Month: September 2015

This is anecdotal, but you know how Facebook suggests people who you might want to be friends with? For some reason, over the last month or so the algorithm has been serving up nearly 100% people who have few friends in common with me but who love Bernie Sanders so much that they use him in their avatar. And I spent some time yesterday looking at these folks and their bios are a lot different from the old suggestions I was getting. In the past, most suggested friends were in three groups: academics, journalists/editors, or employed progressive organizers. But most of these Bernie folks are just regular people who work as food servers or have a job at Lowe’s or maybe do some charity work with the homeless. There’s a lot of young people still in their first job. There are stay-at-home moms and people who are self-publishing short stories.

In any case, there are a lot of them and they’ve managed to get connected to each other and want to bring me into The Borg.

Nothing wrong with that, but I thought about it when I saw that Bernie has just reached the million donor plateau. That’s right, a million people have donated money to the Bernie Sanders campaign, which is more than any other candidate and more than Obama had attracted at the same point in his campaign.

How many of these folks are infrequent voters? How many would be disengaged from the process if not for Bernie being in the race?

Those are the big questions. Because something could be afoot.

Okay, I probably have a jaundiced view of American politics, but I just don’t understand this sentiment:

My guess is that McCarthy's epic blunder last night will further strengthen "next gen" dynamic in GOP leadership races.

— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) September 30, 2015

Now, Simon Rosenberg is referring to the fact that Speaker of the House-in-waiting Kevin McCarthy went on Sean Hannity’s show last night and openly admitted that a primary motivation for creating the congressional Benghazi! committee was to damage Hillary Clinton’s reputation for trustworthiness.

To say that this was the worst-kept secret in Washington DC would be to imply that it was a secret at all. Everyone, and I mean everyone knows that the right’s obsession with Benghazi has been from the very beginning a way they hoped to damage Hillary Clinton. Sure, there was a brief period of time when they thought that the issue might help Mitt Romney win the election, but that basically ended with the “Please proceed, governor” moment in the Candy Crowley debate. And, back then, the issue was mainly about whether the president had been willing to call the attack an act of terrorism or not, and whether the government had actually apologized to the perpetrators.

Once the thing became a conspiracy theory, the idea was that the State Department was at fault.

Now, I know that in certain Beltway circles telling the truth is considered one of the worst possible gaffes, but McCarthy bragged about the effectiveness of this smear campaign precisely because he wanted to remind people that the Republicans deserve credit for finding ways to effectively fight back against the Democrats. In other words, he was reminding the Republican base voter that there actually are examples where the Republican leadership did something extraordinarily partisan and obnoxious and that it worked. The reaction will probably be exactly what he hoped for. He gets a pat on the head and a couple of “Atta Boys.”

The idea that Republican members of Congress will clutch their pearls in horror that McCarthy defended their performance is a big reach, in my opinion.

These folks are so beyond the norms of behavior that you’d expect of your children that it’s absurd to hold them to those kind of standards. When one of them gets caught in a lie, that’s a badge of honor, and it’s not even remotely problematic to get caught telling the truth if the truth is that you’ve been lying.

If you think I am engaging in hyperbole here, just remember back when Mitt Romney set the land-speed record by telling 533 lies in a mere 30 weeks– (and that tally ended in August). Republicans did not blink. They had no problem with Romney’s pathological relationship with the truth. If anything, they wanted him to be a more convincing liar.

Look at Carly Fiorina right now. She’s doing well, recently, and how many of the people running against her have questioned her truthfulness? It’s not an issue for them. It’s not something they can score political points with, because the base does not want their heroes to tell the truth.

I can’t remember the last time a Republican officeholder got in trouble with the base for lying. Sure, the base thinks that promises were made to them that were made in bad faith, but that’s a different kind of lie. Lying for the cause is expected and rewarded.

If McCarthy is auditioning for the role of the most powerful Republican in Washington DC, he’s off to a good start. Why should Republicans support him? Because he won’t let the truth get in the way of brawling.

That’s all the base really wants.

Courtesy of Republican and Governor of Kansas, Sam Brownback, discussing what’s most important, in a manner of speaking:

Gov. Sam Brownback wants Kansans to be ready for the zombie apocalypse.

