A heart-sickening epitaph for Obama
After the end of Obama's presidency, there may be no monument left behind by him, but his work will be seen in the ruins of Aleppo
John Podhoretz and Noah C. Rothman, in the Nov. 14 issue of the Commentary magazine recalled the epitaph of Christopher Wren in St. Paul cathedral. It concludes with the Latin phrase Si monumentum requiris, circumspice, "If his monument you seek, look around." Wren had rebuilt the cathedral after the London Fire. The younger generation will remember these words from the "Batman v. Superman" film.
Aleppo, the queen of cities in the Arab and the Ottoman periods, a pearl of Umayyad architecture has now had more devastation than a city can endure. It has been bombed, burned and demolished. As a matter of fact, it is not only Aleppo suffering but all of Syria. In the last five-and-a-half-year period we witnessed three phases of the U.S. strategy – or lack thereof – in Syria.
It all started with the Arab Spring, which is still an enigma in itself, as to who kindled it, who fanned it, who let it spread so fast to the whole region where even the strongest sand storms move like a slow motion movie. (Do you buy the social media theory for escalation of this forest fire where you do not have a proper internet connection most of the time?)
After the rout in Libya, the U.S. had this strange taste in its mouth about the anti-regime forces: It started to impose its own criteria on the anti-tyranny groups where the Arab Spring has reached. On top of the list was the strength of the secular values those groups should have. Hillary Clinton had introduced the discrimination between the "good opposition forces" and "bad opposition powers" into the game and thus started her drama in Libya that ended in oblivion last month. Actually it was Obama, who, considering himself as an expert on Islamic issues and groups, took the reins in his own hands after the murder of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens in Benghazi in 2012. Syria was the first testing ground of his "moderate opposition" and "no-boots-ground" theories. The U.S. dragged its feet for so long and so hard that neither Turkey nor the Arab neighbors of Syria found an American ear willing to listen to their worries. Finally, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing People's Protection Units (YPG), the Syrian offshoots of Turkey's PKK, were deemed fitting and became the U.S.'s partners. However, U.S. President Barack Obama was not yet convinced if Syria's Bashar Assad should stay or go. When he uttered the word, it was such a weak whisper that still even with U.S. boots on the ground, the PYD-YPG does not know if they should oppose the Assad forces or cooperate with them. Turkey's proposal for a "no-fly zone" and its train-and-equip program in Syria fell on deaf U.S. ears and their 70-odd coalition members, 5 million Syrians had to leave their country with 7 million displaced within Syria.
So the Assad forces and its ally, Russia, with their scorch-the-earth policy, practically erased Aleppo from the face of the earth. What is remaining now is about to fall any day. Thousands of babies have been killed and some 300,000 people are in the imminent danger of total annihilation by Russians and the Baath regime.
After the end of Obama's presidency, there may be no monument left behind by him, but his work will be seen in the ruins of Aleppo. And on his gravestone will be Obama's name. What a sad epitaph for a man who had promised eight years ago that the U.S. would not be the gendarmerie of the world.
Aleppo, the queen of cities in the Arab and the Ottoman periods, a pearl of Umayyad architecture has now had more devastation than a city can endure. It has been bombed, burned and demolished. As a matter of fact, it is not only Aleppo suffering but all of Syria. In the last five-and-a-half-year period we witnessed three phases of the U.S. strategy – or lack thereof – in Syria.
It all started with the Arab Spring, which is still an enigma in itself, as to who kindled it, who fanned it, who let it spread so fast to the whole region where even the strongest sand storms move like a slow motion movie. (Do you buy the social media theory for escalation of this forest fire where you do not have a proper internet connection most of the time?)
After the rout in Libya, the U.S. had this strange taste in its mouth about the anti-regime forces: It started to impose its own criteria on the anti-tyranny groups where the Arab Spring has reached. On top of the list was the strength of the secular values those groups should have. Hillary Clinton had introduced the discrimination between the "good opposition forces" and "bad opposition powers" into the game and thus started her drama in Libya that ended in oblivion last month. Actually it was Obama, who, considering himself as an expert on Islamic issues and groups, took the reins in his own hands after the murder of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens in Benghazi in 2012. Syria was the first testing ground of his "moderate opposition" and "no-boots-ground" theories. The U.S. dragged its feet for so long and so hard that neither Turkey nor the Arab neighbors of Syria found an American ear willing to listen to their worries. Finally, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing People's Protection Units (YPG), the Syrian offshoots of Turkey's PKK, were deemed fitting and became the U.S.'s partners. However, U.S. President Barack Obama was not yet convinced if Syria's Bashar Assad should stay or go. When he uttered the word, it was such a weak whisper that still even with U.S. boots on the ground, the PYD-YPG does not know if they should oppose the Assad forces or cooperate with them. Turkey's proposal for a "no-fly zone" and its train-and-equip program in Syria fell on deaf U.S. ears and their 70-odd coalition members, 5 million Syrians had to leave their country with 7 million displaced within Syria.
So the Assad forces and its ally, Russia, with their scorch-the-earth policy, practically erased Aleppo from the face of the earth. What is remaining now is about to fall any day. Thousands of babies have been killed and some 300,000 people are in the imminent danger of total annihilation by Russians and the Baath regime.
After the end of Obama's presidency, there may be no monument left behind by him, but his work will be seen in the ruins of Aleppo. And on his gravestone will be Obama's name. What a sad epitaph for a man who had promised eight years ago that the U.S. would not be the gendarmerie of the world.
Last Update: December 05, 2016 02:10