Exclusive: President Obama is caught between the harsh realities of the Mideast and the fantasy world of Washington’s warmongers, but he prefers to risk a global catastrophe than to stand up to the neocons, the liberal hawks, the Israelis and the Saudis, a dilemma that Daniel Lazare explains.
By Daniel Lazare
“Only odd-numbered world wars start in Sarajevo.” That was the joke during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. Though it turned out not to be true, fortunately, a strange echo occurred a few years later when NATO military commander General Wesley Clark threatened to shoot down Russian planes flying paratroopers into Kosovo, prompting a British general to refuse on the grounds that “it’s not worth starting World War III.”
But war among the great powers may now be in the offing in Syria, where the conflict seems to be exploding on a new and grander scale. Instead of two players, NATO and Russia, it now includes a half dozen or more: the U.S., France and Great Britain, plus Russia, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the other Arab gulf states. Where the conflicting claims of Bosnians, Serbs and Croats were difficult enough to sort out in former Yugoslavia, the struggle over Syria is an immense tangle in which a growing list of combatants struggle to impose their disparate points of view.
President Barack Obama at the White House with National Security Adviser Susan Rice and Samantha Power (right), his U.N. ambassador. (Photo credit: Pete Souza)
The upshot is a game of chicken that is bigger, bloodier and more intractable than anything in decades. Recognizing that an Islamic State takeover in Syria will lead to another round of jihad in Chechnya, Vladimir Putin sees no alternative but to step up support for the besieged government of Bashar al-Assad. Refusing to stand by while fellow Shi‘ites are slaughtered, Iran sees no alternative but to step up support as well.
Determined to halt any expansion by Iran or Hezbollah on its border, Israel increasingly tilts toward ISIS and Al Qaeda, while the Saudis more and more paranoid about a “Shi‘ite crescent” extending from Yemen to Bahrain, Syria and even the kingdom’s own Eastern Province have vowed to intensify their support for the Sunnis.
Too much is at stake for anyone to back down. An Israeli-Russian rapprochement, which could conceivably defuse the crisis, has long been an intriguing possibility. Israel has refused to condemn Russia’s annexation of Crimea. After all, Israel’s huge Russian immigrant population tilts toward Putin, while the only monument to the victorious Red Army outside the former Soviet bloc lies in the seaside town of Netanya, about ten miles north of Tel Aviv all of which suggests that it is better disposed to Russia than is generally realized.
If Putin could engineer an agreement that would allow Assad to hold onto power while reining in Hezbollah, Israel would conceivably go along. But Israel fears that Hezbollah will take advantage of any such truce to build up its missile arsenal, which is why in the end it will almost certainly say no.
Besides, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the General Assembly on Thursday, it regards ISIS and Iran as common enemies, “and when your enemies fight each other, don’t strengthen either one weaken both.” Hence, its policy is to prolong the deadlock even though the results in the end may prove more dangerous for the Jewish state rather than less.
Finally, there is the United States. It has a relatively young, hip, liberal president who opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It also has military expenditures bigger than those of the next nine most powerful countries combined. So surely it has both the good sense and the clout to see that disaster is averted.
But, no, the U.S. is too beholden to the Israelis, to the Saudis, and to an increasingly Strangelovian foreign-policy establishment at home to act independently.
Foot-Dragger-in-Chief
Barack Obama has long cultivated a Yoda-like air of detachment and inscrutability as hawks tried to push him in an ever more bellicose direction. Yet, despite his administration’s saber rattling, he backed off from bombing Syria in 2013 when Putin arranged for Assad to jettison his chemical-weapons arsenal.
Obama also has refused consistent Turkish demands to open up a no-fly zone in Syria’s north, which would inject the U.S. military directly into the battle to topple Assad’s Baathists. But Obama has let the CIA channel funds to thousands of rebels, many of them Islamists allied with Al Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate. He has not blocked the Saudis from supplying Al Nusra with U.S.-made high-tech TOW missiles.
