Tag: Syria

A mistake timely made can often be more profitable than a perfect answer tardily had.

Syria remains at the point of war and thus continues at the tip of global attention. There are important lessons embedded in this crisis that transcend the art of war and touch on how we come to know what we think we know. We should use this crisis to examine how we fashion opinions on public matters. I raise this issue because of comments received from among this column’s readers.

Many readers oppose the position I have staked on Syria. That does not trouble me. My weekly expositions are not draft that you might agree with them. Their greater utility is in offering an alternative, progressive viewpoint. This column’s perspective differs from mainstream media but is equally valid. I like the back-and-forth of keen discourse. Sharp debate adds more than it ever subtracts. The disquieting thing is that almost all opposing comments were emotive outbursts. Disagree; yes by all means, but have reasons that reason can articulate.

Most comments favoring American intervention were of this variety: “If your family was being gassed you would bomb Assad!” or the slightly less ad hominem “How can you stand to watch people be gassed to such a grisly death?”

These are expressions of emotion not of reason. As a race, we must do better in how we make decisions. If not, we will not recover lost ground in our race for political and economic development. For instance, in a government worth its salt comprised of leaders worth theirs, an officeholder would recuse himself from the matter if his family were place in unique danger different than that of the rest of the nation. Otherwise, he would be acting under duress. Nations are not to be governed in such an unstable fashion. To do so would be to exalt frailty and rashness over caution and wisdom.

Here, I assume these comments roughly parallel overall opinion. If my assumption is true, good percentage of us do not sufficiently scrutinize the information transmitted to us by global corporate media. For a race and people who have been subjected to an encyclopedia of negative stereotypes and half truths, it is startling how easily we imbibe the message of the very same global informational condominium that has libeled us. This informational architecture historically has been erected against our interests yet we so easily believe rather than question it. Thus, my fear is not that we disagree over Syria. My fear is that if this same machine that can so easily persuade so many o f us to become emotional over Syria it may be able to accomplish the same feat on matters more germane to our political and economic fortunes as Black people.

I have assiduously watched mainstream media coverage of Syria for weeks. Not once have I heard any news reporters or the hirelings paraded as neutral experts question whether Assad’s government actually committed the attack. It is treated as incontrovertible as a mathematic proof that Assad’s is the guilty hand.

Western governments and the vested economic interests they serve have wanted to topple Assad for years. They certainly want to prevent his imminent victory over the weakening rebels. These same economic interests own the news networks. The media houses work not to disseminate truth, advance honest debate or promote objective analysis. Their task is to promulgate the opinions of those who fund their payrolls. Such is how the world currently turns.

The media houses are the butlers and stevedores of the powerful and mighty who seek to perpetuate their control of the world by controlling a good portion of our mind and opinions.

At this moment, I am skeptical about the claim against Assad for particular act. He has done enough to consign himself to a terrible afterlife. There is no need to attribute to him the wrongs of others for he has enough of his own. The evidence adduced against him is not wholly convincing. There is also a quantum of evidence leading to a different conclusion but that information has been embargoed by corporate media.

In the end, I could be wrong. However, I might be right. The bigger point is that we should allow reason and facts to guide us and forbid propaganda-fueled emotions from turning us into the instruments of other people’s designs. As much as possible, I came to my position based on the facts as I know them.

That Assad would plot such an attack is illogical. He was winning the war and decisively so. Also the opinion the rebels had not capacity for this atrocity is unfounded. The UN already concluded rebels used sarin gas months ago to lethal effect. Neutral military analysts also believe rebel arsenals possess rockets with gas-filled warheads.

America claims over 1400 people were killed in the incident. However, the France-based medical NGO, whose doctors were on the ground, estimates fatalities at 350. The discrepancy is too large to ignore.

American political leaders have stood before the world claiming the evidence against Assad is “beyond a shadow of a doubt.” Yet, the American intelligence community is divided because there are many shadows and even more doubts. Some believe Assad is the culprit. Yet, some analysts working in the American government believe their own clandestine agency, in league with the rebels and other dark operatives, concocted the incident to pull America into the conflict. Yet, corporate media has boycotted this jarring news because it does not fit their thematic narrative and the rush to war against Syria.

Last week, a group of retired intelligence officers, Veteran Intelligence Officers for Sanity (VIPS) sent President Obama a disquieting memorandum. The missive’s dozen signatories warned the President not to embark on war based on dubious conclusions founded on incomplete evidence. VIPS members claimed contact with intelligence analysts still in government employ. These analysts have informed VIPS that the preponderant evidence points to a conclusion contrary to the one dominating the airwaves. The memo mentions a subtle but important point the laymen would overlook. The non-classified document the American government published to defend its push for military action was released by the White House and not an intelligence agency. This is not standard procedure. The deviation is because the American intelligence community is strongly divided on the matter. Thus, the White House made a political decision against Assad but that decision might not accord with the true facts.

The memo also reveals a secret meeting in Turkey on August 13-14, the week before the fateful incident. The meeting was attended by American, Israeli, Saudi and Turkish clandestine officers as well as by rebel leaders. Allegedly, the rebels were told they would soon benefit from a massive influx of weapons and war materiel. There was talk of a mysterious event that would soon occur in Syria, bringing America actively into the war.

If this report is true, the intelligence agents at the meeting apparently are as gifted in prophecy as they are in dark operations. The simpler explanation is that they could forecast this peculiar future event because they were its authors.

The VIPS memo is not to be summarily dismissed. VIPS wrote a similar memo to President Bush cautioning against the dash to war in Iraq based on dissimulation. Bush ignored the advice. He was wrong. VIPS was right. Ten years later, Iraqi is mess. Perhaps the most strategic military blunder of the last fifty years, the primary result of the war has been to turn Iraq into a client of Iran. Rarely has a nation so unnecessarily and unwisely expended so much just to benefit a mortal foe.

