The Washington game is first to force
elected President Assad out, at the same time it claims it wants to
destroy ISIL (or IS or ISIS or DAESH depending on your choice of the
many names). Russia’s position is clear: The only organized force in
Syria today capable of destroying terrorist Salafists, all terrorist
Salafists, is Bashar al Assad’s government and the Syrian National Army
and intelligence services that remain loyal to him.
The Obama speech talks of the US support
for “moderate” opposition rebels. Yet as far back as April 2013, when
ISIS was called Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria, and run now by Egyptian
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the US-trained lieutenant of the late Osama bin
Laden, the New York Times, quoting numerous US officials, documented
that virtually all of the rebel fighters in Syria are hardline Islamic
terrorists.
There are no “moderate” oppositionists fighting today. The so-called
“moderate” Free Syrian Army has also signed a non-aggression pact with
ISIS
since 2014.
There is a Russian joke currently making the rounds in Moscow. Russia’s
Putin arrives back in the Kremlin after his September New York meeting
with President Obama on Syria and other topics. A trusted aide asks how
the talk with Obama went. Putin tells his aide that, in a bid to lower
the temperature and calm the nerves before turning to grave topics like
the wars in Syria and Ukraine, the Russian president proposed they first
sit down to a game of chess. Putin tells his aide what it’s like
playing chess with Obama. “It’s like playing with a pigeon. First it
knocks over all the pieces, then it shits on the board and finally
struts around like it won.”
