Covering Their Collective ASSads

Bashir al Assad is the nominal president of Syria.  He has been in power since his father Hafez al Assad died many years ago.  All together, the Assad family has ruled in Syria for roughly 4 decades.  Of course, the last few years have been tough for Assad, although nowhere near as tough as they have been for the rest of Syria.  His rule has been under assault by Sunni rebels and terror groups during the Syrian civil war, a conflict that Assad himself started when he tried to kill those opposed to his government.  Assad used brutal and inhumane tactics like chemical weapons, barrel bombs, rape squads, and mass execution of civilians.  These war crimes, committed on a consistent basis by Assad and his long term allies (Iran and Hezbollah) have caused literally hundreds of thousands of Syrians to be killed with many more wounded or made homeless.

At one point three years ago, president Obama was forced by the war crimes of the Assad forces to announce that the US position is that Assad must go at the end of the conflict.  One by one, countries around the world joined that position (many had taken that stance prior to Obama's statements.)  Sadly, however, no one did anything to stop to fighting in Syria and the killing continued on as before.  The rise of ISIS led to some sporadic bombing of that group's positions in Syria, but the civil war, like the Energizer bunny, just kept going and going.

The conclusion that Assad must leave seems now to be changing.  The Russians have put large numbers of troops on the ground in Syria to reinforce the Assad regime.  So too, the Iranians have major components of their army fighting on the ground in Syria.  This strengthening of the Assad regime has led various world leaders such as German chancellor Merkel to state that they were open to a resolution that kept Assad in office during a transitional phase following peace.  That's the same as allowing Assad to stay permanently since the Middle East is notorious for keeping in place leaders who are supposed to go.  Just look at president Abbas of the Palestinian Authority who is now in the tenth year of a four year term.

What is happening is that Obama's position that Assad must go is crumbling and the Russians and Iranians are moving in to take control of Syria.  It is a bad blow to the American policy.  It is an embarrassment to Obama.  In other words, it is just another day like many before for the Obama/Clinton handling of foreign policy.

The sad thing about all this is that the end result will be that a mass murderer, a war criminal, a degenerate will be kept in power by the efforts of the world to bring "peace".  The Syrian people will suffer.  And once again, American power and influence will take a blow.

 

  var _gaq = _gaq || [];

  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-19179784-1']);

  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

 

  (function() {

    var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;

    ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';

    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);

  })();