Category Archives: State Department

State Department dissent memo: ‘We are better than this ban’

The Washington Post reports: Dozens of State Department officials are expected to sign a memo opposing President Trump’s executive order suspending immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries, activating the famous “Dissent Channel,” which diplomats have used for decades, to oppose what they see as wrongheaded policies put forth by the Trump White House.

“A policy which closes our doors to over 200 million legitimate travelers in the hopes of preventing a small number of travelers who intend to harm Americans from using the visa system to enter the United States will not achieve its aim of making our country safer,” reads a draft of the Dissent Channel memo, which I obtained. “Moreover, such a policy runs counter to core American values of nondiscrimination, fair play, and extending a warm welcome to foreign visitors and immigrants.”

The memo focuses on Section 3 of the executive order Trump signed Jan. 27, which temporarily suspends the issuance of visas and other immigration benefits for citizens from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. As of Monday morning, edits and signatures were still being collected in advance of submitting the memo to State Department leadership. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: The State Department confirmed the existence of the memo on Monday, and it affirmed the right of its staff to dissent.

“This is an important process that the acting secretary, and the department as a whole, respect and value,” said a spokesman, Mark Toner. “It allows State employees to express divergent policy views candidly and privately to senior leadership.”

The speed with which the memo was assembled and the number of signers underscore the degree to which the State Department has become the center of the resistance to Mr. Trump’s order. More broadly, it represents objections to his efforts to cut back on American participation in international organizations and to issue ultimatums to allies.

Not surprisingly, the diplomats and Civil Service officers of the State Department are among the most internationally minded in the government; they have lived around the world and devoted their careers to building alliances and promoting American values abroad. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Trump’s State Department purge sparks worries of ‘know-nothing approach’ to foreign policy

The Guardian reports: Thomas Countryman was on his way to Rome for an international meeting on nuclear weapons on Wednesday when he found out he had been summarily removed from his position. The senior diplomat turned around and got on the first flight back to Washington.

It was a sudden and unceremonious end to 35 years as a foreign service officer, the last four months of it as the acting undersecretary for arms control and international security. But Countryman was not alone. The Trump White House carried out an abrupt purge of the state department’s senior leadership last week, removing key officials from posts that are essential to the day-to-day running of the department and US missions abroad.

The purge has left a gaping hole at the heart of US diplomacy: the incoming secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has yet to be confirmed and the Trump team has not named candidates to fill several levels of leadership under him. Its only nominations so far have been ambassadors to China and Israel. All further nominees to senior posts will take months of security vetting and confirmation.

It is not clear whether Tillerson, a former chief executive of the ExxonMobil oil company, had been informed of the purge. When he does arrive on “Mahogany Row”, he will find a line of empty offices along the wood-panelled seventh floor of the state department, where its leadership works.

“As a career diplomat, I experienced many transitions and never saw anything like this dangerous purge of public servants now underway at State,” former ambassador Laura Kennedy tweeted. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Trump betrays Iraqis who helped the U.S.

The Wall Street Journal reports: Iraqi interpreter Laith al-Haydar received multiple death threats for working with the American military at the height of the war in his country. In return for helping the U.S., he and tens of thousands of other Iraqis were promised U.S. immigration visas.

Nearly four years after he applied, the 41-year-old father of two is still waiting for a visa — and now faces a new setback: President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending immigration from several countries with a Muslim majority, including Iraq, and a temporary ban on all refugees.

Mr. Haydar is among roughly 58,000 Iraqi applicants for U.S. immigrant visas and refugee resettlement under federal programs that promised to fast-track entry for Iraqis who worked with the U.S. government and other institutions deemed critical to the U.S.-led effort in Iraq, according to the State Department. A similar program for Afghans who’ve worked with the U.S. government may also be at risk.