The governor will officially declare October “Zombie Preparedness Month” on Wednesday – a fun way to encourage Kansans to prepare for actual disasters, such as tornadoes and floods, that are slightly more likely to happen than walking corpses roving the prairie looking for brains to eat.

“If you’re prepared for zombies, you’re prepared for anything,” Brownback said in a news release. “Although an actual zombie apocalypse will never happen, the preparation for such an event is the same as for any disaster: make a disaster kit, have a plan and practice it.”

So, prepare for the Zombie apocalypse even though it will never happen. Got it. Prepare for a state that can educate its kids, provide its people adequate medical care regardless of their financial circumstances or find a way not to run massive budget deficits? Not that big a deal.

Thanks, Sam. For. Nothing. But. A. Bad. Joke.

Lawmakers authorize use of Russian military force for anti-IS airstrikes in Syria | Tass.ru |

The Federation Council has unanimously granted permission to the Russian president to use the nation’s military force in Syria, Kremlin chief of staff Sergey Ivanov told journalists on Wednesday.

“The Federation Council unanimously supported the president’s request –
 162 votes in favor [of granting permission],” Ivanov said.

Russia will use only its Air Force in Syria against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group upon the request of Syrian President Bashar Assad, Ivanov said, stressing that no ground troops will be sent.

“The operation’s military goal is exclusively air support of the Syrian armed forces in their fight against the IS,” he said. This operation by the Russian Air Force is limited in time and the types of the used weapons are not disclosed, Ivanov added.

“The use of armed forces on the theater of military operations is ruled out,” he said.

President Vladimir Putin has earlier requested the upper house of parliament to authorize the use of Russia’s armed forces outside the country “based on the generally recognised international law norms and principles,” the Kremlin press service said.

Satellite Image Analysis of Russia’s Military Buildup in Syria | Stratfor |

From my two diaries of Sept. 6, 2015 …
○ Ex-DIA Head: ‘White House Knowingly Backed Al Qaeda In Syria’
○ Kerry Warns Russia Not to Intervene In Syria

From FOIA records on secret memos in 2012 .. no surprise to me as that was my analysis all along. Question to be asked, why is U.S. Congress spending time on Benghazi deaths and not on the failure of policy in Syria and costs in human lives of regime change!

Former DIA Chief Michael Flynn Says Rise of Islamic State was “a willful decision” and Defends Accuracy of 2012 Memo

In Al Jazeera’s latest Head to Head episode, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn confirms to Mehdi Hasan that not only had he studied the DIA memo predicting the West’s backing of an Islamic State in Syria when it came across his desk in 2012, but even asserts that the White House’s sponsoring of radical jihadists (that would emerge as ISIL and Nusra) against the Syrian regime was “a willful decision.”

Amazingly, Michael Flynn actually took issue with the way interviewer Mehdi Hasan posed the question–Flynn seemed to want to make it clear that the policies that led to the rise of ISIL were not merely the result of ignorance or looking the other way, but the result of conscious decision making:

Hasan: You are basically saying that even in government at the time you knew these groups were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it, but who wasn’t listening?
Flynn: I think the administration.
Hasan: So the administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?
Flynn: I don’t know that they turned a blind eye, I think it was a decision. I think it was a willful decision.
Hasan: A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?
Flynn: It was a willful decision to do what they’re doing.

Hasan himself expresses surprise at Flynn’s frankness during this portion of the interview. While holding up a paper copy of the 2012 DIA report declassified through FOIA, Hasan reads aloud key passages such as, “there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”

EXCERPTS FROM DIA MEMO – 2012

Read also today’s article @MoA …

Under Russian Pressure U.S. Accepts “Unified”, “Secular” Syrian State

Putin’s realist talk about Syria at the UN, which embarrassed the platitude spouting Obama, led to a change in U.S. policies.

The White House has halted the Pentagon training of the unicorn riding “moderate rebels”. That program is toast but the real question is if the “secret” CIA run program, which is vastly more extensive, is also suspended. My hunch is that it is.

