Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) said Monday that the administration’s argument that letting Syria’s use of sarin gas last month go unchecked would hurt U.S. security was “not logical” and did not “make any sense.”
Administration officials have argued that the U.S. should respond to the attack because the failure to do so would send a message to other regimes — and terror groups — that the use of chemical weapons was acceptable.
But in an interview with CNN’s “New Day,” Grayson said that too few countries had chemical weapons for that to be a concern.
“There’s only four countries in the world that have chemical weapons,” Grayson said. “The largest of the four is the United States. So are we trying to send a message to ourselves? That’s not logical.”
The Florida Democrat went on to reject the argument made by Secretary of State John Kerry on ABC News’ “This Week” that a failure to respond ” will be granting a blanket license to Assad to continue to gas and we will send the wrong message to Iran, North Korea and other countries.
“I’ve heard that theory before somehow one country’s actions will affect another country’s and another country’s and another country’s,” Grayson said. “It’s just the Domino argument again. We’ll call it the ‘bomb-ino’ argument. It’s not logical, doesn’t make any sense.”
Grayson said the chemical attack on the Damascus suburbs “absolutely” did not threaten American national security interests.
“We are not the world’s policeman,” he said. “We can’t afford this anymore, these military adventures that lead us into wars that last for a decade or more. It’s wrong. We need to cut it off before it even happens.”
The White House argues if the U.S. does not act, Hezbollah and Iran, among others, would see there are no consequences for violating the international law against using chemical weapons.
“Anyone who is concerned about Iran and its efforts in the region should support this action,” a White House official said.
Administration officials said the influential pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC was already at work pressing for military action against Assad, fearing that if Syria escapes US retribution for its use of chemical weapons, Iran might be emboldened in the future to attack Israel. House majority leader Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in Congress, has long worked to challenge Democrats’ traditional base among Jews. One administration official called AIPAC “the 800 lb gorilla in the room,” and said its allies in Congress had to be saying:
If the White House is not capable of enforcing this red line against the catastrophic use of chemical weapons, we’re in trouble.
NewsDiffs reports that the article had no less than nine edits:
President Gains McCain’s Backing On Syria Attack (NYT), Change Log
By JACKIE CALMES, MICHAEL R. GORDON and ERIC SCHMITT | First archived on September 2, 2013, 1:18 p.m.
President Barack Obama’s decision to delay the US offensive against Syria opened the window for negotiating a non-military solution to the issue of chemical weapons, a step that worried Israel for various reasons, the Israeli daily Maariv reported on Monday.
Israel’s worries are not just related to Syrian chemical weapons, but also to the consequences that a non-military solution will have on the Iranian nuclear issue and on Hezbollah.
Israel believes that the proposed attack would have a deterrent message to Iran and Hezbollah that the US is still effective in the region, according to Maariv.
The newspaper reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced fears that Obama’s hesitation could send a message to Iran and Hezbollah that the US would not use military power to undermine Iran’s nuclear program.
Netanyahu also said this could also increase Hezbollah’s motivation to carry on threatening the security situation in the region, resulting in Israel standing alone in face of the Iranian and Hezbollah threats without any expected military interference by the US.
According to the newspaper, Netanyahu wanted a military operation to regain the credibility of the US’s deterrent power in the region.
Meanwhile, observers suggest that the time span for a potential US attack against Syria is actually longer than what Obama initially announced. While Congress is expected to discuss the issue within eight days, the eyes of the world are also looking to the UN General Assembly to convene on 17 September, when the UN inspection mission is scheduled to disclose the results of its investigations in Damascus about the use of chemical weapons.
The newspaper said that Obama’s decision also opened the door for a prospective meeting on diplomatic solutions for the Syrian crisis with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin during the Summit of the Group 20, which is to convene in Petersburg later this week.
One of the expected solutions, the newspaper reported, is what Russia has already been working on. Russia is seeking to preclude a military attack on Syria and instead suggesting the destruction of chemical weapons under the authority of UN inspectors.
Another proposed solution is to take the chemical weapons out of Syria as a prelude to an international conference on the Syrian issue. The US accepts the participation of the Syrian regime in the proposed conference.
