Earlier this week, in a video message to the Syrian People, America’s UN Ambassador Samantha Power stated, “The [Assad] regime has launched chemical weapons on civilians, it has dropped barrel bombs on residential housing, on schools and hospitals.”
Power was speaking at the Third International Humanitarian Pledging Conference for Syria in Kuwait City, Kuwait.
The Syrian Assad Regime to whom Power is referring is fully backed and fully armed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, with whom the P5+1, including the United States, just inked a 'framework' nuclear deal in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Power’s message is likely to find little traction with the Syrian people. For, while she readily admits Assad is waging a military campaign of “barrel bombs” against his people, all she had to offer in their defense was to say that “the conflict in Syria can only be solved through a political solution.”
Power more fully explained that, “The crisis there [in Syria] has grown worse primarily because of the Assad regime’s continuing brutality. The [Assad] regime has launched chemical weapons on civilians, it has dropped barrel bombs on residential housing, on schools and hospitals. It is responsible for the systemic torture and murder of political dissidents and ordinary citizens. It has obstructed humanitarian assistance deliveries to people living under siege. All this violence against, you, the Syrian people has resulted in the worst humanitarian crisis the world has seen in a generation and one of the worst of all time.”
Power knows of what she speaks for she is renowned expert on modern genocide. Before becoming America’s UN Ambassador she had extensively studied other genocides like the ones in Darfur, and Armenia. Curiously, Power is not publicly known for having studied the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews of Europe, which was greatest genocide of the 20th century
And, in prepared remarks, Power went even further, stating: “But we must remember that the dramatic rise of ISIS [aka ISIL – ed.]) and other terrorist groups in Syria would never have been possible without the Assad regime’s atrocities, which continue to be ISIL’s best recruiting tool. Partnering with Assad will not help us defeat ISIL – it will only make ISIL stronger.”
However, ironically, as Power spoke, it was revealed by the Washington Post that President Obama pointedly and wholly ignored the military advice of Central Command’s (CENTCOM) top general from 2010-2013, General James Mattis. According to the story, General Mattis “lobbied for more interdictions of ships and planes carrying Iranian arms to battlefields such as Yemen and Syria, said former defense officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss policy deliberations. And Mattis pressed for more covert actions to capture or kill Iranian operatives, especially after the foiled 2011 plot by Iran to kill the Saudi ambassador at a Washington restaurant. The former defense officials said plans to punish Tehran were often sidelined over concerns that they could disrupt negotiations to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.”
So, from the Washington Post report, it appears that “rather than press for Assad’s departure,” from 2010 to the present, President Obama, and the United States, have knowingly allowed Iran to provide the military “support that has not only kept [Assad’s] regime afloat, but willfully strengthened it. . . .” From Power’s analysis one could conclude that President Obama’s negotiation with Iran over the nuclear issue enabled ISIS to metastasize to the danger it is now.
In Power’s bittersweet talk to the Syrian people she stated, “to hold accountable those responsible for committing atrocities against the Syrian people, the United States is actively supporting the collection and preservation and evidence of atrocities so that justice can prevail and the perpetrators of these horrors will be punished.”
However, “evidence” that Assad murdered hundreds of thousands of Sunnis will do little to help those murdered. Worse, given that the Obama Administration apparently knowingly and intentionally allowed Iran to arm Assad, to protect Obama’s Iran nuclear talks, there is little practical possibility that collected and preserved evidence of Assad’s and Iran’s atrocities will ever be used against “the perpetrators of these horrors.”