The U.S liberals can summarize the tragedy in Syria as just another episode of to paraphrase former U.S. Secretary of State and robust fundraiser for noble causes, and future U.S. President Clinton 2.0 "We came we saw he died." The mainstream "liberals" consisting of the mindset seen and heard on National Public Radio (NPR), PBS, etc. can see Assad's downfall as a regretful necessity, provoked by his delusions of presiding as a strongman over Syria in a similar manner to his father. He failed to comprehend the zeitgeist embodied in the Arab Spring. These liberals have articulated this narrative in some news cycles. Soon thereafter began focusing their zeal on the next candidate for regime change. (Yemen???? or re-installing their leader in exile)
200,000 dead in Syria since the "uprising" began in 2011. Is this result worth it? Why not? Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright believed economic sanctions contributing to over 500,000 Iraqi deaths was worth it:
Albright's comments were certainly no anomaly of justifying mass deaths. But, the current megaphones for the U.S. empire may not always speak so directly when justifying its support of war and mass suffering. For instance, Samantha Power, current U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., resorts to subterfuge in order to make an unsubstantiated causal link between Assad's abuses and the surge of terrorists into Syria:
I infer from her comments that U.S. support for opposition groups that began as early as 2005 and six years before the Arab Spring erupted had no destabilizing impact on Syria whatsoever? 2005 was a pivotal year for the U.S. regime change establishment's relations with Assad. On February 14, 2005 former prime minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated. The regime change establishment promptly accused Assad. Of course their confidence in his guilt enabled their ignoring petty details like empirical evidence. Their pathos establish self-evident truths too strong to be refuted by diversions like forensics.
The U.S. is often accused of abusing its "exorbitant privilege" of having the world's reserve currency. Another exorbitant privilege it abuses is making proclamations without providing causal arguments to support them. The U.S. abuses this exorbitant privilege in Syria. It is simple to find numerous examples.
Assad attacked his own subjects with sarin gas..right? Yes if you uncritically accept the elites judgement. But, the current class of heretics who believe such claims should demonstrate them through empirical studies rather than their blindly accepting apriori claims made by Secretary of State John Kerry or Fox News and MSNBC pundits that Bashir al-Assad is the only possible person capable of attacking his people with sarin gas. Other analysis was offered though undermining the elites' loud yet baseless accusations made against Assad. So if the empire spokesman ever concedes (although it is unlikely) that maybe Assad didn't attempt mass murder by attacking his own people with chemical nerve agents, but his thugs still attacked a distinguished journalist.
Richard Engel, foreign correspondent of NBC, was allegedly kidnapped in Syria by Assad's forces......that is until he revised his recollection of the facts of his captivity. Which journalist doesn't lie about their experiences in the field to distort reality especially when such distortions match the U.S government's established story? We should admire his revealing the Truth if even on a two year delay. Why obsess over details and timing? The only detail deserving our constant attention is the recognition that Assad must go. Everything else is mere chatter.
In their contribution to the hysteria generated from President George W. Bush's declaring war on Terror, Congress passed the "Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003" with bipartisan support and no opponents of the Bill allowed to testify to congressional committees. Empire in the U.S. Congress is a bi-partisan affair. Hawks and Doves are just terms that politicians and the media sling about without any real meaning, Drones and regime changes are the constants.
Yes these facts bore the mainstream media. There is a history of analysis showing Syria's sovereignty is expendable if its continued existence is perceived as a barrier to the U.S. establishing a geopolitical setting most conducive to its interests. This analysis of Syria' being an impediment to U.S. and Israel's desired agenda for controlling the region is available in the following sources:
Oded Yinon, an Israel based journalist and and someone who at one point served in some capacity for the Foreign Ministry of Israel, published a historically important article in 1982 titled "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties" wherein he envisioned the future of Syria disintegrating:
The Western front-in relation to Israel's location..my italics-which on the surface appears more problematic, is in fact less complicated than the Eastern front, in which most of the events that make the headlines have been taking place recently. Lebanon's total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi'ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in Northern Jordan. This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today. [1]The referenced state of affairs predicted in 1982 seem prophetic except that as these conditions occur it guarantees no peace and security. This was no isolated analysis; rather, history has shown it is a prelude to a persistent view of Syria's dissolution being a desirable outcome.