The shock and awe that has greeted President Obama’s decision to get congressional consent to wage war in Syria underscores the problem with US foreign policy, not to mention our mainstream media machine.
Americans somehow think it is standard operating procedure for the Commander-in-Chief to bypass a quaint little place called Congress (Population 535) along the road to war. Perhaps this way of thinking is due to the general atmosphere of fear and loathing now gripping the crotch of the Heartland like a TSA officer. Or maybe it’s just that we’ve been conditioned to believe the president has the right to enjoy dictatorial powers. Whatever the case, the situation demands some consideration.
Up until Friday, it looked all but certain that Barack Obama, America’s Nobel-nominated president, would order yet another military strike on a foreign country without congressional approval (Libya was the first). The Democratic leader’s designs for a “limited” strike on Syria, however, were quickly dashed when British Prime Minister David Cameron suffered a historic defeat, as the House of Commons denied him permission to jump on the military bandwagon heading for Syria.
This was the first time since 1782 that the British parliament refused a government request to enter a war. Could it be that British intelligence knew something the Americans did not, like perhaps the truth? After all, Cameron himself admitted that the UK intelligence was not 100 percent certain that the Assad government was responsible for the chemical attack.
Whatever the case, with Washington’s foremost ally suddenly missing in action, Obama had nothing but respect for the US Constitution, which clearly states, Article 1, Section 8, “Congress shall have power…to declare war.”
Thanks to the broadside delivered to Washington by the bumpy car of the British parliament, the American people got a fleeting, jolting reminder of their candidate on the early campaign trail, those bygone days of yesteryear when hope hung like dew on the American prairie and the sweet aroma of change dispelled the noxious vapors of George W. Bush’s fighter jets.
“I’ve long believed that our power is rooted not just in our military might, but in our example as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And that’s why I’ve made a second decision: I will seek authorization for the use of force from the American people’s representatives in Congress,” Obama said Saturday from the Rose Garden.
After the initial shock of those incredible words was fully digested, and the dogs of war were yanked snarling and slobbering back in the house, the PR campaign against the Syrian regime went haywire. The US mainstream media was clearly knocked off its stride, set as it was for an imminent war.
Consider this opening paragraph in Monday’s issue of The Wall Street Journal.
“President Obama’s Syrian melodrama went from bad to worse on Saturday with his surprise decision to seek Congressional approval for what he promises will be merely a limited cruise-missile bombing. Mr. Obama will now have someone else to blame if Congress blocks his mission, but in the bargain he has put at risk his credibility and America’s standing in the world with more than 40 months left in office.”
America’s leading business paper somehow believes that seeking congressional approval for war will “risk his credibility and America’s standing in the world.” Indeed, considering America’s basement rankings in the world, seeking such approval as mandated by international law could only have the opposite effect.
And what is one to make of Obama’s (money-back?) guarantee of a “narrow and limited” cruise missile attack on Syria; a Lawrence-esque back-before-dinner jaunt that won’t leave the same kind of trillion-dollar aftertaste that the eight-year Iraq War did? After all, it will only take the firing of a single Syrian missile at a US naval vessel for Obama’s weekend fling to transmogrify into World War III.
The editorial then entered hand-wringing, hysteria mode, trembling at the thought that a single square-mile of real estate in a corner of the empire has not been stamped with the imprint of a US Army boot.
“A defeat in Congress would signal to Bashar Assad and the world’s other thugs that the US has retired as the enforcer of any kind of world order… Unlike the British in 1956, the US can’t retreat from east of Suez without grave consequences. The US replaced the British, but there is no one to replace America.”
With some 900 US military bases now straddling a disproportionate amount of the globe, it will take a lot more Congress voting to take a pass on a military scuffle in a Syrian civil war for the US war machine to suddenly go wobbly. Yes, the Obama administration will have to swallow a big slab of humble pie if Congress doesn’t vote in favor of war, but the long-term consequences in the event of such a decision on American power should not be exaggerated.
