Questions on Syria’s Chemical Weapons disarmament
By Dr. Kaveh L. Afrasiabi | Press TV | September 11, 2013
Citing a “potential positive development” in the Russian proposal regarding Syrian chemical weapons stockpile, US President Barack Obama has put a temporary break on the express train of war on Syria and, simultaneously, accelerated the White House push for a congressional authorization for a military strike.
This new development, following a purportedly off-the-cuff press statement by US Secretary of State John Kerry, has been viewed as a potential game-changer that may result in a win-win scenario, whereby Obama can safeguard his reputation, heal the rifts with Moscow, avoid another US entanglement in Middle East conflicts, and simultaneously declare victory by resorting to “credible military threat,” an important consideration given the close links with the US’s Iran policy (of nuclear containment).
The Russian proposal, put forth by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, has two skeletal components respecting the international supervision and monitoring the Syrian chemical stockpile and the provisions for the destruction of that stockpile, yet to be fleshed out. The Syrian foreign minister has welcomed this initiative and so has UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who has warned that a unilateral US strike without the UN authorization would be illegal. Iran’s initial reaction has been positive as well, in the light of a statement by the Foreign Ministry spokesperson articulating the position of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In turn, a number of important questions have been raised as a result of this new development. First, how feasible and practical is the idea of international supervision of the chemical weapons stockpile in the present context of warfare in Syria? The likelihood of danger to the inspectors being relatively great, will they need to be accompanied by an international force and, if so, is the UN willing to risk its peacekeepers in a war zone?
Second, although the international community is correct to push Syria to join the Protocol on Chemical Weapons and to disarm, such a decision cannot be taken in the vacuum of regional realities, above all the fact that historically these weapons have served a deterrent purpose for the Syrian regime vis-à-vis Israel, which has reportedly amassed a huge arsenal of chemical weapons over the years; a recent CIA document confirms this by referring to Israel’s “nerve gas facilities” which went into production decades ago. Indeed, the deterrent value of Damascus’ chemical weapons capability have been demonstrated in the current crisis, whereby Israel has been forced to take several drastic steps such as mass distribution of masks, early installation of Iron Dome defense shield, etc.
Henceforth, Syrian disarmament without a parallel disarmament of the Israeli stockpile would, in strictly military terms, shift the balance in Israel’s favor. Therefore, it is important to explore the short and long-term implications of Syrian disarmament with respect to the long-standing territorial dispute between Syria and Israel. Perhaps Israel should pledge to refrain from the use of chemical weapons against Syria as a part and parcel of the Syrian disarmament agreement.
Third, what happens if the Syrian regime disarms but the rebels, who are reportedly in possession of chemical weapons, do not and resort to these weapons? The threat of chemical weapons by the Syrian rebels has so far been completely overlooked by the White House and, yet, must be taken into consideration in any agreement on Syrian disarmament. In other words, a total disarmament covering the rebels as well as the government, irrespective of the difficulties with respect to the leading rebel groups, which have known Al-Qaeda ties. In principle, this is the right approach that would not discriminate toward any group suspected of possessing and or using the ghastly weapons.
Fourth, a complicating factor is the role of certain regional states that support the rebels and may not consent to any such deal, which raises the question what happens if these sates are not brought on board the agreement on Syrian chemical weapons disarmament? The US should push for explicit and unequivocal endorsement of the plan by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Persian Gulf Cooperation Council member states.
Finally, the two issues of supervision and destruction of Syrian chemical weapons stockpile should not be conflated, and a preliminary investigation of the merits of the former without the necessity of the latter should be conducted. Given the stated concern of Obama and other Western leaders regarding the future use of chemical weapons, the stationing of international monitors on the ground will go a long way in terms of confidence-building that the regime will not use them. This more moderate approach is far more realistic than the issue of “control” that raises serious practical difficulties, such as interfering in the Syrian system of military “command and control.”
For now, however, a glimmer of hope against a US strike on Syria has sparked on the horizon that may not be long-lasting, if the disarmament issue is used by the White House to acquire a “yes” vote on the war power authorization and then attack Syria with the excuse that it has skirted its disarmament obligation.
Theoretically, it is now easier for Obama to lobby the US Congress, by nuancing the pitch in the name of the noble objective of chemical weapons disarmament. In that case, the potential breakthrough in the Russia disarmament proposal may only serve the ultimate US’s war aims which have been partly checked, ironically, by Syrian chemical weapons threats to Israel. By removing these weapons, the imminent threat of US strike may be put to rest and, yet, the paradoxical effect is likely to be a weakened Syria more vulnerable to foreign threats and pressures. In a word, a war-saving proposal adversely affecting Syrian national security interests may be an invitation to war in the future.
False-flag meme goes viral on 9/11 anniversary
By Dr. Kevin Barrett | Press TV | September 11, 2013
On the 12th anniversary of 9/11, everyone is talking about false-flag operations.
Pat Buchanan, a leading American conservative, says that the Syria chemical weapons incident “reeks of a false flag operation.” Buchanan says he cannot believe that Syrian President Assad would be so stupid as to order a chemical strike with no military purpose except to invite the US to bomb his country.
Assad’s opponents, on the other hand, would have every reason to launch such a strike and blame it on Assad.
Ron Paul agrees, saying: “I think it’s a false-flag.” His son Rand Paul adds: “There is a great incentive for this to actually have been launched by rebels, not the Syrian army.”
