Syria intervention plan fueled by oil interests, not chemical weapon concern

Massacres of civilians are being exploited for narrow geopolitical competition to control Mideast oil, gas pipelines

On 21 August, hundreds - perhaps over a thousand - people were killed in a chemical weapon attack in Ghouta, Damascus, prompting the US, UK, Israel and France to raise the spectre of military strikes against Bashir al Assad's forces.

The latest episode is merely one more horrific event in a conflict that has increasingly taken on genocidal characteristics. The case for action at first glance is indisputable. The UN now confirms a death toll over 100,000 people, the vast majority of whom have been killed by Assad's troops. An estimated 4.5 million people have been displaced from their homes. International observers have overwhelmingly confirmed Assad's complicity in the preponderance of war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Syrian people. The illegitimacy of his regime, and the legitimacy of the uprising, is clear.

Experts are unanimous that the shocking footage of civilians, including children, suffering the effects of some sort of chemical attack, is real - but remain divided on whether it involved military-grade chemical weapons associated with Assad's arsenal, or were a more amateur concoction potentially linked to the rebels.

Whatever the case, few recall that US agitation against Syria began long before recent atrocities, in the context of wider operations targeting Iranian influence across the Middle East.

In May 2007, a presidential finding revealed that Bush had authorised CIA operations against Iran. Anti-Syria operations were also in full swing around this time as part of this covert programme, according to Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker. A range of US government and intelligence sources told him that the Bush administration had "cooperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations" intended to weaken the Shi'ite Hezbollah in Lebanon. "The US has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria," wrote Hersh, "a byproduct" of which is "the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups" hostile to the United States and "sympathetic to al-Qaeda." He noted that "the Saudi government, with Washington's approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria," with a view to pressure him to be "more conciliatory and open to negotiations" with Israel. One faction receiving covert US "political and financial support" through the Saudis was the exiled Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

According to former French foreign minister Roland Dumas, Britain had planned covert action in Syria as early as 2009: "I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business", he told French television:

"I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria."

The 2011 uprisings, it would seem - triggered by a confluence of domestic energy shortages and climate-induced droughts which led to massive food price hikes - came at an opportune moment that was quickly exploited. Leaked emails from the private intelligence firm Stratforincluding notes from a meeting with Pentagon officials confirmed US-UK training of Syrian opposition forces since 2011 aimed at eliciting "collapse" of Assad's regime "from within."

So what was this unfolding strategy to undermine Syria and Iran all about? According to retired NATO Secretary General Wesley Clark, a memo from the Office of the US Secretary of Defense just a few weeks after 9/11 revealed plans to "attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years", starting with Iraq and moving on to "Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran." In a subsequent interview, Clark argues that this strategy is fundamentally about control of theregion's vast oil and gas resources.

Much of the strategy currently at play was candidly described in a 2008US Army-funded RAND report, Unfolding the Future of the Long War(pdf). The report noted that "the economies of the industrialized states will continue to rely heavily on oil, thus making it a strategically important resource." As most oil will be produced in the Middle East, the US has "motive for maintaining stability in and good relations with Middle Eastern states":

"The geographic area of proven oil reserves coincides with the power base of much of the Salafi-jihadist network. This creates a linkage between oil supplies and the long war that is not easily broken or simply characterized... For the foreseeable future, world oil production growth and total output will be dominated by Persian Gulf resources... The region will therefore remain a strategic priority, and this priority will interact strongly with that of prosecuting the long war."

In this context, the report identified several potential trajectories for regional policy focused on protecting access to Gulf oil supplies, among which the following are most salient:

"Divide and Rule focuses on exploiting fault lines between the various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts. This strategy relies heavily on covert action, information operations (IO), unconventional warfare, and support to indigenous security forces... the United States and its local allies could use the nationalist jihadists to launch proxy IO campaigns to discredit the transnational jihadists in the eyes of the local populace... US leaders could also choose to capitalize on the 'Sustained Shia-Sunni Conflict' trajectory by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.... possibly supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran."

