{"id":210178,"date":"2015-12-19T18:50:45","date_gmt":"2015-12-19T18:50:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=210178"},"modified":"2015-12-19T19:14:38","modified_gmt":"2015-12-19T19:14:38","slug":"obama-finally-commits-to-putins-syrian-policy-yet-continues-violating-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/obama-finally-commits-to-putins-syrian-policy-yet-continues-violating-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Finally Commits to Putin\u2019s Syrian Policy \u2013 Yet Continues Violating It"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

The basic policy-difference on Syria has been between U.S. President Barack Obama\u2019s insistence that Syria\u2019s legal President must be ousted before any peace-process starts, versus Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s insistence that no foreign power possesses the right to determine whom the leader of Syria or any other country will or won\u2019t be \u2013 only the residents there do, via free and fair democratic elections. Putin proposes an internationally monitored and verified election in Syria to determine the identity of Syria\u2019s President; Obama has rejected that proposal \u2013 until now.<\/span><\/p>\n

The world\u2019s most-reliably honest and accurate news-medium, Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten<\/i>, or German Economic News<\/i>, reports, on December 19th, three major articles about the latest stages of Obama\u2019s newfound verbal commitment to Putin\u2019s policy. They are all summarized here, with factual corrections added by me, because no news-source is 100% reliable:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUN-Sicherheitsrat verabschiedet Syrien-Resolution einstimmig\u201d<\/a><\/span>\u00a0or \u201cUN Security Council Adopts Syria-Resolution Unanimously,\u201d reports that the U.N. Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution that \u201cessentially corresponds to the Russian proposals of the past few weeks\u201d; and, so, “the international community concludes a combined joint action for a cessation of [Syrian] hostilities.\u201d And: “US Secretary of State John Kerry said after the Security Council meeting chaired by him, that the resolution will send ‘a clear message to all concerned that it is now time to stop the killing in Syria\u2019.\u201d However, actually, it\u2019s not merely “Russian proposals of the past few weeks,\u201d because as far back as 6 June 2012, Bloomberg News had headlined,\u00a0\u201cRussia Open to Syria Transition in Shift Away From Assad,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and reported that, “While Russia for the first time sees a change of government in Syria as possible via a series of steps, it remains adamant that the outcome not be imposed from outside, according to a Russian official not authorized to speak publicly on this matter. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said yesterday that his country has never insisted on Assad staying in power and a decision on his future must be taken by the Syrians themselves, state-run Rossiya 24 television said on its website.\u201d (More recently, the Guardian<\/i> on September 15th reported<\/span><\/a> that former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari went public saying that the West\u2019s “failure to consider the Russian [2012] offer had led to a \u2018self-made disaster\u2019.” So: this has been Russia\u2019s position consistently since that time (not only<\/i> \u201cthe past few weeks\u201d), and it is only now being accepted (at least verbally<\/i>) by the regime in Washington, and their toadies in other \u2018Western\u2019 countries. (I had first reported on Obama\u2019s change of position on this\u00a0November 15th<\/span><\/a>, and reported further on it\u00a0December 15th<\/span><\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUN-Friedensplan f\u00c3\u00bcr Syrien: Das Verdienst der viel geschm\u00c3\u00a4hten Russen\u201d<\/a><\/span>\u00a0or “UN peace plan for Syria: The merit of the much maligned Russians,\u201d opines that \u201cIt speaks [favorably] for the US government [i.e., Obama] that it [he, via his subordinate John Kerry] has listened to Vladimir Putin\u201d in this matter. This article summarizes the history by saying that “the Russians have said from the outset that they will not compete against the USA, but want to fight alongside the Western alliance against Islamist terrorism. The plan for an 18-month transitional period, as it has now been decided by the UN, comes from the Russians. They also have, contrary to the Western popular fiction, from the very beginning said that they do not want to hold on to\u00a0Assad.\u201d However, that slightly misstates Putin\u2019s position, which has instead been: Russia will insist upon the next Syrian President\u2019s being selected only by the Syrian population, regardless of what their choice might happen to be. To say that \u201cthey [the Russian government] do not want to hold on to Assad\u201d is to imply that Putin wouldn\u2019t prefer<\/i> that the outcome of a democratic election in Syria result in the election of Assad or someone like him (i.e., non-sectarian, and especially not pro-Sunni, which would mean anti-Shiite, which would include anti-Iranian, pro-Arabic, meaning here also being pro-U.S.-aristocracy, a pawn of Washington), which is to make a misleading, and even false, statement. (Even the best news-medium isn\u2019t perfect, as these examples clearly show. But at least DWN<\/i> <\/span>tries its best to be truthful, whereas the norm in the Western press is instead to lie whenever necessary in order to keep up the Western \u2013 basically America\u2019s \u2013 aristocracy\u2019s anti-Russian propaganda-line.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTrotz Friedens-Plan: Nato schickt Kriegsschiffe in das Mittelmeer\u201d<\/a><\/span>\u00a0or “Despite peace plan: NATO sends warships into the Mediterranean Sea,\u201d reports that, “Despite the UN peace plan for Syria, NATO stepped up its military presence in the Mediterranean area.\u00a0NATO announced that it would support Turkey in the monitoring of the airspace at the border with Syria. Given the uncertain situation, the representatives of the alliance had decided to help, said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday. NATO would provide, inter alia, AWACS aircraft. In addition, the monitoring on the Mediterranean Sea will be increased by German and Danish military\u00a0vessels.\u201d Along with that comes their editorial opinion, which is unwarranted: this article opines that the NATO move somehow “shows that the US government is only partially able to control the alliance. NATO has now opened so many fronts that it is possible for the government in Washington barely to make informed decisions.\u201d The editors\u2019 inference and implication there, that Obama couldn\u2019t have prevented NATO from doing this, is almost certainly false. I therefore shall here engage in my own editorializing, by asserting that progressives throughout the world (such as the owners of DWN<\/i> seem to be) almost consistently exhibit an unstated underlying assumption that Obama isn\u2019t really set upon the U.S. aristocracy\u2019s decades-long effort and intention to conquer, to take control of, Russia. That assumption flies in the face of Obama\u2019s actual record<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLinkspartei: Nach UN-Einigung Bundeswehr-Einsatz in Syrien stoppen\u201d<\/a><\/span>\u00a0or “Left Party says UN agreement requires Germany\u2019s military mission in Syria to stop,\u201d reports that Germany\u2019s Party of the Left asserts: “New troops would run counter to the peace plan.\u201d Here is the rest of that brief article:<\/span><\/p>\n

