'Too many Israelis' ready to give up on peace, Obama laments
UNITED NATIONS/WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama lamented on Wednesday that too many Israelis" were ready to abandon Middle East peace efforts and urged them to reflect on the matter, saying the status quo with the Palestinians was unsustainable.
As part of a broader speech to the United Nations Assembly, Obama appeared to gently chide close U.S. ally Israel against giving up on peace a week before he hosts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
While Obama used his address primarily to rally support in the fight against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, he also recommitted to the pursuit of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians despite what he called a “bleak” landscape. U.S.- brokered negotiations collapsed in April.
"The violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace," Obama said. Then, departing from printed remarks made available to reporters beforehand, he added: "And that’s something worthy of reflection within Israel."
“Because let’s be clear: the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not sustainable. We cannot afford to turn away from this effort – not when rockets are fired at innocent Israelis, or the lives of so many Palestinian children are taken from us in Gaza," Obama said.
His comments followed a 50-day Gaza war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas that ended in late August with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire and no clear victor.
Israel soon afterwards announced a land appropriation in the occupied West Bank that an anti-settlement group termed the biggest in 30 years, drawing Palestinian condemnation and a rebuke from its U.S. ally.
Since the Gaza war, Netanyahu has reaffirmed his bedrock demand that Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas back away from an April unity deal with Hamas Islamists that led Israel to quit the talks on peace and Palestinian statehood.
ROCKY RELATIONS
The conservative Israeli leader, who has a history of rocky relations with Obama, has also pointed to what he sees as the mounting dangers Israel faces from Islamic militants on its doorstep in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. Netanyahu will visit the White House on Oct. 1 after his own U.N. speech.
“Leadership will be necessary to address the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis,” Obama said. “"So long as I am president, we will stand up for the principle that Israelis, Palestinians, the region, and the world will be more just and more safe with two states living side by side, in peace and security.”
He also said violence in the Middle East should cure anyone of the illusion the Arab-Israeli conflict is the main source of the region's troubles, calling such claims “an excuse to distract people from problems at home.”
Asked by Reuters to respond to Obama's remarks, Israel's U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor declined comment.
The White House gave no explanation for the call for Israeli “reflection“ that Obama inserted into his speech. “That message is consistent with what we've said for a long time about the status quo being unsustainable,” said Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council.
While Obama in last year’s U.N. speech cited resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one of the top priorities for the rest of his second term, he made no such assertion this time and also offered no new ideas for restarting negotiations.
Relations between Obama and Netanyahu have been strained amid tensions over failed peace moves and U.S. diplomacy with Iran, whose nuclear program Israelis view as an existential threat.
On a visit to the Oval Office in 2011 Netanyahu famously lectured the U.S. president on the long struggles of the Jewish people, as he sought to counter Obama's call to base any peace agreement on borders that existed before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols and Jonathan Allen at the United Nations andJeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; Editing by Howard Goller
American aircraft continued to attack Islamic State terrorists in Iraq and Syria with a series of airstrikes that were launched Tuesday and Wednesday, U.S. Central Command says.
ReplyDeleteThe airstrikes were carried out by a mix of attack, bomber and fighter aircraft.
Two airstrikes west of Baghdad destroyed two ISIS armed vehicles and a weapons cache. Another two airstrikes, southeast of Irbil, destroyed ISIS fighting positions.
A fifth airstrike damaged eight ISIS vehicles in Syria in an area northwest of the Iraqi town of Al Qa'im, according to U.S Central Command.
All aircraft exited the area safely.
A senior defense official told Fox News that Jordan also conducted an airstrike against ISIS in Syria on Wednesday.
In a separate statement, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said the strikes in eastern Syria hit a staging area used by the militants to move equipment across the border into Iraq.
He did not specify exactly where the air raids took place, but the Iraqi town of Al Qa'im is across the border from the Syrian town of Boukamal, where Syrian activists reported at least 13 airstrikes on suspected Islamic State positions on Wednesday.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was not immediately clear who carried out the airstrikes in and around Boukamal, but it cited locals as saying the intensity of the air raids was similar to that of strikes on the town early Tuesday by the U.S.-led military coalition.