Exploring different scenarios for this trajectory, the report speculated that the US may concentrate "on shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan as a way of containing Iranian power and influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf." Noting that this could actually empower al-Qaeda jihadists, the report concluded that doing so might work in western interests by bogging down jihadi activity with internal sectarian rivalry rather than targeting the US:

"One of the oddities of this long war trajectory is that it may actually reduce the al-Qaeda threat to US interests in the short term. The upsurge in Shia identity and confidence seen here would certainly cause serious concern in the Salafi-jihadist community in the Muslim world, including the senior leadership of al-Qaeda. As a result, it is very likely that al-Qaeda might focus its efforts on targeting Iranian interests throughout the Middle East and Persian Gulf while simultaneously cutting back on anti-American and anti-Western operations."

The RAND document contextualised this disturbing strategy with surprisingly prescient recognition of the increasing vulnerability of the US's key allies and enemies - Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Egypt, Syria, Iran - to a range of converging crises: rapidly rising populations, a 'youth bulge', internal economic inequalities, political frustrations, sectarian tensions, and environmentally-linked water shortages, all of which could destabilise these countries from within or exacerbate inter-state conflicts.

The report noted especially that Syria is among several "downstream countries that are becoming increasingly water scarce as their populations grow", increasing a risk of conflict. Thus, although the RAND document fell far short of recognising the prospect of an 'Arab Spring', it illustrates that three years before the 2011 uprisings, US defence officials were alive to the region's growing instabilities, and concerned by the potential consequences for stability of Gulf oil.

These strategic concerns, motivated by fear of expanding Iranian influence, impacted Syria primarily in relation to pipeline geopolitics. In 2009 - the same year former French foreign minister Dumas alleges the British began planning operations in Syria - Assad refused to sign a proposed agreement with Qatar that would run a pipeline from the latter's North field, contiguous with Iran's South Pars field, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey, with a view to supply European markets - albeit crucially bypassing Russia. Assad's rationale was "to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally, which is Europe's top supplier of natural gas."

Instead, the following year, Assad pursued negotiations for an alternative $10 billion pipeline plan with Iran, across Iraq to Syria, that would also potentially allow Iran to supply gas to Europe from its South Pars field shared with Qatar. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the project was signed in July 2012 - just as Syria's civil war was spreading to Damascus and Aleppo - and earlier this year Iraq signed a framework agreement for construction of the gas pipelines. 

The Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline plan was a "direct slap in the face" to Qatar's plans. No wonder Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, in a failed attempt to bribe Russia to switch sides, told President Vladmir Putin that "whatever regime comes after" Assad, it will be "completely" in Saudi Arabia's handsand will "not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas exports", according to diplomatic sources. When Putin refused, the Prince vowed military action.

It would seem that contradictory self-serving Saudi and Qatari oil interests are pulling the strings of an equally self-serving oil-focused US policy in Syria, if not the wider region. It is this - the problem of establishing a pliable opposition which the US and its oil allies feel confident will play ball, pipeline-style, in a post-Assad Syria - that will determine the nature of any prospective intervention: not concern for Syrian life.

What is beyond doubt is that Assad is a war criminal whose government deserves to be overthrown. The question is by whom, and for what interests?

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter@nafeezahmed

A more detailed in-depth special report based on this article is available at the author's website here.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/aug/30/syria-chemical-attack-war-intervention-oil-gas-energy-pipelines

US Lacks Moral Standing to Condemn Syria

by SHELDON RICHMAN

Whether or not Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons, President Obama has no legitimate grounds to intervene.

U.S. airstrikes, intended to punish and deter Assad and degrade his military but not overthrow his regime, would deepen the U.S. investment in the Syrian civil war and increase the chances of further intervention. Obama’s previous intervention is what has brought us to this point. Instead of steering clear of this regional conflict, he declared that Assad must go; designated the use of chemical weapons as a “red line” the crossing of which would bring a U.S. response; and armed and otherwise aided Assad’s opposition, which is dominated by al-Qaeda-style jihadists who have no good feelings toward America. Once an American president does these things, further steps are almost inevitable if for no other reason than that “American credibility” will be said to be at stake.

