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Let’s All, For a Moment, Remember Bibi’s Wisdom on Iraq 10 Years Ago

By Jim Lobe | September 18th, 2012

As usual, Paul Pillar hits the mark in his latest blog post at the National Interest in asking “Why are the Neocons Still Around?,” suggesting that when you are responsible for “one of the biggest and costliest blunders in the history of U.S. foreign relations” [the Iraq war], retirement from public affairs — as opposed to beating the drums for a new Middle East military adventures — might be a more seemly course of action.

What applies to U.S. neo-cons should also apply to the current prime minister of Israel who, given his many years of growing up and living in the United States, as well as his close personal relations with leading U.S. neo-cons, has either drunk the same kool-aid or helped to brew it up himself. (After all, it was in 2001 that Bibi was bragging about how easy the United States could be “moved to the right direction.”) And just like then, he is now leading the charge for war with Iran in ways that are not only increasing the chances of a major breach between the United States and Israel, as M.J. Rosenberg and other informed observers see it, but are also raising serious questions among the national-security elite in Israel about his fitness to lead.

So, given his current efforts to take the U.S. to war in Iran, I thought it might be useful to review at least part of Netanyahu’s advice and exhortations to Washington in the run-up to the Iraq war. Coincidentally, it was almost exactly ten years ago when he testified at seemingly interminable length before the House Government Reform Committee about the absolute necessity for Washington to effect regime change in Iraq as the next step — the first was ousting the Taliban — toward destroying the “entire terror network” (Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Arafat, etc.) and “ventilating” the Middle East in much the same that the U.S. and its allies “ventilated” Nazi Germany after World War II. You will be quick to see that Netanyahu echoed many of the same points that were being made at the time by Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, et. al. who spoke with similar confidence (and profound understanding of the region) about the necessity for war and the unmitigated good that would come of it.

It’s also worth remembering that Netanyahu testified before Congress on this issue five days after then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card told the New York Times in reference to the administration’s push for a war resolution on Iraq, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t roll out new products in August.” In that context, Netanyahu’s testimony has to be seen as part of the administration’s public campaign to roll Congress. Bibi subsequently drew heavily on his testimony in an op-ed published on the Wall Street Journal’s neo-con editorial page (September 20, 2002) and in an interview with the Washington Times a month later (October 23). Let there be no mistake: Bibi was a big booster of “one of the biggest and costliest blunders in the history of U.S. foreign relations,” as Pillar describes it.

Here’s some of examples of the wisdom he shared with Congress about Iraq, the alleged threat it posed, and how to transform the region:

On why invading Iraq — instead of pursuing Al Qaeda — was the top priority:

I think the first question is, do you want to merely avenge September 11th or do you want to win the war on terror? If you want to stop with September 11th, go after al Qaeda.
…[T]here is no international terrorism of any kind — al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, you name them, all of them — there is no international terrorism if you take away the support of sovereign states. And the sovereign states are few. If you want to win this war, you just have to neutralize these states. In neutralizing them, you have two options. It’s like when kamikaze fighters are coming at you and bombing you. You can shoot one; you can shoot the other. But if you really want to stop it, you have to shoot down the aircraft carriers. There are only a handful of aircraft carriers. …So, I think if you want to win the broader war on terror, you have to get rid of these regimes.

And:

And the question of time [for taking preemptive action], I think the sooner the better. But now the question is when you choose a target, I think Iraq brings two things, a confluence of two things. One, it is sufficiently important in this network to have a tremendous effect. If it collapses, it will have a beneficial seismic effect…

And:

And today the United States must destroy the same regime because a nuclear-armed Saddam will place the security of our entire world at risk. And make no mistake about it — if and once Saddam has nuclear weapons, it is only a matter of time before those weapons will be used.

And:

If a preemptive action will be supported by a broad coalition of free countries in the United Nations, all the better. But if such support is not forthcoming, then the United States must be prepared to act without it.[Emphasis added.]

On Saddam’s (presumed) nuclear program, Netanyahu had no doubts whatsoever:

“Two decades ago, it was possible to thwart Saddam’s nuclear ambitions by bombing a single installation. But today, nothing less than dismantling his regime will do, because Saddam’s nuclear program has fundamentally changed in those two decades. He no longer needs one large reactor to produce the deadly material necessary for atomic bombs. He can produce it in centrifuges the size of washing machines that can be hidden throughout the country. And I want to remind you that Iraq is a very big country. It is not the size of Monte Carlo. It is a big country. And I believe that even free and unfettered inspections will not uncover these portable manufacturing sites of death.”

And:

“There’s no question that [Saddam] had not given upon on his nuclear program, not [sic] whatsoever. There is also no question that he was not satisfied with the arsenal of chemical and biological weapons that he had and was trying to perfect them constantly. …So I think, frankly, it is not serious to assume that this man, who 20 years ago was very close to producing an atomic bomb, spent the last 20 years sitting on his hands. He has not. And every indication we have is that he is pursuing, pursuing with abandon, pursuing with ever ounce of effort, the establishment of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. If anyone makes an opposite assumption or cannot draw the lines connecting the dots, that is simply not an objective assessment of what has happened. Saddam is hell-bent on achieving atomic bombs, atomic capabilities, as soon as he can.
…There was a constant upgrading of these weapons, constant upgrading of these weapons, constant efforts to make them more lethal and to expand the reach of the delivery systems to deliver them.”

And:

So we have all these dots and we say, well, we don’t know exactly what is happening. You know, it’s like you’re about to see somebody plunge the knife into someone, you’re looking through a keyhole. You followed a murderer. You know that he is suspected that he’s already killed a few people and you see him trailing somebody and you’re trailing him. He shuts the door. You’re looking through the keyhole and you see him grasping the throat of this person, raising the knife and then the light goes out, and the next thing you know a bod is found. And you can say, ‘Well, you know, I didn’t actually see him en flagrante, in the act, if you will,’ but I think, Mr. Kucinich, that it is simply not reflecting the reality to assume that Saddam isn’t feverishly working to develop nuclear weapons, as we speak.

And:

There is not question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking and is working and is advancing towards the development of nuclear weapons — no question whatsoever. And there is no question that once he acquires it, history shifts immediately.

On how regime change in Iraq will have wondrous effects on the region:

…If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.

And:

So what is the next step? I believe that the next step is to choose — it’s not a question of whether you have to take action but what kind of action and against whom. I think of the three [Iraq, Iran and Libya, all “racing to develop nuclear weapons”], Saddam is probably in many ways a linchpin, because it is possible to take out this regime with military action and the reverberations of what happens with the collapse of Saddam’s regime could very well create an implosion in a neighbor regime like Iran for the simple reason that Iran has, I don’t want to say a middle class, but it has a very large population that might bring down the regime, just as has [sic] brought down the shah’s regime. So I think that the choice of going after Iraq is like removing a brick that holds a lot of other bricks and might cause this structure to crumble. It is not guaranteed. The assumption of regime removal in Iraq, an implosion in Iran, an implosion in Libya is an assumption. It is not guaranteed. But if I have to choose should there be military action first against Iraq or first against Iran, I would choose exactly what the president had chosen, to after Iraq.

And:

The three principles of winning the war on terror are the three W’s — winning, winning and winning. The more victories you amass, the easier the next victory becomes. The first victory in Afghanistan makes a second victory in Iraq that much easier. The second victory in Iraq will make the third victory that much easier, too, but it may change the nature of achieving that victory.

Democratization is the answer:

The test and the great opportunity and challenge is not merely to effect the ouster of the regime, but also transform that society and thereby begin too the process of democratizing the Arab world. I think that’s absolutely essential.

…I think the greatest protection ….against the return of another Saddam, another bin Laden, another Mullah Omar …is to ventilate these societies with the winds of freedom. Democracy, or, if I want to be realistic, democratization, coupled with an economic package. I think that should be the step afterwards in Iraq. And I think it would actually stabilize Iraq. It might send a message — I think it will — to neighboring Iran, to neighboring Syria. And the people will wake up and they’ll say, “We can have a real life. We can have a choice. Our children can have a future.” That’s not a bad idea.

On regime change in Iran:

I once said to the …heads of the CIA, when I was prime minister, that if you want to advance regime change in Iran, you don’t have to go through the CIA cloak-and-dagger stuff — what you want to do is take very large, very strong transponders and just beam ‘Melrose Place’ and ‘Beverly Hills 2050′ [sic] and all that into Teheran and into Iran, because that is subversive stuff. …[B]ut it may take a long time.

If Bush strikes Iraq, Saddam will hit Israel:

I want to say that I’m here today as a citizen of a country that is most endangered by a preemptive strike, for it is, I think, clear that in the last gasps of Saddam’s dying regime, he will attempt to launch his remaining missiles, his remaining payloads, including biological and chemical payloads, at the Jewish state.