On top of that Secretary of State Kerry made a very new statement that amounts to a really significant change in policy:

The United States and Russia agree on “some fundamental principles” for Syria, the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday, adding that he plans to meet again with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday.

“There was agreement that Syria should be a unified country, united, that it needs to be secular, that ISIL (Islamic State) needs to be taken on, and that there needs to be a managed transition,” Kerry told MSNBC, adding that differences remained on what the outcome of such a transition would be.

Never before has the U.S. officially expressed a demand that the Syrian state should in future be “secular” as it is now. This is a rejection of the Muslim Brotherhood dominated Syrian exile coalition and of the GCC states’ proxy fighters in Syria who demand a sectarian state based on Islamic law.

Since Israel lost the 2006 war against Hizbullah the U.S. and Israel plotted to overthrow the Syrian government which they accuse of facilitating Hizbullah’s military supplies. The U.S. planned, prepared and financed a “color revolution” scheme and an exile opposition.

As Seymour Hersh reported in 2007: The Redirection – Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?.  

○ Putin Hints Russia Will Clip Israel’s Wings Over Syrian Skies | Haaretz |
○ Satellite imagery reveals new Russian bases in Syria | Ynet News |
○ Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon: We’re not coordinating Syria response with Russia | Ynet News |

See also my serie of six diaries on Syria here:

Hey, everyone who blames Al Gore’s waistline for this climate change malarkey (along with a bunch of greedy, money grubbing scientists in league with the first “not a real American” President, and all those tree hugging libtards who just want crash and burn the US economy so China can dominate the world), I have some bad news for you. It seems the governor of the Bank of England as swallowed the Koolaid, and has come out as a true “hair on fire” climate alarmist! No really, he did.

And what’s worse, he says climate change is going to crash the world economy and lead to an global apock-ee-lypse !!!!! God’s honest truth, that’s what he said, in public, to a bunch of major league insurance types at Lloyd’s of London today:

Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England has warned that climate change will lead to financial crises and falling living standards unless the world’s leading countries do more to ensure that their companies come clean about their current and future carbon emissions.

In a speech to the insurance market Lloyd’s of London on Tuesday, Carney said insurers were heavily exposed to climate change risks and that time was running out to deal with global warming.

It’s possible someone spiked his drink, I suppose, or maybe they just lit his hair on fire, because he painted a pretty grim picture, economically speaking of what is barreling down the pike and headed straight for us human beings, and more importantly, certain very special corporate persons who may also face possible extinction, courtesy of an very angry Mother Nature (or maybe Gaia).

There is a growing international consensus that climate change is unequivocal.

Many of the changes in our world since the 1950s are without precedent: not merely over decades but over millennia.

Research tells us with a high degree of confidence that:

• In the Northern Hemisphere the last 30 years have been the warmest since Anglo-Saxon times; indeed, eight of the ten warmest years on record in the UK have occurred since 2002;
• Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are at levels not seen in 800,000 years; and
• The rate of sea level rise is quicker now than at any time over the last 2 millennia.

Evidence is mounting of man’s role in climate change. Human drivers are judged extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of global warming since the mid-20th century. While natural fluctuations may mask it temporarily, the underlying human-induced warming trend of two-tenths of a degree per decade has continued unabated since the 1970s.

While there is always room for scientific disagreement about climate change (as there is with any scientific issue) I have found that insurers are amongst the most determined advocates for tackling it sooner rather than later. And little wonder. While others have been debating the theory, you have been dealing with the reality:

Since the 1980s the number of registered weather-related loss events has tripled; and

Inflation-adjusted insurance losses from these events have increased from an annual average of around $10bn in the 1980s to around $50bn over the past decade.

The challenges currently posed by climate change pale in significance compared with what might come. The far-sighted amongst you are anticipating broader global impacts on property, migration and political stability, as well as food and water security.

Dadgummit, that’s straight out of the liberal fascist playbook! How did this happen, a responsible, intelligent, financial leader buying into the biggest hoax in history? Sure the insurance industry had a few bad years paying off claims for all these – admittedly – troublesome weather events, but life’s like that. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Insurance companies can always stop writing policies if they’re scared of what is a risky business, after all. But no, Mr. High-and-Mighty Governor Carney decided to give his captive audience his best impression of that meddling dirty hippy, Pope Francis, because he didn’t just stop there and offer the foregoing sensible advice. Oh no, far from it.