One can already hear the war hawks berating Obama for his “merely symbolic” punitive airstrike that had no real effect on the civil war. Once he’s taken that step, will Obama be able to resist the pressure for imposing a no-fly zone or for more bombing? He and the military seem unenthusiastic about getting in deeper, but political pressure can be formidable. Will the American people maintain their opposition to fuller involvement when the news media turn up the volume of the war drums? How long before the pictures from the war zone create public approval for “humanitarian intervention,” which the hawks will then point to in support of their cause?

Make no mistake: the United States would be committing an act of war against Syria — and judging by the 2011 Libyan intervention, it would be doing so unconstitutionally, without congressional authorization. If history teaches us anything, it is that war is unpredictable. Even limited “surgical” strikes can have unintended consequences (civilian deaths and American losses) and could elicit unanticipated responses, including from Syria’s allies Iran and Hezbollah.

Exploiting unsubstantiated allegations about chemical weapons also runs the risk of repeating the blunder of a decade ago, when dubious intelligence was used to justify an unlawful war of aggression against Iraq. Are there grounds for confidence in the claims that Assad’s forces used chemical weapons? Maybe they did, but something does not add up. Assad has much to lose by their use, while the rebels have much to gain: Western intervention on their behalf. (In May a member of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria concluded that the rebels may have used chemical weapons at that time.) As Peter Hitchenswrites,

What could possibly have possessed [Assad] to do something so completely crazy? He was, until this event, actually doing quite well in his war against the Sunni rebels. Any conceivable gains from using chemical weapons would be cancelled out a million times by the diplomatic risk. It does not make sense.

Hitchens urges caution:

It seems to me that there are several reasons to be careful. The first is that we seek to believe evil of those we have already decided to be enemies, especially in democracies where voters must be persuaded to sign the vast blank cheque of war.

Finally, it is grotesque to see officials of the U.S. government, such asSecretary of State John Kerry, condemning anyone’s war tactics as something “morally obscene” that should “shock the conscience of the world.” Since 1945, the U.S. government has launched aggressive wars in violation of international law. It has tortured prisoners detained without charge. It has dropped atomic bombs on civilian centers, and used napalm, Agent Orange, depleted-uranium shells, and white phosphorusincendiary weapons. It has carpet bombed and firebombed cities. America’s unexploded landmines and cluster bombs still threaten the people of Vietnam and Cambodia. (Tens of thousands have been killed or injured since the war ended in 1975.)

Today the U.S. government cruelly inflicts suffering on Iranian men, women, and children through virtually comprehensive economic sanctions — just as it did to the Iraqi people from 1990 to 2003. It also threatens aggressive war against Iran.

And while it selectively laments the humanitarian crisis in Syria, the Obama administration bankrolls Egypt’s military government, which massacred over a thousand street demonstrators, and Israel’s repression of the Palestinians.

The U.S. government should get its own house in order and quit lecturing others.

Sheldon Richman is vice president and editor at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Va. (www.fff.org).

As Kerry Makes Obama's Flimsy Case for War, Where Is Congress?

As Kerry Makes Obama's Flimsy Case for War, Where Is Congress?

Statements from Secretary of State John Kerry reveal White House determined to convince public that war serves national interest, but will public demands for debate take place before the missiles fly?

- Jon Queally, staff writer

Secretary of State John Kerry makes a statement about Syria at the State Department in Washington, Aug. 30, 2013. (Photo: Charles Dharapak/AP)U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry took to national television on Friday in order to present the Obama administration's case for war against Syria.

Demonstrators march on Aug. 29 near the White House to protest possible U.S. military intervention in Syria. (Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty Images)Though Kerry vowed the "mistake of Iraq" was not again taking place, his rhetorical case for war did little to inspire confidence in administration's framework for war though much to remind potential viewers of when Colin Powell presented the case for war at the U.N. on behalf of the Bush administration a decade ago.

The document released by the White House is available here.

However, as the AP reported on Thursday, Kerry's case seemed to confirm that though circumstantial evidence exists, nothing in the unclassified report released today by the administration would be considered a "slam dunk".

In subsequent comments from the president himself at the White House, Obama indicated that though "no final decision" had been made, he said "my military" is looking at a variety of options.