But exaggerating the consequences is exactly what America does best. Just one day after Obama had his faith miraculously restored in the battered US Constitution, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that a little birdie informed him that sarin nerve gas was used in the Damascus attack. This revelation allowed Kerry to pull out the most-effective ploy in the PR bag of tricks: the noxious Nazi analogy.
“Bashar al-Assad now joins the list of Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein who have used these weapons in time of war,” Kerry told NBC’s Face the Nation. Kerry called the attack an “affront against the decency and sensibilities of the world.”
“In the last 24 hours, we have learned through samples that were provided to the United States that have now been tested from first responders in east Damascus, and hair samples and blood samples have tested positive for signatures of sarin,” he continued.
So now, when US Congressmen return from their summer break on September 9, you can guarantee their email boxes will be littered with messages from special interest groups imploring them to support military action against the “world’s next Hitler.”
“This is squarely now in the hands of Congress,” Kerry told CNN, saying he had confidence “they will do what is right because they understand the stakes.”
Meanwhile, the calm voice of reason against a senseless war in Syria has been thrown under the bus.
Ron Paul was branded a “conspiracy theorist” by Salon for suggesting that the Syrian chemical attack was a false flag operation designed to get America into another Middle East war.
Paul pointed to the false intelligence that led to the Iraq War to back up his statement.
“[Syrian President Bashar] Assad, I don’t think is an idiot. I don’t think he would do this on purpose,” Paul told Fox News host Neil Cavuto on the allegation that Assad used chemical weapons on civilians.
“Just look at how many lies were told us about Saddam Hussein prior to that (Iraq War) build up. More propaganda. It happens all the time,” Paul said. “I think it’s a false flag.” … Full article
Israeli writer Chemi Shalev predicts today in Haaretz that Israel and the Jewish Lobby will be putting pressure on congressmen. In practice they will push for a war against Syria.
“Supporters of Israel will likely be told that at this critical juncture, neutrality is a luxury that neither the lobby nor the Administration can afford. Time to put up or shut up, get off the fence and spend some of the precious political capital that Israel supporters have amassed in order to fight in the Washington trenches for something that most Israelis contend is crucial to their national interests.”
And the verdict is clear, if you have a powerful Jewish lobby in you country, you don’t really need an enemy, you will end up fighting a war with no end…
Commentators in the West will surely declare that it was their democratic systems of government that forced US President Barack Obama to back down on attacking Syria. But the events that led up to Washington’s de-escalation suggest there were other factors at play.
When Obama stepped out into the White House Rose Garden to declare that, though still intent on attacking Syria, he wanted to get Congress’ approval first, the Pentagon must have breathed a sigh of relief, knowing full well that a military strike against Damascus could spark a major confrontation in the Middle East for which they were not adequately prepared.
The story starts shortly before the Israeli-Saudi intelligence operation that engineered the chemical attack near the Syrian capital. The Americans and Europeans had begun negotiating with the Russians and the Iranians for a political settlement, after having failed to remove the regime by force. The West’s only condition was that Bashar al-Assad would not be part of the solution, even proposing to Moscow that they would be willing to allow the Syrian president to pick a successor of his own choosing.
When the Russians – after extensive discussions with their allies – told Washington that it was difficult to accept such a condition, the West turned to Plan B, which was to raise the level of military support for the opposition and reorganize the armed groups fighting against the regime, allowing Saudi Arabia to take the lead in mobilizing them to up the ante on Damascus.
The goal was to squeeze Assad by launching major offensives from both the north and the south of the country, in addition to wreaking havoc on Hezbollah on its home ground and providing more appealing incentives for Syrian army officers to defect.
In the meantime, the regime and its allies were already in the process of consolidating military gains on a number of fronts by expanding the area under government control, particularly in the area around Damascus. One such operation was to be launched on the eve of the chemical attack on August 20 against opposition forces to the south and east of the capital.
After the opposition was quickly routed in the north as it tried to sweep through the coastal Latakia region, many of their regional and international backers understood that the only way to bring about a qualitative change on the ground was by drawing the West into a direct foreign military intervention in Syria – but a justification was necessary to prompt Washington to act.
