Syria is Forgotten War of Obama

Syria is the forgotten war of the United States (U.S.) President, Barack Obama. Nine months after the motions of military intervention and back at the last minute, Obama seems resigned to a victory for the regime of Bashar Assad.

U.S. paralysis before the massacres in the Arab country marks the end of an era: the humanitarian interventions, in Western countries the responsibility to protect populations threatened by their own rulers arrogated.

The idea of the responsibility to protect began to circulate in the nineties, when the passivity of the great powers to the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda led to intellectuals and politicians to raise the need to resort to arms to stop crimes against humanity. After served to justify wars such as Kosovo. Some used it to argue for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Now, in times of military withdrawal from the first power, enthusiasm for solving other people’s problems to missile strike gone.

Elliott Abrams – adviser to Republican President George W. Bush during the years of Iraq and one of the leading figures of the neocon right – holding, in a telephone interview that the effects of the Obama democrat politics in Syria beyond this country. In Tehran, Tel Aviv, Beijing, have judged the U.S. president according to his hesitation to Syrian civil war and, according to Abrams, have concluded that he is a weak and unreliable leader. Also in Moscow.

“Doubts when arming the Syrian rebels and hesitant to arm the Ukrainian government respond to the same desire to move away from difficult situations, and I think this is very harmful,” says Abrams, attached to laboratory Ideas Council on Foreign Relations. An invisible line connects Damascus with Donetsk.

Obama met Tuesday with Jarba Ahmad, the president of the Syrian Opposition Coalition, the moderate group recognized by the U.S. as the legitimate representative of his country. Jarba, accompanied among others General Abdul- Ilah al- Bashir, head of the military wing of the opposition, visited U.S. military aid to ask the Obama Administration to explain to politicians and public opinion in this country that, despite to opponents defeat, despite their divisions and despite the rise of Al Qaeda associated items in the battlefield, nothing is lost.

“We need weapons, no doubt. In antiaircraft and antitank special,”said in an interim between meetings with members of think tanks and the White House, Majib Ghadbian, special representative of the coalition against the USA and the UN. “Air superiority of the Syrian regime terrorizes and prevents us ensure governance in the liberated areas. We must stop the crimes against the Syrians,”he adds.

In the meeting with Obama in the White House came out no  direct military aid commitment. But the first antitank missiles manufactured in the U.S. have already reached the hands of the rebels, according to The Washington Post. And the CIA has provided secret help.

Since it began three years ago, the Syrian war has left more than 150,000 dead, according to some estimates, and millions displaced. It has strained relations with key U.S. allies in the region like Saudi Arabia. At this time they are harmless or have breached the exhortations and promises of Obama: Assad must relinquish power; if the regime used chemical weapons, the U.S. would intervene; or Washington, at least, would arm the rebels.

In September 2013, an agreement with Russia to remove Syria chemical weapons allowed Obama to suspend a ready military intervention but ran into opposition from the U.S. Congress and American citizens, resist any military adventure after the decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since then, Asad has advanced the chemical disarmament, but the war continues. Attempts to negotiate peace, the last in January in Geneva have failed.

“Unfortunately, things are not going in the right direction. It is very frustrating, “he said a few days ago, a senior official of the Obama administration, which demanded anonymity. ” But this does not mean that we throw in the towel,” he said.

Jarba wanted to convince his reluctant to support a side in the American partners that radical Islamists have a growing influence, that there is a reliable and democratic opposition. Washington has already delivered $ 287 million in non-lethal aid called – that is, no weapons or ammunition to the opposition – and just recognize the offices of the Coalition Opposition Syria as a foreign mission in the USA.

There are only neoconservative Elliott Abrams as those who call for greater U.S. involvement in Syria. The debate played within the Obama Administration. The Secretary of State, John Kerry, and U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, promote a more aggressive policy and suggested military intervention from sending special forces in April reported The Wall Street Journal. The Pentagon, with the head of the Joint Chiefs, Martin Dempsey, front, urges caution: in the age of withdrawal, the U.S. or want -not – sure can resolve everything.

The military also fear the weapons falling into the hands of the rebels. Since the start of the civil war, they have rejected military intervention for fear of a repeat of the fiasco in Iraq. The Pentagon was also reluctant to participate in the 2011 bombing of Libya and now demurs sending military aid to Ukraine.

On the opposite side is Power, which was before that ambassador journalist and activist for human rights, and in 2002 published a reference book on the responsibility to protect, A problem from hell (a hellish problem), a complaint U.S. passivity before the genocides of the twentieth century.

“When innocent lives on a large scale are eliminated and the United States has the power to stop the killing at a reasonable price, is bound to act,” wrote the current UN Ambassador. The realpolitik of President Obama at odds with the idealism of Power. “What is happening [ in Syria ] is intolerable, and we must all do more,” said the ambassador in late April in a speech at the Holocaust Museum in Washington.

” All this must be very, very difficult psychologically and emotionally for Samantha,” says Abrams, who knows her well.

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Posted by Maleeha Tareen on May 16 2014. Filed under Middle East. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.