Coinciding with Kerry and Obama's comments, a new NBS poll shows that nearly 80% of Americans want the White House to bring the decision to engage militarily against Syria to Congress.

To that end, though drastically late to the table in most regards, rumblings among members of Congress signal a changing dynamic in Washington.

Though earlier in the week, Alan Grayson, an outspoken progressive Democrat from Florida admitted to Politico that most members of his party would only "become more vocal about the Syria attacks after they take place," developments in the last twenty-fours prove that there may yet be a role for the legislative branch to play in stopping—or at least slowing—the Obama administration's rush to attack Syria.

And even as much of the public challenge against the White House push for war so far has come from the president's political opponents in the Republican Party, a letter drafted by Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) on Thursday and signed by more than fifty colleagues shows that Obama may not receive full acquiescence from members of his own party in Congress before launching missiles strikes.

Citing the Congress' constitutional "obligation and power to approve military force," Lee's letter "strongly" urges Obama to receive "an affirmative decision" from Congress prior to authorizing any "U.S. military engagement" in what it termed the "complex crisis" in Syria.

"While the ongoing human rights violations and continued loss of life are horrific," Lee's letter (pdf) continues, "they should not draw us into an unwise war—especially without adhering to our own constitutional requirements. We strongly support the work within the United Nations Security Council to build international consensus condemning the alleged use of chemical weapons and preparing an appropriate response; we should also the U.N. inspector the space and time necessary to do their jobs, which are so crucial to ensuring accountability."

A separate letter, sponsored by Rep. Scott Rigell of (R-VA), represents the Republican opposition to rushed intervention in the House, it was also signed by some Democrats.

As The Hill reports,

There is some overlap between the two campaigns; 12 of the Democrats signing the Rigell letter have also endorsed Lee's message.

The congressional pushback highlights the dilemma facing Obama as he tries to bring an end to Syria's bloody and long-running civil war.

Comments by Rigell also suggest that events in the UK on Thursday night—where members of Parliament voted down an effort pushed by Prime Minister David Cameron to authorize British involvement in a strike on Syria—are having an impact on the way members of Congress are now viewing the situation.

“This beautiful Capitol is empty largely and yet a vigorous debate took place in the parliament in Britain," said Rigell in an interview on MSNBC Friday morning. "I find it ironic given the history of our two countries that here we have the president operating—and I say this understanding the seriousness of it—it is not the King’s army. He must come before Congress."

However, as Republicans like Rigell continued to put the focus on executive authority in what still seems like a partisan attack against a president with whom House GOP members have refused to share almost any common ground with throughout his term, Lee's language was focused more on the inanity of the policy itself, cautioning against the damage an attack would have not only on U.S. standing in the world, but on the people of Syria and the wider Middle East.

“We must learn the lessons of the past. Lessons from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and others,” said Congresswoman Lee. “We must recognize that what happens in Syria does not stay in Syria; the implications for the region are dire.”

All of this, however, says little about the deeper issues over the wisdom (or lack thereof) concerning a U.S. attack on Syria, but as Just Foreign Policy's Robert Naiman writes, the debate in Congress is necessary not only because the Constitution demands it, but because the debate itself "surfaces key information."

And over all this, as Bob Dreyfuss at The Nation observes—because Obama "doesn't care about objections from Congress" and Kerry has now laid out the rationale—"it appears that the president of the United States will bomb Syria" despite warnings from all quarters. Dreyfuss writes:

Obama, who says that the attack is designed in some vague way to bolster the international treaty and convention against the use of chemical arms, is meanwhile flouting plenty of other parts of international law. He doesn’t care. The administration says that even [after] the British parliament voted against war, even if the head of the United Nations says don’t do it, even if the Arab League (which backed the bombing of Libya) says it won’t support an attack on Syria, well, who cares? We’re America! We do whatever the hell we want.

So it seems anyway, and as of this writing, despite the calls for Congressional action and debate, there is no sign from leaders of either party in the House of Representatives that lawmakers will be called back to challenge the president.

