Just before Russian President Vladimir Putin opened the G20 summit in St. Petersburg, he blasted the Obama administration on Wednesday for what he termed its propaganda on military action against Syria. “We talk with these people,” he said about Secretary of State John Kerry, the administration’s chief political spokesperson making the case for war. “We assume that they are decent. But he lies. And he knows that he lies. That’s pathetic.”
Putin has always been a bare-knuckles political brawler with a penchant for saying politically incorrect things about enemies — he once said of Islamist terrorists in Chechnya, for example, “If you are willing to become a radical Islamist and be circumcised, I invite you to Moscow. I will recommend that they perform the operation so that nothing can sprout there again.” Now, however, he’s directly challenging the authority of the United States – and he’s winning. President Obama has always wanted to be perceived as a global leader. Instead, it’s his chief international rival, quasi-dictator Putin, who has seized the reins.
Obama has been left to complain. “Do I hold out hope that Mr. Putin may change his position on some of these issues?” Obama asked in Sweden on Wednesday. “I’m always hopeful, and I will continue to engage him.” Just a few weeks ago, Obama mocked Putin’s posture during their meetings, likening it to a “bored kid in the back of the classroom.”
But it is Obama being schooled. Putin has stated that he would be open to action against Syria if shown proof that Assad ordered the chemical attack there. But on Wednesday, he said of John Kerry, “Of course he lied. And that’s not pretty.”
The G20 summit has been set not around national security issues, but on tax issues and economic recovery. Nonetheless, it will be Putin setting the agenda on his home turf, especially given that the visiting team is led by a floundering quarterback.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).
U.S. to release information about Syria’s chemical weapons use
(CNN) — The Obama administration will release declassified intelligence Friday backing up a government assessment that the Syrian regime was responsible for a chemical weapons attack, a senior administration official said.
[U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s response to the vote was more diplomatic.
The United States respects the results, he told journalists in Manila, the Philippines. “Every nation has a responsibility to make their own decisions.”
The United States will continue to consult with the British government and still hope for “international collaboration.”
“Our approach is to continue to find an international coalition that will act together,” he said .]
This comes amid talk among major powers of a military response against the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The administration has said that the information would be made public by the end of the week.
But diplomatic and political developments this week raised the chances of the United States going it alone in a military intervention.
A U.N. Security Council meeting on Syria ended in deadlock, and in the U.S. Congress, doubts about military intervention are making the rounds.
And the United States’ closest ally, Great Britain, backed out of a possible coalition when its lawmakers voted down a proposal on military intervention.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said it is important for the United Kingdom to have a “robust response to the use of chemical weapons, and there are a series of things that (Britain) will continue to do.”British involvement in a military action “won’t be happening,” he said.
But diplomacy is continuing. Speaking in televised comments aired Friday, Cameron said he expects to speak to President Obama over the “next day or so.”
On Friday afternoon, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon intends to consult with countries at the United Nations on developments in Syria and is scheduled to meet with permanent members of the U.N. Security Council at noon Friday.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to speak about Syria at the State Department on Friday at 12:30 p.m. ET.
Iran: U.S. military action in Syria would spark ‘disaster’
Alone or together?
After the British vote, a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told CNN that going it alone was a real prospect.
“We care what they think. We value the process. But we’re going to make the decision we need to make,” the official said.
Former President George W. Bush said Obama’s “got a tough choice to make.”
“I was not a fan of Mr. Assad. He’s an ally of Iran, he’s made mischief,” he told Fox News on Friday. “If he (Obama) decides to use the military, he’s got the greatest military in the world backing him up.”
In a statement released Friday, former President Jimmy Carter said “a punitive military response without a U.N. Security Council mandate or broad support from NATO and the Arab League would be illegal under international law and unlikely to alter the course of the war.”
A former director of the CIA says he believes Obama would face off with al-Assad alone.
“I can’t conceive he would back down from a very serious course of action,” retired Gen. Michael Hayden told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
[…]
Chemical weapons in Syria: How did we get here?
The government of France supports military intervention, if evidence incriminates the government of using poison gas against civilians.
But on Friday, President Francois Hollande told French newspaper Le Monde that intervention should be limited and not include al-Assad’s overthrow.