(cont. below the fold)

We don’t need an army of actuaries to tell us that the catastrophic impacts of climate change will be felt beyond the traditional horizons of most actors – imposing a cost on future generations that the current generation has no direct incentive to fix. […]

In other words, once climate change becomes a defining issue for financial stability, it may already be too late.

This paradox is deeper, as Lord Stern and others have amply demonstrated. As risks are a function of cumulative emissions, earlier action will mean less costly adjustment.

The desirability of restricting climate change to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels leads to the notion of a carbon ‘budget’, an assessment of the amount of emissions the world can ‘afford’. […]

These actions will be influenced by policy choices that are rightly the responsibility of elected governments, advised by scientific experts. In ten weeks representatives of 196 countries will gather in Paris at the COP21 summit to consider the world’s response to climate change. It is governments who must choose whether, and how, to pursue that 2 degree world.

And the role of finance? Earlier this year, G20 Finance Ministers asked the Financial Stability Board to consider how the financial sector could take account of the risks climate change poses to our financial system.

As Chair of the FSB I hosted a meeting last week where the private and public sectors discussed the current and prospective financial stability risks from climate change and what might be done to mitigate them.

There are three broad channels through which climate change can affect financial stability:

– First, physical risks: the impacts today on insurance liabilities and the value of financial assets that arise from climate- and weather-related events, such as floods and storms that damage property or disrupt trade;

– Second, liability risks: the impacts that could arise tomorrow if parties who have suffered loss or damage from the effects of climate change seek compensation from those they hold responsible. Such claims could come decades in the future, but have the potential to hit carbon extractors and emitters – and, if they have liability cover, their insurers – the hardest;

– Finally, transition risks: the financial risks which could result from the process of adjustment towards a lower-carbon economy. Changes in policy, technology and physical risks could prompt a reassessment of the value of a large range of assets as costs and opportunities become apparent.

Hell, this bastard King of (The Bank of) England even thinks multinational companies should be forced to disclose to their “investors” the future costs of continuing to rely upon carbon based fuels. The nerve of the guy!

Carney said that following a meeting in London last week the FSB was “considering recommending to the G20 summit that more be done to develop consistent, comparable, reliable and clear disclosure around the carbon intensity of different assets”.

One proposal, he added, was the creation of an industry-led group, a Climate Disclosure Task Force, to design and deliver a voluntary standard for disclosure by those companies that produce or emit carbon.

“Companies would disclose not only what they are emitting today, but how they plan their transition to the net-zero world of the future. The G20 – whose member states account for around 85% of global emissions – has a unique ability to make this possible.”

In all seriousness, it’s good to see anyone who plays a prominent role in propping up our unsustainable and out of control global financial system acknowledge that business as usual cannot continue in the face of the reality of climate change. In fact, his speech is a direct clarion call to the politicians of the developed and developing countries that we need to do something, and something drastic NOW, to address the danger to the planet from the effects of carbon emissions and global warming, rather than continuing to kick the climate crisis can down the road.

Too bad our Congress has been hijacked by the dumbest, most misinformed, anti-science party in history. It’s enough to make one into a believer in a grand conspiracy theory that a bunch of sinister, evil men hiding in plain sight, decided to destroy the world for their own selfish interests. Oh wait …

I keep forgetting that Rand Paul is running for president, which is kind of sad. I mean, at one time, I thought it would be at least interesting to see if he could put together a new kind of coalition of folks who might be able to help him be as competitive as his father was, if not significantly more so. You know, he could have held on to most of the Ron Paul supporters and gone after the youth vote on things like marijuana legalization and criminal justice reform. He could have poached some of the Edward Snowden acolytes who are consumed with dread about drones and electronic surveillance. He could have brought on some folks who are fully supportive of a truly more humble foreign policy that entails far less intimate involvement in the Middle East. He could have called for massively reduced Pentagon-spending and won some support from unexpected quarters.

