{"id":47692,"date":"2014-09-22T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=47692"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:30:34","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:30:34","slug":"john-kerrys-rhetoric-on-isis-insults-our-intelligence-and-conceals-the-reality-of-the-situation-in-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/09\/john-kerrys-rhetoric-on-isis-insults-our-intelligence-and-conceals-the-reality-of-the-situation-in-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"John Kerry\u2019s Rhetoric on Isis Insults Our Intelligence and Conceals the Reality of the Situation in Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone who has studied Syria knows the moderate opposition doesn\u2019t exist.<\/em><\/p>\n

John Kerry is becoming more and more like William McGonagall, the \u201cworst poet in the world\u201d whose horror at the 1879 Tay Bridge railway disaster yielded the imperishable observation that it \u201cwill be remember\u2019d for a very long time\u201d.<\/p>\n

Like McGonagall\u2019s verse, Kerry\u2019s attempts to explain America\u2019s crusade against its latest evil enemy are so awful, they are addictive. Just when you think that Kerry\u2019s lame explanation to American politicians of Obama\u2019s Iraqi crusade \u2013 \u201c[Isis] has to be defeated, plain and simple, end of story\u201d \u2013 can\u2019t get any more childish, it does.<\/p>\n

For sheer infantilisme \u2013 the French word captures it best \u2013 I dare readers to wade through the following claptrap without a snort of disbelief. \u201cI want to make sure that by the time we\u2019re done here today, I\u2019ve heard from you, I know what you\u2019re thinking,\u201d quoth Kerry to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, \u201cand you\u2019ve heard from me and you know what we\u2019re thinking, what the [Obama] administration is thinking, and that you have a clear understanding of what it is that we have done so far, of how we see this and how, hopefully, we can come to see it together, what we\u2019re doing now and of where we go next.\u201d It was all very complex, he said \u2013 and will also, no doubt, \u201cbe remembered for a very long time\u201d.<\/p>\n

Most immediately shocking was the Obama fantasy world which Kerry, in his clod-hopping, schoolboy way, represented. Anyone who has studied Syria from afar, let alone those who go there, know that the fictional \u201cmoderate opposition\u201d \u2013 supposedly deserters from the Syrian government army \u2013 does not exist. Corrupted, disillusioned, murdered or simply re-defected towards Isis or some other al-Qaeda outfit, the old \u201cFree Syrian Army\u201d is now a myth as ridiculous \u2013 and as potent for the Kerrys of this world \u2013 as Mussolini\u2019s boast that the Italian army could defeat the British in North Africa. Any Syrian soldier will tell you that they are happy to fight the FSA because these warriors of the \u201cmoderate opposition\u201d always run away. It is the al-Qaeda-Nusra-Isis \u201cterrorists\u201d who fight to the death.<\/p>\n

But Kerry, like the generals of the First World War, is in an ornate chateau of his own imagination. \u201cIn Syria, the on-the-ground combat will be done by the moderate opposition, which is Syria\u2019s [sic] best counterweight to extremists like [Isis],\u201d he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. \u201cAnd we can talk more about that moderate opposition \u2013 what it looks like, who it is, what they\u2019re capable of today, what they could be doing \u2013 as we go forward.\u201d Like Generals Haig and French, Kerry dreamed on.<\/p>\n

The FSA, he said, had been fighting Isis for two years \u2013 in Idlib, Aleppo, around Damascus and Deir Ezzor \u2013 while the Syrian government, Kerry insisted, is not fighting or will not fight Isis. This is nonsense. Most of the Syrian army\u2019s 35,000 dead were killed in action against al-Qaeda and Isis. And the only other boots-on-the-ground forces confronting Isis are the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards alongside the Kurds.<\/p>\n

To exalt the \u201cmoderate opposition\u201d two days before Isis\u2019s latest victories bring them to the very border of Turkey is preposterous. And what statesman illustrates his contention that Sunnis and Shias are in alliance with America by brandishing the front page of The Wall Street Journal upon which a Kurdish leader, an Iraqi Shia minister and the Sunni foreign minister of Saudi Arabia are pictured together? Kerry praised Saudi clerics for condemning Sunni Isis without mentioning that many prominent Saudi imams spend far more time decrying America. Nor could he refer to the Pakistani clerics who have also declared Isis a heretical force \u2013 because, of course, they spend as much time accusing the Saudis of funding it.<\/p>\n

Like Cameron, Kerry uses the words of false self-confidence. The US \u201crightfully, absolutely\u201d had to support the Iraqi government\u2019s efforts, and there is \u201cabsolute clarity\u201d that America has blunted Isis. As for the \u201cIslamic State\u201d itself, it was an \u201cinsulting distortion of Islam\u201d, \u201can enemy of Islam\u201d, a \u201cmilitant cult masquerading as a religious movement\u201d of \u201ccold-blooded killers\u201d whose philosophy \u201ccomes out of the Stone Age\u201d. What is this? Once we claimed that Isis came from the Middle Ages, then the eighth century. Now it seems it came from 2,000BC.<\/p>\n

Thank heavens we have General John Allen \u2013 who not long ago was proposing \u201csecurity\u201d guarantees for the Jordan Valley which both Palestinians and Israelis turned down \u2013 to sort things out in Iraq. He\u2019s the former deputy commander of Iraq\u2019s Anbar province, a man \u2013 according to Kerry \u2013 with \u201cgreat respect\u201d in the region, with \u201cknowledge of the Sunni tribes\u201d and \u2013 a real McGonagall moment, this \u2013 \u201cof all the folks there that are part of the mix to be able to mobilise action\u201d. No wonder Kerry also told the world that, of America\u2019s 50 international anti-Isis allies, some would engage in \u201ckinetic activities\u201d. I bet they will. Though I\u2019ll also wager you won\u2019t be seeing an Arab air force joining the Franco-American air bombardment.<\/p>\n

What we can\u2019t be told by Kerry is as simple as he claims the struggle against Isis to be: that there will have to be a Western alliance \u2013 of some sort \u2013 with Iran to defeat Isis, that this will inevitably have to include an unspoken understanding with Bashar al-Assad\u2019s Syria, even with the ghastly, unthinkable, \u201csuper-terrorist\u201d Hezbollah guerrillas who \u2013 unlike Kerry\u2019s description of Isis \u2013 do not go around \u201ckilling and raping and mutilating women\u201d or selling off girls \u201cto be sex slaves to jihadis\u201d.<\/p>\n

But for a man who thought he could stitch up a Palestinian-Israeli peace in 12 months, what else can you expect? Yes, Isis is the latest monster to taunt us. But isn\u2019t there another one, not that far away, which is a threat to us all and which really has \u201cto be defeated, plain and simple\u201d. It is threatening to kill infinitely more people than Isis. It\u2019s named after an obscure African river. So where are the calls for a 50-nation alliance to destroy Ebola?<\/p>\n

___________________________<\/p>\n

Read More:<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Turkey accused of colluding with Isis following hostage release<\/a>
\nBackground: Where does Isis get its money?<\/a><\/h5>\n

Robert Fisk, based in Beirut, is a multiple award-winning journalist on the Middle East and a <\/em>correspondent for <\/em>The Independent, a UK newspaper.\u00a0 He is the author of many books on the region, including <\/em>The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 independent.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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