It's getting tiresome that every time
it looks like we're going to be treated to a rare use of U.S. power
to do good, the usual suspects pop up to screech in opposition. We
saw it in the Balkans, during the Serbian depredations there. We saw
it in Libya, when the Libyan people, inspired by the Tunisians,
became part of the Arab Spring and rose up against their pathological
dictator Qaddafi, and the U.S. and some European powers provided
critical air support to the rebellion. (This is called “bombing
Libya” and “the war in Libya” by the knee-jerk anti-American
crowd.) Now they're at it again, rushing to protect the loathsome
Assad tyranny in Syria.
There are now 1,429 people, including
426 children, counted as the dead from the latest Assad poison gas
attack on August 21st. Another approximately 1,500 are
suffering the aftereffects of whatever poison Assad unleashed on
them. Presented in this light, the victims are just numbers. Unless
you have an imagination. But you don't even need an imagination. You
can view some of the numerous videos of the victims. You can listen
to the anguished and outraged voices of the survivors (on BBC anyway;
I haven't heard the voices on U.S. media, including the “alternative”
media, which confines itself to people demanding that the U.S. not
“invade” Syria. Apparently firing cruise missiles constitutes
“invasion”).
Lost in the struggle over a response to
this atrocity is yet a newer atrocity, reported by BBC
Panorama on BBC World Service radio, which had a team on the scene in
Aleppo when an Assad jet dropped a firebomb on a school
playground, instantly killing ten children and horribly burning
scores of others, most of whom will probably die without the
advanced medical treatment they require. (The survivors will be left
gruesomely scarred.) This has gone virtually unreported by
the U.S. media. If the U.S. had taken out the six remaining Assad
airbases already, as it should have long ago done, this latest
atrocity would have been prevented. (Assad's other air bases have
been captured, at great cost, by the rebels, sloughing it out on the
ground against enormous odds.) But there are hopeful signs that
Obama's dithering is nearing its end: a sixth U.S. destroyer packing
cruise missiles has been dispatched to the eastern Mediterranean sea,
within striking distance of Assad's assets. (Assad is already placing
human shields in and around possible targets, as I anticipated he'd
do, so the regime can scream about civilian casualties if the U.S.
attacks. That'll be rich. And privileged elites in Syria are
scurrying for shelter.)
But don't think Americans are callous.
The story of a subway line being shut down in New York City while a
couple of kittens were rescued from the tracks not only made it onto
radio stations, but rated an article in the Newspaper of Record, the
New York Times. [August 30th.] Awww, that's so
heartwarming! (Hey, don't get me wrong. I think kittens are cute too.
But how about caring about human beings under brutal, unrelenting
assault? Or is there only enough available compassion to care either
about kittens or humans?)
But about those useful idiots. In both
the U.S. and UK, they roll out common tropes to oppose U.S. military
action. Here is a good example that encapsulates the themes of this
“anti-war” campaign,
from a presumably intelligent fellow,
given charge over an academic center by an American University,* who
conflates missiles fired from offshore with an “invasion,” a guy
by the name of Bassam Haddad, who first presents Assad regime
atrocities as hypotheticals, and additionally equates them with rebel
atrocities in sooo even-handed fashion (hey, during World War
Two there were Jews who killed Nazis, so I guess that gets the Nazis
off the hook for the Holocaust) with emphases added by me:
“What I think we should
do first, before we actually begin to talk about any of this, is to
recognize that this is not—no longer about the Syrian regime and
whatever atrocities it may have committed and whatever atrocities
the rebels may have committed. This is about
invading a
sovereign country before even the evidence is out, before even the
U.N. inspectors are out.
There are decisions to already
invade, to attack, to launch a strike on Syria, by a country
that we should actually check the record of. The United States is not
qualified to do what it claims it wants to do, as a result of its own
record in violating international law for a very long time and
supporting dictators and rogue regimes and the apartheid state of
Israel in opposition to all manners of international law. The United
States violated international law by attacking and invading a country
on false premise, which is Iraq in 2003. And most importantly, the
United States, in Iraq, has actually used nerve agent, mustard gas
and/or white phosphorus in Fallujah and beyond, left depleted uranium
all over the country in Iraq, ruined and destroyed the lives of
generations as a result, and now claims that it needs to do this to
protect Syrian civilians, which is exactly the opposite of what will
happen in any invasion or any strike on Syria, which is not possible
to happen in the surgical manner that is being discussed right now.”