Rush Limbaugh suspects a false-flag with Obama’s complicity. Limbaugh cites Yossef Bodansky: “The rebels nerve gassed themselves in order to engineer a response that takes out Bashar, putting the US on the side of Al-Qaeda.”
Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff, went one step further. Citing sources in the intelligence community, Wilkerson said the chemical weapons attack was an Israeli false-flag operation. Wilkerson explained that “Israel is in a very, very dangerous situation right now. Netanyahu is clueless as to this. I hope that President Obama gave him a lecture into geo-strategic realities.”
Wilkerson’s statement that Israel is in a “very, very dangerous situation” seemed on the surface to refer to the turmoil in the Middle East. But Wilkerson may have been conveying another message as well: By orchestrating a barely-disguised chemical weapons false flag designed to force Obama to attack Syria on or around the 9/11 anniversary, Netanyahu showed he is “clueless” about one very important fact: More and more senior members the US military and intelligence establishments, including Wilkerson, know that Israel also orchestrated the 9/11 false flag operation. And they are ready to push back.
These senior US decision-makers are unhappy that Israel orchestrated the murder of almost 3,000 Americans on 9/11 in order to drag the US into endless wars against Israel’s enemies. They are seething about Israel’s continuing deception of the American public through its domination of the mainstream media. They are furious about the Israel lobby’s influence over Congress via bribery and threats. They are disgusted at the way Israel’s false-flag attack on 9/11 led to the evisceration of both the Constitution and the national treasury, drowning America in debt to the international bankers and destroying the nation’s economic future.
Wilkerson was saying (between-the-lines) that if Netanyahu thinks he can drag the US into yet another major war for Israel, by staging a transparently obvious false-flag attack close to the 9/11 anniversary, he is treading on very dangerous ground.
Dr. Alan Sabrosky, an ex-Marine and former Director for Strategic Studies at the US Army War College, is more forthright than Wilkerson: “I have had long conversations over the last two weeks with contacts at the Army War College and the headquarters, Marine Corps, and I’ve made it absolutely clear in both cases that it is 100% certain that 9/11 was a Mossad operation. Period. The Zionists are playing this as an all-or-nothing exercise. If they lose this one, they’re done.”
Dr. Sabrosky, who says he expresses his Jewish identity through cuisine not foreign policy, explains what he means by “they’re done”:
“If these Americans and those like them ever fully understand just how much of their suffering – and the suffering we have inflicted on others – is properly laid on the doorsteps of Israel and its advocates in America, they will sweep aside those in politics, the press and the pulpits alike whose lies and disloyalty brought this about and concealed it from them. They may well leave Israel looking like Carthage after the Romans finished with it. It will be Israel’s own great fault.”
This is what Wilkerson means when he says Netanyahu was “naïve” to launch the Syrian false flag chemical attack: Naïve Netanyahu imagines he can keep on fooling the Americans forever. He thinks he can get away with rubbing Israeli false-flags in America’s face just in time for September 11th. He is putting Israel in a “very, very dangerous” position.
Naturally, Israel’s American fifth column is trying to save Netanyahu from the consequences of his own folly. They are pushing back hard against the rapidly-rising awareness of false-flags.
Example: Netanyahu’s American megaphone for liberals, the Daily Beast, has published an article attacking the false-flag “conspiracy theories” about Syria.
The Daily Beast is owned by Jane Harmon – who while in Congress was caught by the FBI spying for Israel – and Hollywood Zionist mogul Barry Diller. The Daily Beast’s latest attempt to nip false-flag awareness in the bud is headlined “Enough Already: Syria Wasn’t a False Flag Operation.”
Author Jamelle Bouie admits “there’s no hard confirmation that Assad gave the order to use sarin gas against civilians.” Since there is no evidence implicating Assad, Bouie conjures up “the logistical complexity of setting up the attack and a subsequent cover-up.”
But this “logistical complexity” implicates Israel, not Syria. Israel’s spy service, the ruthless and reckless Mossad, has as its motto: “By way of deception thou shalt do war.” The Mossad is undoubtedly the world’s most experienced intelligence service in the field of logistically-complex false flag deceptions.
Playing dumb, Bouie pretends that Wilkerson cannot explain why Israel would stage such a false flag attack. Since Israel has no motive, Bouie claims, it cannot have perpetrated the attack. But wait a minute – a few paragraphs earlier, Bouie ridiculed those who said Assad had no motive, so he probably didn’t do it!
In fact, Israel does have a motive. Netanyahu has been working overtime in his efforts to drag Obama into war against Syria and Iran. AIPAC and the rest of the Israel lobby are the only significant political force in the US that wants an attack on Syria. And that attack could not possibly happen without a chemical weapons incident attributed to Assad. Obviously, Israel is the prime beneficiary – and the likely culprit.
When someone like Lawrence Wilkerson warns Israel to stop using false-flag atrocities to drag America into ill-advised wars, the Israelis had better listen. When the American people finally wake up to these deceptions – especially 9/11 – Israel could end up, as Dr. Sabrosky suggests, as a smoking pile of rubble.
A ‘Message’ to Iran–or Misinformation?
By Peter Hart | FAIR | September 10, 2013
There’s plenty of discussion about how the threatened U.S. military attack on Syria is really a way of sending a “message” to Iran. And some media accounts inaccurately portray what is known about Iran.
