fled the country, there seems little more that can be done besides even up the death toll.
We would be 6 years too late.
Its probably at that point you let god sort it out, or try to take Assad to a war crimes court. But in the end, I suspect he spends his old age in Russia.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by tisI on Sunday October 02 2016, @05:10AM
Nothing is as it seems.
Kerry, as well as the rest of them are puppets. The folks that control them, bought them the last election-go-round and pull all the strings.
Bad puppets are burned. Good puppets live.
These folks want to make money piping natural gas from the middle east to Europe. Syria is in the way.
So, the US media (all of thems) is selling an invasion/meddling/fuckingWith of Syria at American expense for mom, pop & apple pie, truth, justice and the American way.
Any bullshit reason will do. Whatever works.
Americans are stupid. Americans are sheep.
Americans are oblivious they are being ass raped by the very worms they elected to govern them.
The corporations will win. You will lose.
End of story.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself."
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Sunday October 02 2016, @02:32PM
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Sunday October 02 2016, @09:57PM
> six plus years of civil war is more expensive than paying off Assad and getting that pipeline built last decade.
I am not so sure. Civil wars are cheap. A bit of money up front to organise some armed opposition, and let them at it. The cycle of violence will be started and then just escalate, and best news is that both sides will need a constant supply of weapons, and will do anything to get the money to buy them.
so not only is civil war relatively cheap to start, in the long term the profit for the arms industry is pretty large. Once the civil war fizzles out due to attrition, you come in offering loans to rebuild, lock the country into debt bondage, and then you can build your pipeline anyway, and probably at a good discount.
Fomenting civil war sounds like the most profitable course of action to me.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 02 2016, @10:28PM
Civil wars are cheap.
Yes, but time value of money is not. A six plus year delay means you've lost at least ten percent of your opportunity just from the delay.
and best news is that both sides will need a constant supply of weapons, and will do anything to get the money to buy them.
But with radically reduced buying power. There's a lot of infrastructure that will need to be rebuilt before a pipeline becomes viable.
What puzzles me is how people can ignore the Arab Spring thing. There's a lot of governments throughout the Middle East who have been dealing with civil unrest and civil war. One doesn't need a cabal to explain what happened.