[
Democracy Now, August 30, 2013.]
He really touches all the bases there, eh? (Actually he forgot to
mention slavery, and the near-extermination of the American Indians.)
To his implied assertion that the U.S. has no right to act militarily
because it has unclean hands, I would say this; standing idly by
while a slaughter is occurring, when you have the power to stop it or
at least impede it, is at least a moral crime. And the U.S. cannot
atone for its past sins by refusing to use its power for good. To the
contrary. And what other nation has the means- that isn't allied with
Assad- to intervene? And to that dishonest bit about “
invading
a sovereign country before even the evidence is out, before even the
U.N. inspectors are out,” I don't think more “evidence” would
change Haddad's thinking one iota either. There is already
no
doubt that chemical weapons were used. And the UN team is
explicitly NOT going to weigh on on who fired them.
And by the way, Bassam, what alternative universe are you living
in that you think the U.S. is about to invade Syria? Obama MIGHT
order some cruise missile strikes from the Mediterranean. He's made
it abundantly clear that NO WAY WILL HE EVER INVADE. And there is no
reason to doubt it.
But Bassam is not totally insensitive
to the Syrians suffering, he's just “sensible.” Read on:
“What is happening in Syria is horrific, not just what just
happened in the past week. The death of more than 100,000 people, the
existence of more than two million refugees—many of them, if not
half, are children—is, as we have heard in the earlier report, is
just horrendous.
This is actually all the more reason not
to take such actions, because any strike will actually end up
escalating the situation beyond any control.” (All emphases
added.)
Will it? And what does
doing nothing do? Solve the problem?
Cause Assad to stop his war? At least other nations should degrade
the regime's military assets, and try and deter it from using poison
gas
again. The regime already tested that “red line” Obama
verbally drew earlier this year, and nothing happened. The pattern is
clear: escalating use of nerve toxins, testing whether the U.S. will
actually back up its words with deeds. Doing
nothing
will make things
worse,
guaranteed. And as
others in the Hands Off Assad chorus do, Haddad uses a number of
somewhat contradictory arguments to try and talk the U.S. out of
striking- that it'll be ineffective; that it'll make things worse for
the Syrians; that it'll unleash a regional catastrophe and a massive
war that the U.S. will be embroiled in. Well, is it just a symbolic
pinprick or Vietnam War
redux? It can't be both.
I love his boldness is citing the mass death and suffering as “all
the more reason
not to take” military action. The worse
things get, the more reason
not to intervene. So
counterintuitive, which no doubt is part of its attraction to
an academic mind such as his. Academics HATE HATE HATE the obvious.
It's so
unsubtle. And it doesn't take a smart person to figure
out. (Rendering academics superfluous.) Unfortunately for their
preferences, the obvious is usually true. That's why it's
obvious.
But you can't win with these people. The U.S. is blamed, rightly,
for allowing the mass slaughter in Rwanda to occur, by blocking UN
intervention there. But these jokers always oppose any use of
military force by Western powers, based on the premise that any such
use is
ipso facto imperialist. (Although even if we were to
concede the point, I'll bet that the people butchered in places like
Rwanda would much prefer to be living “victims” of “Western
imperialism” than dead victims of their own countrymen.) They wring
their hands and condemn the West for not stopping every bad thing,
but object to military action. They think the West is omnipotent, but
rule out use of Western military power.
They have this airy notion that “negotiations” are the
solution to all problems. So if someone had just “negotiated”
with the machete-wielding maniacs in Rwanda, for example, they would
have “Okay, we won't kill all the Tutsis.” Or Assad would say
“Okay I'll allow free and fair elections and give up power
peacefully.”
Like I said, useful idiots.
Stunning naivete even made it into the U.S. corporate media, in
the person of Tavis Smiley, a radio host, who appeared on one of the
Sunday morning Washington elite gab shows (This Week with George
Stephanopoulos, on ABC, Sept. 1
st.) Smiley invoked Martin
Luther King, Jr, whose whose 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech at the
large rally in D.C. that year has just been memorialized on its 50
th
anniversary by the establishment AND “alternate” media. He said
King would oppose military action. (So what? So would Gandhi, and
Howard Zinn, and all committed pacifists. Zinn came to believe that
it was unnecessary to fight fascism in World War II.) Smiley
repeatedly said this would lead to mutual annihilation.
