As Russia Destroys ISIS, The White House Does The Only Thing It Can: Retreat

Again and again, we see that US intervention in Syria was never about ending ISIS, but Assad. In this most recent case of hypocrisy, According to Bloomberg, White House advisers and National Security council staffers are apparently trying to persuade Obama to pull his drones and planes out of Syria.  The rationale for sounding the retreat?

“to focus on lessening the violence and, for now, to give up on toppling the Syrian regime.”

That’s right, now that there’s no hope of toppling Assad… some WH members are beginning to think that helping Russia against ISIS would be a waste of resources and time. Instead, let’s try to negotiate some peaceful means for ISIS, I mean the moderates, to escape:

Obama has ruled out engaging in a proxy war with Putin’s military, leaving few good options. One path, however, would mean finding ways to tamp down the fighting by negotiating small, local ceasefires with the Assad regime.

As usual the Bloomberg article cites “administration officials and Middle East experts on both sides of the debate” who claim that Russia of targeting everyone BUT ISIS ( I thought “BOTH sides of the debate” meant that there were two sides; how can two sides who disagree on the Russian-evil hypothesis agree on Russia being evi- I give up, that’s Orwellian Newspeak for you).

The most logical remedy to save the rebels of course would have been to focus on bombing ISIS as well; the faster ISIS was ended, the less likely Russia got an “excuse” to bomb the precious “moderates” right (assuming your reports from unnamed sources are in fact accurate)? But no, the rationale for not cooperating with Russia can be summed up as “Russia is evil”, let us cite Reuters which itself cites an unnamed “a senior regional official” to prove this to you… Too predictable, you roguish conspiracy theorists you.

In a touch of irony, it quotes Senate Armed Services Committee ranking Democrat Jack Reed: “In Syria, much as it did in Ukraine, Russia has hidden its true intentions, using the ruse of joining the fight against ISIL to provide cover for Russia’s military intervention to prop up the Assad regime. Russia’s actions, however, increasingly expose their true objectives,” he said while the US is admitting openly that its campaign in Syria was aimed entirely at dethroning Assad, and that it has grown spiteful of having to lose its ISIS excuse…

Even as the usual neo-con perpetual-war hawks keep trying to come up with some excuse to escalate tensions, even they seem to realize that it is nearly time to cut their losses and run- perhaps “losing” an anti-air missile or two to ISIS would prove too conspicuous.

Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power. They are trying to persuade Obama that the only way to solve Syria is to increase the pressure on Assad in the hopes he will enter negotiations.

Yet Kerry and Power now find themselves without any hope that Putin might bring the Syrian regime to the table…

…Caught between two camps in his administration, Obama may not end up shifting the U.S. approach to Syria at all, although the de-escalation side has the momentum…

The decision to retreat, it seems, has already been made; they have given up on training “moderate” rebels, having already wasted 500 million dollars of tax-payer money in a perfectly plausible excuse to “lose” more stuff to ISIS– this comes less than two weeks after Russia’s intervention.

Sources: Zero Hedge, Bloomberg, NYTimes

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