Mark Mardell must have dropped dead when he saw this piece by Nick Bryant…and if so will be steadily rolling in his grave at the blasphemies being uttered by Bryant….The decline of US power?
Its fairly standard stuff about Bush and his wars, Guantanamo and economic woes dragging the US’s reputation down and its influence in the world down with it.
However there is a long blast at Obama, the usual stuff about his lack of interest in foreign affairs and unwillingness to engage….but there is one thing of unique interest….
One of the reasons why the world has become so disorderly is because America is no longer so active in imposing order……Washington has lost its fear factor.
World leaders nowadays seem prepared to provoke the wrath of the White House, confident that it will never rain down on them.
It explains why the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, after unleashing chemical weapons against his people, continues to bombard them with barrel bombs.
Why Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea, and also offered a safe haven for the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Assad’s flouting of American warnings is especially noteworthy.
In killing so many civilians with chemical weapons, he flagrantly crossed the “red line” imposed by Obama, but escaped punishment.
The president was unwilling to carry through on an explicit threat, in what was the biggest foreign policy climbdown of his presidency and also one of the most significant in the past 50 years.
Even supporters of Barack Obama believe he made a fatal strategic mistake, because it demonstrated endless flexibility and a lack of American resolve.
Needless to say, despots around the world took note.
Powerful stuff and a ‘damning indictment’ as the phrase goes.
But there is something missing from the picture. No mention of the man who promised to tackle Assad but then backtracked on his promise and told his party to vote against taking any military action against Assad. That man being Ed Miliband…the man who claimed it was a great victory and whom the Left has applauded for his cowardice….a cowardice that then spread to Obama who also backtracked on his determination to bomb Assad leaving him free to continue his murderous rampage. Not tackling Assad also had the unfortunate side-effect of boosting ISIS as Assad released members of that group from his prisons and left them to their own devices as they became a proxy army for him attacking the other ‘Free Syria’ forces who were fighting Assad.
So Miliband’s betrayal has allowed Assad to continue his vicious war and led to the rebirth of ISIS…..Just think, he could have been our Prime Minister! Obama has followed on and used Miliband’s betrayal as cover for his own reluctance to tackle Assad in any meaningful way.
And the result is….as said above by Nick Bryant…’a fatal strategic mistake of which, needless to say, despots around the world took note.’
The BBC always seems reluctant to mention Miliband’s role in the Syria vote….I wonder why?
The BBC’s coverage of the U.S.A turned 180 degrees on the accession of St. Obama, from being idots to the equivalent of being Guardianistas.
The third coming in the BBC’s eyes appears to have developed clay feet, just like their second coming – remember how they lauded Tony Blair, until he upset them over Iraq.
Indeed the BBC attitude changed.
We all know why.
To misquote Orwell.
“Black legs good, white legs bad.”
The ubiquitous BBC patellar reflex.
Promote the black at the expense of the white.
Promote the Islamic at the expense of the Christian.
Promote the Irish, Scots, Welsh and everyone else, at the the expense of the English.
Promote the alien at the expense of the indigine.
Promote the workshy at the expense of the industrious.
Promote the homosexual at the expense of the normal.
Promote pullulation/abortion at the expense of family planning.
Promote the female at the expense of the male.
Promote the foreign/inferior/recent/fashionable in painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, drama, music, at the expense of the Classics of Western Civilisation in these fields.
Because English men are of no value, they have white vans (a certain indication of untreatable racism) and display partially white flags (ditto).
The peculiarity of this ineluctable BBC racism, because that is what it is, is that it is directed at their own race, most BBC employees are white, rather than another race. An attitude which is accompanied by the other “isms” listed above”
Please advise me if there has been a PHD awarded for an examination of the severely damaged minds which have these traits. If it does not exist there is a doctorate and a best seller waiting for someone.
I have heard that the course you seek will shortly be available at the University of Istan-glir in Norfuk.
you must be a bundle of fun on a night out mate
The BBC doesn’t “promote” all those things – the BBC is duty bound to give those things equal status.
That was my argument in the run-up to the election: the BBC was allowing left-wing utter bulls*it to be aired in order for political parity even though the majority of UK citizens (as it turned out in the election results) knew it was all lies and deceit. That is probably the best argument for the removal of the BBC – if the institution cannot accept responsibility for broadcasting misleading information (which it does daily – almost hourly!), then it is not fit for purpose.
I actually thought this was a good piece, and you normally have to look long and hard for criticism of Obama’s foreign policy on the BBC, but this piece brings it out clearly.
I simply do not buy the rubbish that our refusing to tackle Assad has emboldened ISIS. Had we gone in against Assad and deposed him, we would have been defacto on the same side as Al Qaeda and ISIS, then ISIS would now, today be in total control of Syria and Assad’s stocks of WMD right on Israel’s border. The West may have created a more pro-western government, but an ISIS who we would have helped arm and support would have then have brutally slaughtered any Government we imposed and taken over the whole of Syria.
I am not defending Assad. The fact is that there are no “good guys” in Syria worth helping.
And lets not forget that Assad Minor was quite the poster boy for the liberal left when he first stepped into his dads dead moccasins.
