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Syria Tag

Our friends over at National Review pulled this little gem. We've officially entered foreign policy bizarro world when the Department of State is absolutely refusing to work with Syria, but is open to working with Iran to fight (however they're defining that) ISIS. Blitzer asked Department of State Spokesperson Marie Harf if Syria was receiving intelligence through a third party, to which she responded, "Not at all. I can categorically reject that. We will not work with the Assad regime, we will not share intelligence with them, we will not coordinate with them. Period. Full stop. I don't want to be any clearer than that."

Barack Obama's address to the nation regarding the threat of ISIS was met with both cautious optimism and unbridled mockery from pundits on both sides of the aisle. No one was more optimistic than CNN's latest hire, former Obama Administration press secretary Jay Carney. Unfortunately for Carney, however, CNN had also invited Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who was more than a little irritated at the media's willingness to overlook the fact that Obama chose to ignore the possibility of the current crisis when he decided to pull the occupying force out of Iraq.
Facts are stubborn things, Mr. Carney. His entire national security team, including his Secretary of State, said we want to arm and train and equip these people and he made the unilateral decision to turn them down. And the fact he didn’t leave a residual force in Iraq, overruling all of his military advisers, is the reason we’re facing ISIS today. So the facts are stubborn things in history, and people ought to know them. And now the president is saying basically that we are going to take certain actions, which I would favor. But to say that America is safer, and that the situation is very much like Yemen and Somalia shows me that the President really doesn’t have a grasp for how serious the threat of ISIS is.
Carney eventually managed to respond, in true Carney fashion:
It is a mis – basically a whitewash of history to suggest that there weren’t periods of enormous chaos and fighting and bloodshed in Iraq when there were tens of thousands of Americans troops on the ground. That is a fact. And that was true in 2004, it was true in 2007. And it was true even when we had the highest number of U.S. troops on the ground. We cannot – the United States of America – ask our military to be a permanent occupying force in a country like Iraq.

Israel has reportedly fired upon and shot down a Syrian drone that invaded Israeli-controlled airspace this Sunday. Although the Israeli military does not believe that the drone was launched as part of an attack on Israel, the tensions in the Golan Heights borderlands have officials on alert. From the Wall Street Journal:
"Our sense is that it wasn't the intention to attack Israel,'' said Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman. Nevertheless, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said Israel has little tolerance for violation of its "sovereign" airspace and that its response would be "aggressive." The intercept came just hours after U.N. peacekeeping forces from the Philippines made dangerous escapes from two border outposts in Syria, where they were trapped for two days by rebel forces including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. Despite the rescue, some 44 Fijian peacekeepers remain in captivity three days after their position near the Quneitra crossing was overrun by rebel forces who have wrested control of the area from the Syrian army. The Nusra Front released a statement over the weekend saying they were holding the Fijians, and that they were being treated well. The group criticized the U.N. role in the Syrian civil war.

We already know that ISIS is “beyond anything we’ve seen;" that they're prodigiously well-funded; that they marry radical Islamic ideology with brutal paramilitary tactics; and that they could pose a threat beyond the confines of the Middle East. What we don't know is the scope of the immediate threat to U.S. assets in the Middle East outside of Iraq. That's why President Obama has approved the use of drone technology in Syria to aid in the military's air surveillance efforts. Via the Wall Street Journal:
The U.S. military's Central Command, which oversees American operations in the region, requested more surveillance aircraft, including drones, to gather more intelligence on potential Islamic State targets, and officials said they could start flying missions over eastern Syria shortly.
Of course, the question on everyone's mind is whether or not drone surveillance will translate into the use of drones to take out hostile targets. The U.S. Military's Central Command, however, has not indicated that they intend to use the drones for that purpose at least for now:
"The Pentagon is preparing to conduct reconnaissance flights over Syria," a senior U.S. official said. "There is no decision yet to do strikes, but in order to help make that decision, you want to get as much situational awareness as possible."
It doesn't help matters that Syria has been locked in its current conflict since early 2011. The Syrian Civil War started three years ago with mostly peaceful protests against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. Since then, almost 200,000 people have died amidst clashes that have spread beyond Syria and into northern Iraq and Lebanon.

The self-proclaimed leader of the united Islamic State, or Caliphate, appeared for the first time in public on Saturday since his military organization took large parts of territory in northern Iraq. Before being named "caliph" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (known as ISIS).
In a sign of [ISIS] confidence, the hitherto secretive Baghdadi made an unprecedented public appearance in the militant-held north Iraq city of Mosul, ordering Muslims to obey him, according to a video distributed online on Saturday.
Baghdadi addressed followers in a mosque in Mosul and delivered a Ramadan prayer and call to arms. According to @Francois_Gatete -- here are several excerpts of the video translated into English.

