The Geneva II Farce

If you were away celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day yesterday, maybe participating in a march, and did not have an opportunity to scan the headlines, you would have missed the embarrassing news of United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon inviting Iran to participate in the Geneva II round of peace talks (to begin tomorrow) and then some hours later rescinding that invitation at the behest of the United States. 

The day quickly descended into "he said"/"she said" imbroglio. Ban said that Iran had agreed to accept Geneva I, meaning that al-Assad would be ushered out and a transitional government with opposition representatives sharing power with certain Western-approved Baathists from the Syrian government would be installed. Iran denied agreeing to any preconditions to attend. The United States expressed shock -- Secretary of State Kerry was said to be apoplectic with rage -- that Ban would step out on his own and invite Iran; Ban said that the U.S. knew what he was up to.

In any event, the Syrian National Coalition, the opposition cobbled together by the West, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies, said it would not attend if Iran participated. The United States instructed Moon to disinvite the Iranians. Moon complied. And there you have it. That is where we are at with one day to go before Geneva II opens in Montreaux.

Meanwhile the Shiite district of Haret Hreik in south Beirut sustained another terror bombing. Sectarian fighting between Sunni and Shiite has started again in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. The attempt to resolve the ISIS occupation of Falluja in Iraq's Al Anbar Governorate collapsed. Al-Maliki will now have to go in heavy. Death and destruction is sure to follow with a good possibility that Iraq will permanently fracture.

And all the while the region burns the United States fiddles. To get a sense of what the U.S. and its Syrian opposition hope to achieve in Geneva II, here is the takeaway passage from today's story by Michael Gordon, Anne Barnard and Alan Cowell, "U.N.’s Reversal on Iran Prompts Outcry From Syrian Allies":

Despite the enormous obstacles, the State Department asserts that the talks are worth holding because the push to establish a transitional body to govern Syria, a main goal of the conference, might encourage defections among Mr. Assad’s traditional supporters, including the Alawite sect, of which he is a member. 

“There are elements inside the regime itself, among its supporters, that are anxious to find a peaceful solution, and we’ve gotten plenty of messages from people inside; they want a way out,” the State Department official said. 

“That’s the whole point of their going to Geneva,” the official added, referring to officials of the Syrian opposition. “To promote the alternative, the alternative vision.”

Yes, you read it right. The goal of Geneva II isn't to end the fighting, even if to secure a temporary ceasefire; the goal of Geneva II according to the U.S. State Department is to encourage Baathist defections.

It is hard to properly frame just how unhinged this strategy is. The Syrian Arab Army is superior in the field. Without a display of air power, the rebels, now composed entirely of jihadists, have done nothing but cede territory as they fight among themselves. The response to this weakness by the sheikhdoms who manage the jihadi armies is to direct them to soft targets in Iraq and Lebanon. Now those two nations are on the brink of civil war from which they might not ever return. Yet all the U.S. cares about is peeling away a few defectors from al-Assad's government. It is insanity.

The one silver lining is that it is becoming harder for the U.S. to feign concern for the humanity crisis created by the Syrian war and pretend that it is acting in the best interests of the Middle East to end the fighting. It is now abundantly clear that the U.S. is acting to expand the war both in length of time and breadth of geography in the deluded hope that the sovereign government of Syria will surrender.