Playground Politics: A Brief Look at the Syrian Conflict

The former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s resignation from his post as special envoy to Syria confirmed what everyone in the political arena was thinking but didn’t want to say: the situation in Syria is beyond help.

Mr. Annan finally realized that he (like the United Nations) is as influential in world affairs as a fly trying to blow out a candle. With the UN peacekeepers’ role being reduced to on-the-ground reporters, there was nothing left for Annan to do but step down and admit that without a unified decision of all the permanent members of the Security Council, the situation in Syria will continue to be a stalemate.

But if we stop talking in the tone of politicians for a second and look at what is really happening on the ground, we’d realize that this little chess game between East and West has allowed and justified yet another act of institutionalized, state-mandated genocide. This edition’s dictator: Bashar Al Assad. The victims: the Syrian people.

And while we are used to seeing the number of casualties scroll through the news reels on our TV screens, it’s worth it to stop and think of the millions that have been displaced, the 15,000+ innocent civilians that have been killed, not to mention the 65,000 missing and the 212,000 incarcerated.

Why is the world standing by while all this is happening? Well, let’s go back to the tone of politics as it is the only way one can get through explaining a human tragedy through a dispassionate analysis of governance in practice.

As always, it boils down to super powers using the Third World as their battleground for power, control, access and superiority. With Russia and China getting the short end of the straw with the regime changes in Iraq and Libya, they simply cannot accept any further losses or cancelled contracts of arms and oil deals in this region. They will do whatever is possible to retain their economic, military and political stronghold in Syria and Iran. On the other side, we have the United States and Israel with their European cheerleaders (the UK, France, Germany, and for some reason Portugal) all fixated on installing another friendly regime to control Iranian activity, secure Israel’s safety, and profit off the unlimited resources the region hides below its soil.

And while both sides continue flirting with each other through threats of economic sanctions and calls for renewal of the UN Peacekeeper missions, a deadly ground battle is unfolding and edging closer to the Syrian regime’s strongholds, Aleppo and the capital Damascus.

The Syrian Freedom Fighters’ recent successes may soon put President/War Criminal Bashar Al Assad in a very peculiar situation. Should Aleppo fall to the rebels and the battle of Damascus commence, Assad will be put between a rock and a hard place. His two options would be to 1) use the familiar tactic of heavy bombing, shelling and airborne strikes or 2) engage in an all out street war.

As effective as the first option could be in denying the rebels, the disadvantages would be the inevitable large count of innocent human casualties which may increase the risk of defections from the military and economic collapse.

As for the second option, Al Assad should be prepared for a long and deadly fight that may drag on for a long time, time he simply doesn’t have, not to mention the costs and potentially large body count of the thousands of mercenaries he may have to rely on.

A sane person may present a third option to Assad: Step down and let the people live. But as we have learned through time and history, in politics, sanity is a relative term in a world of mad men.

Mohammed Khamis

You can follow me on www.twitter.com/thedonchico or email me at: mohkhamis@hotmail.com

The Last Stretch with an Etch-A-Sketch: Why Obama will Crush Romney in the Fall Elections !

As we wind down through the last stretch of a long and boring Republican Primary race, we are slowly reaching the same conclusions that were predicted at the onset: 1) The Republicans will nominate someone with less substance than a strawberry milkshake, 2) Mitt Romney will be that nominee, and 3) Ron Paul will always be ignored by the main stream media.

These conclusions were all but confirmed after Rick Santorum dropped out of the race earlier this month, leaving Romney with a very easy path to clinch the nomination and focus on defeating Barack Obama in the November General Election.

And whilst presidential, senatorial, congressional and gubernatorial election campaigns are usually a source of comedy and entertainment for me, I am afraid (and I hope I’m wrong) this particular contest is promising to be a very predictable and uneventful one.

If we compare the sitting President with his likely opponent, we will find that President Obama would win hands down in all categories:

Charisma and appeal:

Let’s begin with the obvious: Romney has none. Despite over twenty primary debates and countless stump speeches, town hall meetings and television appearances, Willard Mitt Romney still looks and talks like an awkward aristocratic robot who is desperately trying to pose as the average Joe. With a painfully uncomfortable hey-look-I’m-an-average-guy moment after a hey-look-I’m-an-average-guy moment, Romney is comically failing.

The most comical failure to date was when Romney attended the Daytona 500 NASCAR race in February, an event which was most likely organized by his campaign staff specifically as a photo-op to exhibit their candidate as “a regular American” attending one of the country’s traditional sporting events. But when asked by an AP reporter if he follows NASCAR, Romney replied, “Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans. But I have some great friends who are NASCAR team owners.” A simple answer through which Romney has successfully alienated the middle class, lower class and every other class that has never seen the inside of a corporate board room.

And whilst I would like to compare this with Obama’s charisma and appeal, I believe the video below would sum it up better.

Consistency (Flip Flopping with an Etch-A-Sketch):

On a CNN interview last month, Eric Ferhnstrom (Romney’s Senior Advisor) was asked whether Romney has alienated moderate voters by competing with Gingrich and Santorum for the Republican base. His answer:

“Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again”

This unfortunate analogy almost confirmed what every voter felt about Mitt Romney: the man simply has no ideological convictions.

With a history of flip-flopping like a gold fish out of its tank, Romney seems to have many masks and is willing to wear whichever one best suits the costume party he is attending.

Romney is both a Conservative and a Moderate. Unlike Gingrich and Santorum, who operate on a more traditional and consistent political dial, you are never certain which version of Mitt Romney will turn up on any given day. What comes out of Romney’s mouth can never be expressed in terms of certainty. His views right now are never certain to be his views at a future point in time.

And while President Obama has little to no political baggage and closeted skeletons due to his relatively young political life, it would very easy for Obama to go fishing in Romney’s lake and bring out as many flip-flopping fishes as possible during the presidential debates.

After all, Obama would only have to answer to his actions during his last four years as President, and judging by the campaign ad below, it seems he is prepared:

Electability:

Most candidates running for anything, be it a student council election or a nationwide campaign, follow the simple law of Cause and Effect when it comes to electability. Usually the candidate’s views, accomplishments, and campaigns would cause getting more votes. The effect of getting these votes is being considered the most electable.

Romney, however, has shockingly been able to reverse this law by being the last and reluctantly the only choice for the Republican Party. This is the cause of him being the most electable and resulting in the effect of him getting the votes.

For Barack Obama, the campaign trail is where he shines. Some say that in 2008, Obama “campaigned with poetry, and governed with prose.” Had he actually governed with the same poetry he ran with, he may have very well had his face engraved on Mount Rushmore by now. That being said, it is no secret that Obama’s war chest of campaign finances, coupled with the presidential seal on his podiums and his charisma as the icing will result in one of the most decisive presidential campaign wins in recent history. One hopes, however, that it is not so decisive that it resembles a fixed election in a third world country.

But as they say in politics, scandals to politicians are the same as the iceberg to the Titanic: it can sink the unsinkable.

If I was Romney, I would start looking for an iceberg very soon…




Cheers,

Mohamed Khamis

Follow me on www.twitter.com/thedonchico or email me at: mohkhamis@hotmail.com