Category: Americana

Ford: I couldn’t defend U.S. Syria policy

Ford: I couldn’t defend U.S. Syria policy.

Finally, Ambassador Ford can say what he has probably been itching to say for many long months. The Obama Administration’s Syria policy is indefensible. It has served to empower Assad, Al-Qaeda, Iran and Russia, and, in the process, it rolled the clock back to Cold War times. Who gives a damn about killing Bin Ladin long after he had become an irrelevant figure, and at a time when the Administration’s foreign policies, and non-policies, and its reliance on drone attacks as its sole instrument for fighting terrorism, have served to give Al-Qaeda new havens in Syria and Yemen, among other places, as well as a new set of leaders, and has actually managed, despite the ideological divide between them, to foster an emerging and strong cooperation between Al-Qaeda affiliated groups and the regimes in Iran and Syria. Yet, according to President Barack Obama, we should somehow see wisdom, and even victory, in all these developments. Meanwhile, human rights activists like me are now castigated as warmongers because we demand that genocidal maniacs be stopped, and for Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and other terrorist entities and groups be seriously fought, not just pricked.

The speech I would have given

… had I been invited to speak at the White House Correspondents Dinner 

What can I say about President Barack Obama that hasn’t been said before? Oh yes, that he’s a man of action, – though mostly so unobtrusive that it is often confused with inaction, – a man who puts the fear of God in his enemies, – well, at least those of them who are not Russian, Chinese, North Korean, Iranian, Syrian or Republican, – and is known to his friends all over the world, yes all none of them, as Mr. Reliable and Trustworthy. “That Barack Hussein Obama,” the Saudi monarch recently told me, “he is as reliable as a doorknob, on the wrong side of the door.” What a wonderful testament.

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Samantha Power in Practice

Rebecca Hamilton | Samantha Power in Practice | Foreign Affairs.

Try as you may and must, you still cannot sugarcoat betrayal and hypocrisy. Samantha Powers agreed to join the ranks of an administration that was clearly dead-set on betraying the very ideals which she preached, and she did so with her eyes wide open. Now she and her her supporters are trying to find ways to distance her from the mess. But not even a trip to the Moon will put enough distance at the stage. She might still remain politically viable, (after all if Assad can why can’t she?), but in the realm of ideals she advocated, chalk her as a hypocrite, with little possibility for self-redemption, if any.