[Edited & articles added, 9/4&5/12]
To arrive at a plausible explanation for why an armed struggle, such as that occurring in Syria, is taking place, and why we are involved, one must look at the historical context of the conflict and therefore at all the causes, historical events, and relationships that may have led up to it, both inside and outside of the conflict itself. So it goes without saying that one must not only look to the motivations of those historically associated with the conflict, but also of those who analyze it and either present justifications for it or arguments against it.
I try to analyze many things, including the current sectarian civil war in Syria so my motivations are fair game. I am an atheist (god forbid, of course!) and an American (yes, I'm just as patriotic is you are, even if we disagree.). I have a special fondness for the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which states:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. [Emphasis added]
Most Americans reject the idea that we should live under the dictates of any particular religion or religious sect. Because Americans of different religions or of no religion at all, enjoy the freedoms inherent in the First Amendment, most reject the idea that America should be set aside as a Christian state of general or specific denomination (or as a state devoted to the European ethnicity of the colonists), and both atheists and people of the Jewish religion/ethnicity, some of whom are atheists, have been at the forefront of the struggle to defend our fist amendment rights. That is why I find al Qaeda, extreme American Christian fundamentalists, the more extreme elements of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Zionists similarly abhorrent (Assad, a secularist, is none of these, although he oversees a sometimes brutal authoritarian government that is perhaps not as bad as the sectarian
monarchies in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, or the current military government in Egypt.)
When we look at the history of conflict in the Middle East, however, we see in recent history some movements and countries who have set people to fighting amognst each other according to religious and ethnic interests. Prior to the European Zionist program to establish a "Jewish State" in the region of Palestine, the Arabs, Persians, and Jews got along reasonably well. After the Western Powers in charge after WWII decided that the Jewish people should be able to establish a "Jewish State" in the midst of Arab Palestinians though, things deteriorated rapidly. Suddenly, Americans were continuously coerced into supporting the tiny "State of Israel" in wars to protect Israel's interests, even when it was not necessarily in
our own national interest to do so.
One wonders why. Jewish people in the United States constitute a small fraction, 2 or 3% at most, of our population (about the same as Muslims), and many Jews do not support the occupations or Zionist Israeli expansion into the states bordering Israel, which are predominantly Muslim states, like Syria. Many do not support the
barbaric treatment of Palestinians that breeds such resentment in Palestine and the nearby Muslim Arab and Persian states.
One wonders why Americans have come to support the establishment of a "Jewish State" in Israel, when we whole-heartedly reject the idea that America could be officially established as a Christian, atheist, Muslim, or Jewish state. It gets confusing, because Jewishness connotes both a religion, Judaism, and an ethnicity, but you have heard much uproar at the idea that America, one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world, should call itself a Christian state or a state of European ancestry.
Why then is America, or any other country, but especially America with its First Amendment, supporting the idea that Israel can declare openly that it is a "Jewish State?" Why don't they just invite the Palestinians to share in the homeland they have taken from them and have fair elections? (Answer: The Palestinians in their homeland would far outnumber the Israelis, even with all the Jewish immigration from other countries, especially if the Palestinian refugees were allowed to come home.) In particular, with reference to we Americans, why are some American Jews, who fight so strongly here for the separation of church and state, fighting so strongly for our defense of Israel, a "state" that so whole-heatedly rejects that same concept?
This situation can only occur if people are uninformed, ignore their cognitive dissonance, or if the media and Congress are heavily under the influence of those that support these notions that go against our founding principles. Just look at the fawning attention of Congress to the needs of Israel while they ignore our many pressing needs at home.
Remember that technically Israel and Syria, while reaching a ceasefire agreement after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, are still at war, and that Israel still occupies and transfers its citizens to the illegally held Golan Heights, which was taken from Syria in the 1967 war. Israel has every reason to weaken Syria because Israel is still occupying and settling their country, on the Golan Heights, in violation of international law--not that international law really means much to the rogue states of the US and Israel.
This situation is part of the reason you see the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mr. "Hope and Change," placed into a position where he thinks it is advantageous to lie openly to the American people about his certainty of a Syrian chemical weapons attack on the Syrian rebels before all the evidence is in, and to commit to an attack on Syria that can only bring us more hatred from Muslims, more hatred from the real "International Community," more terrorist activities, more suffering in Syria, while promoting an attach which would make him a war criminal once again.
