The rats are jumping ship.\u00a0Obama\u2019s strongest allies can\u2019t stomach the stench of lies that are the foundation of the war effort against Syria. Even England, whose entire foreign policy is reduced to asking \u201chow high?\u201d when the U.S. says \u201cjump,\u201d opted to stay grounded for Obama\u2019s war drive.<\/p>\n
The Arab League, too<\/a>, having long been considered a puppet show by U.S. foreign policy, has cut its strings.\u00a0The UN Security Council \u2014 after having learned not to trust Obama in Libya \u2014 also refuses to give permission for an attack. Which leaves France \u2014 the former colonial master of Syria \u2014 to fill England\u2019s shoes as the token \u201cimportant\u201d European nation to give the attack a thin coat of \u201cinternational\u201d support.\u00a0But England\u2019s insolence will surely make an impression on the French public, who voted in a \u201csocialist\u201d president, presumably not to act as a warmonger.<\/p>\n It is also presumably why \u2014 as\u00a0reported by the French daily Le Figaro<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 hundreds U.S. Special Forces and \u201ctrained militant fighters\u201d entered Syria on August 17.<\/p>\n It has widely been speculated that the real intention of attacking Syria is to prop up Obama\u2019s ailing rebels, who have received massive U.S. support in the form of guns, training, and money, for \u2014according to The New York Times<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 almost two years now, and possibly longer.\u00a0It\u2019s an undisputed fact that\u00a0Islamic extremists militias<\/a>\u00a0are the most powerful fighting forces in the opposition to Assad; if he falls then they will be in power.<\/p>\n If only a tiny bombing campaign is launched, then it\u2019s certain that more bombings will take place at a later date because the U.S.-backed extremist rebels need much more assistance than that to have any hope of beating Assad.\u00a0To change the balance of forces between Obama\u2019s essentially beaten rebels and the Syrian government will require a massive bombing campaign, along the lines of Libya.<\/p>\n One shouldn\u2019t forget the chain of events in Libya: After the U.S.-backed Libyan rebels were facing defeat, Obama exploited the UN\u2019s \u201cnaivety\u201d by claiming that \u201cimmediate action\u201d had to be taken to prevent the slaughter of thousands of Libyans.\u00a0The UN stupidly agreed to a vague resolution about \u201cprotecting civilians,\u201d which Obama immediately used as a pretext to wage aggressive war and regime change,\u00a0dropping thousands of bombs on Libya via fighter jets that attacked both military and civilian targets, tearing apart the nation\u2019s seams in the process.\u00a0Vijay Prashad\u2019s excellent book, \u201cArab Spring, Libyan Winter<\/a>\u201d covers the conflict in depth.<\/p>\n After the Libyan example, the UN is immune to Obama\u2019s lies.\u00a0So now the hardest part about waging war against Syria is starting it.\u00a0And after the war foot is in the door, the logic of war immediately takes over, which instantly creates new, unforeseen dynamics, usually in the direction of expansion. It\u2019s very possible that this \u201cunforeseen\u201d element of war is exactly what Obama is planning on.<\/p>\n For example, any sane military analyst expects Syria to defend itself.\u00a0And Syria is much more capable of doing so than Libya or Iraq were.\u00a0The American public isn\u2019t prepared for this, since it essentially has been told that Syria would submissively accept its punishment, perhaps after throwing a loud tantrum.<\/p>\n But Syria has advanced weapons systems, and it would be perfectly legal and reasonable for Syria to defend itself by \u2014 for example, by bombing a U.S. Navy destroyer, or perhaps targeting Israel, who will certainly be involved in the assault on some level, and therefore is a legitimate military target.\u00a0\u00a0Israel has bombed Syria several times<\/a>\u00a0in the last six months.<\/p>\n It\u2019s very possible that Obama is trying to provoke a strong reaction from Syria to give the U.S. public a \u201creal\u201d reason to escalate the war.\u00a0Any attack on Syria also has the possibility of bringing Iran into the conflict, since Iran and Syria have a mutual defense pact. And this may be the ultimate goal: to provoke Iran into getting involved militarily, so that the U.S. would have a justification to expand the war into Iran, which has been in the U.S. crosshairs for years.<\/p>\n If international and domestic pressure force Obama to merely launch a \u201csymbolic\u201d strike that Syria doesn\u2019t retaliate against, then it will be a historic humiliation for US foreign policy, showing the decline of US international power. But even a \u201csurgical\u201d strike sets a very dangerous precedent, opening the door wider to future strikes which will inevitably be re-opened in the near future.\u00a0\u00a0 A weak war effort this time will make the Obama Administration all the more war hungry next time, since empires don\u2019t simply fade away into oblivion.<\/p>\n If Obama attacks Syria at this point, he\u2019ll have fewer allies than did Bush in Iraq. Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, had the audacity to soil the ground where Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke 50 years earlier at the 1963 March on Washington; Obama sang the praises of the great peacemaker as he planned war against Syria.<\/p>\n Obama has very quickly ruined his integrity in Bush-like fashion.\u00a0He\u2019s jailed whistle-blowers like Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning \u2014 whose only crime was exposing war crimes \u2014 while now preparing an even bigger war crime against Syria.\u00a0His presidency is going down in flames with impressive speed, and has the potential to drag down the rest of the country.\u00a0On Saturday, August 31st<\/sup>, there is an international day of protest against a war with Syria.\u00a0A large anti-war showing in the U.S. will convince more pro-war rats to jump ship, and an especially large showing could possibly sink the war ship in one shot.<\/p>\n Shamus Cooke<\/strong>\u00a0is a social service worker and an elected officer of SEIU 503. He can be reached at\u00a0shamuscooke@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The rats are jumping ship.\u00a0Obama\u2019s strongest allies can\u2019t stomach the stench of lies that are the foundation of the war effort against Syria. Even England, whose entire foreign policy is reduced to asking \u201chow high?\u201d when the U.S. says \u201cjump,\u201d … Continue reading