Drained of ideas, the editors of the Wall Street Journal who
had space to fill and nothing to fill it with, came up with an editorial that
is a strange piece of work indeed.
They wrote an editorial under the title: “Russia 's Syria Doublespeak” and the subtitle:
“Putin lets Palmyra fall to ISIS while helping
Assad take Aleppo .”
They published the thing on December 13, 2016 in the Wall Street Journal, of
course.
Here is the central point they are making:
Putin is engaged in a game of doublespeak because he is
playing a double game in Syria .
That game consists of pretending to fight ISIS
while he is, in reality, fighting the “moderate” forces which are opposed to
Bashar al-Assad. The proof he does this, is that he is letting ISIS retake Palmyra while his forces are helping the Assad military
defeat the moderates in Aleppo .
As to the reason why Putin is doing what he is doing, is
that ISIS in Aleppo represents a bigger threat
to Damascus
where al-Assad has his seat of power, say the editors of the Journal. This is
why Putin wants to defeat the moderates in Aleppo
before turning his attention to ISIS in Palmyra .
Well, what's wrong with that? What's wrong is that the
argument of the Journal editors is based on faulty logic. To see the evidence,
look what they say on two separate occasions. First, they say this: “even as
Islamic State retook the ancient city of Palmyra
from Syrian forces.” Second, they say this: “––the Islamic State who are in the
process of retaking Palmyra ...”
What the editors have done twice is remind the readers that ISIS is not taking Palmyra for the first
time; it is retaking it from the Assad forces, having had it before, and was
chased out of it.
This means that Assad and the Russians had prioritized Palmyra before they went to Aleppo . But now that they are on the verge of
taking Aleppo , they are not going to drop the
campaign and run to protect Palmyra because it
has come under renewed ISIS attack. Any
military commander would tell you that the best way to proceed under these
circumstances is to finish the job in Aleppo ,
and then go do a mop up operation in Palmyra .
With this point now clear, the proof is here that the
accusations leveled against Russia ,
against Putin and against Assad are pure fabrications. And when something like
this is revealed, the attention automatically turns to those who made the
accusations. That would be the editors of the Wall Street Journal. Thus, two
questions come to mind: What were they trying to accomplish? How serious is
their misconduct in the context of the horror show that's unfolding in the
region at this time?
These are tough issues to parse because of the enormity of
the stakes involved. In fact, what we find dispiriting when trying to discuss a
subject like this, is that it is near to impossible identifying an acceptable
explanation that would make sense of the behavior displayed by the Journal's
editors. One possible explanation stands out; the one that conjures up the
image of a juvenile state of mind. You find what it is when you reach the end
of the editorial. That's when you discover the secret that motivated the
editors to write their piece.
Here is the passage where the secret is held: “Obama doesn't
pay attention but some in Europe do.’The Russians,
who claim to be fighting against terrorism, concentrate on Aleppo and have left
a space for Islamic State who are in the process of retaking Palmyra' said the
French Foreign Minister.” So that's what it is. The copycats of America could not resist copying the alley cat
of France .
He said something and they had to echo it.
But the more appropriate analogy will have to be this one:
Like juveniles who hate their father because he doesn't tell them the kind of
stories they want to hear, the editors of the Wall Street Journal accused Obama
of suffering from some kind of attention deficit syndrome. This is what
motivated them to listen to the stranger who told them the things that sounded
like music to their ears.