But I don’t think he ever had the balls to buck the Republican Party’s orthodoxies in any kind of consistent and clear way. He didn’t have a vision or the work ethic to build a new coalition of voters or to inspire masses of people to get involved in politics for the first time.

We’re seeing Bernie Sanders have some success with this kind of unorthodox campaign, but he’s actually got some energy and a willingness to stick to his guns.

I think Paul is just too lazy to do the work and he’s too lacking in imagination. It’s really a disservice to the issues he claims to care about.

In any case, when he drops out, I don’t think anyone will even notice.

I’ve barely written about the Planned Parenthood controversy because I don’t like to dignify these right-wing collective freak-outs, but they’re holding hearings on the Hill today and the New York Times has an article up on the results of an investigation about the allegations that was carried out by Missouri’s Attorney General, Chris Koster.

Planned Parenthood has repeatedly denied the claims made in the videos, which were made surreptitiously by an anti-abortion group called the Center for Medical Progress and released during the summer.

The Missouri attorney general’s report said that it reviewed more than 3,500 pages of documents and conducted multiple interviews of representatives at the clinic and the pathology laboratory. The 47-page report included copies of lab reports and waste-disposal tracking documents.

It said the investigation covered 317 surgical abortions that took place in June, a month that was chosen because the procedures happened before the release of the videos in July.

“As a result of our investigation, the Office of the Missouri Attorney General has found no evidence that PPSLR has engaged in unlawful disposal of fetal organs and tissue,” the report said, using the abbreviation of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region.

I hear the Republican committemembers aren’t having much more success in their show trial hearing.

I’ve seen a lot of smart people predicting that this September/October window we’re in is going to be the time for Sen. Ted Cruz to shine as a presidential candidate. With all this really unpopular (with the Republican base) must-pass legislation to wade through, the Republican leadership in Congress is going to be taking it on the chin over and over. Even the prospect of dealing with the rage prompted John Boehner to announce that he’ll resign when all the dirty work is over.

The idea is that Sen. Cruz will loudly protest at every juncture, accusing his own party of being gutless appeasers who talk a good game but are ultimately bent on giving President Obama everything he wants.

So, yeah, it’s not like knowledgeable people couldn’t see this coming. It’s not even surprising, at this point, that Cruz is being treated with a virtually unprecedented lack of deference and respect by his Senate colleagues, including every member of his own party not named Sen. Mike Lee of Utah.

For the second time, Cruz has been denied a sufficient second to call up a roll call vote. The first time it happened, back in late July, I wrote a piece explaining the procedural significance of this. I refer you to that if you are the kind of geek that needs to understand how the Senate actually operates.

The big picture is that, in July, Cruz’s colleagues were angry that he had called Mitch McConnell a liar on the Senate floor which is an actual violation of the Senate rules. This time, however, there was no comparable provocation for retaliation. This time, the Senate Republicans were just tired of his showboating and grandstanding, and they didn’t want to give Cruz a vote that he would turn around and use to criticize them.

Last time, senators lined up to tell reporters why they had slapped Cruz down. This time, it seems more like routine business.

So, in his little time in the Senate, Cruz has managed to alienate himself from his colleagues in a way that I’ve never seen before. There have been similar senators in the past, I guess, but I can’t think of any since Joe McCarthy who can even begin to compare to how the Senate feels about Cruz. And I don’t think McCarthy suffered the same kind of rebukes from his colleagues until he’d been in the Senate for about seven years and was finally censured.

Without any perceptible support outside of his buddy Sen. Lee, Cruz has to try harder to make his conflict with the Senate leadership visible to the base. But it’s really Cruz against the world.

He can get himself on the radio, for example, but we won’t find any sympathetic television coverage. He might be able to have a good moment in a future debate, but that’s not worth much.

It’s not going to be easy for him to reach his potential fans.

He’s also got the worst electability argument of any candidate I’ve ever seen, as even his own colleagues who know him best would never want to serve under his leadership.

I don’t see this Cruz bubble forming. He may see a blip simply because he’s being noisy, but he’s actually more convincing in his role as Donald Trump’s caddie.