On the “right direction” in which Bush and the U.S. are heading (recalling, for a second, Bibi’s boast about the ease with which Washington can be “moved in the right direction” in the 2001 video):

I think, in a similar way, the bombing of September 11th opened the eyes of Americans to see the great conflict and the great danger that faces us. And once opened, then, the overpowering will of the majority of the people of the United States, of the steamroller, is inevitably moving to decide this battle. I think this is — I think this was called by Congressman Lantos “a hinge of history,” and it is exactly that. It is a hinge of history.

And one year later, I can come here and say that history is moving in the right direction; that had America not woken up, had America not mobilized its action, had it not — have — if it had not had the courageous leadership of President Bush, then I wouldn’t be able to say that I’m confident today. But I am saying that I believe that the war on terror is going in the right direction and that I am confident that if we pursue this direction, then we will achieve victory. And victory is victory for America and victory for Israel and victory for Britain, victory for all the democracies, however vacillating and however reluctant their governments are. This is a victory for all free societies, and I’m sure it will be achieved.

All of which raises the question: given his proven powers of analysis and foresight, why are we listening to Bibi Netanyahu on how to deal with Iran?

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September 21, 2012 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US Media Distorts Iran Nuke Dispute

 By Robert Parry | Consortium News | September 14, 2012

A few weeks ago, Washington Post ombudsman Patrick B. Pexton published a revealing column in which he delved into the nettlesome question of why the Post rarely writes about Israel’s actual nuclear arsenal, even as it devotes intensive coverage to Iran’s nuclear program, which remains far short of producing a single bomb.

Pexton deemed concerns about this imbalance “a fair question” and dug back through a decade of Post articles without finding “any in-depth reporting on Israeli nuclear capabilities.” He then explored some reasons for this failure, including sympathy felt toward Israel because of the Holocaust and the difficulties that journalists confront in addressing the topic.

“But that doesn’t mean the media shouldn’t write about how Israel’s doomsday weapons affect the Middle East equation,” Pexton wrote. “Just because a story is hard to do doesn’t mean The Post, and the U.S. press more generally, shouldn’t do it.”

Yet, there are few signs, if any, that the Post and other mainstream U.S. news outlets are heeding Pexton’s criticism. Obviously, one way to alleviate the imbalance would be to mention that Israel has an undeclared nuclear arsenal in every story that discusses Iran’s nuclear program, which Iranian leaders insist is for peaceful purposes only.

The fact that Israel has a large and sophisticated roster of nuclear weapons is surely relevant in evaluating why Iran might want a nuclear weapon of its own and why Iran would not want to provoke a war with Israel even if Iran did manufacture one or two bombs. Yet this context is almost never included in U.S. news stories.

U.S. journalists and their editors also might stop including hyperbolic statements that exaggerate the potential Iranian threat to Israel, such as the discredited claim that Iran has threatened to “wipe Israel off the map,” an oft-repeated refrain that resulted from a mistranslation of a comment by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

However, that seems to be too much to expect from major U.S. newspapers. For instance, on Friday, the New York Times in an article by Mark Landler and Helene Cooper not only fails to mention Israel’s nuclear arsenal but inserts the provocative claim that “Iranian leaders have repeatedly threatened [Israel] with annihilation.”

The article offers no quote to back up this assertion. It simply stands as a form of boilerplate, as if everyone knows it to be true. But the reality is that Iranian leaders may wish that the Zionist government of Israel ultimately disappears to be replaced by a non-religious state, but that is a far cry from threatening to annihilate Israel militarily, which is the clear implication from Landler and Cooper.

Repeat Offender

Landler, the Times’ White House correspondent, also has been a repeat offender in this journalistic malpractice. For instance, on March 5, he appeared on MSNBC and offered this account of the Israeli-Iranian tensions:

“The Israelis feel the window for that [denying Iran the capability to build nuclear weapons] is closing and it’s closing really fast, and if they allow it to close without taking military action, they would find themselves in a position where the Iranians suddenly are in possession of nuclear weapons, which they’ve threatened already to use against Israel.

“As the Israelis always say, that’s an existential threat to Israel, which is something we don’t necessarily feel here in the United States.”

Landler’s account was hair-raising, claiming that Iranians have “threatened already to use [nuclear weapons] against Israel” which the Israelis understandably perceive as an “existential threat.” But Landler’s statement simply isn’t true.

Iranian leaders continue to deny that they even want nuclear weapons, so it makes no sense that they would threaten to use them against Israel.

In February, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who controls the armed forces, called “the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin” and said “the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.” He insisted that “the Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons.”

Further, the U.S. intelligence community reported in 2007 that Iran stopped research work on a nuclear weapon in 2003 and has not resumed that effort. That assessment has been reaffirmed periodically and remains the position of the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

Beyond that, for Iran to threaten to “annihilate” Israel would represent one of the strangest threats in world history. Here is a nation without nuclear weapons – and whose top leader disavows any intent to get nuclear weapons – supposedly threatening to use those non-existent weapons against a nation which has a large stockpile of nuclear weapons.

You would think, at minimum, that Landler would be expected to cite an actual Iranian official making a specific threat. But he doesn’t and apparently no one in power [at the NYT] demands that he do so. His claim that Iran has threatened to attack Israel with a nuclear bomb is simply accepted as what everybody knows to be true.

Explaining the Failure

That is the sort of ludicrous propaganda that has become commonplace in the U.S. news media, a topic that the Post’s ombudsman addressed gingerly on Aug. 31. Pexton offered mostly innocent explanations for this journalistic misfeasance.

“First, Israel refuses to acknowledge publicly that it has nuclear weapons,” Pexton wrote. “The U.S. government also officially does not acknowledge the existence of such a program. … Because Israel has not signed the [nuclear non-proliferation] treaty, it is under no legal obligation to submit its major nuclear facility at Dimona to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections.

“Iran, in contrast, did sign the treaty and thus agrees to periodic inspections. IAEA inspectors are regularly in Iran, but the core of the current dispute is that Tehran is not letting them have unfettered access to all of the country’s nuclear installations.

“Furthermore, although Israel has an aggressive media, it still has military censors that can and do prevent publication of material on Israel’s nuclear forces. Censorship applies to foreign correspondents working there, too.”

Plus, Israel has demonstrated that it will deliver harsh punishment on any Israeli who does divulge secrets about the nuclear program, as nuclear technician Mordechai Vununu learned in 1986 when he became a whistleblower about the secret Israeli arsenal. He was then kidnapped, taken to Israel against his will, and imprisoned for 18 years, much of it in solitary confinement.

Pexton added that “perhaps most important, Americans don’t leak about the Israeli nuclear program either.” He cited the inclination to protect a friend and ally, as well as the reality that deviating from this silence “can hurt your career.”

Pexton quoted George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as saying: “It’s like all things having to do with Israel and the United States. If you want to get ahead, you don’t talk about it; you don’t criticize Israel, you protect Israel. You don’t talk about illegal settlements on the West Bank even though everyone knows they are there.”

However, the job of journalism should be to present all the relevant facts in context, especially on life-or-death issues like war and peace.

When the New York Times and the Washington Post institute systemic bias in their coverage of such an issue – as the two newspapers also did in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq – they not only fail to uphold the principles of journalism, they risk becoming complicit in the slaughter of innocent people.

~

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com.

September 17, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Pro-Israel Copt’s Phone Call Provoked Anti-American Outrage

By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | September 17, 2012

On September 15, McClatchy reported that the anti-American outrage in the Muslim world over a crude YouTube video insulting the Prophet Muhammad had been triggered by a phone call to an Egyptian reporter from a controversial U.S.-based anti-Islam activist:

Morris Sadek, a Coptic Christian who lives in suburban Washington, D.C., whose anti-Islam campaigning led to the revocation of his Egyptian citizenship earlier this year, had an exclusive story for Gamel Girgis, who covers Christian emigrants for al Youm al Sabaa, the Seventh Day, a daily newspaper here. Sadek had a movie clip he wanted Girgis to see; he e-mailed him a link.

“He told me he produced a movie last year and wanted to screen it on Sept. 11th to reveal what was behind the terrorists’ actions that day, Islam,” Girgis said, recalling the first call, which came on Sept. 4. Sadek, a longtime source, “considers me the boldest journalist, the only one that would publish such stories.”

The report made no mention of the provocateur’s extreme pro-Israel views, however. On his blog dedicated to the “National American Coptic Assembly” — of which he describes himself “a president” — Morris Sadek provides an erratically punctuated outline of what he claims should be “The Coptic Position on Israel”:

We recognize the sacred right of the state of Israel and the Israeli people to the land of historic Israel .

“The right of Return” of the Jewish people to the land of their foremothers and forefathers is a sacred right. It has no statute of limitation. The return must continue to enrich the Middle East .
We recognize Jerusalem as simply a Jewish city, It must never be divided, She is, and shall always be, the united capital of Israel .

The future of the Palestinians lies with the Arab states. A Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria constitute an imminent danger to world peace.

The Chantilly-based National American Coptic Assembly, Inc., a private company with a staff of two, has an estimated annual revenue of $97,000. Considering the fawning pro-Israel statements of its principal, it’s not too difficult to speculate as to the source of that revenue.

