We are ganging up on John Kerry this morning. Here’s the thing–Kerry has a number of problems, but the most basic is that he isn’t very bright. He doesn’t have a high enough IQ for difficult work. As a senator, he hid his incapacity by ignoring virtually all of his job duties. As Secretary of State, his ineptitude–one might say shocking ineptitude, if this were not the Obama administration–is being exposed.
Earlier today in Jakarta, having finished bloviating about global warming, Kerry complained that Syria’s Bashar Assad has been “stonewalling” in the Geneva peace talks:
Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday accused Syrian President Bashar Assad of stonewalling in peace talks and called on Russia to push its ally to negotiate with opposition leaders.
“Right now, Bashar Assad has not engaged in the discussions along the promised and required standard that both Russia spoke up for and the regime spoke up for,” Kerry said during a press conference in Jakarta.
Of course he is stonewalling, you fool! He is winning.
He said the Syrian leader’s team “refused to open up one moment of discussion” of a transitional government to replace Assad’s regime. “It is very clear that Bashar Assad is trying to win this on the battlefield instead of coming to the negotiating table in good faith,” Kerry added.
Really? That’s very clear, is it? Good Lord, what a chump! Remember when Kerry promised that any military effort against Assad would be “incredibly small”? That struck fear into Assad’s heart, no doubt; and even that “incredibly small” possibility was taken off the board when Kerry started mumbling out loud about chemical weapons. Why would Assad do anything other than “try to win on the battlefield,” let alone agree to a “transitional government to replace [his] regime”? Earth to Kerry: that’s what you do when you’re losing on the battlefield.
Russia has told the U.S. it was committed to helping create a transitional government, Kerry said, but has not delivered “the kind of effort to create the kind of dynamic by which that could be achieved.”
Peace talks last week in Geneva ended with no progress toward breaking the impasse in the nearly 3-year-old conflict in Syria.
So Putin lied! Another shocker. Apparently he wasn’t impressed by that “reset” button. Paul told us everything we need to know about the failure of the Geneva talks yesterday:
The farcical Syrian peace talks have apparently come to an end. The talks were never going to produce peace unless Russia pressured Assad into giving up or sharing power. And Russia was never going to pressure Assad into giving up or sharing power because he is Russia’s ally and is winning the civil war. Indeed, Russia recently blocked a U.N. resolution to bring aid to desperate Syrian civilians.
The Obama administration is miffed, once again, at reality. A senior official whined that Russia “can’t have it both ways” — it can’t say it wants peace and a happy Olympics while it is “part and parcel of supporting this regime as it kills people in the most brutal way.”
Actually, though, Russia is having it both ways, and can have it as many ways as it wants as long as the hapless Obama administration is in the picture.
I am starting to understand why so many liberals are isolationists. If your foreign policy is going to be this bad, isolationism might well be a better alternative: a variant on the medical injunction, “First, do no harm.”
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.