Take this Washington Post news story (9/10/13), by Paul Kane and Ed O’Keefe, about the pro-war lobbying underway by AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee):
An AIPAC official said the group is playing an active role because it sees a direct connection between the Syria crisis and Iran’s effort to get nuclear weapons. “If America is not resolute with Iran’s proxy Syria on using unconventional weapons, it will send the wrong message to Tehran about their effort to obtain unconventional weapons,” said the AIPAC official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about the effort.
The Post would seem to be portraying “Iran’s effort to get nuclear weapons” as if it were a fact. It’s not–it’s an allegation. Either that, or the Post is granting a source anonymity to make a claim that goes further than the facts allow.
This isn’t a new problem for the Post; in December 2011 the group Just Foreign Policy noted that the Post was running a Web feature with the headline, “Iran’s Quest to Possess Nuclear Weapons.” After readers sent messages to Post ombud Patrick Pexton, the headline was changed (“Iran’s Quest to Possess Nuclear Technology”).
As Pexton wrote (12/9/11), the International Atomic Energy Agency “does not say Iran has a bomb, nor does it say it is building one, only that its multiyear effort pursuing nuclear technology is sophisticated and broad enough that it could be consistent with building a bomb.”
The Post no longer has an ombud, but Douglas Feaver is acting as the paper’s “Reader Representative.” He can be reached at readers@washpost.com.
Related article
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Obama ‘should be grateful’ for face-saving chance to backpedal on Syria
RT | September 10, 2013
President Obama should curb threats of a US military strike on Syria by joining Russia’s “face-saving” proposal for Damascus to give control of its chemical weapons to the international community, independent researcher Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich told RT.
Sepahpour-Ulrich said that Russia’s proposal allows Obama and America “to save face,” given the fact that a military strike on Syria would be “contrary to the people’s will” and receive little international support.
RT: Do you think this nascent solution is something that can actually lead to a workable compromise?
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich: It could. It’s a face-saving out for Mr. Obama, really. Because he doesn’t have the support to go to war, and if he chooses to go over the people of the United States, the majority of whom disapprove of this war, and the strikes, then he’s turning his back on democracy, and they always say in America they want to export democracy to other countries. So this is a blatant violation and goes contrary to the people’s will. And I think the proposal is really being very kind to Mr. Obama, giving him a way out.
RT: Why do you think Russia’s proposal to put Syria’s chemical stockpiles under international control received a positive response so quickly?
SSU: I think it was very positive because, well, for one, Assad doesn’t want war, he doesn’t want his people to die because there are lobby groups in Washington pushing for war. So I think he was happy to accept that. And I think the other countries, although Kerry and Obama are skeptical, they do not want this war. They do not want to go to this war. They do not have the support they hoped to have and yet they have those red lines that they have drawn which in fact were violated back in May. That’s when the United Nations said they thought the rebels were responsible and they didn’t act on it. But then to have painted themselves in a corner and this gives them the way out. It helps America, of course, its allies are happy not to go to war. It might be a win-win situation for all.
RT: The president has recently come out in some interviews saying this could be a positive step in the right direction, but we haven’t heard any assertive decision on his part. How do you think his quick his repositioning on the subject can be explained?
SSU: I think when he saw there is absolutely no support at all whatsoever, I mean even if Congress did vote for him to carry out these strikes, again, Congress would’ve been acting against the will of the people. America’s really onstage right now for the whole world to see. Not from a degree of, perhaps, hypocrisy, but the fact that it’s not really a promoter of democracy anywhere. And I think that this is a face-saving way for Obama to back-pedal on his position, and he should be very grateful that this solution was offered.
RT: Many legislators we’ve heard from say they were relieved by this talk of a compromise. Do you think they were looking forward to a vote on this subject?
SSU: I think they were very apprehensive because on the other hand, any legislator that would not have acted out the people’s will and had voted for war to please the lobby groups – no matter how much money the lobby would have actually put into their re-election – they would still need the vote of the people. So they were in a dilemma as well. I think the whole country, the whole nation was in a dilemma. And this really was a very clever way of avoiding all sorts of conflicts and casualties and allowing America to save face.
CBS’s Face the Nation: Blatant Pro-Israel Pro-War Bias Revealed
By Michael Gillespie | Dissident Voice | September 9, 2013
CBS’s Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer brought together this morning what he characterized as “one of our best panels of analysts ever,” a group of five supposed experts, to discuss President Obama’s plan to launch military action against Syria: the Washington Post‘s Bob Woodward, the Weekly Standard‘s Bill Kristol, the New York Times‘ David Sanger, the Washington Post‘s David Ignatius, and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)’s Danielle Pletka. Schieffer presented this group as if his audience might expect it to represent a range of views. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Daniel Pletka is vice president of AEI, a neoconservative think tank that was instrumental in dragging the US into the hideously expensive and stunningly counterproductive war in Iraq. Several AEI scholars—including Richard Perle and Michael Ledeen—were associated with war profiteering and the phony intelligence used by pro-Israel neoconservative operatives inside the Bush/Cheney administration to stampede the USA into war in Iraq. Pletka was last in the news for smearing the then-Secretary of Defense nominee, former Senator (R-NE) and decorated Vietnam War veteran Chuck Hagel, as an anti-Semite. (Secretary of Defense Hagel is reported to be privately unenthusiastic about plans for military action against Syria.)