_________________________

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/08/30-1

Call for Debate & Vote Before War With Syria

162 Representatives, Including 64 Democrats, Call for Debate & Vote Before War With Syria

by Robert Naiman

People take part in a protest organized by the Stop the War coalition calling for no military attack on Syria from the U.S., Britain or France, across the road from the entrance of Downing Street in London. (Photo: Matt Dunham/AP)By my count, at least 162 Members of the House of Representatives, including 64 Democrats, have done at least one of the following things in the last few days: 1) signed a letter initiated by California Democrat Barbara Lee saying that there must be Congressional debate and vote before war with Syria; 2) signed a letter initiated by Virginia Republican Scott Rigell saying that there must be Congressional debate and vote before war with Syria 3) issued a statement calling for a Congressional debate and vote before war with Syria. I don’t claim that this count is exhaustive. If you know of other examples, please share them in the comments.

By my count, at least 64 Democrats in the House have done at least one of these three things. Add this to the 98 Republicans who signed the Rigell letter and you get 162.

These are the 54 Democratic signers of the Lee letter, according to Lee’s office:

Barbara Lee, Mike Honda, Lois Capps, Zoe Lofgren, John Lewis, Jackie Speier, Raúl Grijalva, Robin Kelly, Beto O’Rourke, Michael H. Michaud, Mark Pocan, Peter A. DeFazio, Peter Welch, Chellie Pingree, Nydia M. Velázquez, Sam Farr, Stephen F. Lynch, Lloyd Doggett, Janice Hahn, Jared Huffman, Tulsi Gabbard, Emanuel Cleaver, Rush Holt, Jim McDermott, Sheila Jackson Lee, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Suzanne Bonamici, José E. Serrano, George Miller, Donna F. Edwards, Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, Steve Cohen, Marcy Kaptur, Danny K. Davis, Alcee L. Hastings, James P. McGovern, Judy Chu, Marcia L. Fudge, Alan S. Lowenthal, Charles B. Rangel, Bobby L. Rush, Carolyn B. Maloney, Janice Schakowsky, Donna M. Christensen, David Loebsack, Richard M. Nolan, Henry A. Waxman, Diana DeGette, Yvette D. Clarke, Keith Ellison, Niki Tsongas, Eleanor Holmes Norton, John A. Yarmuth, Julia Brownley.

These are the 18 Democratic signers among the 116 signers of the Rigell letter, as noted by The Hill:

Zoe Lofgren, Rush Holt, Beto O’Rourke, Peter DeFazio, Kurt Schrader, William Enyart, Tim Walz, Sam Farr, Bruce Braley, Jim McDermott, Michael Capuano, Anna Eshoo, Earl Blumenauer, Peter Welch, Rick Nolan, David Loebsack, Jim Matheson, Collin Peterson.

Sixty-three Democrats signed at least one of the two letters.

In addition, New York Democrat Jerry Nadler put out a statement saying that there must be a debate and vote.

Why does this matter? It matters because if President Obama were to strike Syria without Congressional authorization, he would violate the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution.

But it also matters because debate surfaces key information.

Earlier this week, press was reporting that the U.S. bombing of Syria could start as early as Thursday.

By Thursday, here had been no bombing.

Instead, on Thursday, AP reported that “the intelligence linking Syrian President Bashar Assad or his inner circle to an alleged chemical weapons attack that killed at least 100 people is no ‘slam dunk,’” and that this “uncertainty calls into question the statements by Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden":

So while Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that links between the attack and the Assad government are "undeniable," U.S. intelligence officials are not so certain that the suspected chemical attack was carried out on Assad's orders, or even completely sure it was carried out by government forces, the officials said.

Ideally, the White House seeks intelligence that links the attack directly to Assad or someone in his inner circle to rule out the possibility that a rogue element of the military decided to use chemical weapons without Assad's authorization. Another possibility that officials would hope to rule out: that stocks had fallen out of the government's control and were deployed by rebels in a callous and calculated attempt to draw the West into the war.

Kerry had said: "We know that the Syrian regime maintains custody of these chemical weapons."

By Thursday, we knew that what Kerry said on Monday was not true. He said “we know.” But, according the U.S. intelligence officials cited by AP, we don’t know.