At least one Iraqi and two Afghans who worked with the U.S. government and also qualify for expedited immigration visas were turned away from American ports of entry on Friday and Saturday, a State Department official said, adding that several more were prevented from boarding planes to the U.S. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

A viral Washington Post story about State Department resignations is very misleading

Vox reports: On Thursday morning, the Washington Post published a piece with an explosive headline: “The State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned.” The piece alleged that Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy, one of the top officials the department, and three of his deputies had left their jobs because they didn’t want to serve in the Trump administration.

“The entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior foreign service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era,” Josh Rogin, the story’s author, wrote.

There was certainly an element of truth to the report: Kennedy and those three deputies had indeed left the department. And the story went viral almost immediately. According to Ishaan Tharoor, a foreign affairs writer for the Post, the story was “breaking” Chartbeat, a tool used by news websites to take stock of traffic. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said on Twitter.

But as the day went on, key elements of the article came into question. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The State Department’s entire senior administrative team just resigned

Josh Rogin writes: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s job running the State Department just got considerably more difficult. The entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior Foreign Service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era.

Tillerson was actually inside the State Department’s headquarters in Foggy Bottom on Wednesday, taking meetings and getting the lay of the land. I reported Wednesday morning that the Trump team was narrowing its search for his No. 2, and that it was looking to replace the State Department’s long-serving undersecretary for management, Patrick Kennedy. Kennedy, who has been in that job for nine years, was actively involved in the transition and was angling to keep that job under Tillerson, three State Department officials told me.

Then suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy and three of his top officials resigned unexpectedly, four State Department officials confirmed. Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond and Ambassador Gentry O. Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Missions, followed him out the door. All are career Foreign Service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Syria deal draws Iran into alliance with Russia and Turkey

The Washington Post reports: Russia, Turkey and Iran agreed Tuesday to the outlines of a plan to reinforce a cease-fire in Syria, establishing the three most significant allies of the protagonists in the conflict as guarantors to a peace process.

The deal concluded two days of talks in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, that drew Iran into a burgeoning alliance with Russia and Turkey over ways to secure a settlement. It set broad but vague parameters for a cease-fire enforcement mechanism and committed the three countries to jointly fight the Islamic State and Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate. It will also provide a test of Russia’s new role as the lead power broker in efforts to secure a sustainable, long-term solution to the war.

The United States, which is not a party to the emerging peace process, said it welcomed any “actions that sustainably de-escalate violence and reduce suffering in Syria,” according to a statement issued by the State Department in Washington. [Continue reading…]

Martin Chulov writes: Russia and Turkey had much on the line at the Astana peace talks, but at the end of the two-day summit on Syria, their returns were – at face value – modest. The gathering culminated in a predictable communique, endorsed by Iran, which aims to strengthen a nominal ceasefire in place since 30 December.

But other, more enduring, themes emerged from the gathering. First, Russia, one of the six-year war’s main protagonists, is serious about negotiating an end to the conflict and is prepared to do more than ever to achieve that. Second, although the Assad regime is winning on the battlefield with the robust backing of Moscow and Iran, it has a relatively weak diplomatic hand.

The long predicted moment when Russia will need to declare its intentions towards Bashar al-Assad is closer than ever. So too is a reckoning for the Syrian leader with his other patron, Iran, against whom Russia and Turkey have increasingly sided since Iranian-backed forces led the recapture of Aleppo.

For the first time, Russia broke ranks with the Assad regime at Astana, chiding it for claiming that al-Qaida was leading an assault on the Wadi Barada area near Damascus, and suggesting that Iranian and Syrian forces, not the opposition, were breaching the ceasefire. It also overtly legitimised two groups that Syrian officials had long labelled as terrorists, the conservative Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam, both significant components of the armed opposition. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Kerry rebukes Israel, calling settlements a threat to peace

The New York Times reports: Secretary of State John Kerry warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Wednesday that the Israeli government was undermining any hope of a two-state solution to its decades-long conflict with the Palestinians, and said that the American vote in the United Nations last week was driven by an effort to save Israel from “the most extreme elements” in its own government.

