Vice President Joe Biden’s remarks about US allies supporting ISIS will have an effect in those countries and make others think twice about cooperating with the coalition, independent researcher and writer Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich told RT.
RT:The US military has, in one way or another, been involved in Iraq for over a decade. What positives has it achieved?
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich: Aside from killing people really nothing from a humanitarian prospective. But if you look at this from the US policy standpoint, I think chaos plays in their favor. For one thing, the country’s become so weak and disintegrated that it cannot repel foreign forces. This in fact helps the American long-term desire to re-occupy Iraq, to occupy the region as a whole. So the fact is that we see a lot of deaths and a lot of killing going on, it may offend you and me as human beings, but it certainly does not diminish America’s ambitions in that region, it plays into them.
RT:Members of the local population in Syria and Iraq are joining Islamic State. Is that because there's widespread support for them or are people being coerced into it through fear?
SS: If we believe that there is a wide-based support for them, then we would have to assume that people in that region are barbarians. And they are not. I think very often they are intimidated, they fear for their lives, they may fear for the lives of their families. That could well be one reason they join them. I don’t believe for the moment that people in Iraq or Syria or elsewhere are the savages that are portrayed on the television screens across the world.
RT:The US Vice President Joe Biden recently talked about America's Arab allies arming the Syrian opposition. He's already had to apologize for these words… Will there be more diplomatic consequences for Washington?
SS: It’s always very refreshing to hear such candor from an American official because what he said is absolutely true. I think it’s very embarrassing that he has to apologize for stating that fact. But of course Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the other regional countries that have helped to bring about this terrorism, this savagery, this ax – they are loathed to be caught cooperating in all this. It will have an impact on their populations although there is permanent censorship in Saudi Arabia, but I’m sure it will leak out and it will, in fact, affect the population of those countries. I hope that the global community will stand up and pay attention to what Mr. Biden said and realize that this is a phenomenon that has been created by the US, its allies to not only kill people, to create terrorism, but to occupy countries towards its goal of global hegemony.
RT:How damaging are Joe Biden’s comments to the coalition?
SS: I think they always like to dismiss him and say that he always had his foot in the mouth. But in fact, if we think back several years ago, even about the domestic policy, Joe Biden was perhaps one of the first officials that backed gay marriage and equal gay rights, and that translated into policies. So I think it would be wrong of the coalition to dismiss Joe Biden’s remarks. He is very much up-to-date and he is aware what is going on. The coalition then should know that the world is awake and aware of what they are doing. In fact, Joe Biden’s narrative, his words, what he has stated will cause a lot of embarrassment to this coalition. I think people would think twice about cooperating.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.