The chairman of the Left Party, Bernd Riexinger, said:<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

“I very much welcome that after nearly five years we finally take concrete steps toward peace negotiations in Syria. The federal government must now immediately stop with all its might the Bundeswehr war deployment. Hundreds of millions would be tax money now spent for a\u00a0German\u00a0war effort to thwart the peace plan of the United Nations. Federal Foreign Minister\u00a0Steinmeier also must speak out for an internationally supervised arms embargo.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Apart from peace negotiations and cease-fire agreements in Syria and an internationally monitored arms embargo strengthening nonviolent working organizations, humanitarian assistance to the civilian population and reconstruction assistance by armed groups, free regions and self-government structures are\u00a0necessary. Everyone knows that there is no quick solution to the existing conflicts in the Middle East.\u00a0Above all, there is no military solution.”\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

So: Germany\u2019s right-wing Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is receiving pressure from a marginal leftist Party, to abandon the American anti-Assad war. Both Merkel and her master, Obama, are, in their decisions of action and of inaction, trying to do whatever they can to carry out the U.S. aristocracy\u2019s objectives, even if they can\u2019t say publicly that they still are trying to find some way to defeat Putin, and, in Syria, to block the Syrian election that Putin has been pressing for. Because, as every knowledgeable person knows, but the Western \u2018news\u2019 media prefer to ignore when they don\u2019t come right out with lies denying it<\/span><\/a>: any free and fair internationally monitored and verified election in Syria will almost certainly choose Bashar al-Assad by a huge margin, to lead the country. Most Syrians \u2013 even many Syrian Sunnis \u2013 prefer a non-sectarian leader, not the type that the U.S. and Saudi aristocracies want to impose there to defeat Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse The basic policy-difference on Syria has been between U.S. President Barack Obama\u2019s insistence that Syria\u2019s legal President must be ousted before any peace-process starts, versus Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s insistence that no foreign power possesses the right to determine whom the leader of Syria or any other country will or won\u2019t be \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":196664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[115,30,32,96,535,753,524,754,523,76,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-210178","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-cia","11":"tag-cover-up","12":"tag-global-news","13":"tag-police-state","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-syria","16":"tag-ukraine","17":"tag-warfare","18":"tag-white-house","19":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}