The ultimate absurdity occurred two weeks ago when White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest blamed U.S. war hawks for forcing the President to embark on a $500-million program to teach anti-Assad rebels how to battle Islamic State even though he knew all along that it wouldn’t work. “But I think it’s also time for our critics to ‘fess up in this regard as well,” Earnest said. “They were wrong.”
What was this other than a confession by the Obama administration that it is too weak to say no? It knows that its Syria policy is a disaster, but it is too worried about what the Israelis, Saudis or Washington’s neocons might say to embark on anything different.
So the U.S. is unable to apply the brakes either. Ordinarily, the press might be expected to inject a note of reason except that the major media outlets so far seem as confused (or misleading) as anyone. Anne Barnard and Neil MacFarquhar’s front-page story in Friday’s New York Times is typical of the muddled thinking that passes for journalism these days.
Rife with innuendo, it charges that Russia has intervened in Syria in order to embarrass Obama “always a consideration for Mr. Putin” — and predicts that “the glow of early Russian successes will almost certainly fade as the realities of Syria’s grim, four-year civil war slowly assert themselves. Mr. Assad’s forces are worn down and demoralized, and they are in control of only about 20 percent of Syria’s territory.”
True enough, although they might have added that if the Syrian military is showing signs of exhaustion, it is because the U.S. and its allies have poured “hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of military weapons” into the arms of the opposition, as Vice President Joe Biden let slip in a talk at Harvard’s Kennedy School last October.
Barnard and MacFarquhar also report that Assad “is vilified by many in the majority Sunni population,” which may also be true, although they might have noted the longstanding campaign by the U.S. and its allies to stir up sectarian hatred in the first place. (Assad is an Alawite, an offshoot of Shia Islam.)
In a secret 2006 diplomatic cable made public by Wikileaks, for example, then-U.S. Ambassador to Syria William V. Roebuck urged Washington to “play on Sunni fears of Iranian influence” in order to weaken the Assad regime. Although reports that Iranian Shi‘ites are proselytizing among poor Sunnis are “often exaggerated,” Roebuck said, “[b]oth the local Egyptian and Saudi missions here (as well as prominent Syrian Sunni religious leaders) are giving increasing attention to the matter and we should coordinate more closely with their governments on ways to better publicize and focus regional attention on the issue.”
The reports of Shi’ite proselytizing were exaggerated yet Roebuck advised blowing them up all the more.
Prescient Warnings
In August 2012, the Defense Intelligence Agency warned that Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda all fiercely anti-Shi‘ite were the main driving forces behind the anti-Assad rebellion, that they were seeking to establish a “Salafist principality in eastern Syria,” and that they were attempting to drum up an anti-Shi‘ite jihad among “the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world,” which is “exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition” i.e. the West, the Gulf states, and Turkey “want in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”
In his remarks at the Kennedy School last October, Biden that the Gulf states flooded the Syrian rebels with arms and money because “they were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war.” Sectarianism didn’t just arrive from the sky — rather America and its Gulf allies did their best to nurture and expand it.
Barnard and MacFarquhar go on to say that with Islamic State advancing on Homs and Damascus from the east, “rival insurgents were putting new pressure on the Syrian coastal provinces, where Mr. Assad’s support is strongest. The fighters advancing on that front were not from the Islamic State but from the Army of Conquest, a group that includes an affiliate of Al Qaeda known as the Nusra Front and other Islamist groups, including several more secular groups that have been covertly armed and trained by the United States.”
In other words, U.S.-backed forces are working hand-in-glove with Al Qaeda as they advance on coastal provinces where Syria’s Shi‘ite population is concentrated. They might have added that this is a bloodbath in the making that America and its allies are doing everything to foment. But instead they criticize Putin for trying to stop it.
Instead of clearing up the confusion, the press compounds it and hence adds to the danger of a wider conflict. The Times is even more hypocritical in its opinion pages. Its lead editorial accuses Putin of “escalat[ing] the bloody conflict” as if the U.S. and its allies had not already ratcheted it up as high as possible and complains that intervention “risks bringing Russia into direct confrontation with the United States,” even though Putin is acting at the invitation of the Syrian government while the United States flouts international law by sending in warplanes without Syrian government permission.
