Parry writes: "President Obama has displayed a stunning lack of sympathy for
the Russian civilians killed in an ISIS plane bombing in Egypt and for two
Russian military men slain as victims of U.S. weapons systems in Syria,
putting insults toward President Putin ahead of human decency."
Egyptian soldiers collect passengers' belongings at the crash site. (photo:
Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations/AP)
Obama Ignores Russian Terror Victims
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
04 December 15
President Obama has displayed a stunning lack of sympathy for the Russian
civilians killed in an ISIS plane bombing in Egypt and for two Russian
military men slain as victims of U.S. weapons systems in Syria, putting
insults toward President Putin ahead of human decency, writes Robert Parry.
Normally, when a country is hit by an act of terrorism, there is universal
sympathy even if the country has engaged in actions that may have made it a
target of the terrorists. After 9/11, for instance, any discussion of
whether U.S. violent meddling in the Middle East may have precipitated the
attack was ruled out of the public debate.
Similarly, the 7/7 attacks against Londons Underground in 2005 were not
excused because the United Kingdom had joined in President George W. Bushs
aggressive war in Iraq. The same with the more recent terror strikes in
Paris. No respectable politician or pundit gloated about the French getting
what they deserved for their long history of imperialism in the Muslim
world.
But a different set of rules apply to Russia. Along with other prominent
Americans, President Barack Obama and New York Times columnist Thomas L.
Friedman have expressed smug satisfaction over the murder of 224 people
aboard a Russian charter flight blown up over the Sinai and in the slaying
of a Russian pilot who had been shot down by a Turkish warplane and the
killing of a Russian marine on a rescue mission.
Apparently, the political imperative to display disdain for Russian
President Vladimir Putin trumps any normal sense of humanity. Both Obama on
Tuesday and Friedman on Wednesday treated those Russian deaths at the hands
of the Islamic State or other jihadists as Putins comeuppance for
intervening against terrorist/jihadist gains in Syria.
At a news conference in Paris, Obama expressed his lack of sympathy as part
of a bizarre comment in which he faulted Putin for somehow not turning
around the Syrian conflict during the past month when Obama and his allies
have been floundering in their war against the Islamic State and its
parent, Al Qaeda, for years, if not decades.
The Russians now have been there for several weeks, over a month, and I
think fair-minded reporters who looked at the situation would say that the
situation hasnt changed significantly, Obama said. In the interim, Russia
has lost a commercial passenger jet. Youve seen another jet shot down.
There have been losses in terms of Russian personnel. And I think Mr. Putin
understands that, with Afghanistan fresh in the memory, for him to simply
get bogged down in a inconclusive and paralyzing civil conflict is not the
outcome that hes looking for.
In examining that one paragraph, a fair-minded reporter could find a great
deal to dispute. Indeed, the comments suggest that President Obama has
crossed some line into either believing his own propaganda or thinking that
everyone who listens to him is an idiot and will believe whatever he says.
But what was perhaps most disturbing was Obamas graceless manner of
discussing the tragedy of the Sinai bombing, followed by his seeming
pleasure over Turkey shooting down a Russian SU-24 last week, leading to the
killing of two Russian military men, one the pilot who was targeted while
parachuting to the ground and the other a marine after his search-and-rescue
helicopter was downed by a TOW missile.
Even more troubling, the key weapon systems used the Turkish F-16 fighter
jet and the TOW missile were U.S.-manufactured and apparently U.S.
supplied, in the case of the TOW missile either directly or indirectly to
Sunni jihadists deemed moderate by the Obama administration.
The Ever-Smug Friedman
Columnist Friedman was equally unfeeling about the Russian deaths. In a
column entitled Putins Great Syrian Adventure, Friedman offered a mocking
assessment of Russias intervention against Sunni jihadists and terrorists
seeking to take control of Syria.
While ridiculing anyone who praised Putins initiative or who just thought
the Russian president was crazy like a fox, Friedman wrote: Some of us
thought he was just crazy.
Well, two months later, lets do the math: So far, Putins Syrian adventure
has resulted in a Russian civilian airliner carrying 224 people being blown
up, apparently by pro-ISIS militants in Sinai. Turkey shot down a Russian
bomber after it strayed into Turkish territory. And then Syrian rebels
killed one of the pilots as he parachuted to earth and one of the Russian
marines sent to rescue him.
Ha-ha, very funny! And, by the way, it has not been established that the
Russian SU-24 did stray into Turkish air space but if it did, according to
the Turkish account, it passed over a sliver of Turkish territory for all of
17 seconds.