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September 17, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Islamophobia, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Details emerge of US role in Sabra-Shatila massacre

Al-Akhbar | September 17, 2012

Israel duped the United Stated into believing that “thousands of terrorists” remained in west Beirut following the expulsion of Palestinian fighters 30 years ago, providing cover for the 1982 massacre in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, according to recently declassified Israeli documents.

The documents include verbatim transcripts of meetings between US and Israeli officials before and during the three-day massacre led by the right-wing Lebanese Christian Phalange militia that left roughly 2,000 people dead, mostly children, women and elderly men.

“[The transcripts] reveal that the Israelis misled American diplomats about events in Beirut and bullied them into accepting the spurious claim that thousands of “terrorists” were in the camps,” The New York Times, which obtained the documents, reported.

“Most troubling, when the United States was in a position to exert strong diplomatic pressure on Israel that could have ended the atrocities, it failed to do so,” the newspaper added.

The Palestinian fighters had previously been evacuated from Lebanon in a US-coordinated effort whereby they provided assurances to protect the camp’s residents, which included both Palestinians and Lebanese.

On 16 September 1982, the first day of the massacre, US envoy to the Middle East Morris Draper met with Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon who justified Israel’s occupation of west Beirut by claiming that “2,000 to 3,000 terrorists” remained in that part of the city.

Draper, according to the documents, was furious to learn that Sharon wanted to allow the Christian militiamen into west Beirut to root out what he claimed were terrorists.

Later that evening, word began to spread in Israel that a massacre was taking place in Sabra and Shatila.

Israeli Deputy Prime Minister David Levy reportedly remarked: “I know what the meaning of revenge is for [the Phalanges], what kind of slaughter. Then no one will believe we went in to create order there, and we will bear the blame.”

The following day, while the massacre continued, Draper, who had not yet learned that the Phalangists had entered the camp, met with high ranking Israeli officials including Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

Shamir had known of the slaughter in the camp, but failed to inform the US diplomat.

Sharon, also at the meeting, continued to insist that the “terrorists” in west Beirut needed “mopping up.”

When Draper demanded that the Israeli forces immediately pull out of the area, Sharon responded with outrage: “I just don’t understand, what are you looking for? Do you want the terrorists to stay? Are you afraid that somebody will think that you were in collusion with us? Deny it. We denied it.”

According to the transcripts, Draper continued to insist that the Israelis leave, but eventually backed off once they agreed to a “gradual withdrawal” to allow for the Lebanese Army to enter the city.

The Israelis insisted, however, that they wait 48 hours before allowing the plan to take effect.

Draper reminded the Israelis that the US had facilitated the departure of Palestinian fighters from Beirut in order to prevent Israelis from occupying west Beirut. “You should have stayed out,” Draper said at the meeting.

The argument persisted, but it ultimately allowed Israel the cover it needed to allow the Christian fighters to continue its slaughter of the camp.

By the next day, September 18, when details of the massacre had become widely known, US President Ronald Reagan expressed “outrage and revulsion over the murders.”

US Secretary of State George Shults later admitted his country bore partial responsibility for the massacre since they “took the Israelis and Lebanese at their word.”

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September 17, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Turkey’s Syrian Misadventure

By Jeremy Salt | Palestine Chronicle | September 15, 2012

Ankara – Turkey’s intervention in Syria has been an act of unprecedented folly. Not since the republic was established in 1923 – not even when the military was in charge – has a Turkish government sought ‘regime change’ in another country.  In sponsoring armed groups seeking to destroy the Syrian government, the collective calling itself ‘The Friends of the Syrian People’ appears to be committing serious violations of international law. While the focus has to remain on the prime victims of their intervention, the Syrian people,  it is also the case that  more than a year later the policy has not worked for Turkey and is blowing up in the face of its architects, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

International Law

Article 2 (1) of the UN Charter (1945) states that the organization is based on the ‘sovereign equality of all its Members’. Article 2 (3) states that all members ‘shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered’. Article 2 (4) required all members to refrain in their international relations ‘from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state or in any manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations’. Article 2 (7) states that ‘nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisprudence of any state’. Chapter 7 of the charter grants the Security Council the right to take action but only in cases of a threat to peace, a breach of the peace or an act of aggression. ‘Peace’ here is clearly intended to mean international peace and not the disruption of domestic peace by domestic disorder.

In 1965 the sovereign rights of the state were further affirmed in General Assembly Resolution 2131 (XX), entitled Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty, passed on December 21 by a vote of 109-0.  Three of the core principles are adumbrated below:

1. No State has the right to intervene directly or indirectly for any reason whatever in the internal and external affairs of any State. Consequently armed intervention and all other forms of interference or attempted threats against the personality of the State or against its political, economic and cultural elements are condemned.

2. No State may use or encourage the use of economic, political or any other type of measures to coerce another State in order to obtain from it the subordination of the exercise of its sovereign rights or to secure from its advantages of any kind. Also no State shall organize, assist, foment, finance, incite or tolerate subversive, terrorist or armed activities directed towards the violent overthrow of the regime of another State or interfere in civil strife in another State.

The fact that powerful states bully the weak and frequently violate their sovereign rights is no excuse for Turkey to do the same. The question of whether the Justice and Development Party government is violating Turkey’s own laws is another issue, already raised in the Turkish media and by opposition politicians.

Disarray

None of this would matter so much if Turkey’s policy had worked out. Bashar would have gone in a few months and the Turkish Prime Minister and his Foreign Minister would be hailed for their foresight and courage but now it is they who are on the hot plate. Bashar is still in power and the army – the foot soldiers mostly Sunni Muslims – has not broken up on sectarian lines. The armed protégés of the outside governments are steadily being contained and driven out of the towns and the cities they have infiltrated. Fighting continues but external support for the armed groups seems to be waning. The US was already losing its appetite for direct intervention under the aegis of NATO and in the wake of the murder of the US ambassador to Tripoli by the very people whom the US used as auxiliaries to destroy the Libyan Jamahiriya and its founder,    it can be ruled out altogether and not only because of fear of the Russian and Chinese reaction.  Finally the US is taking a clear look at the people likely to inherit in Syria if Assad goes and it does not like what it sees.

The recent statement of a ‘rebel commander’ in Aleppo that 70 per cent of the population remains loyal to the government probably means that 90 to 95 per cent support the government and not just in Aleppo, where local Christians have been forming armed groups to defend themselves. It is only another strand of western involvement in Syria that politicians who wear their Christianity on their sleeve in Washington and London have completely ignored the evidence of the killing and intimidation of Syrian Christians. Only the Vatican has spoken out.   Only recently have the sponsors of the armed  groups – with the notable exceptions of Saudi Arabia and Qatar –  begun  looking askance at the savagery of the  crimes they are committing,  including the  massacre of civilians and soldiers, rape, kidnapping and the murder of anyone identified as a ‘regime loyalist’,  including  police, postal workers, university professors and journalists. In Aleppo they stood their captives against a wall and riddled them with machine gun fire. Later they ‘executed’ 20 bound and gagged Syrian soldiers. In Al Bab – near Aleppo – they murdered postal workers before pitching their bodies from the roof of their building on to the steps below. In Homs the FSA’s Faruq Brigade maintained a special squad whose job it was to cut the throats of the group’s captives. Others have their heads cut off. All of this is justified by the crimes committed or alleged to have been committed by the ‘regime’. Any lines of demarcation between these groups have all but disappeared. There is tacit cooperation between all of them. There is no reason why  any sane Syrian would want these people in their midst,  especially as many are not  even their countrymen but salafis/jihadis/takfiris – Pakistanis, Iraqis, Turks, Saudis, Chechens and Libyans – paid by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Their role in the armed opposition has become increasingly dominant.

US Target

Syria has been in the gun sights of the US administration for decades. The country’s modern history bulges with attempts to disable it through assassination, attempts to overthrow the government, armed attack and occupation and most recently sanctions: no wonder Syria has become a byword for the mukharabat state. In the past two decades the calibration of the anti-Syrian policy has been in the hands of the neoconservatives. The Middle East was their prime target and Israel their prime beneficiary. The national security strategy announced by the George W. Bush administration was effectively a neoconservative writ for attacking other states if and when the US wanted, with Muslim countries top of the list. The rule book – beginning with the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia – was tossed out the window. After the invasion of Afghanistan the governments of seven states were set up for destruction:  Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Iran, not necessarily in that order.  Out of the ruins a new Middle East was to be born.

The strategy has  been extended to include a wide range of activities befitting a ‘hyper’ state powerful enough to operate outside the law, including ‘extra judicial’ executions and drone attacks that have killed countless numbers of civilians as well as a handful of Islamic militants in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen. Osama bin Laden could have been arrested and put on trial but was shot dead in front of his wives and children. This was not an ‘extra judicial’ execution because there is no such thing. For an execution to be legal it must have been preceded by prosecution, trial and conviction but now prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner have all been rolled into one. Osama might have been responsible for murders but he also was murdered. The use of ‘extra judicial’ execution is no more than media apologetics for crime.