His
“solution”? Some vague peaceful resolution, with no actual plan
to bringing such an unrealistic thing about.
Apparently the “any conflict can be solved by negotiations”
crowd didn't notice that several UN special envoys tried futilely to
engage Assad, and that the U.S. and others have been dickering with
the Russians and Chinese for two years in the Security Council. (Some
joker on the BBC just called for “talks with all parties,”
including the Russians. As if multiple efforts to “talk” haven't
occurred already.)
Never thought I'd ever agree with Peggy Noonan about anything, who
was on the same show with Smiley, but she nailed it exactly right. It
would be awful for the world to stand by and just watch while a
dictator gassed his own people, she said. (Unfortunately that has
happened before, indeed worse. During the Iraq war of aggression
against Iran in the 1980s, Saddam Hussein gassed Kurdish villages in
his own country, thanks to chemicals sold to him by the U.S. and
Europe. Oh, and the Pentagon's “Defense Intelligence Agency” put
out a bogus report
blaming Iran
for the gassing! In other words, covering for Hussein. Going back
farther, the first use of poison gas against civilians was by Winston
Churchill in the 1920s against uppity Kurdish tribes in
then-British-ruled Iraq who were being ornery about submitting to
their English masters. One more point about Noonan: too bad she
didn't have the same moral clarity when she worked as a propagandist
for Ronald Reagan, the butcher of Central America and southern
Africa, during the 1980s)
Now it's true that the U.S. is
imperialist, and commits many crimes. That doesn't make everything it
does criminal. Nor does it mean that anyone or nation it attacks is
an innocent victim of U.S. aggression. And I'm certainly not so naïve
as to think that moral or humanitarian concerns motivate U.S.
behavior, the fine words of its officials and propagandists
notwithstanding. As I have said before, a good act is still good even
if the motives are selfish, calculated, political. It is unrealistic
to demand purity of motive. Doing the right thing is good enough, and
certainly better than not doing it. It ill behooves people who
present themselves as progressive, humanitarian, and peace-loving to
block action that could save victims of vicious tyrannies. But
increasingly that's what many leftists are doing. In this they are
the mirror-image of the right. The right defends U.S.-allied
dictators and attacks ones the U.S. opposes. With the left, it's
exactly the opposite. In both cases, intellectual and moral
dishonesty is required for the exercise. Both cloak their
ideologically-driven positions in moral terms. That is a sham, as
their inconsistencies prove.
From the first word of the latest nerve
agent attack, voices in the Western media have cast doubt on the
regime's guilt by claiming it would be irrational for then to do it
(as if the regime is rational!). After all, it makes the regime look
bad, they reasoned. And there was already a UN inspection team in
country to investigate previous chemical attacks. And cui bono,
who benefits? Why, the rebels do! (As if the rebels could count on
Western intervention. They've given up on that, through two years of
bitter disappointment and empty promises. There has been plenty of
examples of them voicing their disillusionment and sense of betrayed
in the western media. I doubt if they'd calculate “Aha! Let's gas
ourselves! Then the U.S. will intervene!” Obama had just broken yet
another promise- to send arms. Apparently the skeptics have a lot
more faith in the eagerness of the West to get involved than the
rebels do.)
The truth is, the regime benefits
plenty. They already knew they'd just lie. And they calculated that
once again, the U.S. would do nothing. And they would just claim the
rebels gassed themselves, just as they'd previously pinned their own
atrocities on rebel forces. And they could count on useful western
idiots speculating that indeed the rebels did it to their own people,
to provoke a Western military response. (Assad's backer, Russian
dictator Vladimir Putin, is helping out by asserting that the rebels
gassed their own turf to provoke the U.S. into riding to their
rescue. Only problems with that little theory: 1) the rebels don't
have the extensive poisons used in the attack, not to mention all the
evidence proving the regime did it, and 2) the rebels have given up
on the U.S. helping them.) [1]
The Assad regime is utterly ruthless.
Apparently the skeptics are blithely unaware of how savage and
extreme their violence has been. And the area attacked was a Damascus
suburb, dangerously close to the center of the regime's power,
Damascus itself, a launching pad for rebel attacks on the preeminent
stronghold of the Assad regime. If Assad lose Damascus, Syria would
fracture into pieces. The rebels needed to be stopped there
decisively. There was no reason NOT to use gas, to inflict mass
casualties on the “terrorists” (anyone in rebel-held areas).