The evidence is quite clear that the SU-24 was ambushed in a reckless act by
Turkeys autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has been
collaborating with Syrian and foreign jihadists for the past four years to
overthrow Syrias secular government. And the murder of the pilot after he
bailed out of the plane is not some reason to smirk; it is a war crime.
Even uglier is the lack of any sympathy or outrage over the terrorist
bombing that killed 224 innocent people, mostly tourists, aboard a Russian
charter flight in Egypt. If the victims had been American and a similar
callous reaction had come from President Putin and a columnist for a major
Russian newspaper, one can only imagine the outrage. However, in Official
Washington, any recognition of a common humanity with Russians makes you a
Moscow stooge.
The other wacky part of both Obamas comments and Friedmans echoes of the
same themes is this quick assessment that the Russian intervention in
support of the Syrian government has been some abject failure as if the
U.S.-led coalition has been doing so wonderfully.
First, as a fair-minded reporter, I would say that it appears the
Russian-backed Syrian offensive has at least stopped the advances of the
Islamic State, Al Qaedas Nusra Front and its jihadist allies, including
Ahrar al-Sham (which technically separates itself from Al Qaeda and thus
qualifies for U.S.-supplied weaponry even though it fights side-by-side with
Nusra in the Saudi-backed Army of Conquest).
The Afghan Memories
Obamas reference to Afghanistan was also startling. He was suggesting that
Putin should have learned a lesson from Moscows intervention in the 1980s
in support of a secular, pro-Soviet regime in Kabul, which came under attack
by CIA-organized-and-armed Islamic jihadists known then as mujahedeen.
Wielding sophisticated surface-to-air missiles and benefiting from $1
billion a year in Saudi-U.S.-supplied weapons, the Afghan fundamentalist
mujahedeen and their allies, including Saudi Osama bin Laden, eventually
drove Soviet troops out in 1989 and several years later behind the Taliban
completed the reversion of Afghanistan back to the Seventh Century. Women
in Kabul went from dressing any way they liked in public, including wearing
mini-skirts, to being covered in chadors and kept at home.
Obamas bringing up Afghanistan in the Syrian context and Putins supposed
one-month Syrian failure was ironic in another way. After Al Qaedas 9/11
attacks, the United States invaded Afghanistan in pursuit of bin Laden and
has been bogged down in a quagmire there for 14 years, including nearly
seven years under Obama.
So, Obama may not be on the firmest ground when he suggests that Putin
recall Moscows experience in Afghanistan a few decades ago. After all,
Obama has many more recent memories.
Further, what is different about Putins Syrian strategy compared with
Obamas is that the Russians are targeting all the terrorists and
jihadists, not just the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh).
While U.S. propaganda tries to present the non-ISIS jihadists as moderates
(somehow pretending that Al Qaeda is no longer a terrorist organization),
there is, in reality, very little distinction between ISIS and the alliance
of Nusra/Ahrar al-Sham.
And, as for Official Washingtons new group think about the Syrian
governments lack of progress in the war, there is the discordant news that
the last of rebel forces have agreed to abandon the central city of Homs,
which had been dubbed the capital of the revolution. The Associated Press
reported on Tuesday that thousands of insurgents will leave the last
opposition-held neighborhood in Homs, with the withdrawal beginning next
week.
Al-Jazeera added the additional fact that the remaining 4,000 insurgents are
from al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham and the Free Syrian Army. In other
words, the moderate Free Syrian Army was operating in collusion with Al
Qaedas affiliate and its major jihadist partner.
While its hard to get reliable up-to-date information from inside Syria,
one intelligence source familiar with the military situation told me that
the Syrian government offensive, backed by Iranian troops and Russian air
power, had been surprisingly successful in putting the jihadists, including
ISIS and Nusra, on the defensive, with additional gains around the key city
of Aleppo.
The Belated Oil Bombings
Also, in the past week, Putin shamed Obama into joining in a bombing
operation to destroy hundreds of trucks carrying ISIS oil to Turkey. Why
that valuable business was allowed to continue during the U.S.-led war on
ISIS since summer 2014 has not been adequately explained. It apparently was
being protected by Turkish President Erdogan.
Another irony of Obamas (and Friedmans) critical assessment of Putins
one-month military campaign came in Obamas recounting of his meeting during
the Paris climate summit with Erdogan. Obama said he was still appealing to
Erdogan to close the Turkish-Syrian border although radical jihadists have
been crossing it since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011.