With only 23 days left as secretary of state, Mr. Kerry, the former presidential candidate who made the search for peace in the Middle East one of the driving missions of his four years as secretary, spoke with clear frustration about Mr. Netanyahu’s continued support of settlements “strategically placed in locations that make two states impossible.” But he spoke knowing that the incoming administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump may well abandon the key principles that the United States has used for decades of Middle East negotiations.

“The status quo is leading toward one state, or perpetual occupation,” Mr. Kerry said, his voice animated. He argued that Israel, with a growing Arab population, could not survive as both a Jewish state and a democratic state unless it embraced the two-state approach that a succession of American presidents have advocated. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Israeli leaders postponed plans on Wednesday to move ahead with new housing in East Jerusalem, just hours before Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a much-anticipated speech outlining an American vision for peace with the Palestinians.

The Jerusalem city planning committee, which was reported to be acting at the behest of the national government, canceled at the last moment a scheduled vote on permits for 618 new housing units in the predominantly Palestinian eastern section of the city. Members of the committee said the delay came at the request of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

John Kerry, in a final, pointed plea, will outline a vision of Mideast peace

The New York Times reports: In a last-chance effort to shape the outlines of a Middle East peace deal, Secretary of State John Kerry is to outline in a speech on Wednesday the Obama administration’s vision of a final Israeli-Palestinian accord based on bitter lessons learned from an effort that collapsed in 2014.

A senior State Department official said that Mr. Kerry, who will be out of office in less than a month and no longer in a position to negotiate any deal, will use his remarks to confront Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who has charged that the United States “orchestrated” a United Nations Security Council resolution last week condemning Israel’s continued building of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The United States abstained from the resolution, infuriating Mr. Netanyahu.

The speech, the latest salvo in a final conflict between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Obama as Donald J. Trump prepares to assume the presidency, will make the case that “the vote was not unprecedented” and that Mr. Obama’s decision “did not blindside Israel.” Mr. Kerry, the official said, would cite other cases in which Washington officials had allowed similar votes under previous presidents.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a coming speech, said Mr. Kerry would also argue that, with the notable exception of Israel, there was a “complete international consensus” against further settlements in areas that might ultimately be the subject of negotiations.

At this late date, weeks ahead of the inauguration of Mr. Trump, who openly lobbied on Israel’s side against the United Nations resolution, it is unclear what Mr. Kerry hopes to achieve from the speech, other than to leave a set of principles that he believes will one day emerge as the basis for talks, if and when they resume.

Mr. Kerry, the official said, has long wanted to give a speech outlining an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal but was held back by White House officials, who saw it as unnecessary pressure on Israel that would anger Mr. Netanyahu. But that objection was lifted last week as Mr. Obama and Mr. Kerry agreed the time had come to abstain on the United Nations resolution. That decision led to one of the biggest breaches yet in the rocky American-Israeli relationship during the Obama years. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Why the State Department is worried about Donald Trump and his tweets

Politico reports: en President-elect Donald Trump announced last week that he wanted ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to be his secretary of state, many in the foreign policy establishment were worried. Aside from the fact that Tillerson has zero public service experience, his history of striking oil deals with foreign leaders, notably Vladimir Putin, raises questions about his ability to defend U.S. interests that may conflict those of ExxonMobil.

But the State Department has a bigger disruption to worry about.

The person who actually sets the department’s diplomatic agenda — in ways both overt and subtle — isn’t the secretary of state; it’s the president. The president’s words, as uttered in speeches and other official statements, literally shape American foreign policy. In turn, State Department bureaucrats rely on the commander in chief to articulate clear, thoughtful and consistent views, based on facts and a knowledge of history. Only then can the entire weight of the large State Department bureaucracy follow seamlessly behind him — and carry out his goals.