For the morons who just won't accept
facts (including not just “alternative” media but even U.S.
establishment media, including the government's National Public Radio
system, who keep calling the gas attack “alleged,” not who did it
being alleged, but the fact of the gassing itself even
occurring), here's some
of the evidence:
96 videos documenting the victims
suffering and deaths.
Numerous reports from Syrians trapped
in the area.
Doctors Without Borders, which
sponsors the medical facilities in the areas, reporting on what
happened, and their rushing more atropine, the antidote to nerve
agents, to the area.
Satellites tracked he launching of
rockets from Assad areas into the victims' location.
Assad regime forces donned gas masks.
Assad regime officials and officers
overheard discussing the attack, before and after. One heard
worrying about the UN inspectors finding evidence. (What a “wimp,”
by Assad regime standards!)
The regime bombarding the area after
the attack to destroy evidence.
Stalling the UN inspectors from going
to the area for five days, and then shooting at their vehicles,
forcing them to turn back.
Of course, the Assad-Alawite regime
says it's all “fabricated.”
As we have seen, one line that various
“anti-war activists” (a disingenuous and deceptive designation
for a motley crew of sectarian leftists and people with an extreme
allergy to American power, and ONLY to American power) are pushing is
that the U.S. used chemical weapons (white phosphorous, and depleted
uranium, which they misrepresent as a chemical weapon, used in tank
shells) in Iraq, (some also toss in the fact that Israel used white
phosphorous, which indeed is nasty, and in the case of using it on
Gaza hospitals during their last full-fledged invasion there, a
crime) with the implication (I presume, since they don't spell
out any of the following) that therefore the U.S. has no right to
retaliate against Assad for doing the same (or maybe it's okay if
Assad uses sarin on the people he insists on either ruling or killing
since the U.S. did such and such) and is hypocritical. (I can think
of worse sins than hypocrisy. Standing idly by while a depraved
dictator commits atrocities and doing nothing, for example. And
besides, Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, so
it isn't always so bad.)
By that logic, the U.S. shouldn't have
fought on the same side as the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany
because the Soviet Union did bad things too. Power is not pure.
Oh, and don't forget, the rebels have
done some nasty things too. (Surprise! When people are subjected to
atrocities, they sometimes take revenge, and not always justly.)
In their alternative universe, the
“anti-war” leftists seem to be under the delusion that the U.S.
is going to invade Syria. (Some perhaps know better and are simply
being cynical.) They keep talking about a U.S. “invasion” and
“troops going into Syria.” No such option is under consideration,
which is obvious. It's simply irrational to present the issue in
these terms.
“Hey hey, ho ho, war in Syria has got
to go!” So went a chant by several hundred sectarians and
professional anti-Americans (who claim to be “anti-war,” but they
seem to be real selective about which “wars” they oppose) and
pro-Assad Syrians at an “anti-war” rally in Times Square, in New
York City. Another catchy slogan they bellowed went “We Don't Want
No World War Three!” Right. According to this ilk, any proposed
U.S. military action automatically starts World War III. Opinions of
participants at the rally: “We are tired of U.S. aggression around
the world...the U.S. doesn't have the moral authority” to
intervene, and U.S. wars such as in Iraq and Afghanistan “end
badly;” “We here don't want another war...wars don't bring
peace.” (Actually they do, once they end, although “bring”
is the wrong word. Of course wars aren't supposed to bring
peace, they occur in order to resolve conflicts by force in
favor of one side. Sometimes they do this, sometimes they partially
do this, sometimes they fail utterly to resolve underlying
conflicts.) The rally was mostly Syrian supporters of Assad, and a
gang called “The International Action Center.” Their “action”
consists of rushing to denounce and trying to block any action
against dictators on the outs with the U.S., such as Slobodan
Milosevic, the Serb who wrecked Yugoslavia. A former “Communist”
political hack, he decided the best way for him to grab power
post-Tito was by stoking murderous Serbian chauvinism- aka
“nationalism.” When, finally, after years of atrocities like the
massacre of 8,000 defenseless Muslim men and boys, the years-long
siege of Sarajevo, rape camps, and much else, the West was finally
forced to do something, the IAC saw it as U.S. “aggression”
designed to steal “Yugoslavia's” oil. (Huh? Yeah, that was
actually their line. I know, they're nuts. Their current line on
Syria parrots exactly the Assad regime's line, namely the whole thing
is a case of U.S.-sponsored terrorism and war against Syria. And
Turkey's an aggressor too. You remember Turkey. That's the country
whose citizens Assad has shelled and murdered, and a couple of whose
jets the Assad regime shot down over the Mediterranean. That
aggressor.)