Heads of state are no more exempted from the law of the gun than anyone else but there was a time when they were removed covertly. Now it is done right out in the open. The Reagan administration’s failed attempt to murder Muammar al Qadhafi in the 1980s was finally followed by success last year. The oracular statement of Hillary Clinton in Tripoli a few days before his murder that ‘we’ are looking forward to the Libyan leader’s capture or killing was thus fulfilled. It will be remembered that she celebrated the occasion with a joke. The assassination of the US ambassador to Libya was a different matter altogether:  she said it left her heartbroken – a technical impossibility, some would say, reminiscent of the old jazz line – ‘something beats in his chest/but it’s just a pump at best’. Certainly she has never been known to utter a word of regret, remorse or apology for the women and children who have been killed by US drone attacks in various countries. Her heart seems quite intact as far as they are concerned.

Clinton’s purpose-driven morality blows around like a weathervane in a high wind but she is no more than the symptom of an ugly moment in history which has produced Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition and torture, the massacre of civilians on the ground and from the air in Baghdad, the urinating on the bodies of their victims by US soldiers in Afghanistan, and even the trophy mutilation of their bodies. One cannot be separated from the other. Reinforcing the systemic place of these crimes, very rarely has anyone even been rapped on the wrist for them.

Overshadowing them all, of course,  is the genocidal assault on Iraq, beginning in 1991, and continuing through more than a decade of sanctions and the second war of 2003, but not even for these most terrible crimes has anyone who committed them or was ultimately responsible for them been punished. Clinton and Obama arrived late but added Libya to the pile of corpses and in any case have adhered to the policies set by their neoconservative predecessors.

In this new overtly lawless world, Bashar al Assad is a prime target for assassination. Very possibly he was expected to be at the meeting targeted for bombing by the so-called Free Syrian Army in Damascus a few weeks ago. Usually governments feel obliged to abhor terrorism, especially when directed against the members of other governments, but this time the spokesman for the US State Department more or less said that the victims – the Defence Minister and two other senior figures in Assad’s inner circle – had it coming. Responsibility for this attack was claimed by Riad al Assad, the commander of the FSA who remarked: ‘God willing this will be the end of the regime. Hopefully Bashar will be next’. Mr Assad lives in southeastern Turkey under the protection of the Turkish state. The question is rhetorical but still has to be asked: has Turkey really reached the stage where its government gives sanctuary to a man who openly admits to organizing terrorist outrages in the capital city of another country and is looking forward to the murder of its head of state? The FSA leader’s fervent hope was later echoed in the assertion by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius’ remark that Bashar does not deserve to be on this earth. In the world we used to have this would have been called incitement to murder.

Prolonging Violence

Under the UN Charter it is incumbent on all members to seek the peaceful resolution of conflicts that threaten international order.  In Syria the US government and its allies have done the reverse. Through their intervention they have created a situation that threatens international order. In pursuit of their own agenda they have supported armed groups, imposed sanctions and agitated against the Syrian government through the UN Security Council and the Arab League.

Far from trying to bring the violence to an end they have prolonged it in the hope that it will eventually bring down the government in Damascus. They have blocked every attempt at a settlement that does not involve the precondition of ‘regime change’. Kofi Annan’s ceasefire could not work because the ‘friends’ were not prepared to compel the armed groups to lay down their arms at the same time as the Syrian army did. Having learned its lesson in Homs, where the tanks were pulled off the streets, only for the ‘rebels’ to take advantage of their withdrawal to reclaim lost positions, the Syrian government is not going to play this game again.

Further back, Saudi Arabia and Qatar torpedoed the Arab League monitors’ mission the moment it became clear it would come up with findings not to their liking. Its report was suppressed as was, more recently, the report resulting from the on-the-ground inquiry into the Houla massacre by the UN Supervisory Mission in Syria (UNSMS). It reached the UN Secretary-General’s office but not the Security Council and the mission’s mandate was terminated soon afterwards.  The mission’s commander, Lieut-General Robert Mood, spoke at a press conference of conflicting evidence and it has to be assumed this was the reason for the report being buried. No solution has been allowed by the US that includes the participation of Iran. China and Russia have their own motives for supporting the government in Damascus but their position of opposition to outside intervention and support for negotiations without preconditions at least stands on firm moral and legal grounds. The main Syrian domestic opposition groups have now put forward an initiative for a negotiated settlement starting with the army and all armed factions laying down their weapons simultaneously. Having so far blocked every attempt at a settlement that does not meet their terms, will the ‘Friends of the Syrian People’ allow it to work?

Zero Problems?

In the campaign against Syria – or the Syrian ‘regime’ as the ‘friends’ would insist – Turkey’s role has been central.  Until the beginning of last year the Turkish government had pursued policies of ‘soft power’ and ‘zero problems’ around all of Turkey’s borders. It now suits supporters of the government’s position to argue that the ‘zero problems’ policy had failed, when all the evidence suggests that it had been a resounding success. Outstanding issues were resolved, new trade agreements signed and borders opened up. Relations with the two countries with which Turkey has had the most difficult relationship – Syria and Iran – had never been better. The ‘zero problems’ policy will stand as Foreign Minister Davutoglu’s greatest achievement:  its destruction will stand as his greatest failure.

Libya marked the beginning of Turkey’s policy turnaround. Erdogan initially responded by saying that military intervention anywhere in the Middle East would be a disaster but with a western triumph inevitable Turkey climbed on board. The spectacle thus arose of a government selling itself on its Muslim credentials coming in behind yet another western attack on yet another Muslim country. With Libya finished – another functional state turned into a dysfunctional state – the western-gulf state alliance then turned its attention to Syria. Erdogan and Davutoglu abruptly dropped their attempts to persuade Bashar al Assad to accept their advice (apparently to negotiate with the Muslim Brotherhood and even to bring it into government) and turned on him. The ‘brother’ of a few months before was now the worst man in the world.

The crisis broke when the two men were already fashioning an enlarged regional and global role for Turkey drawing strength from the connections of the Ottoman past and building on Erdogan’s popular standing across the Arab world following his blistering criticism of Israel. In what critics described as ‘neo Ottomanism’, the two men saw Turkey as a regional leader, role model and servant, as Davutoglu put it a few months ago. A new Middle East was being formed and they positioned themselves on the crest of the wave of reform, albeit in a very selective way because they had little or nothing to say about the need for change in the Gulf states.

Out of Touch

Had Erdogan and Davutoglu been properly advised, had they been more alert, more tuned in to the realities of the Middle East, they would have known that Bashar would not soon be gone.    They would have known that he is popular with many Syrians and is seen by them as the best hope for reform. They would have known that confrontation with Syria would undermine relations with Iraq and Iran, as well as putting Turkey at odds with Russia and China. They would have known that these two powers would never allow a repeat of Libya and they might have guessed that the Kurds would take the opportunity of turmoil in Syria to strengthen their own position. They presumed to speak for the Syrian people when not even now is there any evidence that the ‘Syrian people’ in the mass support whom they support. The clearest evidence of what they want remains the referendum of February, when more than half the people on the electoral roll voted to remove the Baath party as the central pillar of society and state and bring in a multiparty system. Of course the changes did not go far enough:  after half a century of authoritarian rule, the mukhabarat state was never going to be transformed overnight but what was on offer was certainly better than the mayhem sweeping across Syria with the encouragement of governments that have  done nothing but harm to Arab interests over  the last two centuries.

Cost of Conflict

The costs of Turkey’s confrontation with Syria have been great. An effective regional policy has been wrecked in favor of policy incoherence. The Kurds have taken advantage of the turmoil, with the PKK escalating its attacks and the Syrian Kurds tightening their grip on the region just south of the border, raising alarm in Ankara at the possibility of a Syrian Kurdish enclave being added to the nucleus of a future ‘Greater Kurdistan’. Bashar is being blamed when it is clear that the Syrian army is stretched to the limit and no longer capable of policing the border as before.

The Iraqi Kurds have been sucked into the vortex of this conflict, with Massoud Barzani convening a meeting of the Syrian Kurds – including a faction closely linked to the PKK – and advising them to settle their differences in the common interest and take what they can. Because of the close political and trade links established with the northern Iraqi Kurdish governorate – at the expense of relations with the actual government of the country – Erdogan was infuriated at Barzani’s endorsement of actions seen as inimical to Turkey’s security interests. Rubbing salt into Iraq’s wounded pride, Davutoglu chose the middle of this crisis to visit the contested city of  Kirkuk.

In the southeast sanctions have killed off the cross-border trade with Syria that was the livelihood of merchants and traders in Hatay and Gaziantep provinces. The population of Hatay is more than 50 per cent Alevi and still connected to Alawis across the border by family ties. The Turkish Alevis are strongly opposed to their government’s policies and do not want the ‘refugees’ (formally the ‘guests’ of the Turkish government), the bearded jihadis or the agents of foreign governments in their midst. They see Bashar as the head of a secular regime which is the best guarantor of minority rights and they regard the prospect of a Muslim Brotherhood-type government of the kind apparently favored by Erdogan with absolute anathema. Their reaction to the situation has not been helped by Erdogan’s intermittent political point scoring at Alawi expense. The focus on Hatay revives the question of how the province came to be a Turkish possession in the first place: breaking the terms of its mandate over Syria, the French government handed the region to Turkey in 1938 as a placatory measure before the onset of the Second World War. As for the Turkish people in the mass, the most recent poll indicates that the majority do not support military intervention in Syria. Whether they are aware of how deeply their country already is involved is another matter.