Public opinion
Skeptics of military action have pointed at the decision to use force in Iraq, where the United States government under Bush marched to war based on a thin claim that former dictator Saddam Hussein was harboring weapons of mass destruction.
Opponents are conjuring up a possible repeat of that scenario in Syria, though the intelligence being gathered on the use of WMDs in Syria may be more sound.
Half of all Americans say they oppose possible U.S. military action against Syria, according to an NBC News survey released Friday.
Nearly eight in 10 of those questioned say Obama should be required to get congressional approval before launching any military attack against al-Assad’s forces
The poll, conducted Wednesday and Thursday, indicates that 50% of the public says the United States should not take military action against Damascus in response to the Syrian government’s alleged use of chemical weapons against its own citizens, with 42% saying military action is appropriate.
But the survey suggests that if any military action is confined to air strikes using cruise missiles, support rises. Fifty percent of a smaller sample asked that question say they support such an attack, with 44% opposing a cruise missile attack meant to destroy military units and infrastructure that have been used to carry out chemical attacks.
“Only 25% of the American people support military action in Syria,” former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson told CNN’s Piers Morgan on Thursday.
Convincing evidence
To shake off the specter of the Iraq war, the public needs convincing that chemical weapons were used and that al-Assad’s regime was behind it.
“You have to have almost incontrovertible proof,” Richardson told CNN’s Piers Morgan on Thursday.
It’s there, said Arizona Sen. John McCain, and will be visible soon. He thinks that comparisons to Iraq are overblown and that doubts are unfounded.
“Come on. Does anybody really believe that those aren’t chemical weapons — those bodies of those children stacked up?” the Republican senator asked Morgan.
Al-Assad’s government has claimed that jihadists fighting with the opposition carried out the chemical weapons attacks on August 21 to turn global sentiments against it.
Read UK intelligence on chemical weapons
McCain doesn’t buy it.
“The rebels don’t have those weapons,” he said.
The president also needs to assure Congress that a possible intervention would not get out of hand, said Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.
“The action has to have a very limited purpose, and the purpose is to deter future use of chemical weapons,” he said.
Why Russia, Iran and China are standing by al-Assad
Haunted by Iraq
The parliamentarians in London shot down the proposal in spite of intelligence allegedly incriminating the Assad government.
Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee has concluded it was “highly likely” that Syrian government forces used poison gas outside Damascus last week in an attack that killed at least 350 people, according to a summary of the committee’s findings released Thursday.
A yes vote would not have sent the UK straight into a deployment.
Cameron had said his government would not act without first hearing from the U.N. inspectors and giving Parliament another chance to vote on military action. But his opposition seemed to be reminded of the Iraq war.
Opinion: For the U.S., Syria is a problem from hell
“I think today the House of Commons spoke for the British people who said they didn’t want a rush to war, and I was determined we learned the lessons of Iraq, and I’m glad we’ve made the prime minister see sense this evening,” Labour Party leader Ed Miliband told the Press Association.
The no vote came after a long day of debate, and it appeared to catch Cameron and his supporters by surprise.
For days, the prime minister has been sounding a call for action, lending support to talk of a U.S.- or Western-led strike against Syria.
“I strongly believe in the need for a tough response to the use of chemical weapons, but I also believe in respecting the will of this House of Commons,” the prime minister said.
“We will not be taking part in military action,” Cameron said Friday. “The British Parliament has spoken very, very clearly,” he said.
Though Cameron did not need parliamentary approval to commit to an intervention, he felt it important “to act as a democrat, to act a different way to previous prime ministers and properly consult Parliament,” he said Friday.
He regrets not being able to build a consensus of lawmakers, he said.
Letter from al-Assad
Before the vote, Syria’s government offered its own arguments against such an intervention. In an open letter to British lawmakers, the speaker of Syria’s parliament riffed on British literary hero William Shakespeare, saying: “If you bomb us, shall we not bleed?”
But the letter also invoked Iraq, a conflict justified on the grounds that Iraq had amassed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was working toward a nuclear bomb — claims that were discovered to have been false after the 2003 invasion.
“Those who want to send others to fight will talk in the Commons of the casualties in the Syrian conflict. But before you rush over the cliffs of war, would it not be wise to pause? Remember the thousands of British soldiers killed and maimed in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, both in the war and in the continuing chaos.”
British Commons Speaker John Bercow published the letter.