With respect to Turkey, I have had repeated conversations with President
Erdogan about the need to close the border between Turkey and Syria, Obama
said. Weve seen some serious progress on that front, but there are still
some gaps. In particular, theres about 98 kilometers that are still used
as a transit point for foreign fighters, ISIL shipping out fuel for sale
that helps finance their terrorist activities.
In other words, all these years into the conflict and about 1½ years since
Obama specifically targeted ISIS Turkey has not closed its borders to
prevent ISIS from reinforcing itself with foreign fighters and trafficking
in illicit oil sales to fund its terror operations. One might suspect that
Erdogan has no intention of really stopping the Sunni jihadists from
ravaging Syria.
Erdogan still seems set on violent regime change in Syria after allowing
his intelligence services to provide extensive help to ISIS, Al Qaedas
Nusra and other extremists. The Russians claim that politically
well-connected Turkish businessmen also have been profiting off the ISIS oil
sales.
But Obamas acknowledgement that he has not even been able to get NATO
ally Turkey to seal its border and that ISIS still remains a potent
fighting force makes a mockery of his mocking Putin for not significantly
changing the situation on the ground in Syria in one month.
Obama also slid into propaganda speak when he blamed Assad for all the
deaths that have occurred during the Syrian conflict. I consider somebody
who kills hundreds of thousands of his own people illegitimate, Obama said.
But again Obama is applying double standards. For instance, he would not
blame President George W. Bush for the hundreds of thousands (possibly more
than a million) dead Iraqis, yet Bush was arguably more responsible for
those deaths by launching an unprovoked invasion of Iraq than Assad was in
battling a jihadist-led insurgency.
Plus, the death toll of Syrians, estimated to exceed a quarter million,
includes many soldiers and police as well as armed jihadists. That does not
excuse Assad or his regime for excessively heavy-handed tactics that have
inflicted civilian casualties, but Obama and his predecessor both have
plenty of innocent blood on their hands, too.
After watching Obamas news conference, one perhaps can hope that he is just
speaking out of multiple sides of his mouth as he is wont to do. Maybe, hes
playing his usual game of above-the-table/below-the-table, praising
Erdogan above the table while chastising him below the table and disparaging
Putin in public while cooperating with the Russian president in private.
Or maybe President Obama has simply lost touch with reality and with
common human decency.
________________________________________
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories
for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest
book, Americas Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parrys trilogy on
the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for
only $34. The trilogy includes Americas Stolen Narrative. For details on
this offer, click here.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Egyptian soldiers collect passengers' belongings at the crash site. (photo:
Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations/AP)
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/02/obama-ignores-russian-terror-victims/h
ttps://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/02/obama-ignores-russian-terror-victims/
Obama Ignores Russian Terror Victims
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
04 December 15
President Obama has displayed a stunning lack of sympathy for the Russian
civilians killed in an ISIS plane bombing in Egypt and for two Russian
military men slain as victims of U.S. weapons systems in Syria, putting
insults toward President Putin ahead of human decency, writes Robert Parry.
ormally, when a country is hit by an act of terrorism, there is universal
sympathy even if the country has engaged in actions that may have made it a
target of the terrorists. After 9/11, for instance, any discussion of
whether U.S. violent meddling in the Middle East may have precipitated the
attack was ruled out of the public debate.
Similarly, the 7/7 attacks against Londons Underground in 2005 were not
excused because the United Kingdom had joined in President George W. Bushs
aggressive war in Iraq. The same with the more recent terror strikes in
Paris. No respectable politician or pundit gloated about the French getting
what they deserved for their long history of imperialism in the Muslim
world.
But a different set of rules apply to Russia. Along with other prominent
Americans, President Barack Obama and New York Times columnist Thomas L.
Friedman have expressed smug satisfaction over the murder of 224 people
aboard a Russian charter flight blown up over the Sinai and in the slaying
of a Russian pilot who had been shot down by a Turkish warplane and the
killing of a Russian marine on a rescue mission.
Apparently, the political imperative to display disdain for Russian
President Vladimir Putin trumps any normal sense of humanity. Both Obama on
Tuesday and Friedman on Wednesday treated those Russian deaths at the hands
of the Islamic State or other jihadists as Putins comeuppance for
intervening against terrorist/jihadist gains in Syria.
At a news conference in Paris, Obama expressed his lack of sympathy as part
of a bizarre comment in which he faulted Putin for somehow not turning
around the Syrian conflict during the past month when Obama and his allies
have been floundering in their war against the Islamic State and its
parent, Al Qaeda, for years, if not decades.
The Russians now have been there for several weeks, over a month, and I
think fair-minded reporters who looked at the situation would say that the
situation hasnt changed significantly, Obama said. In the interim, Russia
has lost a commercial passenger jet. Youve seen another jet shot down.
