Finally: Peace in Syria

A hookah smoking caterpillar has given them the call.  Just ask Alice.

 

According to DIPNOTE, the U.S. Department of State Official Blog, “Our diplomats have been busy, and they have met with significant success across a range of issues – each of these issues vital in their own way to ensuring the safety, security, and prosperity of the American people.”  One of the significant successes is peace in Syria.  “Led by Secretary Kerry, the United States also continues to push for a political transition in Syria, and under his stewardship, in December, the UN Security Council passed a U.S.-sponsored resolution that puts forward a roadmap that will facilitate a transition within Syria to a credible, inclusive, nonsectarian government that is responsive to the needs of the Syrian people.”  This success will follow the State Department’s outstanding success in Libya.

John Kirby the author of the article, “The Year-in-Review: Pivotal Foreign Policy Moments of 2015,” talks about, “the reprehensible human rights violations and violence carried out by the Asad (sic) regime.”  He makes no mention of defeating ISIS, the JV team, probably because it has been “contained.”  There is no mention of the beheadings.  He does not mention the President’s red line or the fact that a Turkish politician has claimed that the Turks supplied the rebels with the poison gas that was used and blamed on the Assad regime.  There is no mention of the oil convoys delivering oil to Turkey (there was abundant satellite evidence of this).  These convoys were allowed to operate until the Russians became involved.  The U.S. military has made mostly cosmetic strikes against ISIS.  ISIS’s heavy weapons were manufactured in the U.S.  There have been numerous accounts claiming that U.S. policy is ineffective and either naive or delusional. I put my money on delusional

The Russian news agency, TASS, has reported that Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov has stated that the U.S. is fighting ISIS “in word only” and refuses to transfer data on terrorist targets in Syria to the Russian military.  ISIS has apparently changed the routes of illegal transportation of  oil to run through the north-western regions of Iraq, which "are in the focus of constant attention of the United States."  Russian aircraft have taken out around 2,000 tank trucks operated by the militants.  This led to their change of routes.  It appears that the U.S. area of concentration is safer for the ISIS oil smugglers.