I realize that some are thinking that all this frank talk about the Israeli state, Zionism, and Jews in America must only come from an "Anti-Semite," because that is exactly what you have been taught to think by the mainstream media. That's why they incessantly present programs on PBS, NPR, and other networks, about the Jewish holocaust (no capital H), instead of incessantly bringing you programs about other important genocidal activities, like our murderous wars on the Native Americans, the African slave trade, slavery in the US, the treatment of the Irish by the English during the potato famine, Colonial period massacres, the Armenian holocaust, the slaughter of millions of Russians in WWII, or the Rwandan genocide. You are not allowed to criticize Israel's criminality. That is why the media constantly demonizes people who criticize Israel with the label of anti-Semite, even though the Palestinians are Semite too. That is why they even call Jewish critics like
Norman Finklestein and
Israel Shahak "self-hating Jews" or anti-Semites.
I guess some will have to get up off their programmed asses and look at the real history, the owners, producers, editors, reporters and guests in the mainstream media, and the activities of
the Israel Lobby (
AIPAC, etc.) t
o figure all that out. NPR, for example, regularly features spokespeople from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a pro-Israeli foreign policy think-tank. WINEP is a simply another propaganda arm of AIPAC. This morning, Renee Montagne talked "
to analyst David Makovsky of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy about the degree to which concern for Israel is shaping the Obama administration's thinking on Syria." His purpose was to show that our concerns should be Israel's concerns about Iran, more than Syria. The message was that Israel is dependent on our commitments to "red lines" being kept so as to send a message to Iran, another of their sworn enemies in the neighborhood. Tonight, PBS's
Newshour has Jewish pro-war Senator Carl Levin telling us what to think.
A careful look at AIPAC's activities and media bias should tell people what they need to know, so I'm not going to tell you about the important Jewish friendships in my life, or the respect I have for many Jewish commentators like Glenn Greenwald, Noam Chomsky, and the rest. Just read my past posts. After all, in an irrational, emotionally manipulated, ideological, and propagandized world, the truth is no defense. Anyone who roundly criticizes Israel is by their definition an anti-Semite. That is as true as their implying that a Barak Obama attack on Syria, sans UN approval, would be legal under international law. Like their evidence for Iraq and Syria WMD, their arguments are completely bogus.
Reminder from Tom Feeley at
Information Clearing House:
"We
must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen
leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they
started it." - Robert H. Jackson was the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.
"To
initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international
crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other
war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of
the whole." Robert H. Jackson was the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.
For more about Israel, search on "Israel" in the search function at the upper left hand portion of the blog, below the Google search function.
So. . . . Here is one of the most important articles on the historical context of the war on Syria. It comes from Global Research and provides a very important perspective from Israel Shahak. You may notice a similarity to American foreign policy in other areas, like the Balkans, when the US was busy carving up the socialist Yugoslavian state into selfish ethnic interests.
It is followed by links to many more articles on the current situation in regard to Obama's perceived need to attack Syria in our name.
__
“Greater Israel”: The Zionist Plan for the Middle East
Global Research, August 26, 2013
Global Research Editor’s Note
The following document pertaining to the formation of “Greater
Israel” constitutes the cornerstone of powerful Zionist factions within
the current Netanyahu government, the Likud party, as well as within the
Israeli military and intelligence establishment.
According to the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl, “the
area of the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to the
Euphrates.” According to Rabbi Fischmann, “The Promised Land extends
from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria
and Lebanon.”
When viewed in the current
context, the war on Iraq, the 2006 war on Lebanon, the 2011 war on
Libya, the ongoing war on Syria, not to mention the process of regime
change in Egypt, must be understood in relation to the Zionist Plan for
the Middle East. The latter consists in weakening and eventually
fracturing neighboring Arab states as part of an Israeli expansionist
project.
“Greater Israel” consists in an area extending from the Nile Valley to the Euphrates.
The Zionist project supports the Jewish settlement movement. More
broadly it involves a policy of excluding Palestinians from Palestine
leading to the eventual annexation of both the West Bank and Gaza to the
State of Israel.
Greater Israel would create a number of proxy States. It would
include parts of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the Sinai, as well as parts of
Iraq and Saudi Arabia. (See map).
According to Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya in a 2011 Global Research article, The Yinon Plan was a continuation of Britain’s colonial design in the Middle East:
“[The Yinon
plan] is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional
superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its
geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding
Arab states into smaller and weaker states.