“This move by President Vladimir Putin complicates an already chaotic battlefield and will certainly make a political settlement even harder to achieve,” the editorial adds. Yet it is the U.S. that has helped prevent a political settlement by demanding that Assad step down as a precondition for any further talks.
The Times says that Assad’s “hold on power has weakened as the Syrian Army has lost ground not only to the Islamic State, which is trying to establish a caliphate in Syria and Iraq, but also to a coalition of insurgent groups that is opposed to the Islamic State” without acknowledging that the same groups, as its own journalists report, are also allied with Al Qaeda.
“Mr. Putin could have prevented the turn to violence back in 2011 by persuading his ally not to attack peaceful antigovernment protesters,” the editorial adds. But it is unclear how Putin could have pulled off such a feat since the U.S. failed to prevent its ally Saudi Arabia from sending in troops to crush mass protests the same year in Bahrain or from conducting nightly bombing raids in Yemen that so far this year have killed more than 2,300 civilians.
The Times faults Putin for “not try[ing] to work out a plan with the Americans to ensure their respective warplanes would not come in contact,” but then says the United States “rightly rejected a Russian warning after the airstrikes started to avoid Syrian airspace and halt their attacks on the Islamic State.”
It concludes by declaring that “Obama will have to work with America’s partners on a unified response to Russia’s moves and seek a way to end the war,” which means acceding to Saudi vows that support for the rebels “will be intensified.”
The effect is to encourage more of the same mindless confrontationalism that has already plunged Syria into catastrophe. What will Obama do if Russia continues to bomb rebels supported by the U.S. and Saudis? Will he step up military aid or send in jets to chase Russian fighters off? What if U.S. and Russian planes exchange fire? Will he back away from a showdown or allow himself to be maneuvered into a broader conflict?
No one knows. But with the warmongers in control in Washington, the fighting can only spread.
Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace).
Just don’t understand the failure to mention any role by covert government if Obama doesn’t go along some with its demands.
In the modern age, one President has been assassinated for not going along with it. Reagan got shot belatedly because of its efforts to defeat Jimmy Carter. Ex-President LBJ was murdered apparently because of his belated opposition to how The Plumbers shot Nixon into the White House, and kept him there.
Obama once apparently reminded a Cabinet colleague about what happened to MLK when he bucked the secret state.
I am no fan of Barack, but understand quite well what he is constantly up against.
The half-a-White person in him instinctively knows what’s up. And he made the same mistake the fully White ones do: fool himself into thinking that it was him and not the ocean of Jewish experts, advisers, media types and their army Zio-robots any modern POTUS must swim with that were the ones really in charge.
I never thought I’d agree with Peggy Noonan, from an article of hers awhile back, but Obama has indeed been running out the clock for a couple years now. When he can retire to his Hawaiian mansion will be the happiest day of his life. You can count on that.
DEMOCRACY AT WORK….
The involvement of the US and its friends and dependents in
in Syria and elsewhere assumes that:
1. The US has an inalienable right to invade any other country
at any time. Any protest, response must be considered
aggression.
2. All definitions as to what is peaceful etc. can only
be made by the US and its friends. (International law
has nothing to do with it!!!)
These basic assumptions have been the core of US
foreign policy for years.
In Syria to be precise when Russia began its more
aggressive response (airstrikes etc.) it changed the
givens for the US and friends. Before that, Syria like
other nations the US has invaded was there for the
taking. When Russia intervened it seemed less
obvious that the Assad Regime was about to collapse,
if not this week perhaps next week. (Of course, it
still might collapse but predictors of such a Syrian
demise are currently in hiding.)
In addition to the airstrikes themselves, Russia entered
international politics with a vengeance at the UN. Its draft
resolution will of course be totally unacceptable to
the US and west because the removal of Bashar Assad
is not a condition. And that is the fiction behind which
the invasion now hides. (i e when B. Assad is gone
the US and west will have “won”, democracy will bloom
everywhere, capitalism will flourish. Like it did in Libya
for example. The world will be “saved”.