Too bad the “anti-war” crowd
doesn't seem to oppose the civil war Assad is waging against 80% of
the Syrians. Or the war the Serbs waged against the Croats and
Muslims. Or the war Saddam Hussein waged against Kuwait- that was
also an occupation and annexation. And why oppose just the
Israeli occupation of Lebanon and not the Syrian one? Speaking of
hypocrisy and double-standards, it's not just the U.S. that is guilty
of them.
Of course they have a boilerplate
“solution,” always the same one. “Dialogue.” Fine. As if no
one has tried to talk to Assad for two years. As if several
high-level UN envoys weren't dispatched to try and reason with him.
As if there hasn't been two years of futile palaver in the UN
Security Council. Or to take Afghanistan, the U.S. has been desperate
to engage the Taliban in peace talks. So far all that has happened is
the payment of millions of dollars in bribes to con men, and the
sequential murder of the top Afghan peace negotiator, appointed by
Karzai, twice, by Taliban assassins. You know, sometimes you can't
talk your way out of a problem. (These clowns might learn something
if they look up the record of a fellow named Hitler, Adolf, and the
various negotiations and deals that were cut with him and how those
ended up.)
But the “average” American
apparently agrees that the U.S. should do nothing about Syria. A
Zogby poll finds only 7% support U.S. military intervention.
Similarly the British public is opposed to involvement. The
indifference of Western populations contrasts in a way unflattering
to them with the heroic fortitude of the 80%
of the Syrian populace under
unrelenting, savage assault from the sociopathic Assad regime.“We
can't be the world's policeman” is a sentiment now voiced by
“average” Americans. Thus the objection to the U.S. being the
“world's policeman” has migrated from the political margins to
the mainstream. (The idea that U.S. aggression and imperialism to
impose desired regimes on other countries constituted a form of law
enforcement actually originated in U.S. Imperialist jargon, to
distort and cover the illegitimacy of coups, invasions, and
impositions of U.S. client dictators on victim peoples. So now the
very idea of a global cop is discredited, even though there is a need
for enforcement of international law, including humanitarian law, and
laws of war, such as prohibition on use of chemical weapons.
Unfortunately the U.S. does commit crimes too, and refuses to submit
to international law, as when it blew off the World Court verdict
against it for crimes against Nicaragua in the 1980s.)
But a few cruise missiles blowing up
some buildings doesn't amount to a war. The actual war in
Syria is the savage
civil war started by the Assad regime gunning down protesters for
democracy in the streets of Syrian two years ago. Limited U.S.
strikes wouldn't be a war, although they would be acts of war
if the Assad regime chose to so construe them. (Those experts on
international law, the Russians, have weighed in with the assertion
that a U.S. attack would be illegal. Thanks for the free legal
consultation, comrades. Much obliged. Oh, almost forgot to
mention- the Russian are continually resupplying the Assad regime
with the weapons to keep slaughtering Syrians. By the way, the
Russians are “experts” in crushing insurrections. Take a look at
the photos of what they did to Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, Looks
like Berlin, 1945.)
Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan has
just called for Assad's ouster. Good idea. But that won't be easy,
since Assad has powerful allies in Russia and Iran, plus Hezbollah,
which is firmly embedded in Lebanon. And there is reasonable
trepidation about unpredictable consequences, such as region-wide
sectarian violence, terrorist attacks, and Assad playing the Israel
card by attacking Israel. And the always feckless and morally
disgusting “Arab League,” a club of dictators and oligarchies,
declines to call for a U.S. response to the gassing. (Human rights?
What are those?)
But is doing nothing really preferable?
What a pathetic cop-out that would be. (And morally craven to boot.)
But it seems Obama maybe realizes now that he has no choice, having
painted himself into a corner with his “red line” bluff. Now U.S.
credibility is on the line, a precious commodity that other U.S.
politicians insist must be defended. So as usual, if the morally
justified (indeed morally imperative) is to occur (in this case
attacks to degrade Assad's ability to slaughter), it is only because
coldly calculated political pragmatism forces it.