As Trump veers from one surprise tweet to the next — at times misspelled 140-character statements that seem to contradict decades of U.S. foreign policy, State Department bureaucrats are facing a unique challenge: How to follow the lead of a president who seems uninterested in consistency, protocol and nuance? [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Rex Tillerson’s company, Exxon, has billions at stake over sanctions on Russia

The New York Times reports: Now that President-elect Donald J. Trump has chosen Rex W. Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, to be the next secretary of state, the giant oil company stands to make some major gains as well: It has billions of dollars in deals that can go forward only if the United States lifts sanctions against Russia.

As head of America’s largest oil company, Mr. Tillerson has earned a friendship award from Russia and voiced skepticism about American sanctions that have halted some of Exxon Mobil’s biggest projects in the country.

But Mr. Tillerson’s stake in Russia’s energy industry could create a very blurry line between his interests as an oilman and his role as America’s leading diplomat.

“The chances that he will view Russia with Exxon Mobil DNA are close to 100 percent,” said Robert Weissman, the president of Public Citizen, a public interest group based in Washington. [Continue reading…]

Bloomberg reports: Rex Tillerson, the Exxon Mobil Corp. chief who is President-elect Donald Trump’s leading candidate for secretary of state, visited the White House repeatedly as sanctions were imposed on Russia in 2014 to make sure his company’s competitors didn’t gain an edge in the way they were enforced.

Tillerson made at least 20 visits to the White House during President Barack Obama’s two terms, visitor logs show, including five after Obama began authorizing the 2014 sanctions in response to Russian aggression toward Ukraine. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Trump picks ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to be secretary of state

The Washington Post reports: President-elect Donald Trump has picked as his secretary of state Rex Tillerson, the chief executive of ExxonMobil, setting up a possible confrontation with members of his own party in the Senate, Trump’s transition team announced Tuesday.

Since Tillerson’s name emerged as a candidate for the post, leading Republicans have expressed reservations about his years of work in Russia and the Middle East on behalf of the multinational petroleum company.

GOP advisers have warned that a growing number of Republican senators may be unwilling to vote to confirm Tillerson because of his ties to Russia. While Senate Democrats cannot filibuster Trump’s Cabinet picks, Republicans have only 52 votes in the Senate, leaving them in potential jeopardy if Democrats unite in opposition to Tillerson. It will take at least 50 votes to confirm a nominee, plus Vice President-elect Mile Pence casting a tiebreaking vote. [Continue reading…]

The Daily Beast reports: Donald Trump’s long-time but informal adviser Roger Stone says the Secretary of State job was dangled in front of Mitt Romney in order to “torture” him for previously opposing the president-elect.

During a Sunday appearance on InfoWars with Alex Jones, a conspiratorial media outlet that has become a mouthpiece of the next president, Stone called Romney a “choker” and said that Trump was simply toying with him.

“Donald Trump was interviewing Mitt Romney for Secretary of State in order to torture him,” Stone claimed on the program. “To toy with him. And given the history, that’s completely understandable. Mitt Romney crossed a line. He didn’t just oppose Trump, which is his democratic right, he called him a phony and a fraud. And a con man. And that’s not the kind of man you want as Secretary of State.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Rex Tillerson, from a corporate oil sovereign to the State Department

Steve Coll writes: The news that President-elect Donald Trump is expected to nominate Rex Tillerson, the chairman and chief executive of ExxonMobil, as his Secretary of State is astonishing on many levels. As an exercise of public diplomacy, it will certainly confirm the assumption of many people around the world that American power is best understood as a raw, neocolonial exercise in securing resources.

Tillerson figures prominently in “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power,” a book I wrote about the corporation that came out in 2012. He declined my requests to interview him for that project, but I turned up at several public appearances he made and asked him a few questions from the reporters’ gallery. I also studied his public remarks, reviewed accounts of his activities reported in State Department cables obtained by Freedom of Information Act requests or released by WikiLeaks, and conducted interviews with other ExxonMobil executives, retirees, friends, competitors, civil-society activists and business partners from Asia to Africa to the Middle East.