There have been losses in terms of Russian personnel. And I think Mr. Putin
understands that, with Afghanistan fresh in the memory, for him to simply
get bogged down in a inconclusive and paralyzing civil conflict is not the
outcome that hes looking for.
In examining that one paragraph, a fair-minded reporter could find a great
deal to dispute. Indeed, the comments suggest that President Obama has
crossed some line into either believing his own propaganda or thinking that
everyone who listens to him is an idiot and will believe whatever he says.
But what was perhaps most disturbing was Obamas graceless manner of
discussing the tragedy of the Sinai bombing, followed by his seeming
pleasure over Turkey shooting down a Russian SU-24 last week, leading to the
killing of two Russian military men, one the pilot who was targeted while
parachuting to the ground and the other a marine after his search-and-rescue
helicopter was downed by a TOW missile.
Even more troubling, the key weapon systems used the Turkish F-16 fighter
jet and the TOW missile were U.S.-manufactured and apparently U.S.
supplied, in the case of the TOW missile either directly or indirectly to
Sunni jihadists deemed moderate by the Obama administration.
The Ever-Smug Friedman
Columnist Friedman was equally unfeeling about the Russian deaths. In a
column entitled Putins Great Syrian Adventure, Friedman offered a mocking
assessment of Russias intervention against Sunni jihadists and terrorists
seeking to take control of Syria.
While ridiculing anyone who praised Putins initiative or who just thought
the Russian president was crazy like a fox, Friedman wrote: Some of us
thought he was just crazy.
Well, two months later, lets do the math: So far, Putins Syrian adventure
has resulted in a Russian civilian airliner carrying 224 people being blown
up, apparently by pro-ISIS militants in Sinai. Turkey shot down a Russian
bomber after it strayed into Turkish territory. And then Syrian rebels
killed one of the pilots as he parachuted to earth and one of the Russian
marines sent to rescue him.
Ha-ha, very funny! And, by the way, it has not been established that the
Russian SU-24 did stray into Turkish air space but if it did, according to
the Turkish account, it passed over a sliver of Turkish territory for all of
17 seconds.
The evidence is quite clear that the SU-24 was ambushed in a reckless act by
Turkeys autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has been
collaborating with Syrian and foreign jihadists for the past four years to
overthrow Syrias secular government. And the murder of the pilot after he
bailed out of the plane is not some reason to smirk; it is a war crime.
Even uglier is the lack of any sympathy or outrage over the terrorist
bombing that killed 224 innocent people, mostly tourists, aboard a Russian
charter flight in Egypt. If the victims had been American and a similar
callous reaction had come from President Putin and a columnist for a major
Russian newspaper, one can only imagine the outrage. However, in Official
Washington, any recognition of a common humanity with Russians makes you a
Moscow stooge.
The other wacky part of both Obamas comments and Friedmans echoes of the
same themes is this quick assessment that the Russian intervention in
support of the Syrian government has been some abject failure as if the
U.S.-led coalition has been doing so wonderfully.
First, as a fair-minded reporter, I would say that it appears the
Russian-backed Syrian offensive has at least stopped the advances of the
Islamic State, Al Qaedas Nusra Front and its jihadist allies, including
Ahrar al-Sham (which technically separates itself from Al Qaeda and thus
qualifies for U.S.-supplied weaponry even though it fights side-by-side with
Nusra in the Saudi-backed Army of Conquest).
The Afghan Memories
Obamas reference to Afghanistan was also startling. He was suggesting that
Putin should have learned a lesson from Moscows intervention in the 1980s
in support of a secular, pro-Soviet regime in Kabul, which came under attack
by CIA-organized-and-armed Islamic jihadists known then as mujahedeen.
Wielding sophisticated surface-to-air missiles and benefiting from $1
billion a year in Saudi-U.S.-supplied weapons, the Afghan fundamentalist
mujahedeen and their allies, including Saudi Osama bin Laden, eventually
drove Soviet troops out in 1989 and several years later behind the Taliban
completed the reversion of Afghanistan back to the Seventh Century. Women
in Kabul went from dressing any way they liked in public, including wearing
mini-skirts, to being covered in chadors and kept at home.
Obamas bringing up Afghanistan in the Syrian context and Putins supposed
one-month Syrian failure was ironic in another way. After Al Qaedas 9/11
attacks, the United States invaded Afghanistan in pursuit of bin Laden and
has been bogged down in a quagmire there for 14 years, including nearly
seven years under Obama.
