Did Obama and Clinton boot a chance to settle Syria a year ago?

Well, sports fans, how would you feel to know the whole show could have been called off and just faded away with a rather anticlimactic ending a year or more ago?

If Syria had settled down ...SO MUCH MORE would have settled right down with it. Amazing to read this, if true....and I've been on Hot Air for a few years now. They aren't known by any means for carrying fabrications, as a side note.

So says Michael Hirsh at National Journal, reporting that former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had all but brokered a deal between the US, Russia, and Syria to have Bashar al-Assad abdicate in favor of free elections. At the time, Hillary Clinton signed a communique to Annan along with Sergei Lavrov on the deal for a political “transition,” as they termed it. Almost immediately thereafter, though, Clinton and Barack Obama undermined it with new demands for Assad’s unilateral ouster, and Susan Rice demanded a Chapter 7 resolution at the UN, effectively ending the partnership.

What the heck?? I recall that series of events but I couldn't have guessed the backdealing duplicity behind them. I'm thinking back and I believe some mention was made about how certain things didn't seem to make sense. Now, does this supply 'the rest of the story' to bring sense for some of what we DID see in the public?

All of which should prompt a reexamination of the first Geneva conference in the summer of 2012, on which Kerry’s new push for peace is based. According to some officials involved, perhaps the greatest tragedy of Syria is that, some 80,000 lives ago, President Obama might have had within his grasp a workable plan to end the violence, one that is far less possible now. But amid the politics of the 2012 presidential election—when GOP nominee Mitt Romney regularly accused Obama of being “soft”—the administration did little to make it work and simply took a hard line against Assad, angering the special U.N. Syria envoy, Kofi Annan, and prompting the former U.N. secretary-general to quit, according to several officials involved.

Source: Hot Air

The article is a long one with the first quote here being from Hot Air's commentary and the second from the inset quotes of original material their story is based from. It's a lengthy piece and I can't do justice to it here by the legal quote limits. Not on this one.

I'd encourage everyone to go read the full piece, if interested, and I'd love to hear what people think.

This is just outrageous...but also quite easy to see for how it happened in the sheer chaos and urgency of the 2012 Election. That was like no election I've seen in my 4 decades of life. Never. Nothing remotely like it for the vicious drive of both sides to win at ANY cost, over ANYBODY it required to go down in the process.

Could Syrian Peace have been sacrificed for 4 more years in power?

To answer your question, yes. But Wrabbit you gotta know that Syria is yesterday's dirty diapers, now it's all about the terrorists repubs killing old ladies and cancer children.

reply to post by Carreau


Yes, it is amazing how quickly very important and very critical things become old news and of little interest, isn't it? I'm agreeing too, not disagreeing. It really is happening this way. I imagine this reaction is confusing to the teenagers and young 20 somethings but wow..It really, honestly didn't used to be that a bit of time passing made anything done wrong a moot point, huh?

How long were past Presidents hounded until something was settled to knowing what happened? Years in some cases on major issues. Something we almost just went to war over ..and may yet still... seems pretty important.

ATS isn't so short sighted, but when did society in general become so profoundly A.D.D.?? It's so open to see, it's startling at times for how it makes everything "okay" and excusable ..if only time will pass to forget.

So the story is that a secret sort of deal with Russia to maybe ouster Assad was then ruined when the US and UK called publicly to have him oustered? I am sure Assad would have agrred to that lol. Of course we know the one thing Russia has been 100% against is removing Assad. They even bent him over and took away his chemical weapons he claimed did not exist to keep him there and buying their weapons. So long as Assad is in power and Russia is making a profit off the civil war their will be no peace deal in Syria that involves the Russians.

reply to post by MrSpad


No, the story is that the United Nations was working an official agreement for Assad to step down without going to a hangman's noose like Saddam was put to, in the process. I'm sorry if you have no recollection of this as a current event. It was only last summer it happened.

Syria's President Bashar Assad Ready To Step Down, Russia Envoy To France Believes (July)

Barack Obama to demand Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down(August)

Will Assad step down?(August)

Those headlines didn't require google....I have a few thousand bookmarks for news stories going back to 2010. This one, among them...and those were just a few on some aspects of what this thread is talking about.

No secret deals. It was pretty much out on the table and in the open. What this seems to give is a bit of insight for how tones changed from July, into August and through the end of the year. It gives a little bit of perspective, if accurate, for why hope turned to no change and a collapse of what appeared like a possible deal.

It's a shame it fell apart. It's criminal if this is why, IMO.