ICH | In the Milwaukee debate, Hillary Clinton took pride in her role in a recent UN Security Council resolution on a Syrian ceasefire:
But I would add this. You know, the Security Council finally got around to adopting a resolution. At the core of that resolution is an agreement I negotiated in June of 2012 in Geneva, which set forth a cease-fire and moving toward a political resolution, trying to bring the parties at stake in Syria together.
This is the kind of compulsive misrepresentation that makes Clinton
unfit to be President. Clinton's role in Syria has been to help
instigate and prolong the Syrian bloodbath, not to bring it to a close.
In 2012, Clinton was the obstacle, not the solution, to a ceasefire
being negotiated by UN Special Envoy Kofi Annan. It was US
intransigence - Clinton's intransigence - that led to the failure of
Annan's peace efforts in the spring of 2012, a point well known among
diplomats. Despite Clinton's insinuation in the Milwaukee debate, there
was (of course) no 2012 ceasefire, only escalating carnage. Clinton
bears heavy responsibility for that carnage, which has by now displaced
more than 10 million Syrians and left more than 250,000 dead.
As every knowledgeable observer understands, the Syrian War is not
mostly about Bashar al-Assad, or even about Syria itself. It is mostly
a proxy war, about Iran. And the bloodbath is doubly tragic and
misguided for that reason.
Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the leading Sunni powers in the Middle East,
view Iran, the leading Shia power, as a regional rival for power and
influence. Right-wing Israelis view Iran as an implacable foe that
controls Hezbollah, a Shi'a militant group operating in Lebanon, a
border state of Israel. Thus, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel have all
clamored to remove Iran's influence in Syria.
This idea is incredibly naïve. Iran has been around as a regional power
for a long time--in fact, for about 2,700 years. And Shia Islam is not
going away. There is no way, and no reason, to "defeat" Iran. The
regional powers need to forge a geopolitical equilibrium that
recognizes the mutual and balancing roles of the Gulf Arabs, Turkey,
and Iran. And Israeli right-wingers are naïve, and deeply ignorant of
history, to regard Iran as their implacable foe, especially when that
mistaken view pushes Israel to side with Sunni jihadists.
Yet Clinton did not pursue that route. Instead she joined Saudi Arabia,
Turkey, and right-wing Israelis to try to isolate, even defeat, Iran.
In 2010, she supported secret negotiations between Israel and Syria to attempt to wrest Syria from Iran's influence. Those talks failed. Then the CIA and Clinton pressed successfully for Plan B: to overthrow Assad.
When the unrest of the Arab Spring broke out in early 2011, the CIA and
the anti-Iran front of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey saw an
opportunity to topple Assad quickly and thereby to gain a geopolitical
victory. Clinton became the leading proponent of the CIA-led effort at
Syrian regime change.
