There are myriad ways that a peaceful resolution of the Syrian civil war can be derailed, but the pieces for an agreement are on the table. Failure to put them together will accelerate the destabilizing effects of the war in neighboring countries and deepen the misery of the Syrian people.
President Obama speaking at the Air Force Academy in 2012, told the assembled cadets that they should "never bet against the United States of America... [because] the United States has been, and will always be, the one indispensable nation in world affairs." On that basis, he suggested, the twenty-first century, like the twentieth, would be an American one. You get idea. We are... go ahead, chant it: indispensable! (Tom Engelhardt)
The involvement of Turkey -- NATO's second largest military force -- in support of Syrian and other Islamist forces is of long-standing. One part of Turkish territory along Syria's border has served for the past two years as a fallback zone for DASEH (ISIS) Islamists as well as to Al Qaeda. However, neither the US or French governments have asked Turkish authorities to stop helping the Jihadists.
Fast food workers from around the world participated in a strike against McDonalds and other low-wage employers in an ongoing struggle to demand a living wage. Meanwhile, strikes erupted in Turkey in reaction to government inaction and possible complicity in a disastrous coal mine explosion that has left hundreds of miners dead.
In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last August, after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the 'red line' he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons.
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In short, from Washington’s point of view, Erdogan has gone off the reservation.
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