President Obama, Great Statesman, Pulls off Two Diplomatic Feats; Syria and Iran

President Obama is such a great statesman and world leader, with an unerring instinct for diplomacy. First he managed, without firing a shot, to get Assad and Putin to the negotiating table, and to prompt a UN Security Council resolution to coerce Assad to give up all his chemical weapons. 

The resolution was passed on Thursday, having been put together by the five permanent members of the Security Council; the US, Britain, France, Russia and China. The ten non-permanent members (Australia, Azerbaidjan, Argentine, South Korea, Morocco, Luxemborg, Togo, Rwanda, Guatamela and Pakistan) signed on Friday. Action to investigate Assad’s arsenal of chemical weapons begins on Tuesday. The deal was put together in a couple of weeks, pointing to how desperate everybody was for some kind of solution to Assad’s use of sarin gas; Russia and China included. Putin certainly didn’t know how to back down from his obdurate position, caught between a rock and hard place. 

But no leaders had the gutzpah to step out, especially in the face of Putin’s continued veto and western voters’ apathy about Syrians being slaughtered by Assad’s regime and the threat of chemical weapons usage becoming an accepted norm. 

No leader that is, except for Barack Obama. For him, what Assad did wasn’t acceptable. So he acted, despite massive resistance at home and no support from the international community. What a great man. He didn’t just act, he acted brilliantly and succeeded. International coup – as in triumph, feat, accomplishment, achievement, scoop, master stroke, stroke of genius – number one.

Then yesterday he made a phone call to President Rouhani who was on his way to the airport. Rouhani had refused a meeting with Obama and the opportunity to shake hands. But Obama called him anyway. And Rouhani took the call. For the first time in thirty-four years the US and Iranian leaders spoke, both against the will of hardliners at home. It gave Rouhani what he needed to take back to his electorate who voted him in because he’s a moderate and they want an end to sanctions and bad relations with the US. 

Obama pulled off a second international coup. And let's not forget that he did it whilst also dealing with his own hardliners at home, a disintegrating Congress and the threat of a government shutdown. 

He doesn’t have as much support as he deserves at home. He deserves to be celebrated and lauded. The saddest and most aggravating aspect of his term in office is that prejudices that have nothing to do with politics still run deep in the US and prevent too many from seeing the reality of who he is and what he’s achieving. 

But some see it. And history will judge him as one of the greatest ever US presidents and world leaders. Because that’s what he is.

US Congress Weighs the Pros and Cons of Military Intervention in Syria

Syrians on both sides of the civil war have weighed in on the debate in Congress about whether to support President Obama’s call for a limited military strike. The rebels and Bashar al-Assad supporters are deluging members of Congress with various media pleading their case. Supporters continue to claim that Assad forces didn’t use the sarin gas and emphasise the danger of the US effectively supporting Al Qaeda.

Rebels insist the gas was used by Assad forces, and continue to plead for assistance against a tyrant who reigns undemocratically and massacres his own people with impunity. 

The problem for the West is that there isn’t enough balanced information about who makes up the rebel forces. There’s a lot of media coverage now on those rebels who torture and murder prisoners in the most horrific ways, which has created an idea that all the rebels are vicious thugs who don’t deserve any assistance at all from the West. Either that or they're completely dominated now by Al Qaeda.

Whatever the truth is, they've been fighting a losing battle from the start in their attempts to convince the West that they need help. A lot of Westerners believe the Middle East is an uncivilised region, lagging hundreds of years behind the West. They quote treatment of women, the enormous wealth in the hands of the few, and undemocratic governments.

Memories are so short when it’s convenient. Has everybody forgotten that Egypt had the world’s first ever peaceful revolution? And a closer look at the West reveals shocking gender inequalities, increasing seemingly senseless violence, phenomenal wealth in the hands of the few and, in the US, a US Congress that may have been elected but is, if not ruled, at least highly influenced by the military industrial complex. Racism, religious intolerance, religious fundamentalism and white collar crime are rampant as is child pornography. 

People are sinking below the poverty line and those who could help turn their heads away. In fact, in the West that event is so common that we even have a cliché for it. When times are difficult you find out who your friends are.  

