It may be no small irony that President Obama’s peripatetic secretary of state will travel this week to Rwanda, where up to a million people were killed in a three-month ethnic genocide in 1994, and has tentative plans to attend an international meeting on Syria, where civilian dead are fast approaching the halfway point of that number.
Bill Clinton, president at the time of the Rwandan massacre, has said that U.S. failure to intervene there is one of his biggest regrets. Just two years later, an estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered by Bosnian Serb forces in the town of Srebrenica while “the world’s great nations,” including the United States, “failed to respond adequately,” the United Nations later said.
As Obama constructs the final months of his legacy, both historical events loom large.
“Another Srebrenica, another Rwanda” are “written on that wall in front of us unless something takes place” to stop the slaughter, Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. envoy to Syria, said late last week as Russian and Syrian aircraft and artillery continued their relentless bombardment of rebel-held eastern Aleppo.
There is no consensus within the administration about what the United States can or should do to try to bring a halt to the killing and stop what appears to be the increasingly inevitable fall of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, to government forces.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: There rarely is a consensus on big foreign policy issues in Washington .... but this is where the President must step in and make the hard decision and then make the case for it to the American people. Unfortunately .... that is not going to happen with President Obama. He may say that Syria is the top issue on his foreign policy file .... but his actions have proven anything but.
16 comments:
In the world, who care about what Obama think, say or do? This President has lost all credibility. Sad, when the most powerful country is completely ignored.
Help save Al-qaeda East Aleppo now!
If Syria did not have the means to defend herself or was without a powerful backer such as the Russians, we would be reading about the establishment of a "no fly zone" and "severely degraded regime forces" long ago. Only those without the ability to fight back and inflict heavy losses on "the west" are attacked.
Now we are seeing the frustration of those used to bullying others with impunity growing. This "inaction" on Syria is driving them nuts. The "accidental" air strike on the SAA in Deir Ezzur is just the kind of stunt we can expect to see pulled again. If they can't get an "official" green light to war politically, they'll work to manufacture one through provocations. For the warlords in the bureaucracy, it's all about the "win" and damn the rest of the world.
With a weak US president, a disengaged citizenry, a certifiably insane deep state bureaucracy in the US up against a determined alliance of Syria/Russia/Iran/Hezbollah, these are extremely dangerous times.
You like Obama or not, it's not really matter, but finding a good solution is not as easy as it seems. If we just step trough the events happened in Syria during the past years, and just see the current situation as is, what could have been done to avoid Eastern Aleppo being captured ( even just by partially ) by SAA? I will give a cookie to anyone who come up with an idea that could not cause WW3 and still acceptable for all parties. I will ship that cookie, I bet you, just find a solution.
Obama seems to hesitate to making the decision, but as I see he made it already by doing ( publicly ) nothing. Those who seen the Security Council meeting ( in full lenght ) that was held this weekend, could have seen that for any and all sides it's not at all about saving lifes, but making victory on the ground of Syria. And the meeting was just a show, for those who have not followed this war, because the rest know how we got here.
Free cookie ? ok ...so maybe this is...the only things that USA can do is to send commandos disguised in Al-qaeda and....., scuse me syrian rebels,....to counterattack the syrian army or delay them enough until a international action will be made Aleppo situation.
Good post mlacix.
Commando's "disguised" as al Quida would very quickly become a daily show on You Tube's lists of execution video's.
The only International Organization with the lawful authority to impose a "solution", is the UNSC, and as the competing Resolutions showed, the US, Britain and France will not allow al Quida to be defeated, and Russia and China will not allow the West to continue to protect and arm al Quida, through the UNSC.
The only other option is an illegal "Coeltion of the Willing", ( will Samoa go all in?), which means war with Russia.
Do you think ISIS would return a US pilot if they were shot down by Syrian/Russian air defense? What a truly screwy situation we have laid out before us...
Well in tonight's debate Clinton is all in to start WWIII to defend Al Quada. Lord help us all.
The fall? you mean the liberation.
Its rather amusing the scramble of the properganger machine as Aleppo became encircled. It does remain to be seen what the USA coalition has accomplished in their air campaign. What i do find sad is they are more then happy to drag out this war, to ensight a migration crisis upon the EU and neighbouring countries who are supposedly allies, inflict massive destruction and death for their foreign policy and outrightly manipulate the public with blatant lies. A time will come where you will need allies, but they will just let you burn!