Before the U.S, invasion and/or liberation of Iraq, geopolitical thinkers Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks Jr, Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser either contributed or provided their thoughts which helped generate a review published by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." The authors summarize what geopolitical factors will most impact Israel's prospects to defend itself while achieving peace in the region. An essential element of this strategy included Syria being isolated and weakened:
Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Suddam Hussein from power in Iraq-an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right-as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions. [2]This view conflates regime change in Iraq with weakening of Syria as a precondition for making peace in the region. Whose peace? The former occurred six years following the publication of that study and was justified by a pack of lies. Nothing new. But, the former is still underway as was advocated in the same study:
But Syria enters this conflict with potential weaknesses: Damascus is too preoccupied with dealing with the threatened new regional equation to permit distractions of the Lebanese flank. And Damascus fears that the 'natural axis' with Israel on one side, central Iraq and Turkey on the other, and Jordan, in the center would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula. For Syria, this could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East which would threaten Syria's territorial integrity. [3].This prelude of the redrawing of the map at Syria's expense was reported again in 2012 by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). This report was declassified and provided to Judicial Watch in response to their request filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The DIA completed a report in 2012 which was recently released resulting from requests filed pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act and is heavily redacted. The non-redacted information though that was released shows the DIA's full awareness that the Muslim Brotherhood/Al Quaeda supported the Syrian opposition (I am sure of course the U.S. tolerated this cynical and dangerous move because this was just a temporary expedient to overthrow Assad. This expedient was justified becasue somewhere in that radical jihadist haystack lies the "moderates" who upon deposing Asad will hep construct a vibrant democratic society....just like in Iraq in 2003 the Syrians will welcome them as liberators!!!!!):
AQI (Al Quaeda In Iraq) SUPPORTED THE SYRIAN OPPOSITION FROM THE BEGINNING, BOTH IDEOLOGICALLY AND THROUGH THE MEDIA….. AQI CONDUCTED A NUMBER OF OPERATIONS IN SEVERAL SYRIAN CITIES UNDER THE NAME JAISH AL NUSRAH (VICTORIOUS ARMY) [4].
And, the DIA further warns in their report what consequences to expect if Al Quaeda and Syrian opposition create enough chaos:
IF THE SITUATION UNRAVELS THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME WHICH IS CONSIDERED THE STRATEGIC DEPTH OF THE SHIA EXPANSION (IRAQ AND IRAN). THE DETERIORATION OF THE SITUATION HAS DIRE CONSEQUENCES ON THE IRAQI SITUATION…… THIS CREATES THE IDEAL ATMOSPHERE FOR AQI (Al Quaeda in Iraq) TO RETURN TO ITS OLD POCKETS IN MOSUL AND RAMADI, AND WILL PROVIDE A RENEWED MOMENTUM UNDER THE PRESUMPTION OF UNIFYING THE JIHAD AMONG SUNNI IRAQ AND SYRIA AND THE REST OF THE SUNNIS IN THE ARAB WORLD AGAINST WHAT IT CONSIDERS ONE ENEMY, THE DISSENTERS. ISI COULD ALSO DECLARE AN ISLAMIC STATE THROUGH ITS UNION WITH OTHER TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS IN IRAQ AND SYRIA, WHICH WILL CREATE GRAVE DANGER IN REGARDS TO UNIFYING IRAQ AND THE PROTECTION OF ITS TERRITORY. [5].
These were reports were completed in August and September 2012 and "were sent to the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, State Department, Department of Defense and U.S. Central Command." The diplomatic and military establishment heads were aware of these dangerous developments. Their foreknowledge of these ominous developments prompt the predictable recriminatory questions: "Why didn't they take necessary actions or implement policy changes in order to mitigate hopefully the damage sustained by a resurgent Sunni movement? And, why did Susan Rice as a member of the U.S. diplomatic elite in the video clip posted above falsely blame Assad as the primary cause of the current bloodshed in Syria that began in the heat of the Arab Spring?
Perhaps this U.S. elite's indifference to a resurgent Al Qaeda in the region results from their deliberately shifting their policy as Seymour Hersh reported in 2007 (to the degree it is possible to identify in the most concrete terms the U.S. policy then in effect in the region) to preventing the Shiites from extending an arc reaching across Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Hypocritically and recklessly, as George W. Bush stated in his platitudes that the U.S. won't "cut and run" from Al Qaeda and the U.S. will "stay the course," and the U.S. will "stand down when the Iraqi army can stand up," the U.S. was actually shifting its policy:
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration had decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. [6].Events in Syria since 2007 have shown the U.S. to places a higher priority on regime change in Syria than combating Al Qaeda. Moreover, the U.S. is willing to use the latter to accomplish the former.
We shouldn't forget these facts because they show a pattern of provocation against Syria who is becoming the latest casualty of an empire obsessed with maintaining hegemonic power over that region. Causal arguments.......moral justifications.....those are mere nuisances to the U.S. empire. Their nuisances...other people's tragedies.....200,000 dead in Syria and 1 million wounded. Is overthrowing Assad worth this humanitarian crisis that continues? The empire believes such a question is rhetorical.
1. Yinon, Oded. "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) http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/The%20Zionist%20Plan%20for%20the%20Middle%20East.pdf
2. 1. The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000. "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." accessed at Information Clearing House http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1438.htm
3. Ibid.
4. Declassified document. pgs. 297-93 (291) JW v DOD and State 14-812 May 18, 2015. Judicial Watch. http://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/pgs-287-293-291-jw-v-dod-and-state-14-812-2/
5. Ibid.
6. Hersh, Seymour. "The Redirection:" Is the Administration's new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?" The New Yorker. March 5, 2007. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/05/the-redirection
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