It’s not such a civilized picture after all. And yet we cling to the idea that we’re ahead somehow of the Middle East. Well, the reality is we may be in some ways, but in others it’s the same play, just different props and costumes and a different stage. And truth is, when we compare the two, we take the best of the West and the worst of the Middle East. 

So in reality none of that has anything to do with whether Syrian rebels should get Western assistance or not.  

International relationships don't provide much help either. They're so complicated; and we don’t know the half of it; information is probably more often than not fed to the public on a need to know basis, filtered through a radically biased media, either deliberately distorted or simply misinterpreted. 

The permutations of what could happen as a result of different actions by different countries are countless. Imagine this: if President Obama got support from Congress to go ahead with a limited military strike against Assad for using chemic weapons on his own people, it would, oddly put the US in Al Qaeda’s good books, which maybe wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Particularly since Putin’s refusal to back the intervention would put Russia in Al Qaeda’s bad books.  Maybe then Al Qaeda would turn their attention away from the US and focus it on Russia. Which would put Putin out of power.

It's a stretch, I know. But trying to come up with a perfectly sensible and unassailable social or political rationale for intervention or not is pretty much impossible. So in the end it's down to humanity and not setting a very dangerous precedent by letting a maniac massacre his people with impunity and play with chemical weapons and get away with it. And those two arguments are pretty unassailable, I think, no matter which way you look at them.  

I wish there was another way, though. But is it possible to stop a violent man with peaceful means?

Edward Snowden - Playing Superman in a World He Doesn't Fully Comprehend

Truth is sometimes hard to find. Wikileaks lately published information, courtesy Edward Snowden, about the US spying on the EU. Nobody has reported the whole context or extent of that spying, or what information was gathered, or to what end. There are plenty of dramatic headlines but very few specifics. Also absent is information supplied by human rights activists from other countries about the spying their governments indulge in. 

So it looks as if the US is the only big bad wolf in the world. And that’s the real story. Which is a lot more dramatic than a scenario where EU, African and Latin American countries are all spying on each other and China and Russia are spying on everybody. 

Does it justify what the US has done? I have no idea, because I don’t know enough about what they’ve done and what is generally accepted at those levels in all countries. John Kerry, when asked to comment on allegations that the US has spied on the EU, refused to comment specifically until he had studied all the evidence, which was refreshing to hear. But he did say “every country in the world that is engaged in international affairs of national security undertakes lots of activities to protect its national security.” 

As for Edward Snowden, he continues to vilify the US, yet seeks asylum in Russia and China, amongst other countries. It’s clear what China’s position is. Vladimir Putin stayed out of the fray for a while, but he’s recently said that he’ll grant asylum if Snowden stops publishing damaging information about “our American partners”. Which he acknowledged would never happen as Snowden sees himself as a human rights activist.

Ecuador has backed right off. President Correa granted Snowden temporary travel documents to get out of Hong Kong and fly to Russia. He initially said Ecuador would decide the asylum request on its own merits and make a decision independent of foreign influence. Then he said that Snowden had to be in the country to start the process and there were no guarantees as to the outcome. He followed that up with an acknowledgment that he’d spoken to Joe Biden who was very polite and respectful. I’d love to have been listening in on that conversation. Perhaps Mr. Biden reminded him of how dependent Ecuador is on US trade.

Whatever was said, Correa’s latest statement was an admission that he acted rashly in granting those temporary travel documents. And he now says that to even process the asylum request could take months.

The net seems to be closing in on Snowden. He appears to be well under Assange’s wing now and speaks about how his life is in danger, just as Assange always has. I always thought there was a tinge of paranoia in that. 

Assange had a lot of connections and power but even he is mostly forgotten now. And what did he achieve? Meanwhile, those assault charges in Iceland still hang over his head. He says they were trumped up and it was all a conspiracy plot to get him back to the US. Maybe he’s right, but it doesn’t totally ring true. Men who did it always say they didn’t. He speaks about being a hero but he isn’t really. He’s just a sad man who never gets enough sun who’s on the run.

Snowden has nobody. He’s in the limelight now and a lot of the world thinks of him as a hero but his actions probably won’t lead to any change either. And much of the world isn’t convinced that what he did was heroic. 