I well remember Sting being only one of the luvvies who showed up to serenade the London student who studied opthamology here in the UK…with a fit British wife as well was she not?
No doubt the liberal lefties-personnified by any cause Sting and Trudie choose to fly private into-won`t remind us all of their hypocrisies though…
I am not defending Assad. The fact is that there are no “good guys” in Syria worth helping.
Couldn’t agree more. While I regard Obama as the worst President the US has had and Miliband as a joke of a leader, the decision not to back Assad was correct in a conflict that is both brutal and extremely complex as to its causes and ramifications.
To back Assad would be to back the Syrian, Hezbollah and Iranian terrorist alliance against Israel and the West while to back the ‘rebels’ would be to back those terrorists trying to become top dog in Islam’s war against Israel and the West.
There is no happy outcome here and all the West and Israel can do is try to safeguard their own interests and limit the terrorist impact on those interests.
Totally agree.
In the interests of full disclosure I am a Muslim.
Permit me to give a opinion based on Islamic eschatology – NATO and the Modern West WANTED to help the “rebels/FSA/AlQaida” to overthrow the Assad government of Syria. They REALLY WANTED to do this however it was Putin’s Russia which vetoed NATO support.
Why did the Modern West and NATO want to overthrow the Assad government? So that a (pseudo) Islamic government could take over in Syria and begin to destabilize the region so Israel could have greater opportunity to expand her borders to the Biblical ones. After this initial failure, an entity called ISIS have come into being (with covert help of NATO and overt help from Saudi Arabia) that would have had a greater capacity of allowing Israel to achieve her messianic mission.
If you follow the line that Western leaders are in the pockets of the oil rich Sunni Muslim potentates where bribery is a way of life, then you will realise that Milliband regardless of his reasons, stuck a stick through the spokes of Cameron’s gravy train.
If you think that sending our troops to war on behalf of other countries because they are able to pay leaders many millions then fine.
To understand Cameron & Obamas position and motives, then you need to look at their drivers in the Middle East.
Saudi et al do not like Bashar Al-Assad because he is a Yasidi Muslim, and in their eyes a heretic who needs to be killed. As a consequence we don’t like Al-Assad because the Sunnis have told our leaders not to.
When the Arab Spring erupted we followed the Sunni masters wishes again – we deposed Gadhafi and other leaders, and we took the opportunity to align ourselves with ISIS because the Sunni Muslim paymasters also supported ISIS.
I can clearly remember a cohort of puppet Western leaders lined up in Ireland at a G (whatever number) where an isolated Vladimir Putin who has no need of their oil money slammed their support for ISIS drawing on the incident of the Jihadi who ate the heart of dead human victim. Needless to say they have now banned him from attending.
Then ISIS announced that their intention was to take over Saudi, depose the ruling family and demolish the Kaaba at Mecca. Suddenly the Sunni world didn’t like ISIS and realised their aims were not the same as theirs.
Within hours Western foreign policy changed, to that of the Sunni world and we have the situation we are in today.
If you ever want to verify this is happening for yourself, just watch Saudi foreign policy announcements for the region, and then a few hours later the Americans following suit, and then the Europeans.
This bribery accounts for all the promotion of Islamic values in the West and the high levels of migration.
Of course this is highly covert, no one is so stupid as to make it obvious, so it’s disguised as payments for speaking engagements, foreign policy consultations etc etc.
When Tony Blair left office, the Emir of Qatar gave him £27 million, all of Blair’s money has come from Sunni Muslim oil rich states, coincidence ? I don’t think so, and I believe that David Cameron will receive similar payments when he leaves office.
We know from the World Cup and Fifa corruption that Middle Eastern countries are using bribery as a means to an end, why wouldn’t they seek to influence Western foreign policy?
Yes, Alan, like others, I’d have to question your reading of the situation in Syria.
Years ago I read interviews with Armenians in the US. On the face of it, about how well they were doing there. But what struck me was how they all eulogised Assad’s Syria. The freedom of religion, etc. All said they had to leave due to the rise of ‘freedom fighters’ and the curtailment of those freedoms.
Years later and I start reading all these stories about this tyrant Assad killing his own people. Mmmm, didn’t add up to me.
When the Yazidi fled their mountain homes they headed for the bloodthirsty tyrant’s ‘free Syria’. Not the much closer parts of ‘western friendly’ Iraq.
In a recent documentary, Syrian Christians said a prayer every night for, yes, that blood-thirsty dictator, Assad.
And, finally. Heard on the radio, a UN investigator saying they had found mass graves in towns where Assad was alleged to have used poison gas. All the bodies had their hands tied behind their backs and bullet holes in the backs of their skulls. Remind you of anybody?
Bear in mind that when we used to hear those heart-wrenching survivor tales from behind ‘freedom-fighter’ lines, the only survivors were Sunni Moslems who, even when they can, ain’t that keen on telling the truth.(ever, about anything)
Speaking of our hero, an interesting exchange starts here:
@DanHannanMEP Telling, @BBCMarkMardell, that you preface anti-euro arguments by telling us that “the Eurosceptics believe X”; but not with pro-euro ones.
Popcorn may be required.