If the bombing had happened on Thursday, then the bombing would have happened before APreported that what Kerry said on Monday was not true.

Can people still say with a straight face that Congress shouldn’t debate and vote before the President attacks Syria, or that it doesn’t matter if they do?

If you think Congress should debate and vote before any war with Syria, you can join 25,000 people at MoveOn in telling Congress here.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Robert Naiman is Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy. Naiman has worked as a policy analyst and researcher at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. He has masters degrees in economics and mathematics from the University of Illinois and has studied and worked in the Middle East. You can contact him here.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/30-2

Yet Another Evil Little 'Humanatarian' War

Yet Another Evil Little War

Now It’s Syria’s Turn

by Nebojsa Malic, August 31, 2013

Attacking Syria has been the talk in Washington for years, all the way back to Bush II’s infamous "Axis of Evil" speech. The current (un)civil war started back in March 2011, out of the failed attempt to topple the government through another "Arab Spring" revolution, organized by the American Empire. As in Libya, the response to failure was escalation into an armed rebellion.

The Empire had openly intervened in the Libyan war within a month. Libya was close to NATO bases in Italy, and had no allies, yet it still took six months of fighting to murder Col. Gadhafi and depose his government. Furthermore, the war’s "legality" was based on the flimsy pretext of UNSCR 1973, authorizing a no-fly zone, which was then creatively reinterpreted as a blank check for "regime change."

Once Libya was thought secured – erroneously, as it turned out – the Eye of the Empire turned towards Damascus. Several times over the past two years, a play was made to intervene in Syria. Time and again, it was walked back. Now, however, a pretext has been invoked, and the Obama White House has declared its willingness to ignore the UN and overwhelming popular opposition, and attack anyway.

There is still some room for voices of reason to prevail, but odds are we are in for yet another Evil Little War.

Replicating Racak

The notion of "humanitarian" intervention is commonly dated back to the 1990s, when Bill Clinton and Tony Blair concocted a "doctrine" called R2P – responsibility to protect – as a way to intervene in affairs of other countries by force. Using the precedent established in Bosnia, Clinton and Blair attacked what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, supposedly to "stop a genocide" (that their propaganda invented) in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

If this sounds even remotely familiar, that is because it closely resembles a pretext Hitler used – alleged violation of "human rights" of ethnic Germans – to annex Austria and the Sudetenland in 1938, invade Poland in 1939, and attack Yugoslavia in 1941.

Selling a "humanitarian" war to the general public requires a pretext. A ghastly atrocity works best. In Bosnia, three bombings around a Sarajevo marketplace – in 1992, 1994 and 1995 – each served to escalate international involvement, culminating in an open NATO intervention.

For Kosovo, Clinton and Blair had Racak: a village where OSCE observers – led by NATO military intelligence officers – declared the Yugoslav forces had "massacred civilians." In reality, Racak had been a battle between police and the KLA, a terrorist organization seeking to separate Kosovo from Serbia and make it into an Albanian state.

The pretext chosen for attacking Syria is that the government had used chemical weapons against civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Empire’s entire case rests on claims by the rebels and some YouTube videos. Numerous analysts and experts point out that Ghouta has all the hallmarks of a false flag operation – plans for which were discovered earlier this year.

A Long-Planned Campaign

Leaked documents reveal that a plan to attack Syria was developed back in 2011. The Empire and its rebel clients have been looking for ways to create a pretext for intervention ever since.

Ghouta is just the latest in a series of manufactured incidents. Back in the summer of 2011, Western media hyped the hear-rending dispatches from Amina Arraf, a "gay girl in Damascus" – who turned out to be a sock-puppet. The actual writer, an American living in Scotland, defended the fraud by claiming he "raised awareness" and that "Amina’s" writing was "fiction but true."

At one point, Turkey seemed eager to lead the war effort, so Ankara claimed that Syrian forces had shelled its border towns. War seemed imminent when a Turkish F-4was shot down in June 2012. Since then, however, Turkey has become busy withother problems.

The rebels then tried to provide a pretext of their own, arguing multiple massacres. As each got exposed as a fraud, the war drums would fall silent – for a while. The rebels’jihadist proclivities and video footage of cannibalism did little to bolster their cause. So the Empire stepped in, clearly spelling out that a trigger for intervention would be a major chemical attack.

