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| Dr Muhammad Idrees Ahmad: Obama to be defined by Syrian failure |
| 2016-12-18 |
| [Guardian] On Friday, near Palmyra, 14 tanks and an anti-aircraft system were destroyed in an air strike on Isis. Palmyra recently fell to the jihadists after the Syrian regime and its allies diverted forces to Aleppo, leaving the ancient city under-defended. This was a repeat of events last year when, on the advice of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani, the regime deployed troops away from Palmyra to the strategically significant metropolis of Aleppo. The planes struck Palmyra on the same day Suleimani was photographed treading the city’s rubble. But the planes weren’t Russian or Syrian: they belonged to the US-led international coalition. While the US has its own reasons for battling Isis, in this case it was picking up the slack from the regime. Palmyra has only symbolic significance for Assad. Aleppo was the prize, and, with the world watching impotent, the regime was able to starve and bludgeon its population into surrender. The regime was aided by Russian bombers and special forces, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah mercenaries, and a horde of sectarian militias from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan ‐ but, above all, it was aided by American indifference. In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic magazine earlier this year, President Obama said he was "very proud" of the moment in 2013 when, against the "overwhelming weight of conventional wisdom", he decided not to honour his own "red line", allowing Assad to escape accountability for a chemical attack that had killed more than 1,400 civilians. Obama may be alone in this judgment. A year earlier, seemingly on a whim, he had set a red line on the use of chemical weapons at a time when none were being used. The red line was, in effect, a green light to conventional killing. But the regime called Obama’s bluff ‐ and, predictably, he backed down. No longer fearing punishment, the regime escalated its tactics. A similar assessment was made recently by Charles Krauthammer. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #5 Agreed. He has a lot of other failures you can define him by |
| Posted by: Frank G 2016-12-18 16:50 |
| #4 Obama defined by Syrian failure? That's kind of harsh. Well, it certainly is a very narrow view of our Barry. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2016-12-18 16:23 |
| #3 Syria a failure? Apparently they don't know what he's been up to back home! |
| Posted by: gorb 2016-12-18 02:42 |
| #2 To Syrians, Steven, to Syrians. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2016-12-18 01:13 |
| #1 Obama defined by Syrian failure? That's kind of harsh. What about all his other failures? |
| Posted by: SteveS 2016-12-18 01:12 |