Blind to consequence, the aggressor thrusts into war, unaware that he approaches the gates of hell.
Once extinguished, life becomes utterly irretrievable in the normal course of events. Thus, lethal warfare is a most somber matter; yet, too often, it is the province of the arrogant and foolish who from haughtiness or incapacity cannot properly gauge the attendant danger. War entices cowardly and diffident leaders into convincing themselves they must war to disguise the character flaws that trouble them. Into one or more of these categories fall the leaders of the three western nations – America, England and France – so bent on bombing Syria for alleged use of chemical weapons.
This Western trio for years has itched to sign the death warrants of the Assad regime. They no longer have to tolerate that itch. With the weapons allegation, they now rush to scratch from existence this government they long have detested.
Zealots of neo-conservative geopolitics in Western capitals have plotted to topple the houses of Hussein (Iraq), Gaddafi (Libya) and Assad (Syria). Toss in those unruly Iranian Shi’as as the ultimate objective. Already two targets have fallen to western intervention based on claims that later proved worse than false; they were fraudulent. Hussein’s Iraq was engulfed by massive war to rid that nation of weapons that did not exist. Its people still feel the bite of war and pinch of scarcity that war produces. The nation stands one major incident away from fully-outfitted civil war.
The West intervened in Libya, allegedly compelled by the humanitarian principle of a responsibility to protect innocent civilians from their despot. The claim rang hollow when made. In hindsight, it was purely counterfeit.
Western assertions that Gaddafi threatened to massacre Benghazi were fabricated pretexts to kill his regime and the man himself. The man never made the murderous exclamation. The lie justifies the vigorous bombing campaign that ensued, establishing a rather curious foreign policy tenet. The West will eagerly bomb a people to protect them from the violence of their government. The outcome of this distorted logic is to heap more pain and suffering on those who already have sampled the sour chalice. Under Gaddafi, Libyans had little freedom. They did have a semblance of social order and economy activity. Today, they have not gained freedom but have forfeited social order and economic activity as well. Western intervention has been a sad bargain for them. Theirs is now a land where political violence and economic depression are the daily fare. The West has abandoned the nation to its fractious aspects. Curiously, the responsibility to protect civilians that so provoked Western nations to chase Gaddafi into is grave seems not to endure with a sufficiency to establish a peace worthy of its name. The West used this rationale to unseat the enemy. Once the enemy is vanquished, the West blinds itself to the people’s suffering. In truth, the West cares little that civilians may perish. Its interest concerns in who kills them. If the killer is a foe, the West deems the action inhumane. If committed by an ally, the killing is considered the inescapable collateral damage of governance in a dangerous neighborhood. Why this curious and strange inconsistency?
The answer is simple. The ability to kill means the actor has eminent dominion over the subject people and place. The West seeks not to end killing but to rob its enemies of their lethal dominion in hopes of bestowing this power in a particular nation to those who would do the West’s bidding. Instead of being a new tool promoting justice and humanitarian mercy, the principle of a responsibility to protect civilians has become a caliginous device undermining the doctrine of noninterference in the domestic affairs of other nations. The powerful now use this new doctrine to encroach against nations that offend them. They speak in the tongue of angels but the motives behind their deeds are as sullen as the excesses of a bygone era.
If Assad should drown in the swell of civil war, Western arch-conservatives will rejoice. They will be three-quarters of the way to their dream of a politically conservative, economically pliant Middle East. Oil stocks and global shipping lanes will be secure for the near future. Israel will be also rid of an enemy. With Assad gone, only Iran remains as an obstacle. Already the rationale to crumple Iran – the nuclear specter – has been established.
This neo-conservative dream refuses to die although it is so and outdated that it disserves America’s imperial interests. Still, this vision influences Western foreign policy. Thus, part of America’s foreign policy establishment will ally with known terrorists such as al Qaeda and its cousin, al Nusra, although these groups have been more actively opposed to America than Gaddafi’s Libya or Assad’s Syria. Staunch neo-conservatives are so fixated on their old designs that they don’t truly understand how much the world has changed. In a bid to oust these established regimes, the hard-line neo-conservatives are willing give the more radical anti-western groups a chance to seize power in these strategic nations. Not only are the neo-cons blood hungry, their incarnadine lust cripples their capacity to think logically, endangering their interests as they rush headlong toward war.
