On Tuesday’s edition of Breitbart News Daily, Dr. Sebastian Gorka laid out the situation in Syria, as the latest attempt at a ceasefire goes into effect.
Dr. Gorka stated:
The key players are Assad, the Syrian dictator; Lavrov, Putin, the Russian administration, the Kremlin; Kerry, the man who says he’s brokered this deal; and then, of course, on the ground, you have the anti-Assad forces, who are more politically motivated than anything else, that want to get rid of the dictator; and then actually scores of jihadist groups, not just ISIS or al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, but actually scores of different groups fighting their own religious war against Assad, who they see as a heretic because he’s an Alawite Shia, he’s not a Sunni.
Those are the big parts of the puzzle, and unfortunately, the administration believes they’ve brokered a significant ceasefire with this deal, when they don’t really understand that the Russians aren’t there to kill jihadis.
This is what my fellow conservatives really need to understand. When I have the stomach, I read the comments at the Breitbart.com web page, and I’m floored how often I read comments about Vladimir Putin as the champion of the West and protector of Christianity. Vladimir Putin is a former KGB colonel. This is a man who persecuted Christians. He’s not there to save Christians and fight radical Islam. He’s there to prop up a client regime, the satrapy of his buddy Assad.
So this is smoke and mirrors. It is based upon a fallacy that this administration has as an article of faith, which is that Syria must see the removal of Assad. That is the only, the sine qua non – the only thing we’re going to have to do is remove Assad.
As long as this man enjoys the support of both Russia and China, he’s not going anywhere
Gorka expressed hope that “some humanitarian aid will get through, under the ceasefire,” but said that “otherwise, this is not a resolution to the conflict, which has taken at least 400,000 lives to date.”
He anticipated “some breach of the ceasefire by either side, either the jihadists, or by Assad, or maybe even the more secular rebels” within a matter of days, “and then the carnage will sadly continue.”
Gorka expected the consequences of such renewed carnage would probably include another wave of refugees. “And if there is any kind of negative consequence for the jihadis, we’ll see a classic squeezing of the balloon, whereby they just dislocate to another area,” he added.
“Look at ISIS today,” he explained. He added:
According to the National Terrorism Center – that’s the federal lead agency for counter-terrorism – when they briefed President Obama two weeks ago in the Pentagon, the map made it out into the press. They stated – this is a quote – ISIS has “fully operational affiliates in 18 nations.” Two years ago, the State Department estimate was 7. So in 24 months, ISIS has more than doubled its affiliates around the world, and if they get squeezed in one area, they’ll just move to another.
Gorka called for the Obama administration to have a “reality check” on Syria:
I’d like to see somebody overtly, or implicitly, recognize that Assad’s not going. He’s an evil man, yes. We get it. He’s nasty, but he’s not going anywhere, because of geopolitical realities.
That is the article of faith – from the beginning, This administration has said, “Whatever we do, Assad goes.” You have to be smoking something that’s not tobacco to believe that’s going to happen. I mean, that’s just absurd.
So there has to be a recognition this man is not going anywhere, despite what he has done. His control has to be recognized in those areas where the Syrian forces maintain sovereignty. And then some deal has to be brokered with the Sunnis, and maybe some kind of partial recognition of a Sunni sub-state within Syria. Otherwise, the death will continue.
Gorka used a pop-culture metaphor proposed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to position Syria as part of a larger conflict involving the entire Middle East, with ramifications for the whole world.
The way to understand what’s going on in the region right now, there’s a great quote from Prime Minister Netanyahu, when he addressed our Congress two years ago. He said, “If you want to understand what’s going on in the Middle East, you have to step back and realize that it’s a ‘Game of Thrones’ for the crown of the Caliphate.”
That’s the best one-sentence summary of what’s going on, the disaster that is the Middle East, after the Arab Spring. Assad is basically a vicious pawn in the Sunni vs. Shiite war for who’s going to control the Middle East,” Gorka said.
Right now, on one side, we have the extremist Sunnis in the form of ISIS and al-Qaeda, who are being supported by nation-states like Qatar and Turkey. And on the other side, we have the Shiite extremists, which are the mullahs of Tehran, who are exporting their vision of the Caliphate, and using people like Assad as their proxies and their frontmen.
“This is the reality of the region. This is the re-ignition of a 1,400-year-old grudge match about which version of Islam is going to control the whole region,” Gorka concluded.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
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