David Ignatius routinely defends Israel and champions proposed Israeli solutions to the Israel-Palestine conflict without letting facts get in the way. In 2009, Ignatius caused an international incident that adversely affected Turkish-Israeli relations when, during a panel discussion about the 2008-2009 Gaza War at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he allowed Israeli President Shimon Peres to speak twice as long as the other participants and then attempted to silence Turkish Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan. The panel featured two heads of state, the U.N. secretary-general, and the secretary of the Arab League, and it dealt with an extremely sensitive issue. In allowing Peres to go last, giving him twice as much time to speak, and then repeatedly attempting to cut off Erdogan’s response, Ignatius showcased his pro-Israel bias on a world stage.
David Sanger has long propagandized for a US war against Iran in the pages of the New York Times. According to SourceWatch: “A few days after Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defense minister, admitted that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapons program, the New York Times ran a series of articles slighting Barak’s assertion all the way to confirming the opposite, i.e., that Iran was actually pursuing such weapons program. Sanger was key in the NYT’s drum beating.” Ray McGovern, a former CIA senior officer who briefed several US presidents, had this to say about Sanger’s articles: “Next it was time for the Times to trot out David Sanger from the Washington bullpen. Many will remember him as one of the Times’ stenographers/cheerleaders for the Bush/Cheney attack on Iraq in March 2003. An effusive hawk on Iran also, Sanger was promoted to a position as chief Washington correspondent, apparently for services rendered. In his Jan. 22 article, ‘Confronting Iran in a Year of Elections,’ Sanger pulls out all the stops, even resurrecting Condoleezza Rice’s “mushroom cloud” to scare all of us—and, not least, the Iranians.”
Bill Kristol is the chairman and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and a board member of the Emergency Committee for Israel. Author David Corn has referred to Kristol as “the No. 1 cheerleader for the Iraq War.” Kristol was one of the architects of the blueprint for regime change and “creative destruction” in the Middle East dreamed up by PNAC. Kristol signed the September 20, 2001, PNAC letter endorsing President George W. Bush’s “admirable commitment to ‘lead the world to victory’ in the war against terrorism.” Kristol said in a January 14, 2003, PBS Frontline interview “that the significance of President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address in 2002 (the ‘axis of evil’ speech) is too easily forgotten—that it was a rare moment, ‘the creation of a new American foreign policy’—and that Bush deserves credit for realizing very quickly after Sept. 11 that his presidency would be judged by how he handled the post-9/11 threat of weapons of mass destruction.” Weapons of mass destruction that, as it happened, could not be found because they did not exist.
Bob Woodward is yet another pro-Israel propagandist for executive power and for war. Andrew Bacevich, an accomplished author, Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University, and a retired career officer in the United States Army has described Woodward this way: “Once a serious journalist, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward now makes a very fine living as chief gossip-monger of the governing class. … Back in 2002, for example, during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Woodward treated us to Bush at War. Based on interviews with unidentified officials close to President George W. Bush, the book offered a portrait of the president-as-resolute-war-leader that put him in a league with Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. But the book’s real juice came from what it revealed about events behind the scenes. ‘Bush’s war cabinet is riven with feuding,’ reported the Times of London, which credited Woodward with revealing ‘the furious arguments and personal animosity’ that divided Bush’s lieutenants. Of course, the problem with the Bush administration wasn’t that folks on the inside didn’t play nice with one another. No, the problem was that the president and his inner circle committed a long series of catastrophic errors that produced an unnecessary and grotesquely mismanaged war,” wrote Bacevich. Somehow, Woodward missed all of that and a great deal more. “That war has cost the country dearly—although the people who engineered that catastrophe, many of them having pocketed handsome advances on their forthcoming memoirs, continue to manage quite well, thank you,” declared Bacevich.
This then is “one of our best panels of analysts ever,” according to Bob Schieffer, who once might have rightly claimed to be something other than a stooge for the Israeli foreign ministry. What CBS’s collection of well-heeled pro-Israel propagandists all agree on is this: The US government should launch military action in Syria in order to maintain political and military pressure on Iran, which Israel views as enemy No. 1 (though Iran has not attacked another country in well over 200 years).
One detail the panelists didn’t mention is that Syria is in the Russian sphere of influence and Russia has warships stationed in the eastern Mediterranean off the coast of Syria. Another thing the panelists didn’t mention is that Israeli air and sea forces attacked a lightly armed US Navy signals intelligence vessel, the USS Liberty, in the eastern Mediterranean on June 8, 1967, killing 34 US personnel and wounding 171. Nor did the panelists mention that in the middle 1980s Israeli spies handling an American-Jewish traitor, Jonathan Pollard, stole thousands of highly classified intelligence documents from the US Navy counter-terrorism intelligence facility where Pollard was employed, or that Israel provided many of those documents to the Soviet Union causing great harm to US intelligence capabilities and interests.
What CBS panelists didn’t say is that Syria is the next stop on Israel’s road to a US war against Iran. What they dare not say is that a US attack on Syria might well draw the USA into a much wider war in a region already severely destabilized by more than a decade of enormously expensive, ill-conceived, poorly managed, hideously destructive, and extraordinarily counterproductive US military actions undertaken largely at the insistence of pro-Israel neoconservatives whose wildly inordinate influence over the Washington foreign policy establishment poses an imminent threat to a great many legitimate US national interests, if not to the uninterrupted progress of human civilization.
~
Michael Gillespie, in addition to his regular freelance work for Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, is also a contributing editor and the Des Moines, IA correspondent for The Independent Monitor, the national newspaper of Arab Americans, published by Sami Mashney in Anaheim, CA.
