US Secretary of State John Kerry is engaged in doublespeak about America’s policy of regime change in Syria, an American political analyst says.
On Saturday, Kerry told Rossiya 24 TV channel during his visit to Moscow that Washington is not pursuing regime change in Syria but President Bashar al-Assad must step down before any peace can be achieved in the war-torn country.
He added that Assad is “a magnet for terrorists” and cannot stay in Syria’s “long-term future.”
Commenting to Press TV, James Henry Fetzer, retired professor in Madison, Wisconsin, said, “John Kerry -- typical of American foreign policy -- is talking out from both sides of his mouth at the same time.”
“We had a series of inconsistent claims about ‘Assad must go,’ ‘Assad doesn’t have to go,’ ‘US is not after regime change.’ It’s absurd for the United States to suggest it’s not after regime change yet Assad must go,” he added.
“In fact, this is the playing out of the plan to take out seven governments in the next five years that Wesley Clark informed the American people about at the Commonwealth Club, beginning with Iraq and Libya, ending with Syria and Iran. It hasn’t played out that way because of Russian intervention,” he stated.
“But the claims about Assad are all fabrications -- the claims that he is responsible of 250,000 Syrians,” but in fact this is the result of a foreign-sponsored militancy in the Arab country, Fetzer said.
Syria has been gripped by deadly violence since March 2011. The United States and its regional allies - especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey - have been supporting the terrorists operating inside Syria since the beginning of the crisis.
The foreign-sponsored war against the Syrian state and people has killed more than 250,000 people and driven more than 10 million from their homes.
Daesh (ISIL) terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control large parts of Iraq and Syria.
On September 30, Russia began its military campaign against Daesh terrorists and other militants fighting against the Syrian government. Moscow has carried out scores of airstrikes, killing hundreds of terrorists.