To date, the U.S. Central Command says it has conducted 198 airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and 20 in Syria – with the help of partner nations.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/09/24/us-aircraft-launch-another-wave-airstrikes-on-isis/
Exclusive: U.S. told Iran of intent to strike Islamic State in Syria -
ReplyDelete(Reuters) - The United States informed Iran in advance of its intention to strike Islamic State militants in Syria and assured Tehran that it would not target the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a senior Iranian official told Reuters.
The communication, confirmed in part by a senior U.S. State Department official, may signal the estranged foes are inching toward a level of contacts rarely seen in over three decades since the 1979 Islamic revolution when a hostage crisis prompted Washington to sever ties with Tehran.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the senior Iranian official said Tehran had voiced concern for Assad, its closest regional ally and the recipient of Iranian military support during a Syrian civil war now in its fourth year.
"Iran was concerned about Assad's position and his government being weakened in case of any action against IS (Islamic State) in Syria and brought this issue up in meetings with Americans," the senior Iranian official said.
"This issue was first discussed in Geneva and then was discussed thoroughly in New York where Iran was assured that Assad and his government will not be targeted in case of any military action against Daesh (Islamic State) in Syria."
The Iranian official said Iran was informed separately in advance of the airstrikes launched by Washington and Arab allies against Islamic State positions in Syria for the first time.
Asked about the assurance that Syrian government forces would not be targeted, the senior U.S. State Department official told Reuters: "We communicated our intentions, but not specific timing or targets, to the Iranians. As we've said, we won't be coordinating military action with Iran. And of course we won't be sharing intelligence with Iran either."
...
IRAN-U.S. COOPERATION
Iranian officials told Reuters privately that Iran already was cooperating with Washington in the fight against the jihadist rebels.
"This is an intelligence matter and I can assure you geopolitical and intelligence matters will not be shared with Americans ... but military and security issues are being shared to fight against IS (Islamic State)," a senior Iran security official said.
Tehran's leadership has approved the "idea of cooperation with the Americans," he said, because it serves Iran's interests.
Iran has occasionally shared classified information with Washington, including during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the conflict in Iraq.
Delete"This issue was first discussed in Geneva and then was discussed thoroughly in New York where Iran was assured that Assad and his government will not be targeted in case of any military action against Daesh (Islamic State) in Syria."
Is this the first step to the US having an "Active Partner" in the fight against ISIS on the ground in Syria ?
I saw where the ISIS felt that "Daesh" was a derogatory name for their group, and have threatened to cut out the tongues of those that say it.
So .... "Daesh" ... It now is.
Telegraph.co.uk
ReplyDeleteCameron holds historic talks with Iranian president
Telegraph.co.uk -
Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian president, has hailed a “new outlook” in relations with Britain after holding talks with David Cameron in the first direct meeting between the two countries' leaders in 35 years.
Cameron met the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, on the margins of the general assembly summit, marking the first time the two countries’ leaders had met since Iran’s revolution in 1979.
Delete“The PM and president acknowledged that there had been significant differences between their countries in the past, and agreed that we should seek to progressively improve our bilateral relationship,” a Downing Street spokesperson said.
“They agreed that this would help build mutual trust and create the environment in which issues such as the future of Iran’s nuclear programme could be successfully addressed.”
ReplyDeleteFederal court lifts injunction in Walker case
Washington Post
MADISON, Wis. - A federal appeals court has overturned a lower court's ruling halting an investigation into Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and more than two dozen conservative groups for alleged illegal campaign activity.
While I don't much care about us bombing the clit cutters, I think our focus should be on a Free Kurdistan.
ReplyDeleteWe will have to leave our fate up to Michelle Obama.
DeleteJust got a missive from OGF.
DeleteHer fourth husband, a retired Marine, is of the opinion "blow them to smithereens".
He is speaking of ISIS.
This at least is clear and decisive.
Not Hegelian.