It was for this reason that the “chemical massacre” in the Ghouta area around Damascus was carried out, most likely at the hands of the Saudi and Israeli intelligence. Barely an hour had passed before the orchestrated media campaign to get Assad was in full swing, followed by condemnations and threats from Western capitals.
Washington rushed to cash in on what they insisted was an imminent military attack by sending envoys to both Russia and Iran, giving the two countries a last opportunity to stand down before unleashing their missiles on Syria. But all the sabre-rattling was not enough to force any political concessions – even Assad informed his allies that he had chosen to take a stand.
The Americans tried to respond to this by showing that they were serious about a strike, moving additional naval vessels into the eastern Mediterranean, as well as increasing the number of fighter planes in bases around Syria. But again, Russia and Iran were unmoved, refusing to give Washington any guarantees that its limited strike would not turn into a broader, prolonged war, with devastating consequences for the region as a whole.
They backed their words with action, as Russia, Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah put their forces on high alert, ordering them to make preparations for a military confrontation. Most notably, Hezbollah directed its fighters to return to their bases, as it set up an operations room in coordination with Damascus to make effective use of their combined arsenal of rockets.
The first to buckle was that old hand at such affairs, the United Kingdom, whose parliament gave Prime Minister James Cameron a way out, putting their ally Washington in the uncomfortable position of going it alone. Suddenly, Obama, too, felt the need to consult the American public and seek the approval of their representatives in Congress.
Nevertheless, Obama – having lost the initiative – has but two choices before him: He either retreats and seeks out a political settlement, or enters into a military adventure, whose outcome he cannot control. The results of round one of this global confrontation in Syria provide yet another indicator that the days when the US can call the shots, without regard for the rest of the world, are on their way to becoming a relic of history.
You’re just a click away on your remote. Get the popcorn. It’s a blast. This one has moral stature. They used chemical weapons, so they will pay.
Don’t miss Chris Matthews. He’s tingling all over. “The president did the right thing and he upheld the Constitution. Only a living god could figure out how to pull that off.”
Welcome to the Syrian theater. All the players are assembled. Which one will intervene and turn a two-day blitz into a global conflagration?
We realize you don’t have whatever it takes to actually enlist in the Armed Forces and do six insane tours in Afghanistan building A-frames and wondering when one of those villagers will shoot you in the head. No problem. You can experience a very good simulacrum in your own mind. The anticipation. The adrenaline flow. The sweaty palms. Then the limbic thrust of revenge.
And as a bonus? No court martial when it turns out you killed an Afghan who was just reaching in his coat pocket for a screwdriver to attach his new front door!
The Syrian run-up is almost as good as the first missile launch. Click to Wolf Blitzer as he recalls his coverage of Gulf War One, when he made his bones purely on the basis of his name.
Catch the living cadaver, Scott Pelley, as he flashes back on his work at the Davidian siege at Waco.
Count down to the first explosion with the eternal newsboy riding his bike and flipping papers on front porches, Brian Williams.
Feel the undertone of sodden grief with Dianne Sawyer (weeps for everybody/all the time) as she does war as only a former America’s Junior Miss can.
And then, boom! You’re there. The attack is on! The sky over Damascus lights up! What unknown newsman, standing on a rooftop, narrating the unfolding scene, will emerge from the carnage with name recognition and a sudden career bump that makes his colleagues want to murder him in his sleep.
It’s the news! Tune in!
Exit From the Matrix
America is united again. Feel it. What took us so long to find each other once more? Post your experience on Facebook. Share your ecstasy with faux friends. Recite the Pledge of Allegiance against a hip-hop track and hope it goes viral.
Finally, all the goody-two-shoes questions about who used chemical weapons and which side we’re backing in Syria and who is al Qaeda and the CIA sending weapons and killers from Libya to Syria are gone. Erased. This is the show! This is what counts! Pretext? Invented provocation? False flag? Don’t bother me, I’m eating war!
If only we still had the Rat Pack around. Frank, Dean, Sammy, Lawford, and Joey Bishop. They could do a Sarin Night at the Desert Inn and wow the crowd with their support for the guys who launch the Tomahawks.