Israeli
strategists viewed Iraq as their biggest strategic challenge from an
Arab state. This is why Iraq was outlined as the centerpiece to the
balkanization of the Middle East and the Arab World. In Iraq, on the
basis of the concepts of the Yinon Plan, Israeli strategists have called
for the division of Iraq into a Kurdish state and two Arab states, one
for Shiite Muslims and the other for Sunni Muslims. The first step
towards establishing this was a war between Iraq and Iran, which the
Yinon Plan discusses.
The Atlantic, in 2008, and the U.S.
military’s Armed Forces Journal, in 2006, both published widely
circulated maps that closely followed the outline of the Yinon Plan.
Aside from a divided Iraq, which the Biden Plan also calls for, the
Yinon Plan calls for a divided Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. The
partitioning of Iran, Turkey, Somalia, and Pakistan also all fall into
line with these views. The Yinon Plan also calls for dissolution in
North Africa and forecasts it as starting from Egypt and then spilling
over into Sudan, Libya, and the rest of the region.
Greater Israel” requires the breaking up of the existing Arab states into small states.
“The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power,
and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by
the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on
the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the
Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel’s satellites
and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation… This is not a new
idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic
thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has
been a recurrent theme.” (Yinon Plan, see below)
Viewed in this context, the war on Syria is part of the process
of Israeli territorial expansion. Israeli intelligence working hand in
glove with the US, Turkey and NATO is directly supportive of the Al
Qaeda terrorist mercenaries inside Syria.
The Zionist Project also requires the destabilization of Egypt,
the creation of factional divisions within Egypt as instrumented by the
“Arab Spring” leading to the formation of a sectarian based State
dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, March 3, 2013
The Zionist Plan for the Middle East
Translated and edited by
Israel Shahak
The Israel of Theodore Herzl (1904) and of Rabbi Fischmann (1947)
In his Complete Diaries, Vol. II. p. 711, Theodore Herzl, the
founder of Zionism, says that the area of the Jewish State stretches:
“From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.”
Rabbi Fischmann, member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine,
declared in his testimony to the U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry on 9
July 1947: “The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the
Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.”
from
Oded Yinon’s
“A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties”
Published by the
Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc.
Belmont, Massachusetts, 1982
Special Document No. 1 (ISBN 0-937694-56-8)
Table of Contents
The Association of Arab-American University Graduates finds it
compelling to inaugurate its new publication series, Special Documents,
with Oded Yinon’s article which appeared in Kivunim (Directions), the
journal of the Department of Information of the World Zionist
Organization. Oded Yinon is an Israeli journalist and was formerly
attached to the Foreign Ministry of Israel. To our knowledge, this
document is the most explicit, detailed and unambiguous statement to
date of the Zionist strategy in the Middle East. Furthermore, it stands
as an accurate representation of the “vision” for the entire Middle East
of the presently ruling Zionist regime of Begin, Sharon and Eitan. Its
importance, hence, lies not in its historical value but in the nightmare
which it presents.
2
The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel
must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the
division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all
existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian
composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that
sectarian-based states become Israel’s satellites and, ironically, its
source of moral legitimation.
3
This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in
Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into
smaller units has been a recurrent theme. This theme has been documented
on a very modest scale in the AAUG publication, Israel’s Sacred Terrorism
(1980), by Livia Rokach. Based on the memoirs of Moshe Sharett, former
Prime Minister of Israel, Rokach’s study documents, in convincing
detail, the Zionist plan as it applies to Lebanon and as it was prepared
in the mid-fifties.
4
The first massive Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978 bore this
plan out to the minutest detail. The second and more barbaric and
encompassing Israeli invasion of Lebanon on June 6, 1982, aims to effect
certain parts of this plan which hopes to see not only Lebanon, but
Syria and Jordan as well, in fragments. This ought to make mockery of
Israeli public claims regarding their desire for a strong and
independent Lebanese central government. More accurately, they want a
Lebanese central government that sanctions their regional imperialist
designs by signing a peace treaty with them. They also seek acquiescence
in their designs by the Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian and other Arab
governments as well as by the Palestinian people. What they want and
what they are planning for is not an Arab world, but a world of Arab
fragments that is ready to succumb to Israeli hegemony. Hence, Oded
Yinon in his essay, “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980′s,” talks about
“far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967″ that are
created by the “very stormy situation [that] surrounds Israel.”