Epithet deleted!
An example of such salvation can be seen quite
clearly in Robert Parry’s article of today on the post
coup US-managed dealings in west Ukraine.
—-Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA
The fact is that rather than whining about Obama, it is time to remember the actual political landscape.
The fact is that the Rockefellers and Rothschilds own the biggest oil companies (ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhilips, Royal Dutch Shell, BP) and banks (JPMorgan Chase, Citi Bank, Barclays, and more). They have been setting foreign policy for over a century.
Notice Susan Rice in the picture? She is a former member of the David Rockefeller founded and chaired Trilateral Commission. So were Condoleezza Rice and Robert Zoellick (911 Commission). So were President Carter and Cyrus Vance. President Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski co-founded and ran the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller.
President Kennedy didn’t want to go to war in Vietnam, and said no to the Rockefellers – and look what happened.
President Obama is to the left of Hillary Clinton, let alone John McCain or Mitt Romney. I think to a great extent, the drone strikes are a substitute for an actual land invasion, which is what the rest of the candidates (Republican and Democratic) were advocating.
So until a someone is willing and able to deal with that fundamental situation, things aren’t going to be any different.
Obama does not merely “tolerate” the warmongers, he is one of the warmongers. That is why the corporate elites allowed him to have been selected as President of USA twice.
As I’ve said before, war is the most idiotic activity men can engage in. The absolute stupidity of our leaders, thinkers, philosophizers, business community, and religious institutions is painfully obvious. The future, if we have any, will depend on our ability to co-operate. In order to save this planets ability to provide an environment that sustains life we are faced with enormous problems that have been brought on by our unbelievably idiotic cultural and religious traditions of preparing to kill each other. If mankind cannot see that it is in the best interests of everyone that we get along with each other through mutual co-operation and the joining of our forces then he will have exterminated himself. We need a new political class of people who actually represent the masses instead of the aristocracy. We should line up all politicians and business leaders and have them shot. Replace them with hard working average citizens and we might have a chance. Then you won’t be able to blame it on God…………………….
Stop me if I said this before. We keep hearing all these pundits and military “experts” remind us that Russia isn’t a “superpower” anymore. That isn’t a new estimate. Lot’s of really smart “Russia experts” have said that over the years. And I’m not being facetious when I say “really smart”. We pay a hefty price for pretending that our adversaries are delusional psychopaths while ignoring our own delusional psychopaths. These pundits keep reminding us that USA spends nine times as much on defense as Russia, Russia no longer has the massive land forces it once had, its economy is weak and relies on a faltering petroleum economy, etc. There was that famous upstart little corporal who – like it or not – was really smart. Of Russia, he said, “Just kick in the front door, and the whole rotten edifice will collapse”. Russia had no air force and no armor divisions to speak of. Their defense budget was a pittance compared to other powers. But they did have a resource that is always left out of the equation: a CAPABLE, TALENTED, RESOURCEFUL and DEDICATED workforce. So, when three million soldiers marched toward Stalingrad in 1941, certain victory was assured. By 1942, a little meeting was taking place on a train at the Eastern Front. A seventy five year old Finnish General was being begged and cajoled by a perfectly rational, reasonable “Russia expert” for help. We know he was rational and reasonable, because the conversation was secretly recorded. Of the T-34 tank and the Ilyushin-II aircraft, he said, “Who could have thought this was possible?” His meaning was, “After all these are just subhuman slavic untermensch.” The Red Army had apparently discovered something unheard of in Western defense spending: COMPARISON SHOPPING. Mannerheim was something unheard of in Western leadership: a “grownup”. He declined to get involved. He also had a previous military career ascending all the way to General in the Czarist Russian Army. I’m sure Kerry and Carter have, while flying first class on shuttle diplomacy, seen those Hermes neckties they sell for $600 in the “SkyShop” catalogue. You can get a reasonable facsimile at Wal-Mart for six bucks, and I found a real one at the Salvation Army for a buck and a half. You can strangle yourself with all three. Of those three million soldiers? Less than 200,000 came home. The Ilyushin-II and the T-34 were the most numerously produced weapons of their kind in military history. Quantity, as the old saying goes, has a quality all its own. History says, “F*@k with the bear at your own risk”.