One was alleged in June this year, but the drive to intervention foundered on the shoal of facts once again. The incident in Ghouta happened just as the government was winning the war, and precisely when the UN inspection team was visiting. To believe this was providential coincidence makes absolutely no sense. Yet that is what the mainstream media would have everyone believe – as well as that the Syrian government is murdering its own civilians en masse, and that the rebels are noble – if jihadist – fighters for freedom, democracy and tolerance. Except when it comes to Christians, of course.

White-Knighting

There is nothing "humanitarian" about war. Ever. Any war, no matter how noble the cause, involves killing people. The way the Empire sells it to the general public – already fed a garbage diet of celebrity scandals and gutter gossip – is that precision munitions bloodlessly eliminate "evildoers" with no loss of innocent (or American) lives.

To believe this, one must also believe in the miraculous transubstantiation of anyone killed by Imperial ordnance into an "enemy combatant." In reality, far from being bloodless, interventions result in mass death of civilians supposedly being "helped"– which the Empire, supposedly so concerned about their well-being, doesn’t evenbother to count.

"Humanitarian" interventionism has little or nothing to do with people supposedly being "rescued", but everything to do with creating and maintaining the image of Empire as the heroic rescuer. This sort of global white-knighting is pure narcissism.

The Balkans Pattern

Time and again, the mainstream media have compared Syria to Kosovo. Some interventionists have even drawn parallels with Bosnia – such as Michael Ignatieff. The Washington Post recently ran a plea for intervention by the Bosnian (Muslim) FM and his Turkish colleague, recycling the myths of the Bosnian War.

It is no accident that the 1999 attack on Yugoslavia – illegal, illegitimate and unjust – is being invoked as a precedent for further Imperial action. Even the critics of attacking Syria – such as Leon Hadar – operate under the mistaken assumption that the Balkans interventions were a success. This is simply not true, though it may seem otherwise to those willing to ignore inconvenient facts.

Because the myths about the Balkan interventions have been left unchallenged, they are repeatedly used to justify new wars – as Diana Johnstone puts it, "justify the unjustifiable" – Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, Mali earlier this year, and now Syria.

Few remember, due to the fog of propaganda, that NATO’s pretext for attacking in 1999 was to impose the "Rambouillet agreement" – a deliberately unacceptable ultimatum misrepresented as a peace treaty. When Belgrade defied expectations of a quick surrender, new pretexts were conjured: allegations of mass murder, forced expulsion, mass rape, concentration camps, genocide, etc. Ultimately, it came down to continuing the war for the sake of NATO’s "credibility": the Alliance had no choice but to intervene, or it would appear foolish.

But as one blogger commenting on the Syria situation put it bluntly, "if your hand can be forced, what power do you have"?

Treason

There is another component to the Syria situation to consider. The Syrian rebels – financed, armed and trained by the Empire – have acknowledged links to Al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization designated as the primary enemy of the United States in the "war" declared in September 2001. Giving any sort of aid to Al-Qaeda is an act oftreason.

Veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk wondered the other day if Obama knew he was helping Al-Qaeda. There is no good answer to this. If the Emperor knows, he is guilty of treason. But if he doesn’t know, then he is manifestly unfit for office.

Far from bolstering Obama’s legacy, a Syrian War may finish it off.

Climb-down?

Despite the massive media blitz, the drumbeat for war on Syria missed a step this Thursday, when the UK House of Commons voted against the war, and left British interventionists fumbling at their failure to back the Empire.

Meanwhile, Russia is sending warships to the Mediterranean. And it just happens that Russia’s largest naval facility outside the former USSR is the Syrian port of Tartus.

There is still hope that the rush to madness might be avoided. If the Emperor wants to actually earn his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, he should listen to the words of a blogger that sounds more sensible drunk than all his advisors do sober:

"I don’t know what to do about Syria. But I know what not to do, which is set a bunch of 20 year old kids on fire."

http://original.antiwar.com/Virginia-Tilley/2013/08/30/syria-dossier-another-failed-argument/