Delete
DeleteIsreal prefers al-Qeada (Daesh) over the Alawites, Christians and their Kurd allies in Syria.
http://www.jpost.com/Syria-Crisis/Oren-Jerusalem-has-wanted-Assad-ousted-since-the-outbreak-of-the-Syrian-civil-war-326328
Israel prefers Al Qaeda and Syrian Nazis to all move to Arizona to keep rat company
DeleteWhatever happened to "The Theater of the Absurd"?
ReplyDeleteI used to like that stuff.
Did not like it well enough to know what's happened to it.
DeleteYou never heard of it, but you were and are a minor actor.
DeleteI think it may have been 'subsumed' to use a Hegelian term into the out and out sexuality and violence of modern day Hollywood and afternoon TV in Phoenix, Arizona.
DeleteYou cannot make peace with savages the Palestinians are savages
ReplyDeleteMy adopted Niece is a young woman with a Mater's Degree and a thesis concerning information flows in the brain....she is of Hindu extraction - very bright and beautiful and she is of the opinion that she wishes her clit not to be cut by the ISIS or Hamas savages.
ReplyDeleteMaster's
DeleteMakes sense to me.
DeleteMaybe America instead of bombing Arabs every couple years should make peace with them
ReplyDeleteThe Obama administration is projecting that hospitals will face $5.7 billion less in uncompensated care costs than they otherwise would have in the first full year of the Affordable Care Act's coverage expansion.
ReplyDeleteMillions more people with health insurance means fewer uninsured patients are coming through hospitals' doors. That means fewer costs from bad debt or charity care from people unable to pay their bills, which amounted to about $50 billion for the nation's hospitals in 2012.
Five years ago, when advocates were still trying to build support for the bill that became the ACA, they saw the potential for reducing the costs of uncompensated care as a big selling point. That's because those costs were already getting passed along to the tabs of people who could pay. This . . . . . . .
Big Savings
Why does America not make peace with Al Qaeda
ReplyDeleteOnly an Israeli would even have to ask that
DeleteWe should have a 'peace conference' with ISIS.
ReplyDeleteWomen invited.
But bring your machine gun..............
And your gynaecologist......
DeleteWhy doesn't America make peace with Al Qaeda
ReplyDeleteOnly an Israeli would continue to ask that
DeleteE85 for $1.98 / Gallon
ReplyDeleteSt. Ansgar, Iowa
Wow !
DeleteWe are $3.63 here......
Los Angeles Times
ReplyDeleteMaking the first major push to choke off financing for Islamic State, U.S. and allied Arab warplanes bombed a dozen small oil refineries in eastern Syria on Wednesday that U.S.
General Sisi says ...
ReplyDeleteOn U.S. action against ISIS: Imagine what would happen if you leave it without action. We still need more effort—it should not be limited to Iraq and ISIS. This is a threat not just to the Middle East but to the whole world . . . I want to be clear with you that this ideology constitutes a problem. There’s a fine line between extremism and killing. If we hadn’t saved Egypt, there would have been a major problem created. The U.S. did not pay attention to that.
The U.S. did not pay attention to that.
That is why we had General al-Sisi there. Why went allowed him to attend the US Army War College in Carlisle, PA.
The US had been paying attention, helping to nurture leaders there in Egypt, leaders that shared the interests of the United States.
General al-Sisi and the Egyptian Army dealt with the radicals in Egypt.
DeleteThe Iraqi government will regroup and then with some foreign assistance in the air, deal with the radicals.
We will see what transpires in Syria.
In the meantime ... Even while consumption of oil contracts, the price does not drop.
Supplies become ever more limited, by conflict.
Coincidence Theorists will shrug that off.
http://time.com/3426794/after-the-revolution-sitting-down-with-egyptian-president-abdul-fattah-al-sisi/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20time%2Ftopstories%20%28TIME%3A%20Top%20Stories%29
DeleteAsked about the possibility of military action in Syria, David Cameron added: “If we were to do anything in Syria, there would be a separate discussion and a separate vote.