Thanks for that F.G. Sanford, someone on this site reminded me that Nikita Khrushchev was in that force.
Does Russia have an F35 plane, or a USS Gerald Ford, or a USS John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier?
I would not be surprised if Russia degrades Daesh/ISIS (& any other terror group) within the next couple of weeks. Russia with an average 2 year defense budget of 88 billion dollars, may secure the Syrian theater by our Thanksgiving. With Iran as an ally, Iraq may also lose their fanatic terrorist by our New Year.
The U.S. Is purchasing 2,457 F35 planes at an average cost of 178 million dollars. Do the math on this one yourself, my calculator just broke. Wikipedia states the F35 Program is budgeted at 1.3 trillion dollars. Maybe someone could explain if the Program is different from the individual cost of each plane….but still that’s a lot of money even using low numbers. The USS Gerald Ford & the USS John F Kennedy are probably going to cost, using today’s figures, at an average including R&D 17.5 billion dollars. Also the USS Gerald Ford Program is budgeted at 36.3 billion.
I casually would like to bring up how on 9/10/01 Rumsfeld announced how the Pentagon could not account for (I think) 2 trillion dollars. Then I seem to recall the media making mention how the U.S. could not account for some 8 billion dollars that went missing in Iraq. Afghanistan went off the boards with 400 dollars a gallon gasoline. No wonder the oil companies want us to fight their wars. Can Russia top this?
A necktie is a necktie. Who may tie the more perfect Windsor knot is the question. If Russia is successful, where the U.S. failed, this is because Russia stayed the course with it’s mission. Actually Russia is telling the world of it’s mission, but the U.S. can’t do anything without it’s ‘Cover Story’. The worst advice the U.S. ever acted on, was when it implemented Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard Plan. Need I go on. Just look back over the last forty years, and you tell me. The second stupidest thing the U.S. ever did was to promote, and rally around David Petraeus. He all but revealed himself recently, by publicly suggesting the U.S. Team up with al-Queda. For this man to even think of doing something like this, after what his people claim al-Queda did on 9/11, is an insult to the American people. His suggestion also supports his arrogance, and how generally he is full of himself. Not only that his Iraqi ‘Surge’ was nothing more than a PR stunt.
Stop me if I said this before. We keep hearing all these pundits and military “experts†remind us that Russia isn’t a “superpower†anymore.
The North Vietnamese army never was a “superpower” but it prevailed. The Iraqi militias weren’t “superpowers” but they persuaded the official sole superpower it was time to take a hike. The Afghan resistance isn’t a “superpower” but it looks like it is keeping its record for being the graveyard of empires.
Rome’s legions were a superpower. Napoleon’s army was a superpower. So was Hitler’s Wehrmacht.
You are so right Bill Boden, I don’t think this country has Ever been more vulnerable, if for no other reason because we have been so consistently wrong. Leadership is losing the support of the people; rightfully so.
Obama is a neo con. Kerry is a realist. They both believe in all that exceptions list c**p but, kerry realises the limitations of such thinking, he has actually been in combat and this makes him a realist.
Regarding Syria events are shaped by what goes happens on the ground / the Russians have seized the agenda.
It is also shaped by the last 15 or so years from Yugoslavia to current trials in Afghanistan and iraq.
There is no appetite in Europe for more Middle East intervention. The public could care less about the people and nations involved.
Obama cannot spin support for Al Quaeda into support for democracy. As that would be what any intervention would mean. Lavrov would be all over this.
His quote about ” if it looks like a terrorists..,” resonated with many
There is no appetite in Europe for more Middle East intervention. The public could care less about the people and nations involved. – James Lake
.
Does this signify some dissolution of the “Atlantic Alliance” aka NATO, as the Euro’s are being overrun with Muslim “Strangers”/possible jihadists?