U.N. deadlock
Lack of support for military intervention at the United Nations on Thursday was less of a surprise.
Russia, which holds a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, is one of Syria’s closest allies and is most certain to veto any resolution against al-Assad’s government that involves military action.
Moscow reiterated the stance Friday.
“Russia is against any resolution of the U.N. Security Council, which may contain an option for use of force,” Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said Friday.
Map: U.S. and allied assets around Syria
A closed-door Security Council meeting called by Russia ended with no agreement on a resolution to address the growing crisis in Syria, a Western diplomat told CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh on condition of anonymity.
U.N. weapons inspectors are now in Syria trying to confirm the use of chemical weapons. The inspectors are expected to leave the country by Saturday morning.
They are to brief U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who, in turn, will swiftly brief the Security Council on the findings.
Congressional jitters
The president is facing doubts at home as well: More than 160 members of Congress, including 63 Democrats, have now signed letters calling for either a vote or at least a “full debate” before any U.S. action.
The author of one of those letters, Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of California, said Obama should seek “an affirmative decision of Congress” before committing American forces.
More than 90 members of Congress, most of them Republican, signed another letter by GOP Rep. Scott Rigell of Virginia. That letter urged Obama “to consult and receive authorization” before authorizing any such military action.
Congress is in recess until September 9.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama was still weighing a potential response to the chemical weapons attacks.
The president has said that he is not considering a no-fly zone and has ruled out U.S. boots on the ground in Syria.
Al-Assad has vowed to defend his country against any outside attack.
UK Government’s legal position on Syrian regime’s chemical weapon use
Any attack on Syria without Congressional approval would be an impeachable act, political commentator Pat Buchanan has told Newsmax in an exclusive interview.
Urgent:Should U.S. Strike Syria? Vote Here
The former presidential candidate and best-selling author also says he prefers “the devil we know” in Syria — Bashar Assad — to the al-Qaida elements he asserts are leading the rebellion against his regime.
Buchanan has been a senior advisor to three presidents, a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000.
President Obama has signaled that he is considering a strike on Syria amid administration claims the Assad regime has used chemical weapons.
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV on Thursday, Buchanan says his chief concern about a potential strike is that “the president of the United States is threatening a war and planning a war he has no right to wage. The Congress of the United States alone has the power to authorize war or declare war and it has not done so.
“President Obama is usurping the authority of the Congress first and foremost and he appears about to launch an unconstitutional and unnecessary war. So the President should be called to account by the Congress and told: no war without our approval. That’s the way the Constitution works.
“The key figure is Speaker of the House John Boehner, who should call the House of Representatives back into session on Monday and instruct the president directly: Mr. President, you have no authority and no right to launch acts of war against Syria against whom we have not declared or authorized any war. We are calling on you not to engage in what would clearly be an impeachable act – starting a war against a country without the approval of the Congress when you are asked directly not to do so.
“If the president launched an unnecessary and unconstitutional war, striking a country against whom we have not declared war and has not attacked us, that is de facto an impeachable act that could lead to an open-ended war, the consequences of which we cannot even see.”
The White House has talked about the moral justification for a strike. Asked if there is also a legal justification, Buchanan responds: “There’s no constitutional justification right now in my judgment for a strike on Syria. The U.N. Security Council has not authorized a war, the Congress of the United States has not authorized a war.
“I do agree that the use of poison gas by the Syrian government — if it was President Assad who authorized it — is an obscene act which the international community and the Security Council should take up. But we don’t know who ordered it; we don’t know how it was delivered; we don’t know if Assad knew about it; we don’t know if Assad ordered it.
“But if he did, this is an issue that ought to be taken up by the international community and the Security Council, not the United States of America unilaterally and certainly not the president of the United States based on the flimsy evidence we have seen to date.”
Obama declared unequivocally on Wednesday that the Syrian government was responsible for the chemical attacks on. However, several U.S. officials are now using the phrase “not a slam dunk” to describe the intelligence picture.
Buchanan comments: “I would not understand or comprehend if Assad, no matter how bad a man he may be, would be so stupid as to order a chemical weapons attack on civilians in his own country when the immediate consequence might be that he would be at war with the United States.