ReplyDelete“I think that clearly, Isil has to be tackled in both Iraq and Syria and I support what the Americans and the five Arab countries did recently.
“But for Britain’s part, we’re going to answer this call from the Iraqi government. We are going to debate that in Parliament and if it comes to anything else there will be a separate vote and a separate debate.”
Iran walks the walk
ReplyDeleteIran General Helped Iraq's Kurds Battle IS Group
TEHRAN, Iran — Sep 24, 2014, 11:28 AM ET
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI Associated Press
A top Iranian general and 70 of his forces were on the ground in Iraq this summer, helping Kurdish fighters defend the regional capital Irbil against Islamic State militants, a senior commander from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said Wednesday.
The commander's remarks appeared to confirm for the first time that Iranian military forces are playing a battlefield role alongside Iraqis against the Islamic State extremist group, though it was not clear whether they were involved in combat or merely serving as advisers. Iran has said it provides advice to Iraq's government but has denied sending combatants or weapons.
Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who runs the Guard's aerospace division, said top Gen. Ghasem Soleimani was instrumental in preventing the fall of Irbil.
"If it were not for Iran's help, the IS would have captured (Iraq's) Kurdistan," he said on state television late Tuesday. "Our respected General... Soleimani stood up to IS with only 70 forces and did not allow them to enter Irbil.”
The Islamic State militants approached the outskirts of Irbil in August, prompting the United States to launch airstrikes that helped Kurdish forces drive them back.
Soleimani has since 1997 been head of the Quds Force, a division of the elite Revolutionary Guard that carries out special operations outside Iran. He is believed to have played a key role in mobilizing Iranian allies across the region, including the Lebanese Hezbollah group and Shiite militias in Iraq.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, has reportedly described Soleimani as a "living martyr" in recognition of his work.
Although Iran and the United States share a common enemy in the Islamic State group, a deep-seated lack of trust has so far kept the longtime foes from publicly allying against the extremists.
While the U.S. has led air strikes against Islamic State militants, Iran is believed to have played a key role on the ground mobilizing Iraqi Kurdish and Shiite forces, including for last month's retaking of the northern Iraqi city of Amirli , which had been besieged by Islamic State militants for more than two months.
Iran fears that the U.S. wants to use the fight against the Islamic State group as a pretext to strike Syrian President Bashar Assad's government, a close ally of Tehran. The Obama administration has repeatedly called on Assad to resign and ruled out any cooperation with Damascus, even against the Islamic State group.
The U.S. has not invited Iran to join the emerging coalition fighting the Islamic State group and Iran has said it would not join in any case. Iran's parliament speaker Ali Larijani on Wednesday accused some coalition members of aiding the same militants they are now fighting -- a veiled reference to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which are strong backers of the Syrian rebels.
Iranian boots on the ground; Quds force, Hezbollah and the Mahdi army, getting her done with US air power, imagine that.
DeleteThe "Rat Doctrine" needs, competent, "Active Partners" on the ground.
DeleteDoes not make much difference who those partners are, tactically.
It gets worse for the existentialists
ReplyDeleteThe British prime minister, David Cameron, met the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, in New York on Wednesday in what marks a milestone in the long-strained relations between London and Tehran.
The meeting - as the two leaders attended the UN general assembly - was the first encounter between an Iranian president and a British prime minister since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Iranian reporters in Rouhani’s UN entourage tweeted pictures of the smiling Iranian cleric shaking hands with Cameron in front of the two countries’ flags.
“A little bit of history made,” the prime minister was overheard telling one of his aides, according to a tweet by a British reporter , as the meeting ended.
Rouhani’s deputy, Hamid Abutalebi, said the meeting would prepare the ground for “fundamental changes” in the relationship between Iran and the EU.
It “will bring fundamental changes to Iran-EU relations as well the nuclear negotiations,” he said, according to the semi-official Isna news agency. “It will be one of the biggest achievements of Dr Rouhani’s visit to New York and it will also have an affect on Tehran-London relations.”
