U.S. President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan are riding a tandem bicycle and
backpedaling together on Syria after their talks this week at the White House.
At Thursday’s
news conference with Erdogan, the president, responding to a question
about how he would react to conclusive evidence Syrian troops had crossed a
“red line” and used chemical weapons, portrayed the issue as a challenge for
world powers collectively, rather than his administration alone.
Turkey, Obama said, “is going to play an important role as we bring
representatives of the regime and opposition together in the coming weeks.”
Erdogan
was kind enough to oblige without delay.
Speaking at the
Brookings Institution in Washington a day after discussing Syria with Obama,
Erdogan said it would be up to the UN Security Council to decide whether to
establish a no-fly zone inside Syria.
He said he also backed
a planned international conference on Syria agreed by Washington and Moscow.
"With respect to a
no-fly zone... it is not a decision that could be taken between the United
States and Turkey. It is something that would have to come through the UN
Security Council," Erdogan said.
"We are in the
process of putting together a conference in Geneva... If that process decides
on such a zone, as Turkey, we would also do whatever is necessary," he
said.
During his talks at the
White House, Erdogan had been expected to push Obama, at least in private, for
more assertive action on Syria.
Listing actions he would
take, Obama said he would increase pressure on the Syrian regime
with diplomatic efforts and humanitarian aid, but notably did not include any
military steps.
Israel is all too happy
with the pair’s about-face.
A weakened Bashar
al-Assad is preferable for Syria and the whole region, to a takeover by rebel
forces increasingly ruled by Muslim extremists, Israeli officials said
overnight.
“Better the devil we
know than the demons we can only imagine if Syria falls into chaos and the
extremists from across the Arab world gain a foothold there,” a senior Israeli
intelligence officer told The
Times of London.
On Friday, Israel’s senior
Defense Ministry official Maj.-Gen. (Res) Amos Gilad said in an interview with Israel Radio Assad is in total control
of his country’s weapons systems and is acting sensibly with regard to Israel,
seeking to calm escalating tensions between Jerusalem and Damascus following
Israeli airstrikes earlier this month.
According to The
Times of Israel English-language daily, Gilad stressed Israel is not
striving to topple Assad’s regime, and recent IAF attacks on Iranian weapons
shipments in Syria en route to Hezbollah are motivated by a desire and an
obligation to defend Israel.
Brig.-Gen. Tamir Hyman,
commander of the IDF division responsible for the Israeli-Syrian border on the
Golan Heights, said Assad’s army “has not fallen apart” despite the two years
of fighting, and its command structure was intact, adding Israel had “no
interest” in one side prevailing over the other in the war.
In his column for the
Beirut independent daily al-Nahar, Lebanese political analyst Rajeh el-Khoury
today describes
Obama as a Syria deserter.
According to Khoury:
The
gist of Erdogan’s visit to Washington and his talks with Obama is that the
United States won’t go it alone on Syria. Since other nations refuse to act
except on the heels of America, the tragic crisis will remain widely open under
the aegis of Russian intervention and Iranian meddling.
This
means the race between warfare and efforts to convene Geneva-2 will drag on
longer than many expect in view of the deep schism between an opposition that
refuses to sit at the table with a “murderous” regime and a regime unwilling to
negotiate with its “terrorist” opponents.
It’s
not enough for Obama to say, “We're
going to keep working for a Syria that is free from Assad's tyranny; that is
intact and inclusive of all ethnic and religious groups; and that’s a source of
stability, not extremism...”
The
White House has been parroting this for over two years.
But
the Obama Administration’s failure to translate the words into action left the
field wide open for the Russians to buy time for the regime’s military and for
the Iranians and Hezbollah to join the fray, leading the tragedy to where it is
now.
In
his new approach, Obama has explicitly surrendered American’s leadership role
and disavowed all his previous positions and erased the “red lines” he drew on
the use of chemical weapons.
“This is an international problem.
It is very much my hope to continue to work with all the various parties
involved, to find a solution that brings peace to Syria, stabilizes the region,
stabilizes those chemical weapons," Obama said at his joint news
conference with Erdogan.
"But
it's not going to be something that the United States does by itself. I don't
think anybody in the region would think that U.S. unilateral actions would
bring about a better outcome in Syria," he added.
Obama’s words are not only an avowed
relinquishment of America’s role. They give the Russia- and Iran-backed Assad
regime the green light to keep up its military campaign and destroy Syria on
the Syrians’ heads.
Isn’t
Obama gibbering when he says with Erdogan by his side, “We’re going to keep
increasing the pressure on the Assad regime and working with the Syrian opposition”?
“We
both agree that Assad needs to go,” he added -- after 90,000 deaths?
Hearing
such verbiage, you can construe the American president’s Syria policy has
simply gone haywire.
