Will the U.S. intervene on Maliki’s side in Iraq? If Obama is honest about not determining outcomes of “somebody else’s civil war,” as he said in reference to Syria, then, he’s unlikely to do anything serious in terms of providing support to embattled Maliki.
Sunni-majority towns in Iraq are falling to a broad Sunni alliance that includes ISIS as a major player. Only Iran and Maliki want us to believe that ISIS is solely responsible for the current offensive.
On the other hand, the idea that Iran is orchestrating this development in order to convince America and the international community to allow her to intervene directly in Iraq is naive. Such intervention would be too costly and Iran is already knee-deep in the Iraqi quagmire anyway, not to mention the Syrian one, and does not need to do so more overtly. Should Iran’s decide to embark on such a course, it would be a massive miscalculation on their part.
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.
Why Is Nobody Saying The Obvious: Putin Destabilized Ukraine – Forbes.
President Obama did indeed manage to hit the reset button on US-Russian relations, though I am not sure if empowering Putin and return to Cold War politics was the intended result. We have already seen how this situation played out in Syria. Now let’s see what’s in store for the Ukraine. It may not get as ugly, but it won’t be nice.
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 