We've been writing about the lack of a free and independent Kurdistan for years, It’s time for a free and independent Kurdistan. While the Palestinian agenda has dominated every international forum, the much more populous and ethnically distinct Kurds have been mostly ignored.  In part, this is because the Kurds span several nation states created by colonial powers after the implosion of the Ottomon Empire.  Turkey particularly has threatened war if a Kurdish nation emerges. In part it is because creating an independent Kurdistan does do not serve a political purpose of snuffing out the only Jewish state in the region. Developments are moving fast that could change everything. Syria lost control of its Kurd territory during the ongoing civil war, and the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan has operated independently for years. With Iraq losing control of vast territory, and the U.S. not anxious to do anything to help, the Kurds have claimed Kirkuk for their own, as the BBC reports, Iraqi Kurds 'fully control Kirkuk' as army flees:
Iraqi Kurdish forces say they have taken full control of the northern oil city of Kirkuk as the army flees before an Islamist offensive nearby. "The whole of Kirkuk has fallen into the hands of peshmerga," Kurdish spokesman Jabbar Yawar told Reuters. "No Iraq army remains in Kirkuk now." Kurdish fighters are seen as a bulwark against Sunni Muslim insurgents.

Today is a travel and meeting day for me. So imagine my consternation to read the comment in the Tip Line from commenter Ragspierre, linking to a National Review post, about Obama's West Point speech today: Have we reached peak strawman…??? I have been an Obama straw man...

The video embedded at the bottom of the post is of Dr. Massad Barhoum, the medical director of the Western Galilee Medical Center, one of three Israeli hospitals to treat Syrians wounded in that country's civil war. He tells of how his hospital was informed by the IDF that they would be receiving Syrian casualties. He gives the background of his hospital too. It is six miles from Lebanon and has come under rocket fire. It serves the 600,000 residents of the Galilee - Jews, Christians, Muslims and Druze - that make up the "tapestry" of the population in northern Israel. He also explains that there's an extra worry the Syrians have when they find themselves in Israel - that they are alone with no support system. Dr. Barhoum speaks with empathy of those patients who, all of a sudden, find themselves receiving help from a country they have been taught to hate. The whole talk is worth listening to. Dr. Barhoum speaks well and is direct but understated. But here are three quotes that stood out:
  • "Who are these wounded? These mysterious patients who travel in secret, the whole story is wrapped in melodrama, victims of war seeking medical salvation at the hands of their sworn enemies. Yet when they past through the gates of my hospital, the cease to be Syrians. Just as when we walk through the gates we cease to be Jews, Muslims, or, like me, an Arab Christian. They are patients, we are caregivers and nothing else matters."
  • "Arriving unconscious they awoke to a strange language and the sudden terrifying realization that they are in Israel. For every patient this fright, this mistrust is natural. They have been saved by the Israel they have been told to fear and hate. But I have seen this terror dissolve into trust, to appreciation and thanks for the Israeli doctors who saved their lives."
  • "... But still we help. Israel's decision to provide medical care to Syrians in their time of need is recognition of a shared humanity and compassion. That to us has no race, no ethnicity, and no borders."

Did anyone actually expect the Geneva conference with the warring parties in Syria to end in anything other than complete failure? Apparently someone did.  John Kerry, who now is embittered at the outcome, Kerry Blames Syrian Government for Deadlocked Talks
Secretary of State John Kerry issued a statement on Sunday night that blamed the Syrian government for the deadlock in peace talks but asserted that the United States remained “committed to the Geneva process.”

Mr. Kerry’s statement followed two rounds of generally fruitless discussions during which the Syrian government continued its attacks on rebel-held areas with crude weapons known as barrel bombs, and came as more than 200,000 Syrians remained cut off from humanitarian assistance.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy to the negotiations, underscored the frustration when he apologized to the Syrian people over the weekend and questioned the value of continuing the talks.

The main aim of Mr. Kerry’s statement appeared to be to pressure President Bashar al-Assad and to keep alive the hope that a political settlement might be reached in Syria. He was scheduled to fly on Monday to the United Arab Emirates, which is among the Persian Gulf countries that have supported the rebels.