If your brother-in-law is over at the house as you watch the missile strike and he says, “You know, there’s no good proof Assad used poison gas,” poke him in the eye with a sizzling hot dog on a stick and yell, “USA! USA! USA!”
You might also try, “Obamacare! Immigration reform! Climate change! Carbon tax! NSA! Surveillance State! Gun control! Drone attacks!”
Suddenly, they’re in. They were out, but now the Commander-in-Chief has his hand on the pulse of the nation. We’re off life support. Who cares about Fast&Furious, the IRS non-profit division, Benghazi? They’re in the rearview mirror and we’re accelerating down the superhighway to fame and fortune. Jobs? We can live off our own fumes!
Mind-controlled androids? This is who we are! Love it, live it, watch it, soak it in!
God bless Congress for giving Obama back Constitutional authority to kill the enemy of the terrorists we’re backing.
Jon Rappoport –The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at http://www.nomorefakenews.com
Syria asked the UN to prevent “any aggression” against Syria following a call over the weekend by US President Barack Obama for punitive strikes against the Syrian military for last month’s chemical weapons attack.
US military action will be put to a vote in Congress, which ends its summer recess on September 9.
In a letter to UN chief Ban Ki-moon and President of the Security Council Maria Cristina Perceval, Syrian UN envoy Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari called on “the UN Secretary General to shoulder his responsibilities for preventing any aggression on Syria and pushing forward reaching a political solution to the crisis in Syria”, state news agency SANA said on Monday.
He called on the Security Council to “maintain its role as a safety valve to prevent the absurd use of force out of the frame of international legitimacy”.
Ja’afari said the United States should “play its role, as a peace sponsor and as a partner to Russia in the preparation for the international conference on Syria and not as a state that uses force against whoever opposes its policies”.
The US and their allies are expending a lot of effort in trying to convince both each other and public opinion that intervention in Syria would be legal both under their own respective domestic laws as well as under international law. Little, however, is being said about whether or not such action would be moral.
Neocon chickenhawk warmonger, “Mad Max” Boot, writing in Commentary, invokes George W. Bush’s legal justifications for attacking Iraq – of all examples – to set a precedent for Obama to attack Syria. Boot cites notorious Bush legal advisor and fellow warmonger John Yoo (famous for advising the Bush administration that torture of terrorists is legal) saying that Obama has executive power to ‘engage in war’ without consulting Congress but must consult Congress to ‘declare war’.
1. The Syrian regime has been killing its people for two years, with reported deaths now over 100,000 and refugees at nearly 2 million. The large-scale use of chemical weapons by the regime in a heavily populated area on 21 August 2013 is a war crime and perhaps the most egregious single incident of the conflict. Given the Syrian regime’s pattern of use of chemical weapons over several months, it is likely that the regime will seek to use such weapons again. It is also likely to continue frustrating the efforts of the United Nations to establish exactly what has happened. Renewed attacks using chemical weapons by the Syrian regime would cause further suffering and loss of civilian lives, and would lead to displacement of the civilian population on a large scale and in hostile conditions.
2. Previous attempts by the UK and its international partners to secure a resolution of this conflict, end its associated humanitarian suffering and prevent the use of chemical weapons through meaningful action by the Security Council have been blocked over the last two years. If action in the Security Council is blocked again, no practicable alternative would remain to the use of force to deter and degrade the capacity for the further use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime.
3. In these circumstances, and as an exceptional measure on grounds of overwhelming humanitarian necessity, military intervention to strike specific targets with the aim of deterring and disrupting further such attacks would be necessary and proportionate and therefore legally justifiable. Such an intervention would be directed exclusively to averting a humanitarian catastrophe, and the minimum judged necessary for that purpose.
The problem with this opinion is that it does not reflect the actual situation and circumstances on the ground in Syria and, as British legal expert Professor Philippe Sands, QC, of London University points out:
…is premised on factual assumptions – principally that the weapons were used by the Syrian government, that the use of force by the UK would deter or disrupt the further use of chemical weapons – that are not established on the basis of information publicly available.