“But what the United States should do is quite clear: Gather all the evidence through the U.N., gather all the evidence through our intelligence, take this to the Security Council the same way President Kennedy through Adlai Stevenson took the [evidence] during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We had our photographs, we showed the world what we had, we proved the missiles were in Cuba.
“That is the constitutional and legal way to do this. It is not to act in panic because John Kerry is shocked at the pictures he saw on YouTube.”
Buchanan said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid should call the Senate into session and “if he believes we should go to war, authorize it.”
“That is what George H. W. Bush did before he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait. That is what George W. Bush did. I was against that war on Iraq but the president won the authority from Congress so it was a constitutional and legitimate war no matter that I did not like it.”
If Obama does attack Syria without approval, “it is a clear, unconstitutional, illegal act,” Buchanan reiterated. “If the president did this, he would be a rogue president.” Buchanan says he disagrees with former ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton’s assertion that we should seek to take out Assad.
Urgent:Should U.S. Strike Syria? Vote Here
“Look who is on the other side of this war,” he tells Newsmax. “We have al-Qaida elements that are murderous, that have tortured people, that have killed Christians, and they’re the leading force in the elements that are fighting against Assad.
“Behind Assad we have the Iranians and Hezbollah and the Russians. It is not our war. Quite frankly, I would prefer the devil we know, which is Assad, to the devil we don’t know, which is that crowd in the rebels who are torturing and killing people and engaging in atrocities of their own.”
Buchanan also says the Republicans have “the power of the purse” and should block spending by those agencies that would implement Obamacare.
And regarding immigration reform, Buchanan doubts that the GOP-controlled House will go along with the amnesty that President Obama wants and the Senate has approved.
He adds: “I believe and hope that the House of Representatives will deny amnesty, deny legal rights to people who’ve broken into our country and broken our laws.”
IF HISTORY is any guide, President Obama could probably get away with ordering a military strike on Syria without first getting congressional authorization. Yes, the Constitution grants Congress the exclusive right to declare war. And yes, the 1973 War Powers Resolution legislated congressional control over presidentially initiated uses of force. But President Harry S. Truman sent troops to Korea in 1950 without Congress’s permission; President Bill Clinton carried out a 78-day air campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, despite the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day limit; and two years ago, Mr. Obama committed U.S. planes and other military assets to support British and French airstrikes in Libya. In our view, history has vindicated all three actions.Still, should the president act unilaterally now? The legal authorities his administration has informally cited are slender indeed — slimmer, even, than the U.N. Security Council resolution upon which the Libya mission rested. Officials have suggested that the international norm against the use of chemical weapons is tantamount to a legal prohibition and that punishing and deterring Syrian violations warrants a brief, limited use of force.
Washington Post Editorials
Consult Congress on Syria
Editorial Board 7:43 PM ET
Obama would be wise not to ignore Congress before a military strike.
Mr. Obama has consulted congressional leaders; but this is a far cry from the full-blown debate and vote that more than 100 members of the House have called for in a bipartisan letter to the president. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister David Cameron has called Parliament into session to discuss Syria, and his government will pursue a U.N. Security Council resolution — albeit with little chance of success, given Russia’s likely veto on behalf of its Syrian clients.Under the circumstances, the president would be wise to seek the maximum feasible congressional involvement. This is only partly a judgment about what’s constitutionally and legally sound; it’s also a judgment about what’s politically optimal. The more Congress shares in the burden of decision-making, consistent with the operational necessities of the prospective mission, the more legitimate the ultimate decision will be.Obviously, the risk is that Congress would deny Mr. Obama power to enforce his “red line” — or would unduly delay it. That this risk exists, alas, partly reflects Mr. Obama’s past reluctance to educate public opinion about the stakes in Syria, which, in turn, reflects his reluctance to get more deeply involved there. But now that U.S. credibility is at stake, we doubt that Congress, even one partially controlled by Mr. Obama’s partisan enemies, would weaken the commander in chief, and the nation, in a confrontation with implications that extend well beyond Syria.Mr. Obama must know that Congress will engage more deeply on Syria sooner or later. Even a short, sharp strike such as the one he reportedly contemplates is unlikely to be the last act in this drama. Nor, in our view, should it be. Unless linked to a broader strategy for weakening the Assad regime — and forcing it either out of power or into real negotiations — the use of force might prove worse than useless. Mr. Obama can and should formulate a sustainable strategy and then make a convincing case for it to the American people and their elected representatives.