Are those dreamers who departed Europe’s virtual paradise to join the barbaric jihadists hiding among the refugees? – with aspirations of suicide bombings…?
Will the NATO Generals fall in line with LePens style Nationalist movement undercurrents
flowing throughout Europe – fomenting racial discord as exists in the ‘United States’?
This sample of questions and more lay/lie in wait as the world turns and bombs fall and ISIS decapitates and rapes beautiful people and mass murder escalates with impunity.
If “Crazy Carly” had her way:
http://russia-insider.com/en/crazy-carly-fiorina-shoot-down-russian-jets-protect-allies-syria-video/ri10104
Yes, Russia is confident. We squander our defense budget while they improve their technology.Add to that the fact, thanks to people like Dick Cheney,that Russia seems to have the moral high ground and the US would risk conflict on many fronts from Korea to … Yeah, she’s crazy.
Okay, just for talk sake, let’s say an Obama team vs CIA/Neocon team battle is raging on, behind the D.C. curtain. This might explain the half a dozen reportings in the press, where congress people who have read the 28 redacted pages of the 9/11 Commission Report stated, how the blacked out pages ‘would be a game changer’ as to how Americans may come to view the role the Saudi’s played, that fateful day back in September of 2001. Are these stories being purposefully leaked to embarrass Saudi Arabia? How could we ignore how for all this past year Obama and Netanyahu have been bumping up against each other. When Netanyahu thumped his nose at the White House, insulting all protocol to lecture the American Congress to the evils of Iran, well was that stage craft, or was it the real deal? I don’t know myself, but should we at least be considering there could be this kind of fight go on within the circles of our government? Is Obama that bipolar, or could he be putting up a good front when supporting the Neocon’s, and yet at other times be throwing out some clues to what he is really thinking? You could call me an Obama apologist, or we could try to unravel this mess together here, and see if there is some kind of a quiet riot going on inside the beast we call our nations capital. I’m not the best Devils Advocate, but I am attempting to see if there is anything to see beyond our line of sight. This probably is feudal, but hey we all love speculating, plus you are a smart crowd. So the question is; Could there be factions within the U.S. Government making a dash to the exits, to escape our relationship with Israel & Saudi Arabia?
The fact that mere citizens are not allowed to see the secret internal policymaking proves that every participant’s goals oppose the national interest. I have found that attractive hypotheses of concealed benevolence or intelligence always turn out to be wrong. The path to DC requires selfishness and hypocrisy. One could speculate that the US again allies with AlQaeda to entrap Russia in a quagmire as in Afghanistan, but then the Repubs would be obliged to walk into their own trap again after Russia left.
My thoughts Eric: I have read of but not verified President Obama’s deep connection to Zbigniew Brzezinski, if that is true, then it is likely that the President is a neocon. If President Obama believes the literally insane concepts of Zbigniew Brzezinski; then let him air them out with us, his people… I for one never voted and would Never vote for a man with ideas like Mr. Brzezinski’s… Perhaps researchers can verify Mr. Obama’s Columbia education to see just how much an influence Zbigniew Brzezinski had/has on him…
Brzezinski has been a lifelong opponent of Russia. He supported the Vietnam War, and essentially created AlQaeda, planning the 3 billion dollar insurgency trap for the USSR after its invasion of Afghanistan to support secular government. He blamed the destabilization on the USSR. After collapse of the USSR, he was SecDef for NATO in AfPak/Iraq War II, sought confrontation of Russia in Chechnya, and hoped that Ukraine would prevent a new Russian empire. He claims that Europe is becoming a “satellite†to Russia, and despite the US-backed Ukraine coup on Russia’s border he claimed “We’re not starting the Cold War. He (Putin) has started it.†He also supported the overthrow of Ghadafi in Libya.
Apparently Brzezinski sees Iran, Turkey, and Egypt as a strategic partners, and claims to oppose US involvement in Syria, saying that Assad has more support than any opponent. I would guess that he secretly supports Isis and AlQaeda to force Russia and Iran into a quagmire, but would withdraw support if Russia withdrew, the same strategy that turned AlQaeda against the US. Secret destabilization is always blamed on the victim anyway, and the US pays the price for his prejudices.