Furthermore, Grieve in his opinion note infers that the Syrian government is also responsible for all of the 100,000 deaths and is responsible for the creation of the entire refugee crisis resulting from the war when clearly both sides need to take responsibility.
The legal principles relating to burden of proof, presumption of innocence until proven guilty, gathering of evidence, laying charges, making arrests, going to trial, etc., all seems to have been abandoned by the very governments that claim all of these principles as being the foundation stones upon which have been established the virtues that ‘they’, so the Western governments have told us, hate about ‘us’.
President Obama announced this weekend that he has decided to use military force against Syria and would seek authorization from Congress when it returned from its August break. Every Member ought to vote against this reckless and immoral use of the US military. But even if every single Member and Senator votes for another war, it will not make this terrible idea any better because some sort of nod is given to the Constitution along the way.
Besides, the president made it clear that Congressional authorization is superfluous, asserting falsely that he has the authority to act on his own with or without Congress. That Congress allows itself to be treated as window dressing by the imperial president is just astonishing.
The President on Saturday claimed that the alleged chemical attack in Syria on August 21 presented “a serious danger to our national security.” I disagree with the idea that every conflict, every dictator, and every insurgency everywhere in the world is somehow critical to our national security. That is the thinking of an empire, not a republic. It is the kind of thinking that this president shares with his predecessor and it is bankrupting us and destroying our liberties here at home.
According to recent media reports, the military does not have enough money to attack Syria and would have to go to Congress for a supplemental appropriation to carry out the strikes. It seems our empire is at the end of its financial rope. The limited strikes that the president has called for in Syria would cost the US in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey wrote to Congress last month that just the training of Syrian rebels and “limited” missile and air strikes would cost “in the billions” of dollars. We should clearly understand what another war will do to the US economy, not to mention the effects of additional unknown costs such as a spike in fuel costs as oil skyrockets.
I agree that any chemical attack, particularly one that kills civilians, is horrible and horrendous. All deaths in war and violence are terrible and should be condemned. But why are a few hundred killed by chemical attack any worse or more deserving of US bombs than the 100,000 already killed in the conflict? Why do these few hundred allegedly killed by Assad count any more than the estimated 1,000 Christians in Syria killed by US allies on the other side? Why is it any worse to be killed by poison gas than to have your head chopped off by the US allied radical Islamists, as has happened to a number of Christian priests and bishops in Syria?
For that matter, why are the few hundred civilians killed in Syria by a chemical weapon any worse than the 2000-3000 who have been killed by Obama’s drone strikes in Pakistan? Does it really make a difference whether a civilian is killed by poison gas or by drone missile or dull knife?
In “The Sociology of Imperialism,” Joseph Schumpeter wrote of the Roman Empire’s suicidal interventionism:
“There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome’s allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive an interest – why, then it was the national honour that had been insulted.”
Sadly, this sounds like a summary of Obama’s speech over the weekend. We are rapidly headed for the same collapse as the Roman Empire if we continue down the president’s war path. What we desperately need is an overwhelming Congressional rejection of the president’s war authorization. Even a favorable vote, however, cannot change the fact that this is a self-destructive and immoral policy.
Venezuela has condemned US President Barack Obama for bypassing the United Nations and asking US Congress to approve a military offensive against Syria, saying the move can lead to destruction of international institutions.
During a visit to the South American country of Guyana on Saturday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said that the US president was shamelessly bypassing the UN and turning Congress into his personal world court.
“If multilateral bodies and the international system are disregarded like this, what lies ahead of us in this world is war, is destruction,” Maduro warned.
“It is a very serious thing indeed when President Obama tries to take the place of UN bodies, and that he has tried and convicted the Syrian government, and that he has decided to invade, to militarily attack the people of Syria, and that he has chosen the US Congress as a sort of high world court in place of the UN Security Council,” Maduro said after holding a meeting with his Guyanese counterpart Donald Ramotar.
Earlier in the day, Obama said he has decided that Washington must take military action against the Syrian government, which would mean a unilateral military strike without a UN mandate.
Obama said that despite having made up his mind, he will take the case to Congress. But he added that he is prepared to order military action against the Syrian government at any time.