Despite the meeting’s significance, Rouhani has to proceed cautiously as he visits the UN, accommodating world leaders while not upsetting hardliners at home. The domestic repercussions of any statements he makes or meetings he attends can be costly and hawks and fundamentalists, such as those in the Iranian parliament, will be circling like vultures to watch him slip.
Before the Cameron meeting, Rouhani had already met a number of world leaders, including France’s François Hollande and Austria’s Heinz Fischer, but with suspicion of Britain rife in Iran it will be the most-scrutinised at home.Iranian hardliners have an extraordinary obsession with Britain (which they still consider “the old fox”) and approach it with a conspiratorial mindset. In their view, British hands are behind everything political in Tehran and the royal family still runs Westminster. Iranian conservatives have a suspicion towards Britain much deeper and stronger than towards the United States.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/24/leaders-uk-iran-cameron-rouhani-meet-un-new-york
DeleteIf you'll remember, I posted right after the Ameril operation that Soleimani, and the Quds were all over that battle. :)
DeleteThe U.S. is trying, mightily, to play down the "Shia vs. Sunni" angle.
DeleteI do recall.
DeleteThe US is playing down the "Religion" angle, altogether.
DeleteGeneral al-Sisi is calling Radical Islam an ideology.
In Jordon ...
Abu Qatada’s lawyers gave interviews outside the courtroom. “Justice took place today,” said Ghazi Althunibat, one of the defendant’s lawyers.
“The decision is aligned with Jordanian law and the UK treaty. He is innocent and he deserved to be declared innocent.”
Althunibat restated Abu Qatada’s opposition to Islamic State, saying: “He didn’t make these statements because of pressure from Jordan’s courts,” insisting he supported the freeing of hostages such as UK citizen Alan Henning.
“He is against Daesh [the Arabic term for Islamic State] and everything they do. He believes their actions are against Islam.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/24/abu-qatada-cleared-terror-charges-jordan-court
Muslims denouncing Daesh, claiming that they are not part of Islam.
Just what we have been told never happens, it is happening now.
While the Saudi, who still do their beheading in private, and don't head chop White folk of European descent, get a pass on being called barbarians and savages.
In broad daylight, a Saudi-Israeli alliance
Where are the Israeli?
DeleteOh, yea, almost forgot ....
Isreal prefers al-Qeada (Daesh) over the Alawites, Christians and their Kurd allies in Syria.
ATLANTIC
ReplyDeletePresident Obama, speaking before the United Nations General Assembly, just delivered a speech that reminded me of Hillary Clinton at her most pugnacious, and of John McCain at his most tranquil. He reminded me of the second-term George W. Bush as well.
Obama labeled ISIS "evil" (remember the trouble Bush created for himself when he used such terms?) and promised the destruction of its "network of death"; he excoriated Russia explicitly and at length for bullying its way into Ukraine; he made a direct demand on the Muslim world to disassociate itself from the extreme Islam of ISIS; and, most striking for us here at Goldblog headquarters, he dashed the hopes of the linkage-meisters, the foreign-policy analysts who continue to believe that Israel and its problems represent the core crisis of the Middle East. "Iraq, Syria and Libya should cure ... the illusion that Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the main source of problems in the region,"he said. Five years ago, in his Cairo speech to the Muslim world, Obama labeled the Israeli-Palestinian dispute one of the three major sources of tension between the U.S. and the Muslim world. This bit of analysis has been overcome by events. (He did, though, talk about the unsustainable status quo in the West Bank, something he has talked about before.)
Obama's critics will say that he has shed his public diffidence on matters related to the conflicts of the Middle East because pollsters have been telling him that Americans want a less professorial president. But my impression from watching him in recent weeks, and from talking to people who know him well, is that two sets of recent events in particular have actually shifted his thinking about the relative importance of "soft power"; about the nature of America's adversaries; and consequently about the role the U.S. must play in the world, in order to keep these adversaries at bay.
He understands now that Russia's new czar worships power, and is immune to appeals based on notions of rational self-interest. Obama's forthright promise to stand with America's NATO allies in Eastern Europe, made recently in Estonia, can now be understood as prologue to today's speech.
