Who Would Arming Ukraine Actually Empower?
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/28835-focus-who-would-arming-ukraine-actually-empowerIt’s easy to forget that just two years ago, President Obama was determined to bomb Syria and remove the Assad regime, and U.S. establishment institutions were working to lay the groundwork for that campaign. NPR began dutifully publishing reports from anonymous U.S. officials that Syria had stockpiled large amounts of chemical weapons; the NYT was reporting that Obama was “increasing aid to the rebels and redoubling efforts to rally a coalition of like-minded countries to forcibly bring down” Assad; Secretary of State John Kerry pronounced that forced removal of Assad was “a matter of national security” and “a matter of the credibility of the United States of America.”
Those opposed to the anti-Assad “regime change” bombing campaign argued that while some of the rebellion was composed of ordinary Syrians, the “rebels” the U.S. would arm and empower (i.e., the only effective anti-Assad fighters) were actually violent extremists and even terrorists aligned with Al Qaeda and worse. The people arguing that were invariably smeared as Assad apologists because this happened to be the same argument Assad was making: that the most effective fighters against him were jihadis and terrorists.
But that argument in D.C. was quickly converted from taboo into conventional wisdom the moment it was needed to justify U.S. involvement in Syria. The U.S. is now bombing Syria, of course, but rather than fighting against Assad, the Syrian dictator is (once again) America’s ally and partner. The rationale for the U.S. bombing campaign is the same one Assad long invoked: that those fighting against him are worse than he is because they are aligned with Al Qaeda and ISIS (even though the U.S. funded and armed those factions for years and their closest allies in the region continue to do so).
A similar dynamic is at play in Russia and Ukraine. Yesterday, Obama’s top national security official, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, told a Senate Committee “that he supports arming Ukrainian forces against Russian-backed separatists,” as the Washington Post put it. The U.S. has already provided “non-lethal” aid to Ukrainian forces, and Obama has said he is now considering arming them. Who, exactly, would that empower?
= new reply since forum marked as read
Good term. 
of John Kerry & Barack Obama"
It started early on Monday, when Kerry broached the idea of Syria handing its arsenal of chemical weapons to international control. But Kerry immediately dismissed the idea, saying Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad "isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously."
Shortly after, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that Moscow would be willing to support it, and his Syrian counterpart quickly welcomed the concept.
With the administration fighting an uphill battle to win support from Congress for military action, a U.S. official told CNN on condition of anonymity that Kerry's remarks were a "major goof." Kerry spokeswoman Jen Psaki sought to roll back the comments, saying he was simply responding to a "hypothetical."
But by Monday evening, President Barack Obama called it a welcome development "if true," warning that it couldn't be used as an opportunity for Syria to stall for time.
Obama told CNN that the threat of American force "has prompted some interesting conversations," including one he had with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of 20 economic summit Putin hosted in St. Petersburg.
"When I was at the G20, we had some time to discuss this, and I believe that Mr. Putin does not see the use of chemical weapons as a good thing inside of Syria or anyplace else," Obama said.
And by Tuesday morning, Kerry told the House Armed Services Committee that the Russian plan "is not something that, you know, suddenly emerged, though it did publicly."
"President Putin raised the issue with President Obama at St. Petersburg. President Obama directed us to try to continue to talk and see if it is possible," he said.
The plan appears to have taken on "a life of its own" in the past day and could help Washington and Moscow reach "a mutually face-saving solution," said Andrew Kuchins, director of the Russia and Eurasia Program and the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"This is really a rabbit out of a hat," Kuchins said.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/10/politics/kerry-syria/
When asked in London on Monday what Syria could do to avoid a U.S. missile strike aimed at crippling its chemical weapon arsenal, Kerry replied that Syrian President Bashar Assad would have to give up his weapons within seven days. Implicit in the flippant remark: Just blowing off a little steam here, folks; it's not gonna happen.
Except Syria’s ally, Russia, took the suggestion seriously.
So did Syria’s foreign minister, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Britain’s prime minister, who had been slapped down by his own parliament when asked to support a U.S. strike. So, for that matter, did former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, both of whom suggested such a move would be welcome.
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The widespread, positive response makes the president’s plan for military action look even more precipitous and poorly thought out than it looked last week, when even then it was clear that most Americans, for myriad reasons, oppose military action against Syria.
(And even the president acknowledged as much when he told CNN during a blitz of network television interviews on Monday that the idea was "a potentially positive development." Though he argued that the threat of military action had given Syrians "pause."
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On Monday, the New York Times reported that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov even suggested that Syria might also sign the treaty that bans the manufacture, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-a-flippant-remark-by-john-kerry-about-syria-changes-the-calculusruntimeinclude-sluglamerobinabcarian-20130909-story.html