Obama once again held the Syrian government responsible for the chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds of people in the suburbs of Damascus.
On Thursday, the second meeting of the UN Security Council’s permanent members ended without reaching an agreement on Syria.
Representatives from the US, Britain, France, Russia, and China met on Thursday afternoon at the UN headquarters in New York for the second time in two days, but the meeting broke up after less than an hour, with the ambassadors steadily walking out.
The Western members of the council have been pushing for a resolution on the use of force while Russia and China are strongly opposed to any attack on Syria.
The call for military action against Syria intensified after foreign-backed opposition forces accused the government of President Bashar al-Assad of launching a chemical attack on militant strongholds in the suburbs of Damascus on August 21.
Syria has strongly rejected the allegations and says terrorists carried out the deadly chemical weapons attack.
It is not difficult to understand the power-game being played in Syria and no decent human being should stand on the sideline in a conflict that will shape the future of our humanity. The global intifada (uprising) is spreading and it is rejecting war and hegemony and now even President Obama is reeling under pressure. It is an earthquake that is shaking the very foundation of post-WWII world order (what used to be referred to mistakenly as “the American century” when it was really the Zionist century). The British, French and American public long exposed to Zionist propaganda have joined the revolution. Politicians started to panic especially after the British parliament voted against war. This was the first major and stunning defeat to the US/Israel hegemony of British politics since WWII.
US President Obama was stuck after the British vote and the clear solid position of Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Russia, China and even overwhelming public opposion in the US despite the attempt to whip frenzy by Israel media stooges like Wolf Blitzer of CNN. Obama was also stunned by what his own intelligence services told him about potential repercussions of a military strike on Syria especially without UN mandate and without US public support. These repercussions included presence of strong defensive and offensive capabilities in Syria. There were intelligence leaks about a downed “test” incursion. But repercussions discussed include strengthening rather than weakening Iran (after all, this is what happened after Iraq!). President Obama spent countless hours talking with his Zionist and non-Zionist advisers and key government officials (there are no anti-Zionists in his group). Faced with no good option in trying to maintain Israel/US hegemony, Obama decided not to decide and shift the debate to Congress to buy time. Now it is up to the American people who overwhelmingly reject war on Syria to stand up and pressure the Israeli-occupied US congress to do what is good for US citizens not what they perceive to be good for Zionism.
The Russian president spoke of a number of key points that he called “common sense” while Obama just lied. Russia and the US had agreed to the parameters of a political conference in which all sides were invited. Russia talked the Syrian government into attending this Geneva conference (even though most Syrians opposed a dialogue with Western backed thugs and Western backed mercenaries). Under Israeli pressure, the US administration started to rethink their agreement and their stooges announced they cannot join discussion with their opponents unless their opponents are defeated and surrender! Syrian government forces then gained momentum against the Western and Israeli backed extremist rebels and cornered them in very few pockets. Syria was opening up and international inspectors were coming. Putin rightly points out that under such conditions: who has the benefit of using chemical weapons: the Syrian government or the rebels trying to provide excuses for Western defeat of a government they could not defeat themselves? It is common sense. Syria, Russia and China and all humanity ask logically: if the US has proof that the Syrian government used chemical weapons to attack its own people (including its own soldiers), then give us the proof. They rightly ask why the mandate of UN inspectors was limited to only find out if they were used but not to explore who might have used them. After the lies Israeli and US intelligence concocted to go the war on Iraq, they now seem rather reluctant to manufacture evidence again.
Obama lied about many other things and perhaps the only part of his speech that touched on reality is when he admitted that he is part of a system and that he cannot make a decision by himself. The military-industrial complex is now too entrenched in US politics for any president to challenge it. In fact, no one would be allowed to become president if they were to have even a slight chance of potential to challenge it. So Obama says: I am with the machine that was in place before I came to power and will always be with the machine. By this he showed that his campaign retorhic about “change” was just what American call “bull-shit”. That is why Obama is stuck. When President Obama paid tribute to Martin Luther King Jr just a week ago, he was being hypocritical. King had famously said that the US is the greatest purveyor of violence on earth. The US public can and must push Obama and Congress to change just like they pushed previous politicians to get civil rights, women’s right to vote, ending the war on Vietnam, ending US support for Apartheid South Africa and more.