It’s hard not to have compassion for him, though. The leaders of the countries he’s turned to who happily betray their own people don’t give a damn about him or about truth. At heart he believes he’s freeing the world but he isn’t really. This isn’t about the pursuit of truth or impacting on infringement of human rights. If it was, Snowden would have spoken out loudly against Russia and China. But he happily turned a blind eye to their behaviour - because he thought they might be useful to him, I guess. 

So it’s about the pursuit of half the truth. Which is no truth at all and speaks more of an agenda than anything else. I believe this is really about a young man with a childishly naïve understanding of international relationships playing Superman. Not fully comprehending that in the real world he’s entered, his cloak, more a fantasy for him than an absolute reality, can’t protect him.

Further reading: 

New York Times: Snowden applies for asylum in Russia

Reuters: Snowden threatens new US leaks; asks numerous countries for asylum

CBS News: Former NSA, CIA director: "the USA does conduct espionage"

The Sad Truth about Edward Snowden - Nobody Really Wants Him

Edward Snowden continues to elude capture as a story unveils that has all the makings of a fascinating political thriller/personal drama. A lot of his support comes from people who believe he’s a hero and that he sacrificed himself for a worthy cause. Others, myself included, are a little more sceptical, mostly because of the countries he turned to for asylum. To proclaim yourself an activist for human rights – in this case privacy and freedom of speech – and then ask help from countries whose governments are notorious for violating those rights doesn’t make sense.

Snowden must be very naïve if he believes these countries would want to harbour an activist who has shown himself willing to break laws and expose and betray his own country. And he's downright deluded if he thinks they care more about human rights than about international relationships. They’ve already proved that they don’t. They’ll use him if they can and spit him out if they can’t.

Who is Edward Snowden, anyway? What’s his background? There’s not much information to be found about him. I guess he values his privacy. He doesn’t mind exposing a government but he doesn’t want anybody to expose him. He’s possibly also a little paranoid. NBC News reported that he covers himself and his laptop with a red hood when entering his passwords. I can’t say whether that information is true or not.

According to The Guardian, he comes from a middle class family. He was born in 1983 in Wilmington, N.C., his father is a former Coast Guard Officer and his mother is the chief deputy clerk for administration and information technology at Baltimore federal court. He has one sister, an attorney, who is older than him. He didn’t complete high school, but he’s mum on why. He studied at a community college and got a general equivalency degree. The Guardian learned that a student with his name and date of birth took classes at the Anne Arundel Community College from 1999 to 2001 and in 2004 and 2005.

In 2004 he was recruited into the Army Reserves special forces for a 14 week training course which he didn’t complete. Nor did he get any awards. Snowden told The Guardian he broke both his legs in an accident and that’s why he was discharged. 

He then worked as a security guard with the NSA, from where he moved onto doing IT for the CIA. He worked there from 2007-2009, when he left to work for private contractors. He had been working for Booz Allen for about 3 months when he let the cat out the bag. He had been making about $200 000 a year. By self admission he has been a spy almost all his life. Which doesn’t quite fit with the facts. It’s very Hollywood, though. 

Snowden told the Guardian that he was diagnosed with epilepsy last year and used that as his excuse to take leave from Booz Allen. He didn’t tell his girlfriend or his family where he was going or what he was going to do. Nor did he apparently stop to think about how his actions might impact on them. I guess big noble causes require people to be sacrificed, whether they want it or not.

What I wonder is, why did he leave school? No kid does that unless there’s provocation. And the accident with 2 broken legs? What happened there? Snowden did say that he wanted to go to Iraq to protect the Iraqi people but got disillusioned when he realized the special services were more about killing Arabs. 

Which is very understandable and commendable. But what did that do to him, I wonder? As for his home life, how successful was his older sister and what was his relationship with her and with his parents? And I’d be very interested to know when he first started communicating with Julian Assange, or at the least how much he was influenced by that man’s PR. I have the sense that, like poor Bradley Manning, who had lousy self esteem and was lonely and easy prey, Snowden is now just so much fodder for Assange and his personal quest to stay in the spotlight no matter what the cost to anybody.