The Hart Reseach poll released by MSNBC today has some interesting findings.  Forget the top-line, hypothetical head-to-head match-ups because there’s too much noise in those.  Where this poll is good is that it takes the pulse and temperature of a sample of Americans.   The sample skews old and young, more higher education, higher income, and liberal, short by 100% for Latinos, and it doesn’t appear that the results were not weighted to conform to the actual population demographics.  Therefore, the utility of many of the percentages is weak.  However, the numbers and  trends within subgroups should be solid enough and the responses to certain questions are if not eye-popping then certainly striking.

One easy top-line message — The net favorable rating for Planned Parenthood is +16.  No major change from the July poll.  Don’t know/don’t care dropped from 25% to 22%.  Negatives increased from 30% to 31% and positives increased from 46% to 48%.  If the GOP wants to go all in on this issue, I say bring it on.
On gay and lesbian rights, 59% say that the country is moving in the right direction.  

On more religion and banning abortion, the GOP is on the wrong side.

On marijuana, Sanders and a plurality of the public are standing alone on this.

On the political parties.  The Democratic Party scored 12 points higher in positives and ten points lower in negatives than the GOP.  Now if only Democrats could figure out how to translate that into House and Senate races.

Obama is plus six positive at 46%.  Not bad for his seventh year in office.  iirc GWB was scrapping along near 30% at this point in his tenure and his VP was ten points lower than that.  

On the candidates.

The Democratic Party nomination has become sort of boring.  Cllnton, Biden, or Sanders are close to being equally acceptable to 75%+ of Democrats.  Biden and Sanders have made significant gains in the past two months and closed what was previously a large gap between them and Clinton.  It would require a totally neutral and well informed person to interpret and say more than that about the results — and such a person probably doesn’t exist.  So, we wait another month for the first debate before more can be said.  (Note: I’ve refrained from commenting on all the other polls since the last Iowa DEM caucus Quinnipiac poll.  The quality of those polls left too much to be desired and external validation was weak.  Although the overall trends remained the same: Clinton still leads, Sanders is gaining, and Biden could step into a number two or number three position.)

Lots of stuff happening on the Republican side.

The kiddie table debate can be shut down.  Pataki and Gilmore made strides in name recognition, and that mostly increased their “no way” rating.  The others saw a decline in their acceptibility and “no way” ratings.  Graham is the leader of the pack on “no way” at 67%. Overall, the more they are seen, the less they are liked.  (Like Walker?)

Among those at the adult debate, Paul was hurt the most among the remaining contenders.  Down nine points in acceptability and up ten points in “no way” which in this poll was 58%.  If not for his family presidential election cottage industry, he’d be walkin at this point.

Kasich increased his name ID by 16 points and turned one-quarter of that into favorables and three-quarters of it into unfavorables.  At 44% “no way,” he’s not out of it yet, but with his paltry 34% acceptable rating, he’s getting close to that point.
Christie has had a modest recovery but he’s still over 50% in “no way.”

The second biggest loser since July is Cruz.  Lost 7 points in favorables and gained 6 points in “no way” — tied with Kasich at 44%.

Huckabee also lost a bit of ground, and like Cruz, his “no way” poll numbers have continuously increased.  

Jeb, for the moment, has stopped his slide as acceptable at 55% and “no way” is up to 43%.

Fiorina gained 24 points in name ID and all of that went into her acceptable rating, 61%.  Her “no way” stands at 28%.  This is like the dream of every politician.

Carson gained 15 points in name ID and 20 points in acceptability to 69%.  “No way” for him dropped to 23%.  Think about that.  69% of Republicans view Carson as the most acceptable and least unacceptable of the candidates.  A black man with zero political experience, no political expertise, and almost wholly ignorant of public policy issues.

Then there’s Trump. Not much change from July.   More acceptable than Christie and similarly unacceptable.   As acceptable as Huckabee and less unacceptable.   Hard pressed not to give credit to Fiorina for putting a big crimp in Trump’s MO.