5
The Zionist policy of displacing the Palestinians from Palestine
is very much an active policy, but is pursued more forcefully in times
of conflict, such as in the 1947-1948 war and in the 1967 war. An
appendix entitled ”Israel Talks of a New Exodus”
is included in this publication to demonstrate past Zionist dispersals
of Palestinians from their homeland and to show, besides the main
Zionist document we present, other Zionist planning for the
de-Palestinization of Palestine.
6
It is clear from the Kivunim document, published in February,
1982, that the “far-reaching opportunities” of which Zionist strategists
have been thinking are the same “opportunities” of which they are
trying to convince the world and which they claim were generated by
their June, 1982 invasion. It is also clear that the Palestinians were
never the sole target of Zionist plans, but the priority target since
their viable and independent presence as a people negates the essence of
the Zionist state. Every Arab state, however, especially those with
cohesive and clear nationalist directions, is a real target sooner or
later.
7
Contrasted with the detailed and unambiguous Zionist strategy
elucidated in this document, Arab and Palestinian strategy,
unfortunately, suffers from ambiguity and incoherence. There is no
indication that Arab strategists have internalized the Zionist plan in
its full ramifications. Instead, they react with incredulity and shock
whenever a new stage of it unfolds. This is apparent in Arab reaction,
albeit muted, to the Israeli siege of Beirut. The sad fact is that as
long as the Zionist strategy for the Middle East is not taken seriously
Arab reaction to any future siege of other Arab capitals will be the
same.
Khalil Nakhleh
July 23, 1982
Foreward
by Israel Shahak
1
The following essay represents, in my opinion, the accurate and
detailed plan of the present Zionist regime (of Sharon and Eitan) for
the Middle East which is based on the division of the whole area into small states, and the dissolution of all the existing Arab states. I will comment on the military aspect of this plan in a concluding note. Here I want to draw the attention of the readers to several important points:
2
1. The idea that all the Arab states should be broken down,
by Israel, into small units, occurs again and again in Israeli strategic
thinking. For example, Ze’ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha’aretz
(and probably the most knowledgeable in Israel, on this topic) writes
about the “best” that can happen for Israeli interests in Iraq: “The
dissolution of Iraq into a Shi’ite state, a Sunni state and the
separation of the Kurdish part” (Ha’aretz 6/2/1982). Actually, this aspect of the plan is very old.
3
2. The strong connection with Neo-Conservative thought in the USA is very prominent, especially in the author’s notes. But,
while lip service is paid to the idea of the “defense of the West” from
Soviet power, the real aim of the author, and of the present Israeli
establishment is clear: To make an Imperial Israel into a world power.
In other words, the aim of Sharon is to deceive the Americans after he
has deceived all the rest.
4
3. It is obvious that much of the relevant data, both in the notes and in the text, is garbled or omitted, such as the financial help of the U.S. to Israel. Much of it is pure fantasy. But, the plan is not to be regarded as not influential, or as not capable of realization for a short time. The plan follows faithfully the geopolitical ideas current in Germany of 1890-1933, which were swallowed whole by Hitler and the Nazi movement, and determined their aims for East Europe.
Those aims, especially the division of the existing states, were
carried out in 1939-1941, and only an alliance on the global scale
prevented their consolidation for a period of time.
5
The notes by the author follow the text. To avoid confusion, I did
not add any notes of my own, but have put the substance of them into
this foreward and the conclusion at the end. I have, however, emphasized
some portions of the text.
Israel Shahak
June 13, 1982
For the rest of this article, see:
Global Research, August 26, 2013
__
Additional Reading:
This first article completely blows away (forgive the language) the Obama adminsitration's argument for war on Syria:
Point-By-Point Rebuttal of U.S. Case for War In Syria The American War Brief Is Extremely Weak
By
WashingtonsBlog
__
PEW Poll:
Public Opinion Runs Against Syrian Airstrikes-- Few See U.S. Military Action Discouraging Chemical Weapons Use
President Obama faces an uphill battle in making the case for U.S.
military action in Syria. By a 48% to 29% margin, more Americans oppose
than support conducting military airstrikes against Syria in response to
reports that the Syrian government used chemical weapons.
The new national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted Aug.