Less rabid neo-conservatives realize the danger of abetting al-Qaeda and its franchisees. President Obama, that avowed fan of the President Bush, camps with this more straight-laced conservative group. He wants Assad subdued but is wary of handing the keys to the palace Syria to extremists as he has been done in Libya.
The melding of staunch and cautious neo-conservative thought has produced a most cynical policy. America does not seek the quick departure of Assad, fearing that radical elements will most profit from the void created. Thus, a policy has been fashioned to keep Syria in perpetual war, where neither side is strong enough to win nor so weak as to fold. Aside from the gold star of replacing Assad with a compliant American lackey, this “plan B” best protects Washington’s interests. Far from freeing the Syrian people from violence, American policy aims to make violence a way of life in Syria as it has become in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia and the Congo.
Statements of western leaders have been illuminating. Try as they can to peal the bell of humanitarian concern, their words reveal the ugliness inside hidden. British Foreign Secretary Hague proclaimed self-righteously that the world act because this was the first instance of chemical weapons use in the 21st century. Hague must do better at reading the newspaper and spend less time mesmerized by his own harangue. This is not even the first chemical attack of the year. There was an earlier attack in which dozens were killed. At that time, the West hoisted their arms in protest until the UN inspector concluded the opposition had deployed lethal sarin gas. The West quickly discounted this outrage, pressing the international media not to report it. American and its sidekicks were not truly interested in deterring the use of chemical weapons. They were more interested in finding a pretext to delve further into Syria to shift the balance of power.
If genuinely upset about chemical weapons, Western nations already would have bombed themselves for committing this transgression. When white phosphorus and depleted uranium are used in certain ways during military operations, they are classified as weapons. Such use is prohibited under most reasonable interpretations of international conventions. Yet, America used them and napalm in Iraq. Israel, the nation that purported provided America the communication intercepts implicating the Syrian government in the latest incident, resorted to white phosphorus against Palestinians during the 2008-09 Gaza uprising. None in the West clamored to sanction, much less bomb, Tel Aviv. The thought of America delivering a military blow to Israel for using illegal weapons so transcends the imagination as to be laughable.
Statements of American officials have been reprobate in their lack of clarity. Explaining the rush to war, President Obama maundered, “In a nation with the largest stockpile of chemical weapons, where they have been allied to known terrorist organizations in the past, where over time their control of chemical weapons may erode… these chemical weapons could be directed against us. We want to make sure this does not happen.” This statement is a potpourri of tortured reasoning. It will be recorded as one of Obama’s lesser, most naked moments when he bared the emptiness of his character. That he could make this statement only a day after his keynote address commemorating the 1963 March on Washington and Dr. King’s “Dream Speech” shows that Obama either lacks a memory or is a man with a most elastic moral composition. For him, right is not what you seek to find; it is merely what you say it to be.
According to Obama’s logic, Assad needs to be bombed because he is losing control over chemical stockpiles. This loss of control may soon allow terrorists to acquire use the weapons against America. This generates a few questions. If Assad has lost control over the weapons, why is America so adamant Assad directed this particular strike? If terrorists can imminently acquire these weapons and use them against America, doesn’t that mean they also have the ability to use them in Syria where the weapons are based?
On one hand, America alleges the opposition did not have the ability to launch this attack. On the other hand, America alleges segments of the opposition have the ability to use these weapons against America. Both statements cannot be true.
Bombing Assad, will secure the chemical stockpiles. Bombing will further loosen his hold, rendering the stockpiles more vulnerable to plunder by radicals. Bombing Assad enhances the possibility of al Qaeda acquiring the weapons. In other words, American action will turn these fears into a self-fulfilling prophecy. This, in turn, will allow the American military corporate condominium to further frighten the American public by claiming terrorists now hold lethal chemical weapons. This will be used as a rationale to increase security and police state tactics in America. Just wanting to be kept safe, the public will cower, dropping its inchoate concerns about internal surveillance and eavesdropping. The military/security machinery will further invade and erode American democracy, stone by stone, civil liberty by civil liberty. The American public will be as much a victim, albeit indirectly, of the bombing as the Syrian people.
