Yemen flight to save your life from bombed airport – Kenya 148 killed at university, 7 hour delay in armed security, terror inside Muslim community – Libya establishing IS inside and struggle of warlords arms trafficking into African states such as Boko Haram – Tunisia and Egypt reasonably stable though far from a democracy, human rights or freedom of speech – Iraq the growth of AQ in new form of IS, the fall of Mosul, the mass graves of Tikrit, Sunni-Shia divide – Lebanon a mess due to refugee problem from Syria – Turkey growing into a new dictatorship of Erdogan, suppression democratic rights, H.R. and freedom of speech – Syria on the edge of becoming a terror state with Al Nusra and IS destroying Free Syrian Army and the Assad forces, Christians awaiting persecution and massacre.
What is the reading from a spokesperson at the US State Department: Syria can be resolved today if Assad steps down. Really? At least our only democratic ally in the region appreciates US policy: Israel.
My recent diary – ISIS to Bush-era Iraq invasion – Unintended Consequences.
The website NewAmericanCentury.org has its account “suspended.” The neocons have successfully reached out to liberal interventionists based on the R2P doctrine to continue regime change in the Middle East through covert means of the colour revolutions, NGO internal meddling and any other means [economic sanctions] to attain their goal. The Obama administration in its first term was very compliant. The goal to make Russia a pariah state has succeeded quite well and it’s discretionery policy to protect key allies like Israel, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia has, on the surface, succeeded. But for how long?
The New American Century: Rest in peace
The Asia Times | by Jim Lobe |WASHINGTON – Is the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which did so much to promote the invasion of Iraq and an Israel-centered “global war on terror”, closing down?
In the absence of an official announcement and the failure since late last year of a live person to answer its telephone, a Washington Post obituary would seem to be definitive. And, sure enough, the Post quoted one unidentified source presumably linked to PNAC as saying the group was “heading toward closing” with the feeling of “goal accomplished”.
In fact, the nine-year-old group, whose 27 founders included Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, among at least half a dozen of the most powerful hawks in the George W Bush administration’s first term, has been inactive since January 2005, when it issued the last of its “statements”, an appeal to increase significantly the size of the US Army and Marine Corps to cope with the growing demands of the kind of “pax Americana” it had done so much to promote.
As a platform for the three-part coalition that was most enthusiastic about war in Iraq – aggressive nationalists such as Cheney, Christian Zionists of the religious right, and Israel-centered neo-conservatives – PNAC actually began breaking down shortly after the invasion of Iraq.
It was then that the group’s predominantly neo-conservative leadership – Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, PNAC director Gary Schmitt, and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analyst Robert Kagan – began attacking Rumsfeld, in particular, for failing to deploy enough troops to pacify Iraq and launch a true nation-building exercise, as in post-World War II Germany and Japan.
It was the first of a number of policy splits that, along with the deepening quagmire in Iraq itself, have debilitated the hawks, forcing neo-conservatives in the group to reach out to liberal interventionists with whom they sponsored a series of joint statements extolling the virtues of nation-building and a larger army, or calling for a tougher US stance toward Russia and China.
R2P post-Libya
So, what does this mean for the future of R2P? Only a year after its success in Libya, R2P’s detractors have fresh grounds to attack the doctrine as an unreliable friend of the vulnerable …○ Leading from the front: America, Libya and the localisation of R2P
○ Obama’s Adoption of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) – A Constructivist Analysis
○ The Dangerous Neocon-R2P Alliance
○ Anglo-American Values Don’t Fit Europe, Time to Protest NATO Aggression