If media houses were objective, they would report the VIPS memo. They would investigate the claimed divergence within the intelligence community and the secret meeting in Turkey where intelligence agents demonstrated a remarkable clairvoyance. However, corporate media has buried these and other reports that don’t mesh with the yarn they want to spin. As such, they act not as objective news outlets but as instruments of government. They are the private sector equivalent of a ministry of information.

In the end, Assad may have committed this atrocity. However, the evidence is not as convincing as portrayed. There is substantial evidence pointing in the other direction. Yet, global corporate media has no stomach to show us things that may lead to independent thought and weighing of complex facts. Instead, they show us videos that may be staged in whole or part. Then point and keep pointing an accusatory finger at the sinister figure we all love to abhor. This rouses emotions yet dulls the mind. They manipulate our decency and humanity to make us feel Assad must be punished in the worse way. We have been manipulated into a subtle trap where our emotions work against our mind.

Another important lesson is that we must adjust our perspectives of America. It is a great nation but one with a government handicapped by narrow-minded, often banal politicians. The current crop of leaders is so much less than the nation they lead. Statesmen are few; political journeymen abound. Ambition is more abundant than wisdom. We are used to looking at a nation’s leaders as a symbolizing the nation’s greatness. This is no longer the case in America. Collectively, the nation’s leaders are the most ineffectual group since the Vietnam War. They do not represent greatness’s continuity. They prove greatness is not guaranteed even to the high and mighty. It is a rarity to be nurtured and cultivated, not a commodity to be purchased at auction by the highest bidder.

America is undisputedly the most powerful nation on earth. However, this week’s events affirm that those controlling the American helm are not the wisest of statesmen. Thus far, only one American looks wise, almost prescient, in this matter: Hillary Clinton. The former Secretary of State had the presence of mind to refuse a second term as the nation’s top diplomat. She jumped ship before it ran aground amid a storm much of its captain’s own making. She did not foresee the approaching squall. In fact, her diplomacy or lack of it contributed to the desultory course the American ship has meandered. However, the consummate political survivor if not an astute diplomat, Clinton exited office unscathed if not free of culpability. At times, it is better to be the recipient of good fortune than it is to be skilled.

Her successor John Kerry will not be as lucky. His name forever shall be tarnished by his bombast and inconsistency during this complex international crisis. A diplomat’s inherent responsibility is to tongue and measure his words. Kerry evidently misread that section of the diplomat’s handbook. Here is a man who measures his word by how far he can sling them, not by how closely he holds them to his chest or limit them to their precise meaning. America has selected as its head statesman a person who splashes words about like an avant-garde artist does paint. In the average man, the consequence of this condition is his alone to bear. In a diplomat, the condition portends trouble for his nation. In the primary American diplomat, such a condition causes the world to shudder for it could bring us all close to the lips of steep crisis that need not be.

Thus, we had the spectacle of Kerry attempting to be two men at once. Responding to questions about the efficacy of America’s intended strike, Kerry said the attack would be sufficient enough to degrade Assad’s capabilities and deter future chemical weapons use. Responding to those wary of America entering headlong yet into another war, Kerry promised the threatened strike would be “incredibly small.” The statements reveal a man who responds to the moment not a person with an intimate relationship with veracity. Both statements can be false but both can’t be true.

This is the rustling of an awkward but powerful man trying to thread the delicate needle. However, he is abjectly ignorant the needle can only be coursed by wise, truthful policy. Instead of navigating the narrow channel with truth, he has tried to thread the needle with two plumb lies. The man was making a grand mess of this affair.

Fate sometimes smiles on those who don’t deserve its benevolence. It has come to Kerry’s rescue in the nick of time. During a press conference, Kerry blurted Assad could avert the military strike if he relinquished the chemical weapons. Kerry meant the statement as a lark. The Russians seized his unguarded utterance as a basis for a new policy, thus corralling the American war machine by the words of its very own public embassy.

As I write, American military action has been forestalled by the Russian initiative that Syria quit its chemical arsenal. The outline of an agreement between Russia and America has been reached. Syria will hand over its chemical weapons and America will sheathe its sword. If the deal works, Syria will still be at war with itself but the world will be safer. The possibility of the conflict growing will be forestalled for the moment.

The reluctant warmonger, President Obama, will get a fortunate reprieve from lunging into war as did his predecessor. John Kerry can return to re-reading the diplomat’s handbook or a work on the finer points of circumlocution. Meanwhile, a formal KGB agent and hatchet man will emerge as the man who out maneuvered America’s best and brightest. While Russian President Putin acted in his national interests and not for any utilitarian motive, he has been the peacemaker. On the other hand, America claims a humanitarian motive for its incessant talk of war. On this occasion, American leaders slipped on their own arrogant inconsistency and the Russians took advantage this clumsiness to outwit them with their own words, thus averting a broadening tempest. Putin is far from an angel; he is the quintessential anti-hero but what he has done is to counterbalance the American government’s militarism.

In the end, the cold-blooded Russian prevented the American Nobel Peace Prize winner from attacking a nation that posed no threat to his. This is the elemental truth of the matter. This is true news because it shows a steady reshaping of the global configuration and roles of nations. America has been too quick to pounce on nations it considers its enemies. Wisdom dictates one should not war with all those whom you dislike. It makes for a rather dangerous neighborhood and an unsettled world. Hopefully, America has learned this lesson. Sadly, the lesson the American government will likely glean is not this pacific one. The American war machine bristles at being stalled. The next time it will leap faster to the attack. The world may have dodged great danger this time but danger shall return and the warmongers will be poised to take quicker advantage of it. And that is the real news!

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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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