While America rushes headlong into the bog, England temporarily rescued itself with a touch of sanity. PM Cameron wanted to join President Obama in this martial recreation. In a stark rebuke to the rashness of their leader, Parliament ruined Cameron’s war designs. The rebellion in parliament against Cameron’s warmongering shows that democracy still works on occasion. The true heroes were those parliamentarians of his Tory party who placed national interests above party loyalty. English people are tired of war. After Iraq, they are wary of being dragged into a fray based on dubious, hastily drawn conclusions.
Hoping to go into war with his junior partner Cameron, like the fictional heroes Batman and Robin, Obama is left to go it solo like the mythical cowboy hero, the Lone Ranger. Sure, the French want into the fray but that is a puny consolation prize. The French have a big appetite but hold a rather small cup and saucer. They can collar and bully weak African nations but Paris is no longer a genuine world power. The Gallic bull is but an old, flabby cow.
One feels some sympathy for Obama. Judging by his unintelligent stammering, his heart is not in this. But the weight of the military and political apparatus pushes him toward war. He is too weak to resist although the claim against Assad smells dubious. That Assad would launch attacks likely to invite a Western response when he was clearly winning the war makes little sense. Assad was eager to attend peace talks in Geneva where negotiations would memorialize his military gains. Why would he risk all on a tactical outburst of no military consequence? That he would do this the very day weapons inspectors arrived on his invitation makes even less sense. Also, if America truly wanted to get to the truth of the matter, why did it apply high-level pressure to dissuade the UN from carrying out the inspection of the incident?
While the international media has joined their financial sponsors in hastily concluding that Assad is the culprit, reasonable alternative theories must be investigated before a conclusion can be had on a matter freighted with such consequence. As President Obama implied, Assad may have lost control of portions of his stockpile in the miasma of war. Such weapons do not wonder the streets ownerless. Someone quickly assumes possession. Others may have gotten hold of them.
Clearly losing the war, the opposition has much to gain by staging an attack then blaming Assad for the carnage. This would compel the West to increase their support and attack Assad, thus rescuing the opposition from impending defeat. Western clandestine agencies have been operating in the Syrian theatre for months. These agencies have the assets and guile to stage this operation while casting responsibility toward Assad. Moreover, these agencies also have motive to do this. Should their governments join the battle against Assad, the importance of these agencies will increase as will their funding.
Assad is malign soul and he might well have commissioned this tragedy. However, his guilt is unlikely and thus far unproven. Even if he did this, American intervention will cause more harm than good. To engage in a policy that encourages perpetual war weakens America’s already dwindling legitimacy. To do so in the face of broad global opposition is to make a mockery of the international legal system America purports to champion.
In retrospect, President Obama must rue the moment he said that use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a “red line.” Rarely has a leader placed himself, his nation and an entire region in such a predicament with the careless utterance of two words.
I have no idea of the line’s true color but Obama certainly straddles a line separating caution from rashness and the arrogance of dumb power. It is tragic that the mighty are rarely wise. Much grief could be eliminated. By uttering this dangerous flippancy, Obama assured the world that chemical weapons would be used. Now he feels he must strike Syria or his credibility is at stake. This is silly.
Credibility is not at stake. Vanity is. Obama has killed bin Laden, bombed Libya, Yemen and Pakistan and Afghanistan into smithereens. No one questions his love of bombing real and imaginary foes. To argue that he must act because he said he would act is to impose an adolescent form of reasoning on the world’s most elevated seat of national power. It is a request begging us to forgive the original folly (issuing the unwise threat) that we may also adopt the mad logic of fighting for the sole reason of not losing face. In any event, Obama should not worry of loss of face. His actions through all of this shows he has two faces. The man has, at least, one to spare. Better to lose face than lose the slim chance of peace.
A minor tactical strike by America accomplished little. After the massive post-incident media and political buildup, a tactical incision would be worse than nothing. Arch conservatives would be biting at his heels and head to do more. He will comply as he always has. The logic of America’s illogical position requires that it strike repeatedly and with such force as to alter the balance of power which now heavily favors Assad. The more America invests itself in this melee, the more it must defeat Assad. The more it must defeat him, the more America must invest itself in war. This Nobel Peace Prize winning president has just purchased a pivotal seat in someone else’s war with the very words of his own mouth. Those who would rule the world should first control their tongues and the heady exuberance the muscle and might of high office often bring.
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