Re-reporting by Carolyn Bennett
“Reset” incident
Hillary Clinton meets Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
Careless ignorance dangerous and shameful
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| Flag of Syria |
Press stories quoted Clinton boasting how hard her staff had
“worked to ensure” the accuracy of what was an apparent blunder.
“Was it right?” she asked the Russian foreign minister.
No, he said, “You got it wrong.”
What careless Americans translating Russian called “reset”
was a Russian word, “peregruzka,” meaning “overloaded” or “overcharged.” The Daily
newspaper Kommersant had a front-page laugh: “Sergei Lavrov and Hillary Clinton
push the wrong button.”
This was prelude to four years of gaffes and a deepening of boorish,
belligerent, coarse outbursts from the U.S. Secretary of State, her staff, and
her administration.
Recklessly breaching character of diplomacy
In a joint press conference with India’s prime minister last
month, the U.S. Secretary declared that the United States was not sending “military
support” to the “opposition” in Syria.
She said, “All of our support has been medical and
humanitarian.” She demanded that the Russian government “cut all military ties”
with and “suspend all further support and deliveries” to Syria.
Her belligerence seems to know no bounds. Quoted by Democracy Now and
other sources today, Mrs. Clinton boorishly labeled the Russians liars. “We
have confronted the Russians about stopping their continued arms shipments to
Syria,” she said.
The Russians have said “… everything they’re shipping is
unrelated to their (Syria’s) actions internally [but] that’s patently untrue;
and we are concerned about the latest information we have that there are attack
helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria….”
The same Russian foreign minister with whom Hillary Clinton had
embarrassed herself and the United States in 2009 responded to the statements about
Russian military supplies to Syria.
Sergei Lavrov said the Russian Federation supplies only what
“Syria would need in the event of an armed attack on it from without. … We do not
supply Syria or anyone else with things that are used to fight against peaceful
demonstrators—unlike the United States, which regularly supplies that region
with such special equipment.”
The Russian defense minister pointed out that Clinton’s
comments were at direct variance with U.S. Defense Department (Pentagon)
reports that had denied having information showing Russian weapons exports to
Syria as charged by Secretary Clinton. The United States on the other hand has recently
made such a shipment “to one of the Gulf countries, [a move] which the Americans
consider…to be acceptable.”
Russian analyst Konstantin Makiyenko added to Lavrov’s
statement.
The United States has no moral right to lecture Russia on
weapons supply to Syria, he said. “Even if we assume that combat helicopters
are indeed being passed to Syria, this action would not at all contradict current
norms of international law dealing with weapons trade.”
Moreover, the deputy director of the Center for Strategies
and Technologies Analysis said, the United States “sells huge amounts of
weapons to the repressive Saudi regime, which took part in the tough
suppression of peaceful Shiite protests against the despotic regime in Bahrain”;
and in Saudi Arabia, there is “Systematic suppression of the opposition.”
As a major provider of military weapons to many global hotspots,
the United States, Makiyenko said, “has no moral right to lecture Russia on who
should get weapons and who should not.”
Failed U.S. relations in pre- and post-Cold War Middle East
At the end of May, a news article posted at the Russia
Television website commented rather cynically but painfully on point. “With the
arrival of Barack Obama at the White House four years ago, many in Moscow [and
elsewhere] genuinely believed there would be a normalization of relations
[remember the “reset” incident] between the two former Cold War opponents.”
“There is no crime in dreaming,” the writers said.
However, in relations with the Middle East, “America’s
behavior seems inconsistent with that of an impartial, objective observer.” The United States behaves “like a third party
to the turmoil with a lot to gain should the Syrian government fall.
“Instead of waiting for an official investigation to
determine the identity of the culprits in the latest massacre, the Houla
massacre,” the United States “is instigating the situation by tossing
rhetorical grenades, needlessly provoking the situation.
“After all, there are many actors in the region who stand to
gain in the event that Syrian President Bashar Hafez al-Assad is removed from
power.” The strong U.S. ally in the region, seemingly “on a collision course
with Iran …, the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would benefit
from the overthrow of Assad.”
A further truth is, the United States has not been an honest
broker in the Middle East for the past thirty years; in more distant times, not
since 1945 or 1946.
The Cold War is recorded historically as having reached its
peak in 1948–53. In this period the Soviet Union “unsuccessfully blockaded the
Western-held sectors of West Berlin (1948–49). The United States and its
European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a unified
military command to resist the Soviet presence in Europe (1949).” The Soviet
Union exploded its first atomic warhead (1949), thus ending the U.S. monopoly
on the atomic bomb. The Chinese communists came to power in mainland China
(1949) and the Soviet-supported communist government of North Korea invaded
U.S.-supported South Korea (1950), “setting off an indecisive Korean War that
lasted until 1953.”
The United States internally experienced an extended “Red
Scare,” McCarthyism in which citizens were haunted, hunted down, hauled before rabid Congressmen,
their professional lives destroyed or subjected to constant threat. The causes
of human rights stymied.
Years passed in which sleepwalking Americans believed they
were in the “good times”: “Ossie meets Harriet,” “Daddy knows best.” Today some
on the Left and Right nostalgically pine for those times.
In late 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed and 15 newly
independent nations were born and Russians held a “democratic” election. The
Cold War was over. But in the years since the end of the Cold War—from another
Bush and another Clinton through several governments seated in Washington—there
has been a shameful waste of foreign relations opportunity.
The United States of America in the twenty-first century is burdened
with a kind of leadership that is defined by belligerence, boorishness, superficiality,
willful ignorance and incompetence. It is not only void of moral sensibility but
is woefully lacking in requisite imagination. Sources and notes
“Button gaffe embarrasses Clinton,” BBC, March 7, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7930047.stm
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/6/13/is_syria_in_a_civil_war
“‘Russia does not sell combat helicopters to Syria’ – Lavrov”
(Robert Bridge, RT),
June 13, 2012, http://rt.com/politics/us-russia-syria-weapons-lavrov-689/
“Al-Qaeda behind terror attacks in Syria, Russia warns” (Robert
Bridge, RT), May 14, 2012,
http://rt.com/politics/al-qaeda-syria-russia-opposition-220/
“Is U.S. preparing for broad Middle East conflict?” May 31,
2012,
http://rt.com/politics/us-russia-iran-syria-missile-defense-opposition-688/
Historical note revised from Britannica
Images
WW3 Trigger: U.S. Implement Syria Aerial Blockade,Despite repeated warnings from Russian and China to respect the sovereignty of Syria’s airspace, the US plans on implement an aerial blockade without UN backing
http://uprootedpalestinians.blogspot.com/2012/02/ww3-trigger-us-to-implement-syria.html
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