Tens of thousands of Syrians are now pouring out of their country to seek refuge in Turkey, Iraq and Jordan. They are another consequence of the decision to prolong the fighting in Syria rather than help end it. Here it should be remembered that Syria took in half a million Palestinian refugees in 1948 and more than a million Iraqis after the US-led invasion of 2003 created the greatest refugee tragedy in the Middle East since 1948. Now it is Iraq that is taking in Syrian refugees. Refugees of a different category in Syria include the families of the 100,000 Syrians who were driven off the Golan Heights by Israeli forces in 1967.

Although everyone in the collective calling itself ‘The Friends of the Syrian People’ is playing their part, the role of Saudi Arabia and Qatar  – the paymasters –  is especially pernicious because it is based on a sectarian reordering of the Middle East, with Shi’ism dammed  behind a wall of Sunni  governments. Saudi Arabia is one of the most reactionary states in the world, not just the Middle East. Qatar is a liberal version of Saudi Arabia but still has no political parties, no parliament, no unions and a system of indentured foreign labor that has been likened to slavery and even bears the same name as that given to the columns of slaves trudging across Africa in the 19th century (the kafil, the name of the wooden collar yoking the slaves together.)

The unprecedented domestic success of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party government has now been followed by unprecedented folly in foreign affairs. It needs to get out of this mess without delay, a conclusion that has undoubtedly already been reached within the party. Turkey needs to get back to where it was and begin the process of repairing the damage done to relations with near neighbors, beginning with Iraq and Iran because it will be a long time before relations with Syria can be returned to an even keel. The whole Syrian venture will have to be wound down. The SNC will have to be abandoned (but it has been a waste of time and money from the beginning anyway) and the commander of the FSA asked to seek lodgings elsewhere. Whatever the support being given to the armed men it will have to be dried up.  This is going to create further complications but they will have to be faced. There will be loss of face but that is a problem for the individual politicians and advisers concerned: the interests of the country are the central issue and in any case, loss of face does not even begin to compare with the loss of more lives that will be the only result of persevering with a policy that has failed.

– Jeremy Salt is an associate professor of Middle Eastern history and politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.

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September 15, 2012 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Canada’s Diplomatic Disaster

By ERIC WALBERG | CounterPunch | September 10, 2012

On 7 September, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird announced that Canada is suspending all diplomatic relations with Iran, expelling all Iranian diplomats, closing its embassy in Tehran, and authorizing Turkey to act on Canada’s behalf for consular services there. Baird cited Iran’s enmity with Israel, its support of Syria and terrorism. “Canada views the government of Iran as the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today,” Baird said at the Asia Pacific Economic Conference in Vladivostok, Russia.

Canada has not had a full ambassador in Iran since 2007. Relations between the two countries cooled after Iranian-Canadian free-lance photographer Zahra Kazemi died in Iran in 2003 under disputed circumstances, and went from bad to worse under the Conservative government in power in Ottawa since then.

While indeed Iran has been the nation most outspokenly critic of Israel, and is actively working to thwart the Western-backed insurgency in Syria, there is no evidence of its support for “terrorism”. It is in fact the victim of terrorism on the part of Israel and the US, which boast about assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists and destroying Iranian computers with viruses made-to-order, among other officially-sponsored acts of subversion.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast suggested that the real reason for Harper’s latest targeting of Iran was because of Iran’s successful hosting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran in August. Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says Tehran’s hosting of the 16th NAM Summit was a “humiliating defeat” for the West.

Humiliation is indeed the operative word for Canada in particular. The past five years of Conservative rule in Canada under the fiercely pro-Israeli Prime Minister Stephen Harper have brought nothing but disgrace to Canada internationally, and this present move adds further humiliation.

As if scripted, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately commended Canada’s decision. With good cause, as it looks suspiciously like a response to a direct Israeli request. Canadian foreign policy is now made in consultation with Israeli advisers under a public security cooperation “partnership” signed in 2008 by Canada and Israel to “protect their respective countries’ population, assets and interests from common threats”. Israel security agents now officially assist Canada’s security services, the RCMP and CSIS, in profiling Canadians citizens who are Muslims and monitoring individuals and/or organisations in Canada involved in supporting the rights of Palestinians and other such nefarious activities.

The barring of British MP George Galloway from entering Canada in 2009 on a North American tour was done as a result of this cooperation. Baird’s claim that Iran supports terrorism is one that Israeli agents have been making in Ottawa under this partnership. Harper has publicly stated he is convinced that Iran is trying “beyond any doubt” to develop nuclear weapons, with ‘evidence’ supplied by these advisers, though it is unlikely that such claims convince anyone, but rather merely confirm public perception of his devotion to Israel.

“It’s hard to find a country friendlier to Israel than Canada these days,” chirped Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on his official visit in 2010. He is right. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives:

-called Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon a “measured response” (Two Canadian UN peacekeepers were targeted and killed by Israeli in the invasion. Harper refused to protest, asking rhetorically in parliament what they were doing there in the first place.)

-refused to condemn the invasion of Gaza in December 2008 or the siege of Gaza (the only “Nay” at the UN Human Rights Council)

-refused to condemn the Israeli murder of nine members of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in May 2009

-opposed an attempted IAEA probe of Israel’s nuclear facilities as part of an effort to create a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East

-cut off UN humanitarian aid to Gaza because it was going through the Hamas government there

-allow goods manufactured in occupied territories by illegal settlers to be labelled “Made in Israel” under the 1997 Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement 1997.

And as is the case in the Obama/Romney ‘race’ next door, there is no peep of protest from Canada’s opposition liberals or socialists. Interim Liberal leader Bob Rae (whose wife Arlene Perly is past vice president of the Canadian Jewish Congress) met with Netanyahu on his official visit to Canada in February this year, and afterwards said the visit “gives all Canadians the chance to reflect on the deep friendship and strong ties between Israel and Canada”.

In a bizarre non sequitur, the ‘Liberal’ leader added, “Iran’s regime is a threat to the security of the region and the world. A nuclear armed Iran would mean the threat of even greater proliferation and instability in the region, is a direct flouting of international law, and obviously raises the deepest concerns in Israel for its security.” Apparently a very much ‘nuclear armed Israel’ which daily threatens to bomb Iran does not raise his ‘deepest concerns ‘ for Iran’s security.

After meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres during his official visit to Canada this May, New Democrat leader Tom Mulcair, told the press, “My in-laws are Holocaust survivors. Their history is part of my daily life. That’s why I am an ardent supporter of Israel in all circumstances.” Mulcair’s wife, Catherine Pinhas, was born in France to a Sephardic Jewish family from Turkey. Canadians for Peace and Justice in the Middle East and Independent Jewish Voices criticized Mulcair for accepting financial support from pro-Israel lobbyists.

So there will be little if any protest in parliament over Harper’s unprovoked violation of diplomatic norms. In fact, rumor has it that this Canadian move is in preparation for an Israeli-US attack on Iran, though Baird demurred when asked about this as the motive for advising all Canadians to leave Iran immediately. However, the Harper government actually supports Israel’s threats of a pre-emptive air strike against Iran as being within its rights. Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of the Americas Peter Kent told the G8 in Toronto in 2010, “It’s a matter of timing and it’s a matter of how long we can wait without taking more serious pre-emptive action.”

It appears Ottawa is ready and willing to join Israel in any attack. Harper has said, “An attack on Israel is an attack on Canada.” There have already been US-conducted military ‘exercises’ involving Canadian ships off Iran’s coast. 160 Canadian troops have died senselessly in Afghanistan over the past decade. Now Harper wants them to die for Israel in an invasion of Iran, orchestrated to look like it is in defense of Israel.

The NAM summit clearly ruffled some feathers. Iran is supported by the great majority of the world’s people and governments, both as a courageous opponent to US and Israeli imperial intrigues, and as a model for countries that want to develop independent, peaceful nuclear power as an alternative to oil. The summit strongly supported Iran on both counts.

Iranian leadership of NAM during the next three years promises to be innovative and energetic. Even as Baird embarrassed Canadians with his undocumented accusations and violations of diplomatic norms, Mehmanparast called on the UN to fulfill its obligations towards Palestinians and respond forcefully to Israel’s killing of six Palestinians in besieged Gaza last week. “As the rotating president of NAM, the Islamic Republic of Iran expects all international institutions affiliated to the United Nations to adhere to their responsibilities towards the Palestinian nation.” The hysteria in Tel Aviv, Washington, and now Ottawa is not without cause.