Read more from Opinions:
Stephen G. Rademaker: Congress and the myth of the 60-day clock
Jonathan Bernstein: Going to Congress before war helps presidents
Eugene Robinson: The U.S. must act in Syria
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doggiecris
9:29 PM EST
Now there’s a great idea! Congress can’t decide on what’s for lunch!
USAFirster
9:24 PM EST
“Mr. Obama can and should formulate a sustainable strategy and then make a convincing case for it to the American people and their elected representatives,” says WaPo.It’s news to me that American people have “elected representatives.” What we have is a bunch of rabid polticians who are sworn to burning down America and shutting down the government.But all hope isn’t lost: to get the Tea Party Congress to act on Syria just change the word Syria to Obamacare.
edbyronadams
8:48 PM EST
It’s all so ironic. In primary campaign for the “08 nomination Barack Obama made great hay by touting his opposition to Iraq and hung the votes of those in Congress who had to vote on the issue around their neck. The Democrats in Congress don’t want to be consulted, fearing the same treatment in another future campaign.
Republicans, being stuck on stupid, think every problem will yield to hot lead.
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We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them–
to try to understand what you have done, why you have done it.
That way, you can begin to forgive yourself. That’s very important.
If you don’t forgive yourself you’ll never be able to forgive anybody else
and you’ll go on committing the same crimes forever. ANOTHER COUNTRY, James Baldwin
He bores me, this Erdoğan. A typically flawed tragic hero, now in his political death throes. The story’s been told a million times and the ending is always the same. And Erdoğan, like all the others, deserves it. Now the sharks are gathering. They pumped him up to do their job, this street-wise corner boy from Istanbul. Fingered early, he rose to power. He thought he was prime minister but he was really a pawn. To make up for that shattering awareness, he yelled, scowled and sneered for ten tedious years. They told him to be a tough guy. And he tried. But he thought tough meant straight ahead all the time, all the time with the mouth going. For a while that didn’t bother them. They thought he knew his country. But now they (and the world) know better.
It must have been nice to go to the White House and be hailed by the back-slapping Bush as the leader of the Turks. And because he knew no English and he thought Bush did, and because his advisors were yes-men and a few yes-women, Tayyip became the boss of the American pipedream about mixing moderate Islam with democracy. It will lead to peace in the Middle East, they said. And all honor and glory and riches to himself, he thought. And all he had to do was ramrod some changes on secular, democratic Turkey changing it into another country. They told him more: that he would be in a privileged relationship with the USA, like Israel. You have a free hand. And we will help you out in all respects. And Tayyip saw that it was a good deal and was pleased, so pleased that he always smiled broadly in the White House. The secular, democratic Turks at home in Turkey were surprised that their nation’s leader always looked constipated at home yet so frivolous in America. But it was merely noted in passing because they were mostly asleep, like the Turkish Army. No one even noticed that for his election night acceptance speech he wore a solid, Islamic green tie.
Later, when Obama came to Turkey spouting about “predominantly Christian America” and “predominantly Muslim Turkey,” Tayyip suddenly understood, like Archimedes floating in his bathtub. Shouting EUREKA! to himself, Tayyip had suddenly discovered DIVISION as a political process. Now you’re talking my language! So Tayyip went to work. He divided Sunni from Alevites, “his” people from the rest of the Turks, rakı and beer drinkers from ayran drinkers, head covered women from women whose hair blew gaily in the wind. He separated “his” people from terrorists (everyone else), “his” propaganda-spewing media from the few honest newspapers. And now, with the help of his bewildering foreign minister, has separated Turkey from the rest of the world. But make no mistake about one thing…Erdoğan has an incredible genius for unifying. Now, except for “his” people,” the world is unified AGAINST him.
He also has a genius for making money, tons of it.
In a decade he went from whining about how he couldn’t raise his family on a prime minister’s salary to countless wealth. His family owns fleets, land, everything imaginable. Rumors of Swiss bank accounts abound. A former American ambassador said as much. Erdoğan’s foreign excursions always include hundreds of his bad-actor* business cronies. America made a warrior out of him, pointing out the boundless financial opportunities inherent in destroying nations. Hence his avid embrace of the now catastrophic “Arab Spring.” Obama’s baseball bat and America’s fat wallet did wonders for Tayyip’s cooperative spirit. He could be a team player particularly after he became the team leader. Bye-bye Gadaffi! Who needs human rights awards when you can lead democracy’s charge across North Africa. Bye-bye Assad! Your uncovered wife makes mine nervous. So Hello NATO! Hello Al-Qaeda! Hello hell!
