A Mediterranean Battlefield - Syria

[Peter Lemkin]

The Anti-Empire Report #120

By William Blum September 3rd, 2013

Found at last! After searching for 10 years, the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have finally been found in Syria!

Secretary of State John Kerry: "There is no doubt that Saddam al-Assad has crossed the red line. … Sorry, did I just say Saddam'?"
A US drone has just taken a photo of Mullah Omar riding on a motorcycle through the streets of Damascus. 1
So what do we have as the United States refuses to rule out an attack on Syria and keeps five warships loaded with missiles in the eastern Mediterranean?

• Only 9 percent of Americans support a US military intervention in Syria. 2
  
• Only 11% of the British supported a UK military intervention; this increased to 25% after the announcement of the alleged chemical attack. 3
  
• British Prime Minister David Cameron lost a parliamentary vote August 29 endorsing military action against Syria 285-272
  
• 64% of the French people oppose an intervention by the French Army. 4 "Before acting we need proof," said a French government spokesperson. 5
  
• Former and current high-ranking US military officers question the use of military force as a punitive measure and suggest that the White House lacks a coherent strategy. "If the administration is ambivalent about the wisdom of defeating or crippling the Syrian leader, possibly setting the stage for Damascus to fall to Islamic fundamentalist rebels, they say, the military objective of strikes on Assad's military targets is at best ambiguous." 6
  
• President Obama has no United Nations approval for intervention. (In February a massive bombing attack in Damascus left 100 dead and 250 wounded; in all likelihood the work of Islamic terrorists. The United States blocked a Russian resolution condemning the attack from moving through the UN Security Council)
  
• None of NATO's 28 members has proposed an alliance with the United States in an attack against Syria. NATO's Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that he saw "no NATO role in an international reaction to the [Syrian] regime." 7
  
• The Arab League has not publicly endorsed support of US military action in Syria; nor have key regional players Saudi Arabia and Qatar, concerned about a possible public backlash from open support for US intervention. 8
  
• We don't even know for sure that there was a real chemical attack. Where does that accusation come from? The United States? The al-Qaeda rebels? Or if there was such an attack, where is the evidence that the Syrian government was the perpetrator? The Assad regime has accused the rebels of the act, releasing a video showing a cave with alleged chemical-weapon equipment as well as claiming to have captured rebels possessing sarin gas. Whoever dispensed the poison gas why, in this age of ubiquitous cameras, are there no photos of anyone wearing a gas mask? The UN inspection team was originally dispatched to Syria to investigate allegations of earlier chemical weapons use: two allegations made by the rebels and one by the government.
  
• The United States insists that Syria refused to allow the UN investigators access to the site of the attack. However, the UN request was made Saturday, August 24; the Syrian government agreed the next day. 9
  
• In rejecting allegations that Syria deployed poison gas, Russian officials have argued that the rebels had a clear motivation: to spur a Western-led attack on Syrian forces; while Assad had every reason to avoid any action that could spur international intervention at a time when his forces were winning the war and the rebels are increasingly losing world support because of their uncivilized and ultra-cruel behavior.
  
• President George W. Bush misled the world on Iraq's WMD, but Bush's bogus case for war at least had details that could be checked, unlike what the Obama administration released August 29 on Syria's alleged chemical attacks no direct quotes, no photographic evidence, no named sources, nothing but "trust us," points out Robert Parry, intrepid Washington journalist.
  