Tillerson’s life has been shaped to a profound extent by two institutions: ExxonMobil and the Boy Scouts of America. He grew up in Texas, where his father was a modestly compensated administrator for the Scouts. Tillerson became an Eagle Scout. An engineering major at the University of Texas, in Austin, Tillerson joined ExxonMobil in 1975. He has never worked anywhere else. Of all the companies that were born out of the breakup of Standard Oil, Exxon is culturally the most direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller’s monopolistic giant, which was organized on principles of ruthless capitalism and Protestant faith. Exxon today is an unusually cloistered corporation that promotes virtually all of its top executives from within. Former executives I interviewed mentioned that as recently as the nineteen-seventies, it was not unusual to start company meetings with a prayer. When Tillerson finally won a competition for the top job, in 2004, he directed substantial time and charitable activity toward the Boy Scouts. In public appearances, he comes across as sophisticated, yet his life is rooted in environments that are fundamentally nostalgic for imagined midcentury virtues and for the days when burning fossil fuels did not threaten to trigger catastrophic climate change. Tillerson once listed his favorite book as “Atlas Shrugged,” Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel that has become a touchstone for libertarians and promoters of unbridled capitalism. Compared to the records of some of the other people around Trump, Tillerson’s is at least one of professional integrity; Exxon is a ruthless and unusually aggressive corporation, but it is also rule-bound, has built up a relatively strong safety record, and has avoided problems such as prosecutions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, even though it operates in many countries that are rife with corruption. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Turkey hosts new round of peace talks between Russia and Syrian rebels — it looks like the U.S. wasn’t invited

Business Insider reports: The US was shut out of a new round of negotiations between Russia and Syrian rebel factions hosted by Turkish officials in Ankara, a source within the Syrian opposition told Business Insider on Monday.

The opposition source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the negotiations, said American officials were not invited to take part in the talks because of recent tensions between Turkey and the US.

“The US is totally out of these talks,” this person said. “And they’re pretty angry about it.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Rudy Giuliani’s links to a formerly designated terrorist organization

The Wall Street Journal reports on Rudy Giuliani’s possible nomination as Secretary of State: Beyond the Iraq war [which he supported], Mr. Giuliani is also drawing scrutiny for his regular appearances at events supporting an Iranian opposition group, called the Mujahedin-e Khalq, which the State Department designated as a terrorist organization from 1997 through 2012.

Last year, Mr. Giuliani addressed MEK leaders in Paris and called for the overthrow of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his clerical regime. “The Ayatollah must go! Gone! Out! No more!” Mr. Giuliani told a crowd of thousands. “He and Rouhani and Ahmadinejad and all of the rest of them should be put on trial for crimes against humanity.”

The MEK paid Mr. Giuliani and other former U.S. officials to speak at its events, according to group leaders and U.S. officials who investigated the matter. Speaking fees ranged from $25,000 to $40,000 per appearance.

A broad mix of senior Republicans and Democrats has appeared at MEK events, including James Jones, President Barack Obama’s former national security advisor; Howard Dean, a one-time head of the Democratic National Committee who is now seeking that post again; and Mr. Bolton.

The Treasury Department launched a probe into the legality of former officials being paid by the MEK or its affiliates while it was still on the State Department’s terror list, U.S. officials have said. Treasury officials declined to comment on the status of that probe, including whether it has been closed. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Two U.S. diplomats drugged in Russia last year, deepening Washington’s concern

RFE/RL reports: Two U.S. officials traveling with diplomatic passports were drugged while attending a conference in Russia last year, and one of them was hospitalized, in what officials have concluded was part of a wider, escalating pattern of harassment of U.S. diplomats by Russia.

The incident at a hotel bar during a UN anticorruption conference in St. Petersburg in November 2015 caused concern in the U.S. State Department, which quietly protested to Moscow, according to a U.S. government official with direct knowledge of what occurred.

But it wasn’t until a dramatic event in June, when an accredited U.S. diplomat was tackled outside the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, that officials in Washington reexamined the November drugging and concluded they were part of a definite pattern.

The State Department suggested the harassment has become a particular concern in the past two years. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Is the U.S. weighing a tougher response to Russia over Syria crisis?

