Sunday, February 02, 2014

The Pest and the Slightest

Ponder this sequence of Secretary of State Kerry's diplomatic fail.

In attempting to enforce President Obama's "red line" over Syrian chemical use and the same president's advice to Assad that he should leave office, Secretary of State Kerry raised Assad's threat to Hitlerian proportions after Assad's forces used chemical weapons. Kerry called for military action.

In order to convince Assad to cave in, but aware that Congress would not approve the attack as the president wanted, Kerry reassured everyone that the strikes would be unbelievably small.

To save his floundering presence, Kerry latched on to Russia's offer to get Assad to give up chemical weapons to end the threat of whatever sized air strikes we might manage.

Kerry signed the worthless agreement to disarm Assad of chemical weapons in exchange for our holding off on any attacks on Assad.

Assad continued to kill civilians--but without chemical weapons.

Assad has given up not even 1/20 of their worst chemical weapons stockpiles thus far, and future deadlines look unlikely to be met.

Even the UN says Assad is stalling on disarmament.

And now, with Kerry treating Assad as a partner in chemical disarmament and Geneva negotiations over the war itself, Assad's Syria demands Kerry apologize before any direct talks:

"The Americans asked us to negotiate directly with them in Montreux," Walid Muallem told Syrian state media on the plane home from 10 days of peace talks in the Swiss cities of Montreux and Geneva.

"But we refused to do so before Secretary of State John Kerry apologised for what he said at the conference," Muallem added, in remarks carried by state news agency SANA.

My, how the slighty have fallen.

To be fair, the Syrians were only asking for an unbelievably small apology.