And here’s another “hello.” It goes way back. Hello Feto! a diminutive and derisive nickname for Fethullah Gülen. Gülen is a weepy, elementary-school-educated “Islamic leader” (and CIA asset) who lives in bucolic, well-protected splendor in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. A Green Card holder courtesy of his CIA sponsors, he is a treacherous financial dynamo seemingly lifted from a James Bond novel. His Movement, (cemaat in Turkish) has completely infiltrated and undermined secular Turkey. He had revealed his intent long before he had escaped from the Turkish courts into the loving arms of the CIA. A tape of his treacherous words surfaced in 1999 wherein he said:
You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers…. Until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria, like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt…The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it…You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey…Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all—in confidence…trusting your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave here, [just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here. **
Of course then, Gülen was talking treason. Today, he is acting treasonously. His infiltration of the Turkish state is everywhere. In the judiciary, the media, the military, the state police, the parliament and in the ruling party. It is well known that the Gülen movement’s heavy hand is instrumental in the legal fiasco that has destroyed the credibility of the Turkish legal system. The same hand was instrumental in the astonishing and ongoing police violence from the Gezi Park Movement.
Only a fool would fail to notice the common ground that Erdoğan and Gülen stand upon, united by their allegiance to the aims of the United States, fueled by cold, hard American dollars, ever encouraged by the cold, sneaky hand of the CIA. Erdogan controls everything in Turkey with his hands of stone. Thanks to their collaboration, the army’s professional leadership is in jail. The judicial system is rancid. There is neither justice nor democracy in Turkey but the police clubs, tear gas, water cannons, bullets (rubber and real) are everywhere. The police destroy all democratically demonstrating groups with the violence of Hitler’s Brownshirts. It is widely known that the Gulen movement played a major role in the legal fiasco called Ergenekon of which the prime minister dubbed himself chief prosecutor. The jail system is a penal industry by itself on the order of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s, The Gulag Archipelago. Telephone conversations, e-mail messages, are monitored. There is no privacy in Turkey. The prime minister encourages so-called “neighbors” to report all fellow neighbors if they dare bang on pots protesting the government. He claims such banging violates people’s privacy. There is no freedom of banging in Turkey either. The cleansing of leftist patriots continues, in the army and in all institutions controlled by the government. The brutal crackdown on Gezi Park demonstrators continues in all its Erdoğanian fury. Call what’s happening in Turkey a post-modern extermination campaign. And the astonishingly unreliable political opposition acts as the ruling party’s best friend and may even be an active collaborator in the destruction of secular Turkey.
And Erdoğan? Outside Turkey he has ruined himself. His near delirious rants, preposterous claims, the insults flying, the ignorance of his advisors all fully displayed on the world stage. His rage, greed, and arrogance have brought him to comic levels. But his money and his bad-actor friends and advisors remain. And so does he prime minister. In any other country he would have long been rejected by the electorate forthwith. But as long as America says, yes, Erdoğan remains. So sad for Turkey to be the lapdog of the likes of Erdoğan, Fethullah Gulen and America. So sad for Islam to be linked with these two masters of deceit. So sad for the Turkish people to be harnessed to the moral corruption that is Turkish politicized Islam.
Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Erdogan betrayed a lot more for a lot more. Treachery has always been a good business, indeed an American specialty in their CIA-driven foreign policy. And it perfectly suits Erdoğan’s two-faced description of “his” Turkey as an “advanced democracy.” But now he stands alone, babbling nonsense, rich, naked to the world and disgraced. One wonders if he even knows this much. What price this glory? What price this treason?
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
MACBETH, William Shakespeare
Cem Ryan, Ph.D.
25 August 2013
Istanbul
NOTES:
* According to the Merriman-Webster Dictionary, a “bad actor” is an unruly,
turbulent, or contentious individual.
** See Claire Berlinski’s excellent article, Who Is Fethullah Gülen? inCity Journal, Autumn 2012.
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