So, in light of all of the above, the path for Mr. Obama to take as a rational, humane being is of course clear. Is it not? N'est-ce pas? Nicht wahr? Bombs Away!
Pretty discouraging it is. No, I actually find much to be rather encouraging. So many people seem to have really learned something from the Iraqi pile of lies and horror and from decades of other American interventions. Skepticism good ol' healthy skepticism amongst the American, British and French people. It was stirring to watch the British Parliament in a debate of the kind rarely, if ever, seen in the 21st-century US Congress. And American military officers asking some of the right questions. The Arab League not supporting a US attack, surprising for an organization not enamored of the secular Syrian government. And NATO even NATO! refusing so far to blindly fall in line with the White House. When did that last happen? I thought it was against international law.
Secretary of State John Kerry said that if the United States did not respond to the use of chemical weapons the country would become an international "laughingstock". Yes, that's really what America and its people have to worry about not that their country is viewed as a lawless, mass-murdering repeat offender. Other American officials have expressed concern that a lack of a US response might incite threats from Iran and North Korea. 10
Now that is indeed something to laugh at. It's comforting to think that the world might be finally losing the stars in their eyes about US foreign policy partly because of countless ridiculous remarks such as these.

United States bombings, which can be just as indiscriminate and cruel as poison gas. (A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force.)

The glorious bombing list of our glorious country, which our glorious schools don't teach, our glorious media don't remember, and our glorious leaders glorify.

• Korea and China 1950-53 (Korean War)
  
• Guatemala 1954
  
• Indonesia 1958
  
• Cuba 1959-1961
  
• Guatemala 1960
  
• Congo 1964
  
• Laos 1964-73
  
• Vietnam 1961-73
  
• Cambodia 1969-70
  
• Guatemala 1967-69
  
• Grenada 1983
  
• Lebanon 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
  
• Libya 1986
  
• El Salvador 1980s
  
• Nicaragua 1980s
  
• Iran 1987
  
• Panama 1989
  
• Iraq 1991 (Persian Gulf War)
  
• Kuwait 1991
  
• Somalia 1993
  
• Bosnia 1994, 1995
  
• Sudan 1998
  
• Afghanistan 1998
  
• Yugoslavia 1999
  
• Yemen 2002
  
• Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular no-fly-zone basis)
  
• Iraq 2003-2011 (Second Gulf War)
  
• Afghanistan 2001 to present
  
• Pakistan 2007 to present
  
• Somalia 2007-8, 2011 to present
  
• Yemen 2009, 2011 to present
  
• Libya 2011
  
• Syria 2013?
  

The above list doesn't include the repeated use by the United States of depleted uranium, cluster bombs, white phosphorous, and other charming inventions of the Pentagon mad scientists; also not included: chemical and biological weapons abroad, chemical and biological weapons in the United States (sic), and encouraging the use of chemical and biological weapons by other nations; all these lists can be found in William Blum's book "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower".
A story just released by Foreign Policy magazine, based on newly-discovered classified documents, reports how, in 1988, the last year of the 8-year Iraq-Iran War, America's military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks by Iraq far more devastating than anything Syria has seen. 11 Indeed, during that war the United States was the primary supplier to Iraq of the chemicals and hardware necessary to provide the Saddam Hussein regime with a chemical-warfare capability. 12
Now, apparently, the United States has discovered how horrible chemical warfare is, even if only of the "alleged" variety.

Humanitarian intervention

Some of those currently advocating bombing Syria turn for justification to their old faithful friend "humanitarian intervention", one of the earliest examples of which was the 1999 US and NATO bombing campaign to stop ethnic cleansing and drive Serbian forces from Kosovo. However, a collective amnesia appears to have afflicted countless intelligent, well-meaning people, who are convinced that the US/NATO bombing took place after the mass forced deportation of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo was well underway; which is to say that the bombing was launched to stop this "ethnic cleansing". In actuality, the systematic forced deportations of large numbers of people from Kosovo did not begin until a few days after the bombing began, and was clearly a Serbian reaction to it, born of extreme anger and powerlessness. This is easily verified by looking at a daily newspaper for the few days before the bombing began the night of March 23/24, and the few days after. Or simply look at the New York Times of March 26, page 1, which reads:

… with the NATO bombing already begun, a deepening sense of fear took hold in Pristina [the main city of Kosovo] that the Serbs would NOW vent their rage against ethnic Albanian civilians in retaliation.

On March 27, we find the first reference to a "forced march" or anything of that sort.
But the propaganda version is already set in marble.