In an “exit interview” on NPR’s All Things Considered, CIA Director John Brennan managed to keep a tight upper lip, saying that despite “Aleppo’s fall” he remained “convinced that many, many of those oppositionists … will continue to fight.” Brennan did his best to put lipstick on the pig of CIA support for “moderate” jihadists, but included some sadly revealing things showing that he – like John Kerry – was in way over his head on Syria. Like Kerry, Brennan described Syria as the most complex situation he’d faced in his career. In the following (linked) four-minute interview on January 4, 2017, Ray tried to be sympathetic – failing miserably.
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/372705-brennan-crocodile-tears-syria/
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The “most complex situation Brennan” has faced in his whole career! What did he think his mission was, and how did he expect to achieve it? And did he think it was going to be easy? Following is part of what Brennan told NPR, followed by depressingly similar remarks made earlier by Secretary of State John Kerry during one of his own “exit interviews.”
BRENNAN: I think we always like to say that we wish that we would have been able to make a difference in a way that would have prevented the slide in the situation there. We also have to recognize though that as great a country – as powerful a country as the United States is, we have in many areas limited ability to influence the course of events. (December 23, 2016)
KERRY: Syria is as complicated as anything I’ve ever seen in public life, in the sense that there are probably about six wars or so going on at the same time – Kurd against Kurd, Kurd against Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sunni, Shia, everybody against ISIL, people against Assad, Nusrah. This is as mixed-up sectarian and civil war and strategic and proxies, so it’s very, very difficult to be able to align forces.
(September 29, 2016)
Can it be that Kerry (and Brennan) really believed that America’s exceptionalism and indispensable-ism should have made it easy for Washington to be able to “align forces” in the Middle East?