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September 10, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US dispatches troops, military hardware to Yemen

Press TV – September 10, 2012

The United States has reportedly dispatched a large number of troops and military hardware to a military base in southern Yemen.

According to some Yemeni media, about 4,000 American troops, a number of F-16 jet fighters, Lockheed C-5 Galaxy military transport aircraft and Apache helicopters have been stationed in al-Anad Air Base in Lahij province.

The deployment of the American forces and military hardware to Yemen has changed the Arab country to one of the biggest US military bases in the Middle East, the reports say.

In July, Yemeni military sources unveiled that about 150 American troops equipped with high-tech military and communication tools have arrived in Yemen.

The US soldiers arrived in the al-Anad Air Base on a military plane on July 1, the Ansarullah website quoted Yemen’s military sources as saying.

The deployments came after Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Kurbi revealed that Sana’a had requested Washington to send assassination drones “in some cases against fleeing al-Qaeda leaders.”

In May, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta for the first time admitted to the use of drones in Yemen.

The United States has launched frequent assassination drone attacks not just in Yemen but in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Somalia. The attacks have left thousands of people dead over the past few years.

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September 10, 2012 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

UK Calls to Add Hezbollah’s Resistance to EU’s Terror Watch List

Ahlul Bayt News Agency – September 8, 2012

British, Dutch foreign ministers urged EU nations Friday to impose sanctions on the military wing of Hezbollah for providing support to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.

The European Union has long resisted pressure from the Zionist entity and the U.S. to list Hezbollah, with many member states saying it was important to keep lines of contact open to a powerful organization in the Lebanese politics.

“It is necessary to move on that. I think we’ve taken action on that in the U.K. and I would like to see the EU designate and sanction the military wing of Hezbollah,” UK Foreign Minister William Hague said on his way into an EU foreign ministers meeting in Cyprus.

Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal said the European Union should brand Hezbollah a terrorist organization, a move that would enable the bloc to freeze the group’s assets in Europe.

“We have for quite some time now argued that effective European measures should be taken against Hezbollah,” Rosenthal said on the sidelines of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Cyprus to discuss the EU’s response to the Syrian crisis.

The U.K. lists Hezbollah’s military wing as a terrorist group. The Netherlands, like the U.S., lists the group but doesn’t distinguish between its military and political wings, despite the fact that the party of Resistance to occupation is a member of the Lebanese government.

But other EU member states, which have blacklisted the Palestinian Islamic group Hamas, have resisted U.S. and Zionist pressure to do the same to Hezbollah.

The Hezbollah issue has long divided European capitals. When the George W. Bush administration pushed Europe to list Hezbollah in 2005, a number of countries, led by France, opposed it. The issue hasn’t been seriously addressed since then.

Several EU countries have argued that such a move could destabilize the balance of power in Lebanon and add to tensions in the Middle East.

Some European diplomats say it would also be legally difficult to blacklist Hezbollah without a court ruling in an EU state that linked the group to terrorism.

“Until now the Europeans have said that to designate a group as a terrorist organisation you have to have a judicial process under way against this organisation, which is not the case at the present time,” said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.

Hezbollah, the Lebanese party of resistance, was set up in 1982 to fight Zionist forces which had invaded Lebanon. If it weren’t for the military wing of Hezbollah, the Lebanese land wouldn’t have been liberated in May 2000, and Lebanon wouldn’t have gained victory in the July 2006 war which the Zionist entity launched against it.

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September 8, 2012 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Chomsky: ‘I support Israel, but…’

Rehmat’s World | September 6, 2012

In August 2010, Noam Chomsky told Israeli Channel 2 News: “I regard myself a supporter of Israel.”

The Jewish-American political analyst, professor Avram Noam Chomsky (born 1928), knows how to cover his personal agenda behind literary smokescreen. That’s what he did in his recent article published at AlterNet on September 3, 2012, entitled ‘Why America and Israel Are the Greatest Threats to Peace.’ His article begins with the statement: “Imagine if Iran – or any other country – did a fraction of what Americans and Israel do at will.” However, after criticizing both the US and Israel for their warmongering policies toward the Islamic Republic – Chomsky drops the Zionist entity from his list of “brutal and repressive regimes” in the region.

“The Iranian government is brutal and repressive, as are Washington’s allies in the region,” wrote Chomsky. One wonders why none of the leaders from 120 NAM member countries and 23 non-NAM countries who attended the 16th NAM summit in Tehran last week – compared Iran with the United States in those categories!

Before, I quote Chomsky’s said article, I would like to introduce the ‘real Chomsky’ to my readers. Chomsky is a strong critic of US foreign policy. He believes in the discredited ‘official 9/11 story’. In his book, ’9-11′, Chomsky criticized US foreign policy in the Middle East and its invasion of Afghanistan – but never mentioned Israel’s complicity in the tragedy. Chomsky is against Palestinian military resistance. He also favors the so-called ‘two-state’ solution and believes in Israel’s right to exist as ‘Jewish state’. Chomsky never publicly questioned the Zionist version of the holocaust (‘Six Million Died’). Chomsky is against academic boycott of Israel. Chomsky doesn’t believe that US foreign policy is controlled by Jewish groups especially AIPAC. Chomsky also doesn’t like Israel being compared with the former apartheid South Africa.

American Jewish writer and blogger, Roger Tucker, in a 2010 ‘Open Letter to Uri Avnery, Noam Chomsky and Jimmy Carter,’ had claimed that they’re not friends of Palestine – because they themselves were ‘Crypto-Zionists’ hiding behind the facade of ‘humanism’.

Jeff Blankfort, Jewish former editor of the Middle East Labor Bulletin, a long time photographer and a frequent writer on the Israel-Palestinian conflict – had called Chomsky a Double Agent in one of his 2005 articles.

“A number of statements made by Chomsky have demonstrated his determination to keep Israel and Israelis from being punished or inconvenienced for the very monumental transgressions of decent human behavior that he himself has passionately documented over the years. This is one of the glaring contradictions in Chomsky’s work. He would have us believe that Israel’s occupation and harsh actions against the Palestinians, its invasions and undeclared 40 years war on Lebanon, and its arming of murderous regimes in Central America and Africa during the Cold War, has been done as a client state in the service of US interests. In Chomsky’s world view, that absolves Israel of responsibility and has become standard Chomsky doctrine,” wrote Blankfort.

Now, back to Chomsky’s ‘satirical article.’

The war drums are beating ever more loudly over Iran. Imagine the situation to be reversed.

Iran is carrying out a murderous and destructive low-level war against Israel with great-power participation. Its leaders announce that negotiations are going nowhere. Israel refuses to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and allow inspections, as Iran has done. Israel continues to defy the overwhelming international call for a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the region. Throughout, Iran enjoys the support of its superpower patron.

Iranian leaders are therefore announcing their intention to bomb Israel, and prominent Iranian military analysts report that the attack may happen before the US elections.

Iran can use its powerful air force and new submarines sent by Germany, armed with nuclear missiles and stationed off the coast of Israel. Whatever the timetable, Iran is counting on its superpower backer to join, if not lead, the assault. U.S. defense secretary Leon Panetta says that while we do not favor such an attack, as a sovereign country Iran will act in its best interests.

All unimaginable, of course, though it is actually happening, with the cast of characters reversed. True, analogies are never exact, and this one is unfair – to Iran.

September 6, 2012 Posted by | Deception | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran’s Strategic Diplomatic Victory over the Washington-Israeli Axis: Its Larger Political Consequences

By James Petras :: 09.04.2012

Introduction

Iran chaired, hosted and led the recently rejuvenated Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting in Teheran, attended by delegates from 120 countries, including 31 heads of state and 29 foreign secretaries of state. Even the United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon, notorious mouthpiece of Washington, felt obligated to address, a forum attended by two-thirds of the member countries of the UN, despite State Department and Israeli objections.

Any objective evaluation of the meeting, its venue, the attendance, resolutions and political impact leads to one paramount conclusion: the NAM meeting was a strategic diplomatic victory for Iran and a major defeat for the US, Israel and the European Union. The entire US-Israeli-EU diplomatic and propaganda effort to isolate and stigmatize Iran, especially over the past decade, was shredded.

The Politics of Attendance

Attendance by representatives of 120 countries demonstrates that Iran is not a ‘pariah state’; it is an accepted member of the international community.The presence of 60 heads of state and foreign secretaries demonstrates that Iran is considered a noteworthy and significant political actor, not a “terrorist state” to be isolated and shunned. The proceedings, debates and discussions among and between the delegates and Iranian leaders convinced those attending that Teheran gives primacy to reasonable dialogue in resolving international conflicts.

Both in terms of form and content the NAM meeting highlighted the superiority of Iran’s diplomacy over and against Washington’s bellicose posturing and improvised diversionary tactics. The fact that the meeting took place in Teheran, that Iran was elected chair, that a major part of the NAM agenda and subsequent resolutions coincided with Iran’s democratic foreign policy, highlights Washington’s policy failures and its isolation on issues of major concern to the larger international community. Pandering to the domestic Zionist power configuration has a high cost in the sphere of international politics.