The fact remains that the most destabilizing country in the Middle East is the one that receives unconditional billions of US taxpayer money. It is the state that caused millions of refugees and that introduced weapons of mass destruction including nuclear weapons to the Middle East. It is the state that used white phosphorous and depleted uranium on civilian populations. It is the state that started five wars and that lobbied successfully to get the US to go to wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan that caused millions of lives lost and trillions of US taxpayer money spent. It is the state that fits all the criteria discussed in the International convention against the crimes of apartheid and racial discrimination.
The fact is that this latest Israel-inspired conflict is not about form of government in Syria. The US/Israel backed dictators in a dozen Arab countries are far, far worse than Bashar Assad of Syria. The fact remains that this is a clear attempt by the US through its secretary of state under influence from the Zionist lobby and with the support of puppet rulers in the Arab world to liquidate the Palestinian cause. The parameters of this are clear: liquidating Palestinian rights like the right of refugees to return to their homes and lands, limited Palestinian autonomy that Palestinian puppets can call a state in parts of the occupied West Bank in confederation with Jordan. This will ensure the “Jewishness” of the apartheid state of Israel. Gaza would be relegated to Egyptian administration or continuing to manage it as one Israeli official said “by putting Gazan’s on a diet”. To get this program through, resistance must be made to look futile. Israel set-up a high-level ministerial committee to fight boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. Israel told the US that the Hizballah-Syria-Iran axis must be destroyed. Potentially developing Arab countries will be broken up with sectarian and other conflicts (divide and conquer) beginning with Iraq. They thought Syria is the next weak link that can be removed in the same way that Libya was disposed of. They underestimated the level of rejection to their demonic schemes of divide and conquer.
What happened actually is the opposite. A strengthening block evolved starting in Iran, Iraq and Palestine and spreading globally. The counter-revolutionary efforts are failing and in some cases getting the opposite effect of unifying and strengthening resistance. The attempts by some to ignite sectarian strife in Lebanon failed miserably. The positions of China, Russia, Venezuela and other governments came to reflect the international consensus of resisting US/Israeli hegemony. No human being and no government can claim neutrality. Neutrality is rather meaningless when there is such an evel attempt to dominate the world for the benefit of just a few people at the expense of millions. The vast majority of people in all countries (Palestine, USA, Britain, France, Russia, China etc) stand on one side of this against the Zionist attempts to drag the world into yet one more destructive conflict. Clearly a win here is a win for Palestine and a win for all people of the world.
Before we talk about democracy in Syria, we must respect the fact that the vast majority of people on earth insist that Western governments respect their own citizens’ will instead of trying to smother them or shape them with propaganda or bypass them to serve the Israel lobby. Before we talk about democracy in Syria, we must end apartheid in Israel, and end the repressive regimes supported by the US especially those in the oil producing Arab countries. Perhaps this is the reason gulf states are pouring billions to fund murderers in the so called “Syrian rebels” (most of them turn out to be mercenaries). It is the same reason that Netanyahu and Obama are both very nervous. When the US/Israel program of liquidating the Palestinian cause and destroying Syria fails (and it will), all bets are off. People stand up to tyranny and stand up for human rights and that is why governments (US, Israeli, Saudi Arabia, Turkey etc) are starting to panic. They do have good reason to worry because people power is coming and each of us must be part of it. We ask you to join the global intifada which will liberate oppressors and oppressed alike and create a better world for all.
Beirut – During his visit with US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, Lebanese President Michael Aoun reportedly received a US-Israeli document detailing plans for creating a civil war in Lebanon with covert false flag operations and possible Israeli invasion.
Although the source of the document is Israeli and created in partnership with Washington, no one knows who presented it to Aoun. The Lebanese TV station, Al-Jadeed, initially reported the document on Lebanese TV and a video on its website. Geopolitics Alert translated the report for this article. … continue
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