To a great extent, recent acts of
imperialism are catching up with the U.S in the current crisis,
namely the invasion of Iraq. (The long war in Afghanistan is also
lumped in with that, although it is simplistic to see that as
imperialism, or only imperialism.) And the cynical alibi and pretext
the Bush-Cheney regime drummed up to invade Iraq, the fake “weapons
of mass destruction” hoax, is coming back to bite the successor
Obama regime on the butt. That obviously fraudulent “intel” is
now being invoked to discredit or at least cast doubt on the
overwhelming evidence that Assad is using lethal nerve agents to
defeat the rebellion against his monstrous misrule. But this time it
really is different.
First, there IS NO DOUBT that Assad HAS
these weapons. It is no fabrication to say that. No one denies it,
not even the Assad regime. (The situation was the opposite in the
case of Iraq. The regime of Saddam Hussein denied having so-called
weapons of mass destruction- and many Western experts agreed,
including former disarmament inspector Scott Ritter- and in fact the
regime didn't have them.) And the evidence in the Syrian case is
solid. Even before Iraq was invaded, the “evidence” was
discredited, although the U.S. media ignored that fact for the most
part. [2]
It's unfortunate
that Kerry's speech, the content of which was perfectly reasonable
and true, unavoidably sounded like Colin Powell's fraudulent UN
presentation when he pounded the table presenting the “case” that
Iraq had WMD, including imaginary mobile chemical weapons labs. (Or
were they bioweapons labs on wheels?) That's the trouble with lying;
when you get caught, you lose credibility. (The other kind of
credibility, that is, trustworthiness.) The speeches certainly sound
the same, superficially: a tone of moral outrage, with claims of
atrocious and unlawful behavior. So the opponents of doing anything,
who range from the war weary masses (don't see why they should be war
weary, it's not as if they've been under bombardment, or subject to
rationing, or to onerous taxation, or have lost millions or hundreds
of thousands or even tens of thousands of dead) to the professional
anti-Westerners and various sectarian cultists, have an easy layup
shot here, (dare I call it a “slam dunk”?), invoking the Iraq
invasion with its attendant false claims to provide a pretext.
Another big
difference between Iraq and Syria, besides the fact that this time
the call to action is not based on lies, is that the U.S., or at
least its President, DOESN'T want to get involved, and certainly
doesn't want to invade and ISN'T GOING TO INVADE.
Finally, there was
no concern at all for the welfare of the Iraqi people in the U.S.
invasion of that country. Here concern for the Syrians provides
pressure to act. (Of course the primary motives are restoring
U.S. credibility, and responding to the possible threat of future use
of chemical weapons against U.S. targets or its allies, by Syria,
terrorists, or other states emboldened by U.S. fecklessness.
Humanitarianism is NEVER sufficient motive to prompt U.S. military
action, not in the Balkans, not in Haiti, not anywhere ever. That's a
sad commentary on the backward state of our species' evolution. The
entire world should always respond to stop atrocities. That would be
what one would expect. The fact that it doesn't happen points to the
dangerously undeveloped condition of homo sapiens.) [3]
The Assad regime's
response is smarmy, disingenuous, insulting, and at least in large
measure the opposite of truth, as always. They're '”waiting for
normal nations, for civilized nations, to realize that we are
fighting al-Qaeda here,” in the words of an Assad accomplice. And
of course denying they used sarin, the rebels did it to themselves.
[On Sunday Sept. 1st, John Kerry revealed on his TV talk
rounds that chemical proof of sarin was found in hair and blood
samples taken from victims.]
To take another
case where “peaceniks” and “anti-(only U.S.)imperialists” see
the U.S. and its allies as the culprits; who is bringing suffering to
the Afghan people? They don't notice the Taliban terrorizing people,
assassinating anyone with a job connected to the foreigners,
murdering Afghan police, targeting women who refuse to be chattel,
planting bombs that blow up busloads of Afghan civilians and more.
(They just kidnapped a female legislator, by the way.) Here's another
fact that eludes their notice: 80% of the civilian deaths in
Afghanistan are caused by the Taliban. You'd think that would be
germane to a discussion of what's going on there, and who really is
the root of the problem.
Some people just
have a problem with moral complexity, I guess.
*Haddad is Director of the Middle East
Studies Program at George Mason University.
1] Putin confidently asserted
the gassing was a rebel “provocation” to draw the U.S. in. He
demanded the U.S. show evidence to the UN. Which the U.S. should,
since it's already been reported that they have satellite data and
electronic intercepts. They won't be revealing “sources and
methods” or telling the Assad regime anything they don't now know.
