Assad continues his mission to kill in Syria. On Sunday, Assad’s government ordered airstrikes throughout Syria but the most notable was in Aleppo. Using helicopters to make sure “ready – aim – drop” is just right, these barbarians drop “barrel bombs” onto highly populated civilian areas.
The barrel bombs and the explosives within them are not accidentally mis-dropped, and they are not indiscriminately dropped. They are calculatingly dropped so they will get the highest “kill rate” regardless of who ends up dead. By experience, they know that they are very successful at killing women and children. The Doctors Without Borders group says at least 189 people have been killed and nearly 900 wounded in the Aleppo bombings since Sunday.
Aleppo Tweet
Idlib is another area that been hit hard over the past two days. The people of Syria are being killed. Assad doesn’t care. In fact, this is his plan. In case it isn’t clear to the International community yet, there is GENOCIDE going on in Syria.
Idlib
Today the UN Security Council was bullied into capitulating on the condemnation of Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian government’s increasing military offensive on Aleppo. The statement that was submitted to the Security Council was drafted by the US and was blocked by none other than Russia. In order to pass, it would require all fifteen members to approve. What a surprise it is that Russia would veto this! Russia sure isn’t going to let their “boy be called onto the carpet” and be held accountable for any of the mayhem he is causing in Syria.
Russian diplomats refused to allow any mention of President Bashar al-Assad’s tactics in the statement, diplomats said. In the face of Russia’s anticipated move, the United States decided to withdraw the draft. The United States wanted the statement to express “outrage at the use of air strikes by the Syrian government, in particular the use of heavy indiscriminate weapons, including Scud missiles and ‘barrel bombs,’ which were dropped on Aleppo” this week. Kurtis Cooper, spokesman for the US mission to the United Nations said, “We are very disappointed that a Security Council statement expressing our collective outrage at the brutal and indiscriminate tactics employed by the Syrian regime against civilians has been blocked.”
It was just in the last week or so that the Secretary was bouncing around from the Middle East to Russia and back, talking to all sorts of foreign leaders. All of this leading up to the idea that the US and Russia could partner to get a “peace deal” for Syria at Geneva2. Secretary Kerry recently said he thought “some thirty countries might be invited to get together to negotiate peace for Syria.” Seems like way too many cooks in the kitchen to me.
UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will begin working on Geneva2 in the next week or so. There is an expectation that he will be able to get some mileage out of talks between the US and Russia. According to a US State Department Press Release, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy R. Sherman is traveling to Geneva to participate in those talks. From my perspective, sending an Under Secretary no matter how talented she is just underlines how “very disappointed” the US is with Russia. However, Geneva2 is about Syria not Russia. One open issue that the US and Russia apparently are to decide is, “Should Saudi Arabia and / or Iran be invited to participate in Geneva2?” [Source: Global Post]
Another point to be considered is if Russia has just been putting on a “false face” recently for their own purposes by putting both feet into the negotiation process, talking Peace and even saying that what is going on in Syria must stop. Obviously, they are not willing to say that officially standing up with the UN and putting out an official statement clearly calling out Assad and his government on horrifying acts.
According to said UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq, Mr. Brahimi has a busy agenda coming up as he will pull together meetings with envoys from the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, the European Union and Arab League. While the United States tip toes around being “very disappointed,” and Russia shores up their support of Assad so their interest in Syria is protected, Syrians are still being KILLED. Also to be clear, even if Iran doesn’t get invited and Iraq is invited there is no difference. The Iraq Foreign Minister Maliki doesn’t make any decisions without going to Iran for permission. In other words, Iraq is Iran’s proxy.
It is very disappointing that the US is taking such a back seat ride on the Syria issue. President Obama has for so long publicly said that Abbas is a very bad man and he must step down. He has also said that the United States supports the moderate Syrian Opposition and their effort to unify Syria and develop a unified transitional government.
Even more emphatic, a clear “red line” was laid out – if Assad used Chemical Weapons on his people there will be consequences. However, when the time came to “walk the talk” the United States stood still and hid behind excuses. Obama suddenly decided he should not strike Syria without going to the Congress to get agreement. The congress had not agreed with President Obama on anything the entire year, and proudly advertised that they were not going to agree with him. The were overtly not agreeing with him as a mission. As this “political game” was engaged that was going to have an obvious outcome … Syrians were still dying.
Assad is not afraid of anything the US, UK or any of the EU countries have to say. He has extracted himself from the Arab League … of course that probably was after they kicked him out. He answers to no one, except Russia and potentially Iran who are both his greatest supporters in the war. Of course, it is doubtful that they really care less for Assad himself. They do love his real estate though.
The Arab League needs to take this situation in hand, if they have the courage to do it. To date they haven’t put much effort into getting into the drivers street, but if they don’t the Arab League is putting the entire region at risk. How much influence does the Arab League have with Bashar al-Assad? Probably a lot less that they had before the kicked him out over a year ago, but they must find away.
