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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 shortscreen on Sunday October 02 2016, @04:01AM
"the United States has no legal justification for attacking Mr. Assad's government, whereas Russia was invited in"
"The problem is the Russians don't care about international law, and we do"
So the US, who have no legitimate reason to be doing anything in Syria, are supposedly the ones that care about international law? Is this even supposed to make sense?
We all know what the US is asking for in their "diplomacy." Regime change. Why do they want it? The talking heads keep going on about Assad attacking his own people. Well of course he is, he has rebels armed with US weapons all up in his face. Was the Assad government killing people prior to that? Even assuming that they were, it doesn't really explain why the US suddenly, after some decades, took notice of the Syrian government's crimes and decided it needed to help the people ("help" them by starting up a civil war that is).
The US backed rebels in Libya against the government, but in Ukraine they backed Kiev against the separatists in Donbass. They've backed the Kurds one minute but not the next. They haven't had much to say about Saudi Arabia bombing Yemen, or executing people. Whatever criteria the US has to decide which faction it is going to favor, it obviously has nothing to do with protecting civilians from government violence. The response from congress on the question of letting Syrian refugees into the US would also suggest that policy makers aren't too concerned about helping them.
The US excuse for sticking its nose into Syria doesn't hold water. Why should anyone believe anything else they're saying?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @10:05AM
More questions than answers... we can only assume you have an agenda. A brief overview of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Civil_War [wikipedia.org] confirms your shallow US-centric assumptions are worth little. Thanks for nothing.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 02 2016, @02:35PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @10:02AM
The ISIS aren't supported by Assad. So perhaps the USA should help Assad to crush the ISIS, just like Russia is doing?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 03 2016, @06:21PM
The ISIS aren't supported by Assad. So perhaps the USA should help Assad to crush the ISIS, just like Russia is doing?
Nah. Assad is a known loser who started the civil war in the first place through his abominable policies. I think at this point, the best end state is going to be a Somalia style governance by tribes and strongmen which will probably include both ISIS elements and Assad. But if Russia wants to enter into another attrition war like Afghanistan and Chechnya, then so be it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by HiThere on Sunday October 02 2016, @07:31PM
Yeah, that sounds pretty stupid. I don't think much of Assad, but generally the government of a country is permitted to invite in allies to help it. So he had the right to invite the Russians. And thus their presence does not speak to their ignoring international law. (You can point to other instances where they have, however.) It's also true that the US has repeatedly invaded countries in defiance of international law. So claiming that we respect it is pretty dubious.
The main thing I took away from this is that Kerry has an agenda, and it favors serious threats of the use of military force. (I notice that he didn't actually recommend using it, just threatening it. In context that might make sense, but it LOOKS extremely dubious, as if he's trying to fool SOMEBODY, possibly his political supporters, possibly those he was speaking to. So basically all I can decide for sure is that he's a lying bastard.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @06:21PM
I'm not a fan of Assad either, but if you were a Syrian (especially one of the minorities) who would you prefer in charge? Assad or the rebels the USA are sponsoring or their allies (the Al Qaeda) or the ISIS? Yeah Assad is an "Evil Dictator" but have you looked at groups the USA are giving money, training and weapons to?
The whole mess is mainly the fault of the USA:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-secretly-backed-syrian-opposition-groups-cables-released-by-wikileaks-show/2011/04/14/AF1p9hwD_story.html [washingtonpost.com]
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html?pagewanted=all [nytimes.com]
And the mess was what the USA and their allies wanted: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/05/newly-declassified-u-s-government-documents-the-west-supported-the-creation-of-isis.html [washingtonsblog.com]
Same sort of thing in Libya. Gaddafi was better than the alternatives the USA and allies are bringing in.
Same thing for Iraq - the USA installed Saddam and then they made up bullshit about WMD. There were no nukes. Iraq had WMD in the form of chemical weapons, but the USA was fine with that back then: http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26/exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/ [foreignpolicy.com]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2013/09/04/history-lesson-when-the-united-states-looked-the-other-way-on-chemical-weapons/ [washingtonpost.com]
If you are going to say that it's fine to support rebels to overthrow a bad leader, does that mean if Trump gets elected, it's fine for some country to do what the USA does and sponsor rebels to overthrow Trump? Same for if Clinton or the US Gov in general starts doing lots of bad stuff?
Oh wait, the US Gov has been doing lots of bad stuff (it's overthrown a fair number of democracies). Perhaps you'd be better off if some other countries helped start a coup or civil war.