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posted by janrinok on Sunday October 02 2016, @12:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the didn't-get-an-invite dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Sunday October 02 2016, @02:32PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 02 2016, @02:32PM (#409076) Journal
    The obvious rebuttal is that six plus years of civil war is more expensive than paying off Assad and getting that pipeline built last decade. We have a hypercompetent cabal who can't foresee the obvious drawbacks to a civil war.
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  • (Score: 2) by Unixnut on Sunday October 02 2016, @09:57PM

    by Unixnut (5779) on Sunday October 02 2016, @09:57PM (#409163)

    > 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

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 02 2016, @10:28PM (#409167) Journal

      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.