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Israel’s Lobbyists Pushing Hard for another War in the Middle East
By Jeremy Salt | Palestine Chronicle | September 8, 2013
Ankara – Two million refugees out of Syria, some of them Palestinian refugees from 1948 and 1967 and some Iraqi refugees from 2004. They are the consequences of war and yet the raging beast that is devouring the Middle East is still not satiated. Another war looms. Another country already devastated is to be shattered by missile attacks. Who wants this war: who could want it? Who could even think of avenging the dead by calling for more killing?
It is not the people of the world. All polls show they are against it. Not just the people of Latin America, Africa, the Indian subcontinent, southeast Asia and China but the American people, the British people, the French people and the Turkish people. It is only the politicians who want this war: Obama, Kerry, Hagel, McCain and others in the US; Cameron and Hague in Britain; Hollande in France; and Erdogan in Turkey. None of them has any proof of their accusation that the Syrian army used chemical weapons around Damascus, but proof is beside the point. Their Muslim contras have failed to destroy the government in Damascus and now in the chemical weapons attack they have their pretext for doing the job themselves.
The US administration is now deciding how long this attack should last. Should it be a few days, or a few months? Should it be aimed at just punishing the ‘regime’ or should it be aimed at destroying it altogether, which seems to be the emerging consensus? They are talking this over confidently, almost nonchalantly, McCain playing poker on his mobile phone because he is so bored, as though their missile attacks on other countries have lulled them into thinking that their military power is so great they could not possibly be hurt themselves.
Erdogan wants a ‘Kosovo-style’ aerial campaign. In 1999, NATO aircraft flew more than 38,000 ‘sorties’ over Yugoslavia, of which number 10,484 were strike attacks. Operation Allied Force lasted for 78 days, not the 30 days claimed by Kerry when being questioned by the Senate committee which finally voted for war on Syria. In 2011 NATO launched Operation Unified Protector against Libya ‘to protect the people from attack or threat of attack.’ This particular ‘operation’ lasted for seven months, during which 26,500 ‘sorties’ were flown, 9700 of them strike sorties. Even the National Transitional Council, the incoming government after the destruction of the government in Tripoli, said 25,000 people had been killed. A similar operation over Syria, a country much better able to defend itself, and with powerful allies besides, would cause enormous further destruction and the death of many thousands of people. This is the meaning of ‘Kosovo-style’ aerial warfare. In fact, what is shaping up is even worse, an air war that will have more in common with Iraq than the bombing of Yugoslavia. The targets and objectives are being expanded all the time.
Saudi Arabia has no politicians and no public opinion polls which would tell us what the Saudi people think of their government and its role in the destruction of Syria. The only country in which the government and the people are clearly united in their support for an attack on Syria is Israel. Polls show that nearly 70 per cent of Jewish Israelis – Palestinians are fully against it – are in favor of the US striking Syria, while thinking that Israel should stay out unless Syria or Hezbollah retaliate with strikes against Israeli targets. The British vote against war and Obama’s hesitation forced Israel and its lobbyists in the US to break cover, ending the silly pretense that Israel is not involved in Syria and does not really care who wins. David Horowitz, the former editor of the Jerusalem Post, wrote an infuriated piece about ‘how a perfect storm of British ineptitude and gutlessness sent the wrong message to the butcher of Damascus and left Israel more certain than ever that it can rely only on itself.’ The novelist Noah Beck accused Obama of being spineless. Others in the media called him weak and unreliable. By ‘blinking’, he had sent a dangerous message to ‘cruel regimes’ and terrorists everywhere. Debkafile, an outlet for disinformation and other scrapings from the floor of Israeli intelligence, echoed this line. Obama’s ‘about turn’ had let Iran, Syria and Hezbollah ‘off the hook ’, creating a ‘military nightmare’ for Israel, Jordan and Turkey.
The same lines of attack and support were duplicated by Israel’s formal and informal lobbyists in the US. Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post sneered at Obama for hesitating: ‘Perhaps we should be publishing the exact time the bombs will fall lest we disrupt dinner in Damascus’. Wrote William Kristol in the Weekly Standard: ‘Is President Obama going wobbly on Syria? No. He’s always been wobbly on Syria – and on pretty much everything else … the worst outcome would be for Obama not to call Congress back or not to act at all but to falter and retreat. For his retreat would be America’s retreat and his humiliation America’s humiliation.’ Kristol’s stablemate, Thomas Donnelly, thought Obama content ‘‘to see Assad kill his own people – which he has done in the tens if not hundreds of thousands – as long as Assad doesn’t use chemical weapons’. Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times that the most likely option for Syria was partition, ‘with the pro-Assad, predominantly Alawite Syrians controlling one region and the Sunni and Kurdish Syrians controlling the rest.’ The fragmentation of Syria on ethno-religious lines, of course, has been a Zionist objective for decades. No mention by Friedman of the Druze, but never mind that: in the interim, America’s best option is not the launching of Cruise missiles ‘but an increase in the training and arming of the Free Syrian Army – including the antitank and antiaircraft weapons it’s long sought.’ Friedman thought this might increase the influence on the ground of the ‘more moderate groups over the jihadist ones.’