No projection on when Republicans will “get real” about this election.  But they will.  As soon as the party insiders (and money bags) agree with the rank-and-file voters on the “electable one.”  The GOP voters are signaling their current consensus decision.  That decision is more obviously emerging in this national poll, and the same but weaker signal can for the first time be seen in the most recent IA, NH, and FL polls.

How I would describe it is that they’ll take their idea of a GOP version of Obama.  Because, above all else, they do want to win, and Obama won twice.  Better yet, make it a GOP version of the Obama/Biden ticket.    

Obama, Putin clash over differences on Syria’s future

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin sharply disagreed Monday over the chaos in Syria, with Obama urging a political transition to replace the Syrian president but Putin warning it would be a mistake to abandon the current government.

After dueling speeches at the United Nations General Assembly, Obama and Putin also met privately for 90 minutes — their first face-to-face encounter in nearly a year. The discussions opened with a stony-faced handshake before the leaders slipped into their meeting room at U.N. headquarters.

In his address to the UN earlier Monday, Obama said he was open to working with Russia, as well as Iran, to bring Syria’s civil war to an end. He called for a “managed transition” that would result in the ouster of Assad, whose forces have clashed with rebels for more than four years, creating a vacuum for the Islamic State and other extremist groups.

Putin, however, urged the world to stick with Assad, arguing that his military is the only viable option for defeating the Islamic State.

“We believe it’s a huge mistake to refuse to cooperate with the Syrian authorities, with the government forces, those who are bravely fighting terror face-to-face,” Putin said during his first appearance at the U.N. gathering in a decade.

Obama and Putin’s disparate views of the grim situation in Syria left little indication of how the two countries might work together to end a conflict that has killed more than 250,000 people and resulted in a flood of refugees.  

○ Full text of President Obama’s remarks before the U.N. General Assembly

And Obama similarly appealed for adherence to international rules while addressing Ukraine, insisting the world has a responsibility to counter Putin’s aggression in the eastern part of the country.

“We cannot stand by when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation is flagrantly violated,” Obama stated in his speech. “If that happens without consequence in Ukraine, it could happen to any nation gathered here today.”  

International Law, USA and regime change in Iraq, Libya and Syria

Could Syria’s revolution have been different? | Mondoweiss |

Lebanon, like Syria, saw democratic, secular dreams vanish into a sectarian maelstrom that ravaged the country and left it vulnerable to foreign invasion and local brutality. Yes, Lebanon’s old system encouraged corruption. Yes, there was injustice. Yes, a majority suffered from inequalities. Yet changing the system was no excuse to shred the fabric of a society that, for all its flaws, was tolerant of different creeds and political beliefs. Two revolutions perished in Lebanon, the Palestinian and the Lebanese. Security became more important than freedom, if only because so much freedom permitted the anarchic rule of kidnappers, gangsters, drug dealers, gun runners and fanatics. In the absence of central authority, the only states on Lebanon’s borders, Syria and Israel, occupied different halves of the country. The only militia to survive the war as an armed force was Hezbollah, a sectarian grouping of religious Shiite Muslims that represents Iran and the perpetuation of sectarian politics in Lebanon.

One way to view the fanatic Islamicization of the Syrian revolution after 2011 is that it was the inevitable form of a rebellion inspired and financed by Saudi Wahhabism that sought not democracy but the elimination of rule by Alawite “infidels.” Another is that fratricidal violence marginalizes moderation, renders compromise impossible and pushes forward the most brutal actors. What was more surprising than the rise of fanatics within the revolution was that such disparate opposition forces had found any common ground at all. Like the leftists opposed to the Shah of Iran in 1979, Syria’s democrats saw their Islamist allies dispose of them and their beliefs when they were no longer needed. If the regime fell, the victors would replace it with a theocratic dictatorship that would purge the country of its diversity, its minorities, its dissidents and its tolerance.