29-Sept. 1 among 1,000 adults, finds that Obama has significant ground
to make up in his own party. Just 29% of Democrats favor conducting
airstrikes against Syria while 48% are opposed. Opinion among
independents is similar (29% favor, 50% oppose). Republicans are more
divided, with 35% favoring airstrikes and 40% opposed. [Emphasis Added]
__
Washington Post--Politics
Pro-Israel and Jewish groups strongly back military strike against Syria
By Matea Gold and Holly Yeager,
Published: September 3
Many of the United States’ most influential pro-Israel and Jewish groups on Tuesday backed the Obama administration’s call for military action in Syria, putting strong momentum behind the effort to persuade reluctant lawmakers to authorize a strike against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The stances mark a new phase in the debate over how to respond to Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians, setting in motion a robust lobbying effort on Capitol Hill — powered in part by the memory of the Holocaust and how the Nazis gassed Jews. After a period of conspicuous silence on the issue, major groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations called for bipartisan consensus Tuesday around the use of force. . . . .
__
To some, US case for Syrian gas attack, strike has too many holes
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s public case for attacking Syria is riddled with inconsistencies and hinges mainly on circumstantial evidence, undermining U.S. efforts this week to build support at home and abroad for a punitive strike against Bashar Assad’s regime.
__
By Alex Kane
September 02,
2013 "Information
Clearing House - "Mondoweiss"
- A
former legal official from the Bush administration has warned
that
the text of President Barack Obama’s resolution authorizing
the use of military force on Syria is so broad that it could
justify attacks on Iran and Lebanon. Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard
Law professor who resigned from the Bush administration over its
executive overreach,
wrote today in Lawfare that “the proposed AUMF focuses on
Syrian WMD but is otherwise very broad” and that it “does not
contain specific limits on targets.”
After Obama’s Rose Garden speech yesterday, he sent Congress the
text of his proposed resolution on striking Syria in
response to the chemical weapons attack on Ghouta. While
Congress could modify the resolution, as it stands it’s a
document authorizing the use of force on a broad array of
targets and could justify deeper U.S. military involvement in
the Middle East. Here’s
more of Goldsmith’s analysis:
(1) Does
the proposed AUMF authorize the President to take sides in
the Syrian Civil War, or to attack Syrian rebels associated
with al Qaeda, or to remove Assad from power? Yes, as
long as the President determines that any of these entities
has a (mere) connection to the use of WMD in the Syrian
civil war, and that the use of force against one of them
would prevent or deter the use or proliferation of
WMD within, or to and from, Syria, or protect
the U.S. or its allies (e.g. Israel) against the
(mere) threat posed by those weapons. It is very easy to
imagine the President making such determinations with regard
to Assad or one or more of the rebel groups.
(2) Does
the proposed AUMF authorize the President to use force
against Iran or Hezbollah, in Iran or Lebanon? Again, yes,
as long as the President determines that Iran or Hezbollah
has a (mere) a connection to the use of WMD in the Syrian
civil war, and the use of force against Iran or Hezbollah
would prevent or deter the use or proliferation of
WMD within, or to and from, Syria, or protect the
U.S. or its allies (e.g. Israel) against the (mere)
threat posed by those weapons. Again, very easy to imagine.
It
brings to mind the AUMF passed in the aftermath of September 11.
While that resolution directly concerned Al Qaeda and the
Taliban, it was later broadened to justify drone strikes in
Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia–even on
targets that were clearly not part of Al Qaeda.
__
Should We Fall Again for ‘Trust Me’?
By Ray McGovern
September 03,
2013 "Information
Clearing House -
In a dazzling display of chutzpah, the White House is demanding
that Congress demonstrate blind trust in a U.S. intelligence
establishment headed by James Clapper, a self-confessed
perjurer.
That’s a lot to ask in seeking approval for a military attack on
Syria, a country posing no credible threat to the United States.
But with the help of the same corporate media that cheer-led us
into war with Iraq, the administration has already largely
succeeded in turning public discussion into one that assumes the
accuracy of both the intelligence on the apparent Aug. 21
chemical weapons attack in Syria and President Barack Obama’s
far-fetched claim that Syria is somehow a threat to the United
States.
Here we go
again with the old political gamesmanship over ”facts” as a
prelude to war, a replay of intelligence trickery from Vietnam’s
Gulf of Tonkin to Iraq’s nonexistent WMD. Once more, White House
officials are mounting a full-court press in Congress, hoping
there will be enough ball turnovers to enable the administration
to pull out a victory, with the corporate media acting as
hometown referees.
__
If Obama wages an
aggressive attack on Syria — especially without UN authorization
— he’ll be committing a major international crime that will, by
any standard, make him a war criminal, just like Bush before
him.