At the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the entire stable was off and running. ‘Forget the red line and engage in Syria,’ wrote David Schenker, as if the US has not been intensely engaged in Syria for the past three years, fomenting the violence which has built up to the present catastrophic situation. Wrote Robert Satloff: ‘Given the strategic stakes at play in Syria which touches [sic.] on every key American interest in the region, the wiser course of action is to take the opportunity of the Assad regime’s flagrant violation of global norms to take action that hastens the end of Assad’s regime … this will also enhance the credibility of the president’s commitment to prevent Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability.’ Michael Herzog thought the US could learn from Israeli air attacks on Syria: ‘In Israel’s experience Assad has proven to be a rational (if ruthless) actor. He was deterred from responding to recent and past strikes because he did not want to invite the consequences of Israeli military might. Therefore, the United States has a good chance of deterring him as well.’
In Commentary, Max Boot called on the US to use air power in cooperation with ground action by ‘vetted’ rebel forces to ‘cripple and ultimately bring down Assad’s regime, making impossible further atrocities such as the use of chemical weapons.’ How these forces are to be ‘vetted’ and how they, rather than the Islamist groups who are doing most of the fighting, could bring down the ‘regime’ Boot does not say, most probably because he doesn’t know. Daniel Pipes, the long-term advocate of Israeli violence in the Middle East, writing in National Review online, wanted not a ‘limited’ strike but something that would do real damage and brings the ‘regime’ down.
Outside these journals and the think tanks, former ‘government advisers’ and ‘foreign policy experts’ signed a petition calling for ‘direct military strikes against the pillars of the Assad regime’. Many of the names will be familiar from the Project for the New American Century and plans laid long ago for a series of wars in the Middle East: Elliott Abrams, Fouad Ajami, Gary Bauer, Max Boot, Ellen Bork, Eliot A. Cohen, Paula Dobriansky, Thomas Donnelly, Douglas Feith, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Bernard-Henri Levy, Michael Makovsky, Joshua Muravchik, Martin Peretz, Karl Rove, Randy Scheunemann, Leon Wieseltier and Radwan Ziadeh.
AIPAC and the Jewish organizations piled the pressure on Congress and the White House. AIPAC’s statement on Syria stressed the sending of a ‘forceful message of resolve to Iran and Hizbullah’ at a time ‘Iran is racing towards obtaining nuclear capability.’ The Politico website quoted unnamed AIPAC officials as saying that ‘some 250 Jewish leaders and AIPAC activists will storm the halls on Capitol Hill beginning next week to persuade lawmakers that Congress must adopt the resolution or risk emboldening Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear weapon … they are expected to lobby virtually every member of Congress’. Their ‘stepped-up involvement’ comes at a welcome time for the White House, wrote the Politico correspondent, given its difficulty in securing support for the resolution. The two top Republican leaders in the Senate, minority leader Mitch McConnell and minority whip John Cornyn, had already been urged ‘by top Jewish donors and AIPAC allies’ to back the war resolution.
The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations called for an attack that would demonstrate ‘accountability’ to ‘those who possess weapons of mass destruction, particularly Iran and Hezbollah.’ Morris Amitay of the pro-Israel Washington Political Action Committee thought that ‘for our [United States] credibility we have to do something.’ Bloomberg reported the Republican Jewish Coalition as sending an ‘action alert’ to its 45,000 members ‘directing them to tell Congress to authorize force.’ The same message of support for an attack was sent out by the National Jewish Democratic Council and Abe Foxman of the so-called Anti-Defamation League, who stressed that while ‘he’s not doing this for Israel,’ the attack may have serious consequences for Israel.
With the exception of the Foxman statement, these organizations carefully kept any mention of Israel out of their public statements. In off the record discussions, however, it was the central concern. On August 30 Obama had a conference call with 1,000 rabbis, with Syria, ‘at the White House’s request,’ according to Bloomberg, being the first question asked. Iran was not mentioned either but, said a leading rabbi from New York, ‘we have a strong stake in the world taking seriously our insistence that weapons of mass destruction should not proliferate’. Bloomberg quoted Obama as ‘arguing’ that ‘a military response is necessary to uphold a longstanding international ban on the use of chemical weapons use and to deter Assad from using them again on his own people or such neighbors as Israel and Jordan.’ Of course, this was not an argument at all but Obama telling the rabbis what they wanted to hear. In a separate approach, 17 leading rabbis ‘covering the religious and political spectrum’, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, sent a letter to Congress calling on it to authorize force against Syria. The language could scarcely be more Orwellian: ‘Through this act, Congress has the capacity to save thousands of lives.’
Another conference call was held between representatives of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and White House deputy national security advisors Tony Blinken and Ben Rhodes. The representatives waited until Blinken and Rhodes were ‘off the call’ before advising constituent organizations ‘not to make their statements ‘Israel-centric’,’ according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. A powerful figure wheeled out by the lobby is Sheldon Adelson, the casino billionaire who funds settlement in Jerusalem and on the West Bank and spent (along with his wife) $93 million trying to see Obama defeated in the presidential election last year. Adelson is a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition and supports the pressure it is putting on Congress to authorize a military attack on Syria.
The carefully crafted outlines of this deceitful campaign are very evident:
1. This is not about Israel
2. This is about America’s national interest.
3. This is about punishing a government which has used chemical weapons on its own people.
4. This is about saving lives
5. This is about a government that has no respect for international law and norms.
6. This is about sending a ‘forceful message of resolve to Hezbollah and Iran.’
7. This is about showing that Obama’s red lines are not empty threats.
Obama’s own ‘full court press strategy’ includes interviews with six television anchors ahead of the congressional vote. The moment Obama said everything AIPAC wanted to hear during the primaries was the moment he took the first step into the tight corner in which he now finds himself. This is now a global confrontation with a lot at stake besides Israel’s interests, but it is pushing as hard as it can to make sure this war goes ahead. Like David Cameron, a congressional vote against war will allow Obama to back out of the corner by saying that the American people have spoken and he cannot take them into war against their wishes. Will he do that, or is really going to plunge his country into war irrespective of what Congress or the American people think? By the end of the coming week we should have the answer.
