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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: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @03:35AM
> The problem is the Russians don't care about international law, and we do
They have nothing to lose in the sort term other than the rubles spent on their adventurism. Putin doesn't really care about al-Assad personally, but he thinks without al-Assad as strongman the place will disintegrate into factions and that will fuck up his strategic deals with Syria. So he thinks his only choice is to prop up al-Assad.
But the blowback is going to last for years - Putin is breeding seething hatred for Russia that is far in excess of middle-eastern hate for the US - we drone the occasional wedding, he's bombing schools and hospitals. Putin and al-Assad dropped more than 2x as much ordinance just on Aleppo in the last week as the US dropped on ISIS across all of Syria and Iraq. And, in classic "to risky to change course causes risk to increase" karma, there is simply no way the sunnis are ever going to allow the shia (al-Assad's minority faction) to maintain control. At the start, 5 years ago the uprising was not sectarian but al-Assad made it sectarian because he's a desperate dictator. It worked for him, he's lasted 5 years instead of only a year. But in the process he's totally fucked the country in every possible way so when he's killed anyway the country is going to be way worse off.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @04:34AM
They hate us both and are not white.
Who cares?
It's much better to be friends with Russia than friends with desert arabs and enemies of fellow european type people.
We should also be friends with some of the inhabitants of afghanistan and some of the inhabitants of syria for a similar reason.
The only plus with the arabs are they marry girl children. They should be respected for their partial rejection of feminism in that way: a thing that is impossible amongst whites as the goddess cults (such as that of the Virgin Mary, statue paraded and all) that have always been required to placate the european male organism.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday October 02 2016, @03:05PM
Eglin Air Force Base, go home. You're drunk.
And the real question is, "Why the fuck are we meddling with Syria in the first place?!"
Is it the pipeline? Is it Greater Israel? Either way, the public knows its bullshit.