NAM Resolutions: Iran versus Washington – Israel

The centerpiece of US and Israeli strategic policy has been to claim that Iran’s nuclear program including the enrichment of uranium, are a threat to world peace and in particular to Israel and the Gulf states. The NAM meeting repudiated that position, affirming Iran’s right to develop a peaceful nuclear program including the enrichment of uranium. NAM rejected western sanctions against Iran and other countries. In fact many of the leading members, including India, brought delegations of business executives in pursuit of new economic contracts.

NAM declared its support for a nuclear free Middle East and called for an independent Palestinian state based on 1969 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, in total repudiation of Washington’s unconditional support of the nuclear armed Jewish state.

NAM rejected Egyptian Prime Minister Morsi’s proposal to support the Western backed armed mercenaries invading Syria, major blow to Washington’s effort to secure international support for regime change. NAM unanimously approved several resolutions which affirmed its anti-imperialist principles in direct opposition to US imperial positions: it rejected the US blockade of Cuba; it affirmed Argentine sovereignty of the Malvinas Islands (dubbed the ‘Falklands’ by Anglo-American pundits); it opposed the Paraguayan coup; it supported Ecuador in its dispute with Great Britain on asylum for Assange; it selected Venezuela as the site for the next NAM meeting; it rejected terrorism in all of its forms and modalities, including the state sponsored variant.

Western Propaganda Media: Self Serving Diversions

The resounding diplomatic successes of the Iranian hosts of the NAM meeting were countered by a mass media blitz directed at diverting attention to relatively marginal events. The Financial and New York Times, the BBC and the Washington Post featured a speech by Egyptian Prime Minister Morsi calling for NAM support for the Western backed armed mercenaries invading Syria. The media omitted mentioning that no delegation took up his proposal. NAM not only ignored Morsi but unanimously approved a resolution opposing western intervention and affirming the right of self-determination, clearly applicable to the case of Syria.

While NAM defended Iran’s right to develop its peaceful nuclear program, the mass media publicized a dubious “report” authored by US favorite, Yukiya Amano of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) questioning Iran’s compliance with his directives. Not surprisingly the report by Amano carried no weight in the deliberations of the 130 delegates, given his notoriety as a front-man for Israeli and US pro-war propaganda.

Overall the mass media deliberately ignored or underplayed the resolutions, dialogue and democratic procedures of the NAM meeting in an effort to cover up the enormous political gulf between the US, Israel, the EU and the vast majority of the international community.

Political Impact of the NAM Conference

NAM seriously undermined the images of the Mid-East conflicts which US policymakers and their acolytes in the EU and Gulf States project: the political reality, which came out of the meetings emphasized that it is the US. Israel and the EU who are outside the mainstream international community. It is the US and EU who lack political allies in the pursuit of colonial wars. It is the Israeli occupation of Palestine and Washington’s policies of ‘regime change’ in Syria and Iran which lack allies. Its Iran’s peaceful nuclear program which has legitimacy not Israel’s nuclear arsenal. The Iranian leadership gained prestige via its openness to international dialogue. In contrast its regional Gulf adversaries, who rely on multi-billion dollar US arms purchases and military bases were denigrated and discredited.

The Iranian proposals to reform the United Nations to make it more democratic and responsive to emerging countries and less a tool of US-EU policymakers resonated throughout the conference. The emphasis on free trade, was manifest in the large economic delegations who attended eager to sign agreements in defiance of US-Israel-EU sanctions.

Conclusion

Temporarily the NAM conference may have lessened the threat of a military attack against Iran, at least by the US and the EU – by demonstrating the political cost of alienating two thirds of the UN Assembly. Nevertheless by demonstrating Israel’s total isolation, (and truly pariah status in the international community), NAM may have heightened the pathological paranoia of the Israeli leadership and hastened its move toward a catastrophic war.

The follow-up of the NAM resolutions requires a permanent organization, a minimum coordinating secretariat to ensure compliance and rapid responses to crises. Otherwise the good intentions and positive moves toward peace via dialogue will be inconsequential.

The mobilization of the NAM members in the UN General Assembly is crucial to withstand the blackmail, bribes, threats and corruption which are used by the Western powers to secure majorities on crucial votes regarding US sanctions, coups and military intervention. Trade, investment and cultural boycotts of Israel should be promoted and enforced, until the Jewish State ends its occupation of Palestine. Clearly Iran, as the newly elected leader of NAM, has a major role to play in ensuring that the Tehran meeting of 2012 becomes the basis for a revitalization of the Movement. Iran can play a constructive leadership role providing it continues to promote a plural collective format based on common anti-imperialist principles.

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September 6, 2012 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why is the U.S. government such a gigantic lapdog for Israel?

By Jesse Attreau | The Unintimidated Press | February 23, 2011

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the image that I have of a lapdog is one of a homely looking mongrel of some sort or another panting rapidly with tail wagging uncontrollably, sitting upright by its master’s leg while waiting patiently for its next command.

Oh, yeah, and a little slobbering might be taking place as well.

Did you ever notice how relations on the state level can sometimes take on the appearance of that of a lapdog association? Consider the strange relationship between the United States and Israel, with the U.S. being the lapdog and Israel the master.

The only difference is instead of Israel saying, “Hey, United States, go fetch my shoes,” it says, “Hey, United States, go fetch my money.” And, boy, does the U.S. Congress respond. Resembling a good little lapdog, it immediately goes galloping back to the American taxpayers – slobbering and wagging its tail uncontrollably all along the way – and fleeces us again for another billion or 2… or 3… or 50!!!

For instance, consider just the last 12 or 13 years.

According to the BBC, from 1998 thru 2007 the United States gave Israel $2.4 billion a year in aid. In 2008, it began a new aid package for Israel for $3 billion a year over the next ten years. That’s a total of $54 billion for just those two decades alone. It doesn’t count the billions we had already heaped on Israel prior to 1998. Nor does it include the extra hundreds of millions, if not billions, we throw in on top – like the extra $200 million in military aid for Israel that Barack Obama said he would ask Congress for earlier this year. All totaled, we could easily be talking about a figure that goes well into the hundreds of billions of dollars. All for a little spit of land on the shores of the Mediterranean about the size of New Jersey and inhabited by only around 5 million people, give or take.

For what?

Has anyone ever considered asking just what in the hell is it that justifies this lavish outpouring of largesse? It’s a level of devotion similar to what one might expect to see in a parent toward a child. On the state level I don’t think there is a precedent. I mean, I could see it maybe if Israel had saved the United States’ ass from destruction or something. But from my vantage point, the only thing that Israel has ever done for the United States is bring the United States worldwide scorn and condemnation – not counting any Americans who might have lost their lives from terrorist attacks as a consequence of our government’s lapdog devotion to Israel.

Don’t tell me that $3 billion a year is just a drop in the bucket when compared to the overall federal budget. It was for budgetary reasons that the Senate just cut from a spending bill $1.2 billion that was supposed to go to black farmers to make up for years of discrimination by the Agriculture Department. It also cut $3.4 billion for a settlement with American Indians. Apparently the Senate doesn’t think such numbers are just a drop in the bucket.

Government officials and others typically describe Israel as the United States’ strongest friend and ally in the Middle East.

Strongest friend and ally?

You won’t find any Israeli troops fighting alongside ours in Afghanistan. Nor would you have found any in Iraq either. And if you went back and checked the record, you’d also see that there weren’t any fighting alongside ours in Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait in 1991. You see, whenever our troops conduct military operations in that part of the world we need logistical support from the Arab and/or Islamic countries in the region – Saudi Arabia, for instance. Those countries typically stipulate that we can’t have their support if Israel is involved in the operations. Hence, Israel is always left out of the equation.

What good is a friend or ally if you can never call on them?

I’ve heard some people try to characterize the alliance between the United States and Israel as being one of “strategic importance.”

Strategic importance?

It’s hard to see how. We could never station any troops there. We could never conduct any military operations from there. And Israel doesn’t even have any significant oil or natural gas deposits. So what in the hell is strategic?

The United States government continuously reaffirms its commitment to Israel’s security, and just recently did so again.

Oh? Why?

Why are we responsible for Israel’s security? What has Israel ever done for the United States? Or better yet, what does Israel ever do for the United States, period? As an American taxpayer I don’t feel any obligation for Israel’s security, do you? The time has come for the American people to take a stand on this issue and demand an end to this never ending spigot of largesse that’s derived from our hard earned tax dollars and could easily go into the trillions one day if it’s not stopped.

Some people might argue that without the commitment of the United States to Israel’s security, Israel might be overrun by its Arab neighbors. Although I do support Israel’s right to exist, it would be relatively inconsequential to the United States if Israel were to be overrun. It’s not like it would be any skin off our back. Unfortunate, maybe, but nothing for Americans to lose sleep over. In fact, it might even result in less terrorist attacks and fewer dead Americans.

