Reality begins to bite Kerry on his Russian-Syrian policy

Washington Examiner:
Secretary of State John Kerry warned Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday that the U.S. is prepared to cut off all engagement with Russia on Syria unless Russia immediately stops its assault on Aleppo.

"[Kerry] stressed that the burden remains on Russia to stop this assault and allow humanitarian access to Aleppo and other areas in need," according to spokesman John Kirby in his readout of the morning phone call. "He informed the Foreign Minister that the United States is making preparations to suspend U.S.-Russia bilateral engagement on Syria – including on the establishment of the Joint Implementation Center – unless Russia takes immediate steps to end the assault on Aleppo and restore the cessation of hostilities."

The new policy comes two days after Secretary of State John Kerry declared it would be "diplomatic malpractice" not to continue talks. Kerry has been trying to negotiate a peaceful end to the Syrian civil war, most recently brokering a ceasefire agreement that was supposed to allow humanitarian aid to flow into Aleppo, a major city held in part by U.S.-backed rebels.
...
Kerry tends to be stubborn in accepting reality when he wants to negotiate.  That could be why he has done such bad deals with Iran and Russia.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more