Brzezinski and Obama endorsed each other in 2007.
Thanks so much Eric, I’m on to it. This is probably the source of current policy which looks crypto-fascist to me. If Americans allow this; we are the new Nazies…
That about says it all…..good work amigo
It is quite obvious the poison ivy league is a cesspool of neolibcons.
I agree. Obama has clearly stood up to Israel and the warmongers more than any other U.S. president since JKF. The international peace deal with Iran, over the most strenuous and vicious Israeli / neocon resistance, is clear evidence of that. You can’t complain about an omnipotent oligarchy of international war profiteers, controlling the press and the Congress, and then say the U.S. president could simply step up and blow them away. That idea is born from frustration and anger, not rationality.
For what it is worth, Tony Cartalucci says it is Think Tanks making the decisions.
Read this; US Upstaged at UN General Assembly – Who’s to Blame?
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com
Why does it seem like every writer on CN is constantly trying to soft-pedal Obama’s involvement? Am I the only one a bit disturbed by the constant undercurrent of “he doesn’t want to do all these bad things he does, he’s actually against this, he’s just surrounded by bad apples” in this website’s published content? Where’s the evidence that this isn’t just wishful thinking?
Incidentally, Obama isn’t a “liberal” either.
Amen!
“U.S. General Wesley Clark threatened to shoot down Russian planes flying paratroopers into Kosovo”
And the liberal (queen of chaos), Hillary said we should enforce a no fly zone over Syria, but this liberal think’s we should let the Russians take care of it:
“If you look at Libya… look at what we did there. It’s a mess. If you look at Iraq… look at what we did there. It’s a mess… ” https://youtu.be/AdFswTFofJU?t=384
Amen!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRUzC9Yfb2Q
Agree but from where in the US do you get a reasonable President? No likely from a country which believes it has the right to fuck everyone over for its own benefit and call it self christian and blame another religion for its beliefs.
I would like the christian country of the United States of America to uphold the commandment ” thou shall not kill”
Hypocrites.
Me too. Perplexed when Mark Lynch writes a paean to Obama, including ‘he really doesn’t want to do it..’ Can a US president be rolled time and again by neocons? Beggars belief. Maybe they are just cleaning up his image before his new foundation er library gets up and running in Chicago. Ah, those future contract dollars….
I’m not familiar with Mark Lynch, would someone provide a link to his writing?
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You.
I agree Robert Parry is the worst.
He always bashes Bush (and rightly so) but then says its the Neocons and not Obama who have had the US invade Libya, Yemen, Syria and Ukraine.
Derogatory remarks about Russia and Putin from Obama’s mouth and through other in his administration go unnoticed.
Well,the answer is Obomba is a neocon also.
And Mr. Parry’s take on Israeli affection for Russia is belied by the Zionists here,who take their marching orders from Zion central(Israel),are constantly stirring the pot against Russia.
Until we purge these monsters we will be f*cked.
“Obama Tolerates the Warmongers†?
Obama opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq before he got to Washington.
“What was this other than a confession by the Obama administration that it is too weak to say no?†At long last, yes. Obama has always been too weak to say no. Or, maybe he doesn’t want to say no because he’s cut from the same cloth. Obama surrounds himself with neo-cons and their like. ISIS, Al Queda, etc. are their tools and creations.
Obama continued wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He bombed Libya. Obama presides over murderous drone strikes that kill innocents. He has presided over the expansion of the police state.
Obama postures, as all politicians do. But actions speak louder than words. Obama has no principles. He is a social climber, a front man; that’s all. The last POTUS who dared to buck the system got killed in 1963 by the Deep State, which has successfully covered it up. POTUSes are all the same: frontmen. They don’t get to the Oval Office by having principles. They get there and stay there by following orders.
You’re alone I’m afraid to say…Watch where he lands after leaving office and tell me he isn’t just another sell-out mouthpiece …..