The Syrian revolution lacked strategic vision because it began without any objective beyond reforming or replacing a regime that had nurtured as many allies as enemies. Too many rebel leaders sold themselves, as most Palestinian leaders did, to external paymasters for any one of them to establish popular, unifying credentials. Hundreds of armed groups came into being, sponsored by the United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. The regime, which had almost 50 years to perfect mechanisms of control, played its cards better than rebels with no experience of government, no roots in social work and little experience of combat. Fighters with battle scars from Chechnya, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Algeria and Libya dominated the rebel side of battlefield. When they trod across the border into Iraq and threatened American interests, the Obama administration responded with air strikes. Yet it did not admit it was wrong about Syria, the strength of the regime or the relative strength of fanaticism within the opposition. That would have meant admitting it was wrong to assume the regime was so unpopular and weak it would fall with a small push before the opposition turned from early reformist demands to radical Islamism.

Author: Charles Glass and his new book  Syria Burning – ISIS and the Death of the Arab Spring

○ Iraqi Tribal Leaders Pledge March to Baghdad or Not?

Obama failed to secure the support of Putin for regime change in Syria – G20 Summit on June 18, 2012

Barack Obama and Russia’s president Vladimir Putin completed a bilateral meeting on the margins of the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, with an agreement that there should be a cessation of hostilities in Syria.

But, crucially, Obama failed to secure the support of Putin for regime change in Syria. The US president had been seeking Putin’s help in trying to persuade Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to relinquish power and leave the country.

A joint statement issued after their meeting said simply that the Syrian people should independently and democratically be allowed to decide their own future, but there was no joint call for Assad to stand down, as the White House has been urging.

Diplomatic move by Putin for transition in Syria – 2012

American Options in Syria (2011) by Eliott Abrams @CFR

With each month, the level of violence in Syria rises. Bashar al-Assad’s regime has killed just short of three thousand citizens, and with defections from the army growing, it appears the population is starting to fight back. A full-scale civil war, with the Alawite minority regime fighting for its life against an armed rebellion by forces based in the Sunni majority population, seems increasingly plausible.

The goals of U.S. policy should be to end the violence, bring down the Assad regime, and lay the bases for a stable democratic system with protection for the Alawite, Kurdish, and Christian minorities. It is a tall order. The Obama administration has already abandoned the goal of regime reform, and rightly so: there is no basis in Assad regime behavior for sustaining a belief that he could lead a transition to democracy. Instead, the American, European, and Turkish goal is the end of Assad family rule. But how can U.S. policymakers attain that goal in as short a period and with as little additional violence as possible?

The answer is a strategy aimed at both weakening the regime’s support bases and encouraging the opposition to demonstrate that it seeks a nonsectarian and democratic Syria.

Dealing with violence

… Yet if a military opposition comes into existence and fights the regime, U.S. policymakers will not want to see that opposition crushed. Thus, the United States should not discourage other governments from assisting the rebels if they wish to do so. Nor should it try to stop other groups–for example, Sunni tribes living on both sides of the Syria-Iraq border area — from assisting brethren inside Syria. If violence and refugee flows escalate greatly, the United States will need to discuss no-fly zones or safe havens along Syria’s borders with Syria’s neighbors and its NATO allies.

The Redirection – White House policy shifting from Iraq towards the axis Syria – Iran – Hezbollah | The New Yorker – 2007 | by Seymour Hersh

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a branch of a radical Sunni movement founded in Egypt in 1928, engaged in more than a decade of violent opposition to the regime of Hafez Assad, Bashir’s father. In 1982, the Brotherhood took control of the city of Hama; Assad bombarded the city for a week, killing between six thousand and twenty thousand people. Membership in the Brotherhood is punishable by death in Syria. The Brotherhood is also an avowed enemy of the U.S. and of Israel. Nevertheless, Jumblatt said, “We told Cheney that the basic link between Iran and Lebanon is Syria–and to weaken Iran you need to open the door to effective Syrian opposition.”

There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood.

A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, “The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement.” He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House.

Jumblatt said he understood that the issue was a sensitive one for the White House. “I told Cheney that some people in the Arab world, mainly the Egyptians“–whose moderate Sunni leadership has been fighting the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood for decades–“won’t like it if the United States helps the Brotherhood. But if you don’t take on Syria we will be face to face in Lebanon with Hezbollah in a long fight, and one we might not win.”

○ US With Both Feet in Syrian Quagmire