So, Obama may not be on the firmest ground when he suggests that Putin
recall Moscows experience in Afghanistan a few decades ago. After all,
Obama has many more recent memories.
Further, what is different about Putins Syrian strategy compared with
Obamas is that the Russians are targeting all the terrorists and
jihadists, not just the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh).
While U.S. propaganda tries to present the non-ISIS jihadists as moderates
(somehow pretending that Al Qaeda is no longer a terrorist organization),
there is, in reality, very little distinction between ISIS and the alliance
of Nusra/Ahrar al-Sham.
And, as for Official Washingtons new group think about the Syrian
governments lack of progress in the war, there is the discordant news that
the last of rebel forces have agreed to abandon the central city of Homs,
which had been dubbed the capital of the revolution. The Associated Press
reported on Tuesday that thousands of insurgents will leave the last
opposition-held neighborhood in Homs, with the withdrawal beginning next
week.
Al-Jazeera added the additional fact that the remaining 4,000 insurgents are
from al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham and the Free Syrian Army. In other
words, the moderate Free Syrian Army was operating in collusion with Al
Qaedas affiliate and its major jihadist partner.
While its hard to get reliable up-to-date information from inside Syria,
one intelligence source familiar with the military situation told me that
the Syrian government offensive, backed by Iranian troops and Russian air
power, had been surprisingly successful in putting the jihadists, including
ISIS and Nusra, on the defensive, with additional gains around the key city
of Aleppo.
The Belated Oil Bombings
Also, in the past week, Putin shamed Obama into joining in a bombing
operation to destroy hundreds of trucks carrying ISIS oil to Turkey. Why
that valuable business was allowed to continue during the U.S.-led war on
ISIS since summer 2014 has not been adequately explained. It apparently was
being protected by Turkish President Erdogan.
Another irony of Obamas (and Friedmans) critical assessment of Putins
one-month military campaign came in Obamas recounting of his meeting during
the Paris climate summit with Erdogan. Obama said he was still appealing to
Erdogan to close the Turkish-Syrian border although radical jihadists have
been crossing it since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011.
With respect to Turkey, I have had repeated conversations with President
Erdogan about the need to close the border between Turkey and Syria, Obama
said. Weve seen some serious progress on that front, but there are still
some gaps. In particular, theres about 98 kilometers that are still used as
a transit point for foreign fighters, ISIL shipping out fuel for sale that
helps finance their terrorist activities.
In other words, all these years into the conflict and about 1½ years since
Obama specifically targeted ISIS Turkey has not closed its borders to
prevent ISIS from reinforcing itself with foreign fighters and trafficking
in illicit oil sales to fund its terror operations. One might suspect that
Erdogan has no intention of really stopping the Sunni jihadists from
ravaging Syria.
Erdogan still seems set on violent regime change in Syria after allowing
his intelligence services to provide extensive help to ISIS, Al Qaedas
Nusra and other extremists. The Russians claim that politically
well-connected Turkish businessmen also have been profiting off the ISIS oil
sales.
But Obamas acknowledgement that he has not even been able to get NATO
ally Turkey to seal its border and that ISIS still remains a potent
fighting force makes a mockery of his mocking Putin for not significantly
changing the situation on the ground in Syria in one month.
Obama also slid into propaganda speak when he blamed Assad for all the
deaths that have occurred during the Syrian conflict. I consider somebody
who kills hundreds of thousands of his own people illegitimate, Obama said.
But again Obama is applying double standards. For instance, he would not
blame President George W. Bush for the hundreds of thousands (possibly more
than a million) dead Iraqis, yet Bush was arguably more responsible for
those deaths by launching an unprovoked invasion of Iraq than Assad was in
battling a jihadist-led insurgency.
Plus, the death toll of Syrians, estimated to exceed a quarter million,
includes many soldiers and police as well as armed jihadists. That does not
excuse Assad or his regime for excessively heavy-handed tactics that have
inflicted civilian casualties, but Obama and his predecessor both have
plenty of innocent blood on their hands, too.
After watching Obamas news conference, one perhaps can hope that he is just
speaking out of multiple sides of his mouth as he is wont to do. Maybe, hes
playing his usual game of above-the-table/below-the-table, praising
Erdogan above the table while chastising him below the table and disparaging
Putin in public while cooperating with the Russian president in private.
Or maybe President Obama has simply lost touch with reality and with
common human decency.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories
for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest
book, Americas Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parrys trilogy on
the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for
only $34. The trilogy includes Americas Stolen Narrative. For details on
this offer, click here.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