And
because Obama’s attack on Syria followed Bush’s logic, you’d
assume that liberal, progressive, and other Left groups would do
what they did when Bush went to war: denounce it unconditionally
and organize against it.
But that’s not what
happened. Because this didn’t happen, less accurate information
was made available to the public, and fewer public mobilizations
have occurred, thus re-enforcing Obama’s ability to wage an
aggressive war.
There are
four pieces of information that all left groups have a duty to
report about Syria, but they have either ignored or minimized:
1) Obama presented
zero evidence to back up his main justification for war: that
the Syrian Government used chemical weapons against civilians.
2) A top UN
investigator,
Carla Del Ponte, blamed a previous chemical weapons attack
on the U.S.-backed rebels.
3) Any attack on Syria, no
matter how “limited,” has a high risk of expanding into
neighboring countries if Syria exercises its right as a
sovereign nation to defend itself.
4) A war against Syria
will be a violation of international law, since it is not
approved by the UN, and therefore will make President Obama a
war criminal.
September 03, 2013 "Information
Clearing House - "Politico"
- -
A reference to the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC was
mysteriously cut from a New York Times
article published online Monday and in print Tuesday.
The first version, published online Monday, quotes an
anonymous administration official calling AIPAC the
"800-pound gorilla in the room." The original article, which
is
still available on the Boston Globe's site, had two
paragraphs worth of quotes from officials about the powerful
lobbying group's position in the Syria debate:
Administration officials said the influential American
Israel Public Affairs Committee was already at work
pressing for military action against the government of
Assad, fearing that if Syria escapes American
retribution for its use of chemical weapons, Iran might
be emboldened in the future to attack Israel. In the
House, the majority leader, Eric Cantor of Virginia, the
only Jewish Republican in Congress [Their are an additional 21 Jews in the House of Representatives who are Democrats--there are 13 Jews in the Senate, i.e., 13%, far in excess of their percentage of the US population. Chris], has long worked to
challenge Democrats’ traditional base among Jews.
One administration official, who, like others, declined
to be identified discussing White House strategy, called
AIPAC “the 800-pound 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.”
The
newer version makes no reference to AIPAC and does not
include an editor's note explaining any change, other than a
typical note at the end of the story noting that a version
of the article appeared in the Tuesday print edition of the
Times.
__
Tonight, she kicked it up a notch in an interview on CNN
with Wolf Blitzer, where she invoked the Holocaust.
Wasserman Schultz noted that her Weston-to-Miami Beach
District has one of the largest Holocaust-survivor
populations in the nation.
"As a
Jew," she said, "the concept of 'never again' has to mean
something." She also noted the "searing images" of children
killed in what appears to have been a chemical-weapons
strike
Indeed. But the concept of Bashar al-Assad as Hitler is
something the Obama Administration and his supporters have
to prove to a majority of the members of Congress.
And
they haven't done it yet.
Instead, backers for war in Syria simply say that classified
U.S. intelligence stringly indicates Assad used chemical
weapons. So what's the evidence?
__
by Bruce Gagnon
This is how it works.
The US has been providing Egypt with nearly $2 billion a year in "aid"
since 1979. Most of this is military aid. That "aid" is then used to
buy weapons from American corporations. So in reality most of US
foreign aid becomes more welfare programs for the military industrial
complex.
Because of current civil war conditions in Egypt the Obama team is
having to hold off on providing more aid to that embattled nation. A
recent Pew Research Center poll found that 51% of respondents said it's
better to cut off military assistance to Egypt, while 26% backed
continued aid.
The "aid" now on temporary hold would include: F-16 fighter jets from
Lockheed Martin; M1A1 tanks from General Dynamics; and Apache attack
helicopters made by Boeing Co.
CBS News reported on August 20: "The billion dollars in aid
Congress approved for Egypt does not go directly to Cairo, it goes to
places such as Archbald, Pennsylvania. The General Dynamics factory
there makes parts for the M1A1 tank. General Dynamics is filling an
order for 125 tank kits for the Egyptian Army. One-hundred-thirty
people work at the Archbald facility."
You can imagine the workers at the Archbald facility want this "aid"
to continue. Archbald Mayor Ed Fairbrother says the jobs are "extremely
important" to the community. "They are some of the best jobs we have in
the community," he says. "Those are the kinds of jobs that sustain
communities and families."