The strange relationship between the United States and Israel constitutes American foreign policy at its stupidest. I’m afraid we picked the wrong side to throw in with here, people. I mean, out of all the sides to choose from we pick the tiniest, most-hated, most out numbered – perhaps as much as 30 to 1, or even greater – and most surrounded. How wise was that?

When you consider the evolution of modern weaponry and its availability, it’s doubtful whether all the money in the U.S. treasury would be enough to protect Israel’s security against those odds. On the surface it would appear to be futile.

Not only that, in the process of trying, the United States might have inadvertently created a potentially very dangerous situation down the road. For instance, the U.S. government has a policy to insure that Israel has the military might that it needs to defeat any combination of its neighbors. The problem with that policy is when you do that you create a monster. And indeed, the United States and some of its western partners have armed Israel to the teeth.

How much so? Let’s put it this way: We better hope that Israel never gets mad at us.

There’s significant reason to believe that Israel has armed its submarines with nuclear-armed cruise missiles. Now, the lowest estimate that I’ve seen for the number of weapons in its nuclear arsenal is 200 – a figure that I consider to be conservative.That’s enough destructive power to literally level the United States. Theoretically, Israel could park its submarines off our shores and just lob away.

Did someone say American foreign policy at its stupidest?

Yeah, I know. I know. You’re probably thinking that such a scenario is so far-fetched that I should probably be labeled as some sort of a crackpot for even suggesting such a thing. Yeah, but keep in mind we’re talking about human beings here and the fickle nature of human emotions. Relations between individuals can turn on a dime. Well, the same can be said when it comes to relations on the state level. And when we’re talking about that kind of destructive power, any chance is too much no matter how minuscule it may appear to be.

At the absolute minimum, arming Israel to the teeth just emboldens it to believe it can do whatever it wants. Why do you think after all these years there still isn’t a lasting resolution between the Palestinians and Israel? Israel knows that the Palestinians can’t shake a stick at it militarily. Consequently, there’s little incentive for it to strike a deal. It’s for that same reason that there’s little incentive for Israel to withdraw from its illegal occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights.

Clearly, an emboldened Israel is the major obstacle to achieving peace in the Middle East.

And lastly, the strange and bizarre relationship between the United States and Israel is just another example of the Congress catering to special interests. Make no mistake about it, Israel is just another special interest. There’s even a very powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. I think I’ll just leave it there.

Copyright 2010 Jesse Attreau
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September 6, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

IRANIAN SOFT POWER, LAKHDAR BRAHIMI, AND THE PROSPECTS FOR PEACE IN SYRIA

By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett  | Race for Iran | September 2nd, 2012

CNN’s Nicole Dow featured Hillary in an interview on “Iran’s Soft Power Messaging” last week in connection with the Nonaligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran, see here.  Hillary also appeared on Al Jazeera over the weekend to talk about the new United Nations/Arab League envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, and the prospects for progress toward resolving the conflict there (click on video above to view).  Her two interviews bring together a number of important points about Iranian foreign policy and the requirements for a political settlement in Syria.

Twenty years ago, Harvard University’s Joseph Nye famously defined soft power as the ability to get others to “want what you want,” which he contrasted with the ability to compel others via “hard” military and economic assets.  Hillary’s CNN interview explores what we have called the Islamic Republic’s “soft power offensive” in the context of the geopolitical and sectarian (Shi’a-Sunni) rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

In the interview, Hillary notes that the rise of Tehran’s regional influence over the last decade has little to do with hard power.  (As CNN’s Nicole Dow documents, “the numbers would certainly seem to bear this out.  Last year, Saudi Arabia reportedly purchased as much as six times as much military equipment from the United States as Iran’s entire official defense budget.”)  Rather, as Hillary points out, Iran’s rise is fundamentally about soft power.  “We always think of Iran as a military dictatorship, but the Iranian message is clear:  they want free and fair elections” in countries like Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iraq.  “The Iranian message and belief is—if a country has free and fair elections, it will pursue independent policies that are in that country’s national interest.  The Iranian belief is that if they pursue independent policies, they will inevitably be unenthusiastic about pursuing U.S. or Western policies.”

Hillary argues that Tehran can apply this approach even in Syria.  Saeed Jalili, the secretary-general of the Islamic Republic’s Supreme National Security Council, has made clear that “Iran will not allow the axis of resistance, of which it considers Syria to be an essential part, to be broken in any way.”  But, as Hillary points out, “The two big points of the Iranian push” [on how to deal with the Syrian situation] were for there to be a ceasefire in Syria for three months at the end of Ramadan, and that there should be free and fair elections.”

Iranian policymakers are willing to roll the dice on elections in Syria because, first of all, they judge (correctly) that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad appears to retain the support of at least half of Syrian society.  Thus, it is not at all clear that he would lose an election.  But Hillary underscores that, even if Assad were to leave office as part of a democratic transition, “a free and fairly elected successor to Assad would not be interested in strategic cooperation with the U.S. and would not be interested in aligning itself with Israel.  That would be completely against the views and histories of the people.”

On the other side of the Middle East’s geopolitical and sectarian divide, Saudi Arabia is pursuing a very different strategy, in Syria and elsewhere in the region.  The Saudi strategy emphasizes the funding and training of fundamentalist Sunni groups ideologically aligned with Al-Qa’ida—groups that, in contrast to mainstream Sunni Islamists “who are not interested in killing other Muslims,” take a strongly anti-Shi’a stance.  This is, of course, the strategy that Saudi Arabia followed when it joined with the United States to fund largely Pashtun cadres among the mujahideen fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan—and then fueled the rise of the Taliban during the 1990s, after the Soviet withdrawal.

In Hillary’s assessment, “The Saudis cannot call for a ceasefire or for free and fair elections because the Saudis haven’t had free and fair elections in their own country.  It doesn’t sound genuine, so they can’t do it, and they don’t want to do it.  No precedent has been set to have everyone else doing it except them.”  More fundamentally, though, “the Saudis aren’t interested in an outcome in Syria that leads to a government that carries out the interests of the people of Syria.  What the Saudis are interested in is a head of state who will be on their side.  And their side is against Iran and its influence in the region.  This is a big albatross that Saudi Arabia has on its neck.”

Hillary elaborates on the point:  The Saudis want to convince others in the region that “the Iranians don’t stand for Muslim causes, beliefs, independence or nationalism.  The Saudis want others in the region to see the Iranians as Shiite, Persian, non-Arab, non-Sunni, and that what the Iranians are doing has nothing to do with democracy or freedom, but rather promoting a narrow sectarian vision… the Saudi message is that the Shiites are infiltrating Arab affairs to undermine the Sunni community and Sunni states.  They see the Shiites as heretical, non-believing, non-Arab Persians.  Some Sunnis believe that”—and some Saudis try to play on that “with a tremendous amount of money and weapons.”

But polls and other objective indicators suggest that regional publics are not buying the Saudi message.  As Hillary concludes, “That’s where the conflict is today.  It’s a battle today between this message that Iran has to promote of freedom,” in the sense of real independence, “and the Saudis that are really trying to fight that message.”

In Hillary’s reading, dealing with the contrast between the Iranian and Saudi approaches to Syria will be crucial to Lakhdar Brahimi’s chances of success in stabilizing the conflict there.  On Al Jazeera, she highlights “two critical points” that Brahimi has made since taking over from former Secretary-General Kofi Annan as the U.N./Arab League Syria envoy.

First, Brahimi “has come out clearly against foreign military intervention.  That is critically important because that could prevent the escalation of the civil war in Syria, and it could even start to dial back some of the armed support for opposition fighters.”  Second, Hillary highlights Brahimi’s “refusal to simply parrot the White House talking point that Assad has to go and that Assad has lost all legitimacy.  That is really a ridiculous point that is not going to lead to a negotiated outcome, and he has stood up courageously and refused to parrot it.”

Recalling her own experience working with Brahimi on post-9/11 Afghanistan, Hillary notes that his “track record” in the various civil wars and conflicts where he has been a mediator—Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti—is to focus on “power sharing.  He focuses on getting together all of the critical players inside a country that need to be part of a solution.  That’s power sharing.  That’s not saying who goes and who leaves.  That’s putting everybody into the same pot and having them work together.  And then it’s critically important for him to work with the outside players.”

When challenged with an assertion that neither the Assad government nor the opposition is willing to talk, Hillary pushes back by observing that, just as the Islamic Republic supports a political solution in Syria, President Assad has been willing to talk with opponents since virtually the beginning of unrest back in March 2011.  (So just who is it that it really blocking movement toward a possible political solution?)  Furthermore, she underscores that it is largely the external Syrian opposition that has demanded Assad’s ouster up front; the internal opposition has not insisted on that.

In this context, she points out, Brahimi’s track record suggests that he will “focus on the players that are in Syria… He doesn’t actually have much time or patience for expatriates who sit in cafes in London or Paris.  He doesn’t really think they’re players.  He focuses on people who are in country.”

That is certainly a very different approach to post-conflict stabilization than that pursued by the United States in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and, now—in collaboration with Saudi Arabia—in Syria.

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September 3, 2012 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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