The July 3 move by the Egyptian military to stabilize the country signals the collapse of Obama’s Middle East policy. Washington’s present interventionist regional policy began during the George W. Bush administration and was fatally flawed from the start. The Obama administration simply compounded the mistakes while moving it forward. Vice President Dick Cheney and his neo-con team created a crusade against the Shia branch of Islam targeting Iran, its ally Syria, and Hizbullah in Lebanon. The...

It is now clear that the preliminary meeting at Geneva this week of Russia, the United States and the United Nations for setting a date for the Geneva-2 conference on Syria ended inconclusively. The meeting couldn’t agree when the Geneva-2 should be held or who would be invited. A UN statement said that Russian Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and his US counterpart John Kerry will meet next week and further talks are expected to follow. The United Nations special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi who...

photo: See-ming Lee 李思明 SMLThe US government is in panic mode over the apparently successful escape of NSA leaker Ed Snowden from Hong Kong. US government officials are swinging wildly at any target in sight while howling at the disintegrating illusion of US omnipotence. The rest of the world will not do what they demand. They will not hand over Edward Snowden. The injustice!White House Spokesman Jay Carney screams at China: "We are just not buying that this was a technical decision by a Hong...

Last week, Hillary Mann Leverett told Al Jazeera’s Inside Story, see here, that the Obama administration’s recent decision to begin providing direct military aid to Syrian rebels is “a signal to the rest of the world, particularly to…those who are looking to deal with Syria politically, in a negotiated way, that the United States is not serious about that.  The United States is much more serious about ensuring a continued quagmire in Syria, to keep both the Assad government and the rebels...

photo: FreedomHouseThe Guardian newspaper featured on Friday an infinitely sad picture of a Syrian young boy, hardly nine or ten years old, crossing a street holding an old rifle with bayonet. He apparently belongs to the ‘Martyrs of Maaret al-Nuan’ battalion holding control of the southern town of Maaret al-Numan. Child soldiers in a cradle of the Islamic culture and civilization and in one of the most modern societies in the Arab world – this would have been unthinkable. The western powers...