There are 44 companies in Pennsylvania involved in production of the
M1A1. The interesting thing is that Egypt does not need the tanks and
many of the "kits" are still in crates after being delivered to their
military.
American communities have become addicted to war spending and
military production. As most traditional manufacturing industry has
moved overseas seeking cheaper labor the best jobs in most parts of the
nation are building weapons. It's thus no coincidence that the #1
industrial export product of our nation is weapons. And what is our
global marketing strategy for that product line? Hello Syria!
An attack on Syria will at the least expend lots of Tomahawk cruise
missiles. When daddy Bush launched a cruise missile attack on Iraq in
the early 1990's these missiles cost $1 million each. The Pentagon used
100 of them in the initial attack. McDonnell Douglas (now owned by
Boeing Co.) had their factory in Titusville, Florida working
round-the-clock to replace them. At the start of George W. Bush's
attack on Iraq in 2003 it was the Tomahawk cruise missile fired again in
the first salvos from the USS Cowpens. The ship is a
Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser. The ship is named after the
Battle of Cowpens, a major American victory near Cowpens, South
Carolina, in the American Revolution. It was built at the Bath Iron
Works shipyard in Maine, where I happen to live.
Years ago, speaking to a peace group here in Maine, I noticed a young
woman in the audience with a look in her eyes that I immediately
recognized. After the talk she hung around near my literature table,
waiting until everyone but my partner and I were gone, before she
approaching. She told us she was an Iraq War veteran. We had not had
dinner yet so invited her to come along with us. Over the ensuing years
we became like family with this wonderful former Navy Lieutenant who
was the Officer of the Deck responsible for positioning the USS Cowpens when it launched the very first Tomahawk cruise during "shock and awe" in 2003.
Today this young woman suffers from severe war trauma. She told us
the story of seeing the series of missiles launch right before her
eyes. After her shift was over she went below to see the crew watching a
TV with images of a burning Baghdad. The crew was cheering. She was
in a daze and stumbled to her bunk. At her first opportunity she got
out of the Navy and today has a tough time functioning in the "real
world".
Today these same missiles cost up to $3 million each. So a similar
attack on Syria will keep the factories humming back home. We've become
a killer nation. We have to have endless war—like a drunk needs a
drink at the bar—in order for American workers to put food on the tables
for their families.
What does this say about the soul of our nation?
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
__
__
Which Syrian Chemical Attack Account Is More Credible?
Let's compare a couple of accounts of the mass deaths apparently
caused by chemical weapons in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta on August
21. One account comes from the U.S. government (
8/30/13), introduced by Secretary of State John Kerry. The other was published by a Minnesota-based news site called
Mint Press News (
8/29/13).
The government account expresses "high confidence that the Syrian
government carried out a chemical weapons attack" on August 21. The
Mint report
bore the headline "Syrians in Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind
Chemical Attack." Which of these two versions should we find more
credible?
The U.S. government, of course, has a track record that will incline
informed observers to approach its claims with skepticism–particularly
when it's making charges about the proscribed weapons of official
enemies. Kerry said in his
address
that "our intelligence community" has been "more than mindful of the
Iraq experience"–as should be anyone listening to Kerry's presentation,
because the
Iraq experience
informs us that secretaries of State can express great confidence about
matters that they are completely wrong about, and that U.S.
intelligence assessments can be based on
distortion of evidence and deliberate suppression of
contradictory facts.
Secretary of State John Kerry making the case that Damascus has used chemical weapons (US State Department)
Comparing Kerry's presentation on Syria and its accompanying document to Colin Powell's
speech
to the UN on Iraq, though, one is struck by how little specific
evidence was included in the case for the Syrian government's use of
chemical weapons. It gives the strong impression of being pieced
together from drone surveillance and NSA intercepts, supplemented by
Twitter messages and
YouTube
videos, rather than from on-the-ground reporting or human intelligence.
Much of what is offered tries to establish that the victims in Ghouta
had been exposed to chemical weapons–a question that indeed had been in
some doubt, but had already largely been settled by a
report
by Doctors Without Borders that reported that thousands of people in
the Damascus area had been treated for "neurotoxic symptoms."
