Kerry Says U.S. Came ‘Late’ to Syria Peace Effort

[alp227]

Source: new york times

The United States came “late” to efforts to find a political settlement to the war in Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday, as the crisis there deepened with political uncertainty in neighboring Turkey.

Mr. Kerry said that an international conference – which he and his Russian counterpart proposed in Moscow nearly a month ago – remained the best resolution for ending the fighting, but his remarks carried the implication that the Obama administration had moved too slowly in its first term to seek a negotiated political solution to a conflict that erupted more than two years ago and turned into a war.

“This is a very difficult process, which we come to late,” Mr. Kerry said after meeting at the State Department with Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski.

“We are trying to prevent the sectarian violence from dragging Syria down into a complete and total implosion where it has broken up into enclaves, and the institutions of the state have been destroyed, with God knows how many additional refugees and how many innocent people killed,” Mr. Kerry said.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/world/middleeast/kerry-syria.html

[go west young man]

1. Peace effort is a bit of a misnomer.

If we get involved it's a war effort. One that will just make the MIC richer and the US less well off for it.

[blm]

5. Clinton supported extending war to Syria when Bush was looking to invade.

I can't imagine that she showed any earnest efforts to bring about peaceful remedies during her tenure as Sec of State.

[lcordero2]

2. my ass

They shouldn't even be spending one cent of tax money or debt on this issue.

[Alamuti Lotus]

3. the working definition of "peace effort" that such people use is terrifying *nt

[Comrade Grumpy]

4. The US is in an embarrassing predicament.

The Obama administration from almost the beginning has had the position that "Assad must go," but is unwilling to dirty its hands to the degree necessary to make that happen. They're caught between rhetoric and reality.

They're smart enough to realize what a gigantic clusterfuck this is, but that it would probably require direct US military intervention to drive Assad from power. Wanna war-game those scenarios? Yee-haw! And even assuming the evil dictator was banished from the scene, then what?