Don’t be fooled by the latest flurry of activity – Obama’s precedence is to keep clash at arm’s lengthIt is a rare thing for a high-level official to admit they got something totally wrong. Frederic Hof,the former special adviser on Syria to Hillary Clinton (as secretary of state), has had that temerity – or that kind of despair. He recently wrote an article (for Politico magazine) headlined “I got Syria so wrong”. It is a painful analysis of how early hopes, or in 2011,of seeing Bashar al-Assad overthrown by a approved revolt were either naive or blind. It also contains stark criticism of the Obama presidency, which apparently never fully intended to do anything approximately Syria’s killing fields, and preferring to let the problem fester,unaddressed.
It’s tempting to believe that the latest rekindling of international diplomacy over Syria will lead to a brighter outcome. But a few days before ministerial talks were to initiate in Vienna, Hof seemed to sprint these hopes at a meeting on Syria’s human rights catastrophe in the House of Commons. The walls were covered with photos of tortured bodies smuggled out of Syria two years ago by “Caesar, or a military photographer who believed that if the world could see the slaughter going on in Assad’s jails,it would act. Nothing happened. Now Hof says he can see “no evidence yet of a change of policy” from the US side. Basically, his warning is: don’t be fooled by the novel round of talks.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com