– Jeremy Salt is an associate professor of Middle Eastern history and politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.
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When It Comes to State Violence, Too Much Is Never Enough
By Jim Naureckas | FAIR | August 30, 2013
Time magazine’s Michael Crowley (9/9/13) offers an analysis of how the Syrian situation reflects on Barack Obama’s presidency:
Whatever comes of Obama’s confrontation with Assad, an even more dangerous confrontation lies in wait–the one with Iran. If another round of negotiations with Tehran should fail, Obama may soon be obliged to make good on his vow to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. “I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests,” Obama told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in March 2012.
But to his critics, Obama does hesitate, and trouble follows as a result. With more than three years left in his presidency, he has the opportunity to reverse that impression. Success in Syria and then Iran could vindicate him, and failure could be crushing. “The risk is that, if things in the Middle East continue to spiral, that will become his legacy,” says Brian Katulis, a former Obama campaign adviser now with the Center for American Progress.
Obama does “hesitate to use force”–is that his problem? Since 2009, US drone strikes have killed more than 2000 people in Pakistan, including 240 civilians, 62 of them children. Since Obama took office, they’ve killed more than 400 in Yemen; drone deaths in Somalia are harder to quantify.
Obama roughly tripled the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, from 33,000 to 98,000 (Think Progress, 6/22/11). In 2011, he sent naval and air forces into battle to overthrow the government of Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi. In Iraq, Obama tried and failed to keep tens of thousands of troops in the country beyond the withdrawal deadline negotiated by the Bush administration (New York Times, 10/22/11).
This is a record that would not seem to indicate a particular hesitancy to use force. Oddly, Crowley acknowledges much of this: “Obama …sent more troops to Afghanistan, escalated drone strikes against Al-Qaeda terrorists,” he writes. But his military actions are presented as a sign of his unwillingness to take military action: “In Libya, he at first stood by as rebels fighting Muammar Gaddafi’s forces found themselves outgunned and on the run.”
No matter how many wars you engage in–Obama has had six so far–there are always wars you could have started but didn’t. Crowley seems to be suggesting that those unfought wars ought to take the blame for any problems Obama leaves behind.
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Mind the gap! Democratic deficit in UK, US has never been bigger
By Neil Clark | RT | September 6, 2013
The issue of Syria has demonstrated the massive gap that has opened up between the elite and ordinary people in both the US and Britain.
Poll after poll after poll shows very large majorities against strikes on Syria. People are war-weary, and the last thing they want is for their countries to become embroiled in another Middle-East war.
One Congressman in the US tweeted earlier this week that he had asked 200 people if they supported strikes on Syria and only four said ‘Yes’– that’s just 2 percent. Another said that 99 percent of calls to his office were against military action.
Let’s get one thing straight: the only people who are keen on war with Syria in the US and UK are the elites. Ordinary people on both sides of the Atlantic want absolutely nothing to do with it.
In Britain, the overwhelming majority of people were delighted that our parliament voted against war last week and that enough of our legislators finally listened to the people to defeat the serial warmongers.
A BBC poll showed that 71 percent of people thought parliament had made the right decision. Yet our neocon/’liberal interventionist’ elite is furious that legislators listened to the views of ordinary members of the public and not them. “You’re a disgrace,” screeched neocon Minister Michael Gove at MPs who voted against the government. Behaving like spoilt brats having a temper tantrum because they were not allowed to get their own way, the Permanent War brigade have been calling for a “second vote” in parliament, showing arrogant contempt for the views of the majority of ordinary people who don’t want war with Syria.
Neocon historian Andrew Roberts threw a hissy fit in a newspaper column last Sunday, attacking the “hideously amoral selfishness” of “new Britain” for not supporting war with Syria. Serial warmonger and drama queen Lord Paddy Ashdown declared “In 50 years trying to serve my country I have never felt so depressed/ashamed” – after parliament finally listened to public opinion and not to warmongers like Ashdown.
Nick Cohen, poster boy for Britain’s pro-war faux-left tweeted “Can’t help thinking that the British parliament’s vote will be remembered as a low and mean point in our history.” Have you got that? Parliament listening to ordinary members of the public is a “low and mean point.” Such is the fundamentally undemocratic neocon/liberal interventionist mindset, which says that no point of view on foreign policy counts except their own and that of their neocon pals.
Since last week’s parliamentary vote, UK establishment figures have been lining up to give Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, a jolly good thrashing for daring to defy the War Party’s line on Syria. Writing in The Times, aptly described as ‘The Warmongers Gazette’ by anti-war conservative writer Peter Hitchens, David Aaronovitch called Miliband a ‘political vulture’. Aaronovitch’s attack on Miliband was hailed as ‘devastating’ by Ian Katz, the editor of Newsnight, the BBC’s flagship Current Affairs program, which wheeled out a ‘Dr. Rola’ from ‘Hand in Hand For Syria’ to criticize Miliband’s failure to back the government.