More
__
Counter-Questions on Syria
By Stephen Gowans
The US state is above international law, according to US president Barack Obama. In an
address
announcing that he was referring to the US Congress the decision to
take military action against Syria, Obama declared that the United
States needs to violate international law in order to enforce “the
international system” and “international rules.” The international “
system” and “
rules” Obama referred to, which he apparently intended his audience to construe as “international
law,”
is not, in fact, international law, but rules Obama himself has
unilaterally drawn up, and through rhetorical sleight of hand, attempted
to pass off as international law. Yet, the very act Obama
proposes—waging war on Syria without UN Security Council authorization,
and to punish an act that, if there were hard evidence that it actually
happened, would not be unlawful—is a flagrant violation of the authentic
international system Obama deceptively claims he wishes to uphold.
Obama has arrogated onto himself the powers and responsibilities of
world ruler. He sets the rules, decides when they’re broken, and metes
out the punishment.
The US president justified his self-elevation to the post of world
emperor on moral grounds, arguing that the United States must punish
heinous acts (though only those, real or imagined, of countries that
are not US satellites; the heinous acts of satellite countries are
allowed to continue with impunity, and often, US assistance.) In his
statement, he asked:
• What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price?
• What’s the purpose of the international system that we’ve built if a
prohibition on the use of chemical weapons that has been agreed to by
the governments of 98 percent of the world’s people…is not enforced?
• If we won’t enforce accountability in the face of this heinous act,
what does it say about our resolve to stand up to others who flout
fundamental international rules? To governments who would choose to
build nuclear arms? To terrorists who would spread biological weapons?
To armies who carry out genocide?
Laying aside the realities that: there is no hard evidence that the
Syrian president was behind the heinous act and that it seems more
likely that the opposition, Washington’s ally, was; that appointing to
himself the moral duty to punish the perpetrator is rather rich coming
from the leader of a country that has authored multiple heinous acts
around the globe—and on an infinitely grander scale; that the agreement
of other governments not to use chemical weapons has no relevance to
what goes on within Syria, which has not signed onto international
conventions against the weapons’ use (and neither have US allies Egypt
and Israel); we might put these counter-questions to ourselves:
• What message will we, the world’s 99 percent, send if a president
can autocratically appoint to himself the right bomb other countries
without justification and without legitimate authority, and pay no
price?
• What’s the purpose of the international system if a prohibition on the
unlawful use of force that has been agreed to by the governments of 100
percent of the world’s people (the UN Charter) is ignored with
impunity?
• If we, the 99 percent, won’t enforce accountability in the face of
this act of aggression against Syria, which is to be carried out in
brazen defiance of the international system, what does it say about our
resolve to stand up to others who flout fundamental international rules?
To a country that threatens non-nuclear countries with nuclear arms (as
the United States does, reserving the right of first-strike against any
country)? To a government which terrorizes civilians through bombing
raids, “shock and awe” and drone attacks? To states that carry out
genocide through sanctions of mass destruction (as the United States did
in Iraq)?
Not only is Washington willing to brush aside international law when
the UN Charter gets in the way of its foreign policy interests, it is
also willing to toss evidence, reason and logic aside when they threaten
its pretexts for war. Apropos of this, see counter-hegemonist Amal
Saad-Ghorayeb’s 10 simple guidelines for ensuring methodological rigor,
as inspired by US officials,
here.
__
EXCLUSIVE: Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack
Dale Gavlak and Yahya Ababneh
Mint Press News
August 30, 2013
This article is a collaboration between Dale Gavlak reporting for Mint Press News (also of the Associated Press) and Yahya Ababneh.
Ghouta, Syria — As the machinery for a U.S.-led military intervention in Syria gathers pace
following last week’s chemical weapons attack, the U.S. and its allies may be targeting the wrong culprit.
The U.S. and others are not interested in examining any contrary evidence, with U.S Secretary of State John Kerry sayingMonday that Assad’s guilt was “a judgment … already clear to the world.”
However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.
__
Published on Wednesday, September 4, 2013 by Common Dreams
Russian president says that if Obama is so convinced of Syria's guilt he should bring evidence to the UN
- Jon Queally, staff writer
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the U.S. claims about Syria's
use of chemical weapons are 'absolutely absurd' and said that if quality
evidence does exist it should be brought to the U.N. Security Council
and be debated before the international community.
"If there are
data that the chemical weapons have been used, and used specifically by
the regular army, this evidence should be submitted to the U.N. Security
Council," said Putin in
a joint interview
with the Associated Press and Russia's state Channel 1 television. "And
it ought to be convincing. It shouldn't be based on some rumors and
information obtained by special services through some kind of
eavesdropping, some conversations and things like that." . . . .
_____
