United Nations Peace Envoy, Kofi Annan, has decided to hold an international conference regarding the ever-growing war in Syria, which has left several killed and severely injured. The meeting will take place in Geneva this coming Saturday, but cause for concern is arising, as the United States is having mixed emotions about being a part of the conference.

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has confirmed that despite the United State’s lukewarm feelings about the conference, it will be in attendance, in addition to representatives from various countries including Russia, China, Britain, France, Turkey, and others from European Union, as well as the Arab League.

According to Annan, the purpose of the meeting, “is to forge a consensus on the terms for a political solution among international players with stakes and influence in the Syrian conflict over terms for a political solution. The U.N. envoy believes that the best hope of pressing the combatants on the ground to observe his peace plan to which they signed up in April but have not implemented, is for the foreign powers on whose support they variously depend to agree on terms.”

And the main problem that needs to be addressed this coming Saturday, is the conflict in different approaches and decisions that Russia and the United States both want to make. One of the countries that has yet to announce its appearance is Iran, which is a key factor in resolving conflict. “I have made it quite clear that I believe Iran should be part of the solution,” Annan said in Geneva last Friday. “If we continue the way we are going and competing with each other, it could lead to destructive competition and everyone will pay the price.”

The reason for both Iran and Saudia Arabia being excluded from the conference is based on the Obama Administration not wanting them there. According to Tony Karan, reporter for Time World, “The Obama Administration cited Iran’s role in backing up Syria’s bloody crackdown to declare Tehran’s involvement a “red line” for participating in the Geneva talks, and Annan presumably left out Saudi Arabia as a compensatory gesture to Russia which insists that those countries arming and funding Syria’s rebels share major responsibility for escalating the conflict.

A state department official told reporters last week that “If Kofi Annan can get the proposed participants to agree on such a plan for political transition then there will be a meeting, but that’s what we need to find out before we go to any meeting. There’s no point in going just for the sake of it.”

Image Courtesy of  United Nations

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You would think there would be some limit. You would think that, deep down, an individual would know, or feel, or sense that their actions were so disgustingly outrageous that they should just stop. But no such limit exists. Would that it did, and would that it might spare us the upsurge of bile induced by such moments.

On May 12^th 1996 a particularly chilling one arrived. Asked, ludicrously, by a CBS news reporter if the death of half a million Iraqi children was ‘worth’ the apparent damage to Saddam Hussein’s infrastructure, and so – they said – to his capacity to build a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Madeleine Albright replied: ‘we think the price is worth it’. It was the kind of depraved statement that makes you ashamed for your whole species.

Tony Blair’s September 24^th 2002 Iraq dossier, quite aside from its false claims of 45 minute WMD attacks, somewhat complicated Albright’s foul rambling. Robert Fisk accurately noted the true magnitude of its claim that Saddam had managed to stockpile WMDs:

“Now we were being told – if Blair was telling the truth – that the price was not worth it. The purchase bought with the lives of hundreds of thousands of children was not worth a dime. For the Blair dossier was telling us that, despite sanctions, Saddam was able to go on building weapons of mass destruction.”

After ten years of murderous sanctions, after eight years of annihilating the people of Iraq, after presiding over the deaths over a million Iraqis and Afghans, Tony Blair was appointed peace envoy to the Middle East within hours of leaving political office. Imagine, just for a moment, that Stalin had stepped down as leader of the Soviet Union in 1950 and immediately been appointed peace envoy to Eastern Europe; Blair’s 2007 appointment would rival, if not surpass, such a disgrace.

It continues to this day. On June 8^th 2011 The Guardian reported that Mr. Blair was calling for a ‘wider plan for the Middle East’. Announcing his support for a NATO removal of Muammar Gaddafi, Blair recommended that Western governments issue a ‘change or be changed’ warning to Middle East leaders (leaders that, he neglects to mention, have been propped up by Western governments for the last 40 years). There was one particularly vile phrase that our wonderful peace envoy employed: ‘we need to have an active policy, be players and not spectators sitting in the stands, applauding or condemning as we watch’. Mr. Blair’s phrase makes sense only under the presupposition that ‘we’ are in charge of the world. He entirely neglects the crucial question, which is what the people of the Middle East actually want.

It is for the people of the Middle East, who deserve the right to be masters of their own destiny, to decide what they want, and overwhelmingly that is not Western ‘intervention’. Is there anything more depraved than the fact that Tony Blair is giving advice on how to bring peace to the Middle East?

Image Courtesy of  http://www.flickr.com/photos/giuseppenicoloro/

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