Since the vote Newsnight has promoted a series of pro-intervention figures, seemingly desperate to try and get us plebs to change our minds. What part of ‘WE DON’T WANT WAR WITH SYRIA’ do our elite not understand? Now the high priest of ‘Liberal Interventionism’, the multi-millionaire war criminal Tony Blair, has joined the ‘Get Miliband’ lynch mob, saying that he was “disappointed” that parliament hadn’t supported the government, adding, “This is something where I just have to disagree with the leadership of the [Labour] party.”
For our neocon/liberal interventionist elite, Miliband is a shocker, a bounder, a rotter, and a ‘political vulture’. But most ordinary people in Britain are very pleased that he and his party listened to the public and opposed the government on Syria. You’d never have known it from listening to neocon newspaper columns, but after last week’s vote, bookmakers shortened the odds of Labour winning the next election to 8-13.
If Miliband and his party had voted the way the neocons wanted, then it’s highly likely that earlier this week US and British forces would have launched their attack on Syria. Which is why of course the Permanent War gang are so angry with him.
The pro-war lobby may be numerically tiny, but in both the US and UK it is massively overrepresented in the mainstream media. Despite the Iraq debacle, the same columnists who urged on that particular catastrophe, are still in front of their keyboards, propagandizing for yet another Middle East ‘intervention’, and are still treated with enormous deference whenever they appear on the likes of CNN or the BBC. Which is very, very often.
“Did you know there are people who supported the Iraq War getting invited on news programs to talk about Syria?” tweets comedy writer Graham Linehan. S’TRUE!!!
The disproportionate voice that necons and ‘liberal interventionists’ have in the UK and US media makes it appear that their views are more widely held in the public at large than they are. But in fact their extremist pro-war views are very rarely found outside elite, Establishment circles.
The gap between the elites in the US and the UK is now larger than at any time in the last 100 years. If we do go to war with Syria, despite the overwhelming public opposition, then it will show that democracy is well and truly dead in both our countries.
Are we countries where the views of the majority are listened to, or are we countries where a tiny, unrepresentative, pro-war clique always gets their way? We’re about to find out.
Neil Clark is a journalist, writer and broadcaster. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. Follow him on Twitter
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Lebanese Parliamentarians: US Terrorism against Syria Undermines International Stability
Al-Manar | September 6, 2013
The deactivation of the Lebanese public institution, the deterioration of the socio-economic and security conditions in Lebanon as well as the regional challenges that threaten the local stability topped the agenda of the meeting that was held by the Loyalty to Resistance parliamentary bloc.
The bloc asserted, in a statement, the importance of taking the necessary measures to cope with the consequences of the Dahiyeh and Tripoli blasts and to reduce the economic loads that overburden all the Lebanese.
“The paralysis and the recession that strikes the Lebanese public institutions seriously endangers Lebanon as March 14 forces have decided to deactivate the government and the parliament, betting on regional changes to subdue the national partners,” the statement read.
“Rejecting the national dialogue and the harmony among the main factors of the strategic equation that protects Lebanon-the army, the people and the resistance struck the Lebanese security and stability as the sectarian language is publicly used,” the statement added.
Loyalty to Resistance also condemned the arrogant US threats against Syria and all the Arab countries.
“The American aggression against Syria represents an organized terrorism that threatens the regional as well as the international stability and aims at strengthening the Zionist arm and the colonial grip to control the whole region.
The direct involvement of the American administration asserts that the crisis in Syria is an international conspiracy whose target is the foreign dominance over the region,” the statement read by the bloc member, MP Hassan Fadlallah, underlined.
Related article
- US orders diplomats out of Lebanon (thehimalayantimes.com)
Israel expects Congress to approve strike on Syria
MEMO | September 4, 2013
Israelis initially criticized the Obama administration when he referred the approval of a military strike on Syria to the Congress last week.
Israeli officials are expecting that US President Barack Obama will get Congressional approval for a military strike on Syria next week when the Congress reconvenes.
Israeli media reports said that the Israel lobby is working hard to convince lawmakers to support this decision.
Israelis initially criticized the Obama administration when he referred the approval of a military strike on Syria to the Congress last week.
However former head of the Security and Foreign Affairs Committee in the Knesset Tzahi Hangbi told Israel’s military radio on Wednesday that calling the Obama administration “dead” was premature.
Hangbi, who is close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, praised Obama’s decision to seek congressional support. He stated that Obama’s request would unite the administration and the congress, and the practical result of this step would be to widen the scope for any potential strike.
Related articles
- US Senate panel votes to authorize force in Syria (thehindu.com)
- White House to Congress: Help protect Israel (pakalertpress.com)
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Fanatical Followers of the Covid Regime: A Jim Jones-Style Cult?
By Professor Roger Watson and Dr. Niall McCrae | The Daily Sceptic | November 15, 2021
As scholars at leading British universities over recent decades, we witnessed the replacement of critical thinking and debate by narrative: facts are discrimination and scientific method is imperialism; truth, instead, is derived from ‘progressive’ values. This educational trend may be a major contributory factor to the ease in which society has been inculcated to the Covid ‘new normal’ of masking, testing, and repeated doses of vaccines for a disease of similar risk to severe influenza.
One doesn’t need much critical reasoning to observe the flawed logic of some vaccination enthusiasts, such as people who respond to experiencing any side effects, however debilitating, by saying “at least I know it’s working”, or, after contracting the disease despite their promised inoculation (over 90% effective, according to initial drug company claims), “I’d have been worse off without the jab.” … continue
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