And he has been truly shaken—as have many people—by the depths of ISIS depravity. And more than that, he realized that no other country apart from the United States had the will or capability to stop ISIS's advance. In other words, Obama understands today that the U.S. is the world's indispensable nation. (Two areas in which Obama was notably discreet: He did not criticize Iran, with which he is trying to negotiate a nuclear deal; and he was distressingly silent on the subject of Bashar al-Assad, who is in many ways the father of ISIS, and is certainly the cause of Syria's collapse. Unlike John McCain, Obama is not interested in confronting Assad at the moment.)
Obama's advisors say that this speech can be placed on a continuum of previous statements. The deputy national security advisor, Benjamin Rhodes, in an e-mail sent after the speech, wrote, "President Obama has always had three themes that appeared prominently today: Calling on nations to meet their responsibilities to uphold international norms; no safe haven for terrorists; (and noting that) ordinary people can bridge divisions of race and religion, and deserve governments who do the same. Remember the August 1, 2007 speech when he said he'd go after Al Qaeda in Pakistan. Or the Nobel address. I think this is in a direct line with those."
Rhodes may be right, but this speech did feel, temperamentally at least, like a break with the past.
I only saw a couple of minutes of the speech: but he was getting after Russia, real good, in the part I did see. I was a bit taken aback at the bluntness of it all.
DeleteComical that the author blames the victims of Radical Islamic Radicals in Syria.
DeleteWholesale E85
ReplyDelete$1.57 / Gallon
New York Mercantile Exchange
Belgium, and the Netherlands are now "in."
ReplyDelete'because pollsters have been telling him that Americans want a less professorial president"
ReplyDeleteWhen I first read that I mistook 'professorial' for 'professional'.
I swooned, and thought to call Niece..................
:):(
Information flows, you know...
Delete
ReplyDeleteVOA News
September 24, 2014 8:30 PM
U.S. planes pounded Islamic State (IS) positions in Syria for a second day on Wednesday, but the strikes did not seem to slow the militants' advance in a Kurdish area where fleeing refugees told of villages burnt and captives beheaded.
Syrian Kurds said IS had responded to U.S. attacks by intensifying its assault near the Turkish border in northern Syria, where 140,000 civilians have fled in recent days in the fastest exodus of the three-year civil war.
Iran ready to supply Europe gas via Austria: President Rouhani
ReplyDeleteIranian President Hassan Rouhani says the Islamic Republic can be a reliable supplier of energy for Europe, adding that Tehran is ready to transfer gas to the European countries via Austria. The Iranian president made the remarks in a Tuesday meeting with his Austrian counterpart Heinz Fischer in New York on the sidelines of the 69th UN General Assembly meeting.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The president of Turkey on Wednesday accused the international community of doing too little to stem the flow of foreign fighters to Syria and slammed the U.N. Security Council's inaction on some of the world's most pressing issues.
ReplyDeleteIn two separate speeches in New York, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey was playing a leading role in fighting terrorism but was not being aided by the rest of the world.
"We can stop this flow of foreign terrorist fighters only if our friends and partners awaiting our cooperation show, themselves, a sort of cooperation as well," Erdogan said.
"This is not a fight to be carried out solely by Turkey," he added.
But Turkey, a key backer of the rebels seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad, is under scrutiny for allowing thousands of fighters to cross into Syria across its borders.
Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bashar Jaafari reiterated the criticism later Wednesday, noting pointedly that Turkey was the "main gate for terrorists crossing into Syria and Iraq." He said Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have turned their airports into "reception halls" for extremists before sending them illegally to Syria.
Erdogan spoke at a Security Council meeting where members unanimously approved a resolution requiring countries to prevent the recruitment and transport of foreign fighters preparing to join terrorist groups.
.
ReplyDeleteBut in attacking Syria’s enemy, the United States wasn’t looking to make friends with Syria. President Barack Obama called for Assad to step down in 2011, and it was only last year that the United States was prepared to bomb Syria for having crossed the chemical-weapons “red line” to kill its own citizens. Not that the United States is remarkably choosey about which nations it counts among its allies. Among the Middle East nations joining with the United States to strike Syria is Qatar, which has allowed one of its sheikhs to raise funds for an Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. As you know, the United States is at war with Al Qaeda in all of its flavors, including the Syria-based Khorasan Group, upon which U.S. bombs fell this week. The Khorasan Group is said to be plotting attacks on the United States and Europe.
Our perpetual war is complicated, however, by the fact that the Islamic State is the sworn enemy of Al Qaeda, from which it split earlier this year because it couldn’t play nice with Al Qaeda’s other affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, which is also fighting the Assad regime. Or, to look at it another way, the enemies of America’s enemies are not automatically America’s friends; and even America’s friends, which can be permissive about the flow of money to Al Qaeda, aren’t necessarily America’s friends either.
America has allies in Syria’s civil war, of course, including Harakat Hazm, part of the Free Syrian Army. Harakat Hazm is fighting Assad, but it has also fought alongside America’s enemy Jabhat al-Nusra, which has not disqualified it from receiving U.S. weapons and training. Harakat Hazm took exception to the American-led bombing of Syria in a statement, calling it an “external intervention” and “an attack on the revolution,” according to a Los Angeles Times report. So Harakat Hazm, America’s friend, which fought with America’s enemy against Syria—which is neither friend nor enemy—objects to the fact that America bombed Syria in pursuit of the Islamic State, which is also Harakat Hazm’s enemy. Meanwhile, the militant Shiite group Hezbollah is drone-bombing Jabat al-Nusrat along the Lebanon-Syria border at the same time Israel is downing Syrian jets.
Confused yet? You’ll have plenty of time to catch up. As Mayville promised, this conflict will likely go on for years...
http://blogs.reuters.com/jackshafer/2014/09/24/war-without-end-the-u-s-may-still-be-fighting-in-syria-in-2024-2034-2044/
.
You still haven't told us what YOU would actually do, General Q.
ReplyDeleteGeneral Rat said there were three choices;
ReplyDeleteDo Nothing
Do a Little
Do a Lot
Where do you stand?
I am for creating a Kurdish State.
What about you?
General Deuce has not weighed in either unless I missed it.
DeleteGeneral Rufus has spoken of the amazing accuracy of our weapons from 30,000 feet.
ReplyDeleteWe also have the "Rat Doctrine" whatever that may be.................
It changes day by day.....
DeleteGeneral Bob is on record......
ReplyDeleteHelp create a Kurdish State.
That's about it.
Protect ourselves...............
WHAT IS THE DEUCE DOCTRINE????
ReplyDeleteMy Niece's Doctrine is go to school...............
ReplyDeleteAfter that you might maybe just possibly be able to:
ReplyDeleteDO SOME GOOD IN THE WORLD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbAp5nphTz4
DeleteGeneral Ash ?
ReplyDeleteThe President needs some advice.
ReplyDeleteSomeone is on record as saying, privately:
"We need a military coup"
Deuce suggested this years ago, and was taken apart by Trish.
ReplyDelete"I will fight for my country" Deuce said.
Trish replied:
"It is not your country"
There you have it.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteThere you don’t have it .
DeleteYou mistake sophistry for insight.
As usual.
I am committed to a Free Niece.
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDeleteYou should just be committed, Obumble, and leave it at that.
You still haven't told us what YOU would actually do, General Q.
If you could read at all you would know I wouldn't be there at all.
General Bob is on record......
Help create a Kurdish State.
General Bob is a nitwit. This isn't colonial England. What right do we have to create a Kurdish state? The only groups pushing for an independent Kurdistan right now have been designated as terrorists. The leaders of the Kurds in Iraq right now are pushing for more autonomy from the central government not independence. If the Kurds want independence they need to take it themselves.
The President needs some advice.
Someone is on record as saying, privately:
"We need a military coup"
You should follow the dictum, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."
.