You want a think tank to find a solution to crisis, well im sorry but its not going to happen as they all read the same text book. As soon as you told your rebels to flee last year upon Russia intervention it was GG. Aleppo is surrounded and only the best infantry will be deployed to sweep up the trash. The only chance for the rebels to break the siege is if the YPG changed allegiance and pushed west, but that would collapse the encirclement and cause large casualties from aerial bombardments. That being said the highway north of YPG territory could be secured and widened, well thats the bait. If they want out the rebels need to take Assan, pressure the 1070's and secure the 42. If Assan can be secured then they have options.
"As Obama constructs the final months of his legacy, both historical events loom large."
Another Srebrenica
Another Aleppo
Another Dimocrat politician that only studied law and eschewed studying military science.
//Charater limit, posting in two part 1/2
Hamilcar Barca:
You just made WW3 happen, no cookies for you.
Anonymous:
Even if PKK hostile toward SAA, YPG is seems to be a very stable party in this war, plus they would gain nothing of helping the rebels. If we looking for another group's action to help the rebels, the only one we could fine is IS. And in the recent past the military cooperation between IS and rebels has been documented as sometimes (not just propaganda, but it has a background), such as the Khanasir offensive, that took place in February of 2016 when the coordinatedrebel-IS counterattack aimed to cut the supply line of SAA to Aleppo, soon after SAA and Kurds captured the rebel corridor North of Aleppo that connected the rebels with the Turkish border. IS previously made attempt to advance toward the city, but their focus was limited the Kuweires AirBase and the Aleppo Industrial zone, and all attempt failed. It was reported I think today that IS made another attempt on the AB but I have my doubt on the scale. ( I always found a huge mistake of IS to not advance between the two location, directly on the Al-Bab - Aleppo line, because the frontline there is the least defendable for SAA, and infiltrating the city (if we count the rebels as friendly forces) would have been the easiest, and could have elevated this mess to a whole new level, I think. )
1070 partially still held by rebels, but I do not give high value for the area, because at that position (and whenever they would advance further into the city from here) they are fully unprotected to the south side, and the SAA mechanised forces showed many time before, that they could advance in such not-urbanised areas. The current 1070 is a Charlie Foxtrot at best for the rebels.
//Charater limit, posting in two part 2/2
Rebels tried to break the siege on Aleppo, even with direct attacks, first with the devastatingly failed counterattack on Mullah Farm, North of Castello road, later with a larger scale on the South side of the city. Meanwhile they made offensives in Hama, which was somewhat successfull (in 2014 the Hama front was a huge mess for SAA, and recent rebel advance could not match the '14-15 achivements), and today rebels annoucned an offensive in Latakia, but none seems to reach the main goal to distract and halt the Aleppo offensive. And I think not that inability is the critical for rebels, but that they could not show any counterattack potential inside the eastern part of Aleppo, which they always did in every other urban battles before. There should be a point when SAA will naturally halt it's offensive in eastern Aleppo, when they reaching core areas, and larger concentration of civilians, unless if the rebels really do not have enough forces to hold the line. Rebels like to say larger numbers when it's come to their forces, I remember when the Operation to liberate the Qalamun area was ongoing, rebels stated to have 25-30.000 fighter, but at the end SAA only killed 3-4.000 in the whole area, the rest just evaporated, I guess. In E.Aleppo I heard numbers of 3-6.000, well if I take the measures...
If I should make a decision to solve this, I would act like what really hurt the current SAA (with the RuAF support). And this is not the frontlines invulnerability, but the possibility of not being able to act and solve a situation. They can loose ground today, they will recapture it back tomorow, thats no problem for them, but loosing lifes is. I remember at least two ceasefire deal that happened in Syria because SAA had no means of acting in situations, and they had to halt a very important offensives because of this. The last such deal was with Zabadani - Kafarya. ( Zabadani is a rebel held town close to Lebanon, and is tightly encircled by SAA, while Kafaryah and Fuah towns area held by SAA, and are being encircled when the Idlib front collapsed and they could not retreat.) In the position of rebels I would have pushed in Kafaryah (which is AFAIK the only town in Syria that is still encircled by Rebels), and make a deal with Syrian gov. that the towns are being murdered/massacre unless the Aleppo offensive halt. In this situation the closest SAA forces are 40km away, and Russian international preasure can't do a thing again this, and on the meanwhile US still could use the time to arm the rebels with whatever they want (MANPADS). However this does not help hugely in the long term but isn't firefighting that is going when it's come to Syria?
I guess I eat the cookie. By the way sorry for the long coherent sentences sometimes, I still learn how to compose nicely.
mlacix. You compose nicely and your input is always appreciated.
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