(Word to the wise: one of the NSA's specialties is code-breaking,
which includes cracking encrypted messages, both voice and data.)
2] Recall that when
Ambassador Joseph Wilson exposed the fact that there was no purchase
or attempt to purchase uranium yellow cake from Niger by Iraq, the
Bush-Cheney regime retaliated by exposing the identity of his
undercover CIA officer wife, Valerie Plame, a violation of the
Intelligence Identities Protection Act for which Robert Novak, the
reactionary “commentator” and Washington, D.C. fixture who was
fed the information and made it public, was not prosecuted. In fact
no one was, although Cheney's lieutenant, I. Lewis “Scooter”
Libby, ended up convicted for lying to Federal agents and to a Grand
Jury. Bush commuted his prison sentence so he did no time. But Cheney
was bitter that Bush let the conviction stand. Cheney called it
“leaving the wounded on the battlefield.” What a fanatic. The
fact that Bush wouldn't wipe out the conviction leads me to suspect
that he was kept in the dark about the conspiracy to out Valerie
Plame. Blowing her cover infuriated the CIA, necessitating the
subsequent investigation.
3] Another difference,
which some might find ironic: in the Iraq invasion, the UK performed
its usual role as the parrot on the U.S. pirate's shoulder, seconding
everything the U.S. said and participating in the invasion and
occupation. This time, the UK Parliament has effectively blocked
Prime Minister David Cameron's attempt to participate with the U.S.
in military action. France, which in the Iraq case was excoriated and
reviled in the U.S. for refusing to fall into line (the American
Congress renamed French fries and French toast on their food service
menus “Freedom fries” and “Freedom toast,” an obnoxious,
chauvinistic, juvenile move) this time backs the U.S. France was and
is correct, in both cases. If the U.S. had announced that it was
invading Iraq to free the Iraqi people, that would have been arguably
justified morally, if not legally under international law. Of course
it did nothing of the sort, contrary to the version presented by the
rewriters of history.
BONUS ENDNOTE: Short roundup of other
saps helping Assad, (unwittingly or not):
Phyllis Bennis, of the Institute of
Policy Studies, who is a reliable ally of anyone under U.S. pressure,
says “We may not be able to determine who is responsible” for the
gas attacks. (Counterspin, August 30th, the radio program
of FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, which generally does
good work analyzing and exposing corporate media awfulness, but
sometimes falls into the Anyone-America-doesn't-like-must-be-right
attitude.)
Speak for yourself, Phyllis. Why did
the regime stall the UN inspectors from entering the area for five
days, and then have their goons shoot up their lead vehicle to force
them to turn back? She doesn't have to answer that since she and her
interlocutors simply ignored that fact, among many other damning
facts against Assad, who they talk like they're defense lawyers for.
Republican Senator Rand Paul went on TV
Sunday morning Sept 1st (Meet the Press, NBC) sounding
like he was channeling leftie peaceniks and sectarians. No war, he
says. He invoked Vietnam, quoting (more or less) Kerry about “how
can you ask someone to be the last man to die in a mistake. well I
would ask him how can you ask someone to be the first American to die
in a mistake.” (No Americans military personnel are going to die
firing cruise missiles from ships hundreds of miles from Syria,
Rand.) Paul, like the lefties, asserts that taking military action
will make things worse, will increase the chance of more chemical
attacks, etc. (Funny how they figure that doing nothing lowers
the chance of a repeat of sarin attacks, and exacting a price from
Assad raises it.) Paul, like his father, is an “isolationist,”
as we say, someone who wants the U.S. to be as uninvolved as possible
in the world. He says “American interests” aren't “threatened”
in this case.
Paul of course is the son of retiring
Republican House member Ron Paul, a stubbornly persistent
presidential candidate over the years. Father and son are both
libertarians, meaning they think except for police and the military,
government shouldn't exist. Why the media thinks first-termer Rand is
worthy of coveted slots on TV over and over (he's one of 100
Senators) is something the corporate propaganda system should
explain.
And finally, the West's top Holy Man,
the Godfather of the Roman Catholic Church, the “Pope,” chimed in
helpfully, calling use of chemical weapons a no-no and putting forth
his divine solution: negotiations and prayer. He called for “world
peace” for good measure. Hey, the guy's infallible, so it can't
miss!