Reuters reports: Obama administration officials have begun considering tougher responses to the Russian-backed Syrian government assault on Aleppo, including military options, as rising tensions with Moscow diminish hopes for diplomatic solutions from the Middle East to Ukraine and cyberspace, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.

The new discussions were being held at “staff level,” and have yet to produce any recommendations to President Barack Obama, who has resisted ordering military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country’s multisided civil war.

But the deliberations coincide with Secretary of State John Kerry threatening to halt diplomacy with Russia on Syria and holding Moscow responsible for dropping incendiary bombs on rebel areas of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. It was the stiffest U.S. warning to the Russians since the Sept. 19 collapse of a truce they jointly brokered.

Even administration advocates of a more muscular U.S. response said on Wednesday that it was not clear what, if anything, the president would do, and that his options “begin at tougher talk,” as one official put it.

One official said that before any action could be taken, Washington would first have “follow through on Kerry’s threat and break off talks with the Russians” on Syria.

But the heavy use of Russian airpower in Syria has compounded U.S. distrust of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical intentions, not only in the 5-1/2 year civil war, but also in the Ukraine conflict and in what U.S. officials say are Russian-backed cyber attacks on U.S. political targets.

The U.S. officials said the failure of diplomacy in Syria has left the Obama administration no choice but to consider alternatives, most of which involve some use of force and have been examined before but held in abeyance. [Continue reading…]

The basis for this reporting appears to be an exchange in Tuesday’s State Department press briefing. The suggestion that the administration is now seriously considering its military options sounds like a bit of a stretch. Much more likely is that it is merely restating every administration’s fallback position as it struggles to craft policy: we are keeping all options on the table.

Even if Kerry or Obama was to say, diplomacy has failed, they remain doctrinally wedded to the view that there is no military solution to this conflict.

So, if diplomacy has indeed reached a dead end, I don’t expect to see a tougher response from Obama, but instead, no response at all. All he’s doing now is counting the days until his departure from the Oval Office.

Facebooktwittermail

U.S. condemnations of assault on Aleppo provide no relief to the Syrians getting bombed

An editorial in the Washington Post says: “What Russia is sponsoring and doing” in the Syrian city of Aleppo “is barbarism,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said on Sunday. She’s right: For days, Russian and Syrian planes have rained bombs — including white phosphorus, cluster munitions and “bunker-busters” designed to penetrate basements — on the rebel-held side of the city. Hundreds of civilians have been killed; as many as half are children. U.N. special envoy Staffan de Mistura described “new heights of horror.” Ms. Power said that “instead of helping get lifesaving aid to civilians, Russia and [Syria] are bombing the humanitarian convoys, hospitals and first responders who are trying desperately to keep people alive.”

It goes without saying that this war-crimes-rich offensive, which Syria’s U.N. ambassador said is aimed at recapturing east Aleppo, has shredded the Obama administration’s attempt to win Russian and Syrian compliance with a cessation of hostilities. So naturally reporters asked senior officials as the attack was getting underway how the United States would respond. “I don’t think . . . this is the time to say where we will go from here,” one answered. Said another: “We’re waiting to see what the Russians come back with.”

In other words: Hem, haw.

By Monday, the administration’s response seemed clear: It will hotly condemn the assault on Aleppo, but do absolutely nothing to stop it. On the contrary, Secretary of State John F. Kerry insisted he will continue to go back to the regime of Vladi­mir Putin with diplomatic offers, hoping it will choose to stop bombing. “The United States makes absolutely no apology for going the extra mile to try and ease the suffering of the Syrian people,” he grandly declared after a meeting Thursday on Syria. By “extra mile,” he doesn’t mean actual U.S. steps to protect civilians — just more futile and debasing appeals to Moscow.

The Putin and Bashar al-Assad regimes are well aware that the only U.S. action President Obama has authorized is diplomatic, and that they are therefore under no pressure to alter their behavior.[Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail