As France recovers from the Paris terror attacks, Russia tells France "you've got a guided missile cruiser:"
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday ordered the Russian missile cruiser Moskva, currently in the Mediterranean, to start cooperating with the French military on operations in Syria.
So Russia begins to pry apart Western will to resist the Assad regime. As I've said, I don't believe Russia's small military intervention can save Assad. For that objective, Russia needs John "you've got a friend" Kerry.
And God help us, but I think Kerry will once again (as he did with the faux Syrian chemical weapons deal hammered out with Russia's Lavrov) help Russia save Assad's regime:
Speaking to reporters at the residence of the U.S. ambassador to France, Kerry said the ceasefire envisioned by the political process agreed upon in Vienna on Saturday would exponentially help efforts to fight the Islamic State group, which has claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks that killed 129 people, as well as end the drawn-out Syrian conflict, which has gone on for over four years.
"That's a gigantic step," Kerry said. "If we can get that done, that opens up the aperture for a whole bunch of things. We're weeks away conceivably from the possibility of a big transition for Syria, and I don't think enough people necessarily notice that. But that's the reality."
If there is a deal, it will revolve around Assad retiring as a symbolic Western victory ("Assad has to go") while preserving the Assad regime below him with Western help.
I called it two years ago after the faux chemical weapons deal:
[Stalling the chemical weapons deal] will allow Assad to string out the process as long as he possibly can to buy time to defeat the moderate rebels and leverage the role of jihadis into a Western acceptance that Assad is the lesser of two evils.
Yes indeed, Assad is managing to become the enemy of our enemy.
Think about it. Assad is the one who pulled off a Potomac Awakening to flip us to his side! And this despite his slaughter of his own people, including with chemical weapons!
I'm in freaking awe of Assad's diplomacy. At this rate, Assad will share the Nobel-fricking Peace Prize with a stiffly smiling John Kerry (who will actually believe he deserves the prize).
That my friends, would be Smart Diplomacy.
This from the man who said that the November 13th attacks were incomprehensible in contrast to the more understandable motives for the Charlie Hebdo/Jewish deli attacks at the beginning of the year in Paris:
"There's something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo, and I think everybody would feel that," he said in remarks at the U.S. Embassy in Paris. "There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of - not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, 'Okay, they're really angry because of this and that.' This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate."
Cartoons and Jews. Who can blame the jihadis, really, right John?
What an idiot. Worst. Secretary of State. Ever.
We should let Putin flail in his military adventure in Syria. But no, John Kerry will help Russia achieve their objective of keeping a pro-Russian entity on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea where Russia can have a port and air bases; and Iran's objective of maintaining an outpost to support Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But since Assad formally steps down, Kerry will be able to pretend he is a brilliant diplomat.
We should have stepped up to be the ally France needed to in order to strike back at ISIL in Syria (and point them in a more productive direction, after).
The only potential bright side is in Iraq, where after painfully long delays, we finally appear to be stirring into action. It appears almost subliminal in nature, but I retain hope.
God, our foreign policy sucks. And Kerry is a force multiplier in increasing the suck factor.
UPDATE: Seriously, why is this man still our top diplomat?
There really is no way of reading these comments other than as a craven ranking of outrages. Forget Kerry’s brief flirtation with the word “legitimacy” and assume that he said “rationale” from the start. That changes precisely nothing. The top diplomat in the United States just publicly argued that because the victims at Charlie Hebdo had spoken risqué words but the victims at the Bataclan had not, the violence against the former was more comprehensible than the violence against the latter. Has he lost his mind?
In a time that France has decided to join the war on Islamo-fascists, the charge of "cheese-eating surrender monkey" can be directed at our own top diplomat.
UPDATE: John Kerry and turning the stupid up to 11.
UPDATE: What the heck, I think this administration goes to 12:
Secretary of State John Kerry believes that al Qaeda’s “top leadership” has been “neutralize[d]” as “an effective force.” He made the claim while discussing the administration’s strategy, or lack thereof, for combating the Islamic State (ISIS), which is al Qaeda’s jihadist rival. Kerry believes that the U.S. and its allies can finish off ISIS quicker than al Qaeda. There’s just one problem: It is not true that al Qaeda or its top leaders have been “neutralize[d].”
What did we do to deserve such a monumentally awful secretary of state?