Kerry's optimism that Bashar Assad would talk himself out of power was naive at best, dangerous at worst.  There appears to be no Plan B, as Paul Mirengoff at Power Line notes:

Thirty two years ago yesterday, February 2, 1982, Syrian President Bashar Assad's father, Hafez, began an assault on the city of Hama to put down a Muslim Brotherhood revolt against his regime. Two years ago NPR recounted:
The facts of that event are well-known, but the photographic evidence has been scant. Then, Syria's branch of the Muslim Brotherhood led an uprising centered in Hama, a central city of around 400,000. In response, President Hafez Assad, the father of the current president, ordered 12,000 troops to besiege the city. That force was led by Hafez Assad's brother Rifaat. He supervised the shelling that reduced parts of Hama to rubble. Those not killed in the tank and air assault were rounded up. Those not executed were jailed for years. To this day, the death toll is in dispute and is at best an estimate. Human rights groups, which were not present during the slaughter, have put the toll at around 10,000 dead or more. The Muslim Brotherhood claims 40,000 died in Hama, with 100,000 expelled and 15,000 who disappeared. The number of missing has never been acknowledged by the Syrian leadership.
As we know the lessons of the father have been well learned by the son. Kill enough people and no one will make you pay a price. Somehow the UN and Secretary of State John Kerry thought that they could get some sort of agreement to stop the killing in Syria. The latest round of talks ended on Friday, apparently in failure.
Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia raised expectations in January at a joint news conference in Paris that a way would be found to open humanitarian aid corridors and possibly establish local cease-fires in Aleppo and other cities and towns. But to the dismay of the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations, even those basic steps proved elusive.

You might remember that Secretary of State John Kerry was quick to praise President Bashar al-Assad of Syria for completing the job of destroying all chemical weapons facilities in record time. According to the deal worked out in September with Assad's protecter, Russia, Syria was to rid itself of all of its chemical weapon compounds and production facilities. The first part of that obligation was to neutralize all of the factories so that they could no longer produce chemical weapons. Syria reportedly allowed that task to be completed on time.
Syria has destroyed its declared chemical-weapons production facilities, international inspectors said Thursday, marking a major step in the complex task of ridding the country of the weapons of mass destruction. The declaration came a day before a Nov. 1 deadline as the team overseen by the inspectors hewed to an ambitious schedule for destroying Syria’s entire chemical arsenal by the middle of next year — a far more rapid process than comparable efforts in other countries and one that must be implemented in the middle of a civil war.
A week later, Kerry publicly praised Assad.

In an interview airing now on Lebanese OTV television, Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah discusses the Iranian nuclear deal (summary translation via NOW Lebanon):
The Iran nuclear deal has significant repercussions. The region’s peoples are the biggest winners from this deal because regional and international forces have been pushing for war with Iran which would have had dangerous repercussions in the region. The deal pushed off the [potential Israeli and US] war [against Iran]. Israel cannot possibly bomb nuclear facilities without the US’ green light. Monopoly of power is no longer present. All American wars have failed. John Kerry made it clear that the US does not want more wars. The US and Europe have failed in the region. It is unlikely that normalization will take place. Iranians wanted to reassure the Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabia. [interview in progress, check link for more]
More translation at Naharnet:

A few months ago a picture of John and Teresa Heinz Kerry having dinner with Bashar and Asma Assad in 2009 resurfaced. The timing was awkward because it came just after the Secretary of State condemned Assad as a "thug," and compared him to Adolph Hitler for his use of chemical weapons. The problem with Kerry's meeting with Assad isn't just that it happened. It was the beginning of a relationship - with the approval of the Obama administration - in which the future secretary of state attempted to cultivate the dictator, apparently with the intent of weaning him away from Iran. Even after Assad's brutality towards protesters became undeniable, the Wall Street Journal reported that the administration wasn't ready to give up on him:
The killing of at least 70 people around the central town of Homs in the past five days, according to activists, brought to an estimated 1,100 the total toll in Mr. Assad's months-long crackdown and sparked tougher condemnation from the Obama administration. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged other Arab states, Russia and China to join in protesting the violence. ... Mrs. Clinton's ambiguity highlights the frustrating U.S. courtship of Bashar al-Assad. For more than two years, Mr. Obama's foreign-policy team has tried to woo Mr. Assad away from America's regional nemesis, Iran, and persuade him to resume peace talks with America's regional friend, Israel. For more than two years, Mr. Assad has frustrated the U.S. with the promise of reform and the practice of repression.
One detail in particular about the Obama administration's first term outreach to Syria sticks out, "Mr. Kerry, meanwhile, became Mr. Assad's champion in the U.S., urging lawmakers and policymakers to embrace the Syrian leader as a partner in stabilizing the Mideast." When it came to Syria John Kerry was out in front.