Bashar al Assad, U.S. ally

Though I haven't got the energy or brains to parse it, my sense is that the United States has sold out to its former arch-villain, Syrian president Bashar al Assad and has decided to stand aside as so-called rebels and civilians are massacred in Aleppo, Syria's second largest city. The slaughter may rank historically with the 1994 genocide once witnessed in Rwanda. Everyone seems to look back in anguish at that slaughter, but the anguish is for the dead and not, as in Aleppo, for those still, somehow, living.

Does the U.S. hope to escape a charge of complicity? Of course it does. But can it? I seriously doubt it. And having Bashar al Assad as an ally is ... unspeakable. Out-of-hand executions, gas attacks, no mercy.

Rebels groups have been supported by the United States, Turkey and Gulf monarchies, but the support they have enjoyed has fallen far short of the direct military backing given to Assad by Russia and Iran. [Reuters]

The US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, told the security council that the Syrian government, along with Russia and Iran, bore responsibility for the deaths of civilians in Aleppo. She accused the three states of putting a “noose” around civilians in the city, asking: “Are you incapable of shame? … Is there no execution of a child that gets under your skin? Is there literally nothing that shames you?” [The Guardian]

 Of course knicker-twisting does little or nothing. And a lack of principles deflates still further a nation awaiting the inauguration od Donald Trump as president.

Before the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, there were numerous assessments/projections that suggested that an end-game scenario needed to be formulated if the Middle Eastern arena were not to fall prey to sectarian in-fighting. Well, in Iraq and elsewhere, there still is no end-game scenario and the infighting, as promised, flourishes.

I can't pretend to know the answer or even AN answer. But I do have a strong sense that with friends like Bashar al Assad -- and possibly Donald Trump -- who needs enemies?