6 Major Players Who Turned the Syrian Crisis Into a Devastating Proxy War Nightmare

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/world/meet-major-players-who-turned-syrian-crisis-devastating-proxy-war



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1. United States

The looming military strikes on Syria by the U.S. would be the most forceful intervention yet from the world’s superpower. But even without the strikes, the U.S. has long played an outside role during the Syrian civil war.

***SNIP

2. Iran

The Obama administration’s pitch to lawmakers to convince them bombing Syria is a good idea centers on the alleged threat from Iran. They have been telling Congress it’s important to send a message to Iran about its own nuclear energy program. And hawkish U.S. politicians have long framed the Syrian crisis as an opportunity to strike a blow at Iran.

***SNIP

3. Hezbollah

Closely linked to Iran’s involvement in Syria is Hezbollah’s even greater involvement. The Lebanese militant group that grew out of resisting the Israeli occupation of Lebanon and won the praise of Arabs in various countries for that feat is a key ally of Iran and Syria. Iran provided the arms that made Hezbollah such a potent force because Syria allowed it to do so. Now, Hezbollah i s deeply enmeshed in the Syrian civil war, acting as an effective fighting force to keep Assad in power. Hezbollah sees the survival of the Assad regime as crucial to its own survival.

***SNIP

4. Israel

Israel and Syria have a complicated relationship. Officially, they are enemies. Syria was one of a handful of Arab states that fought Israel in a number of wars, most notably the 1967 war, when Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria and occupied it ever since. In a move never recognized by the international community, Israel annexed the part of Golan it controlled in 1981, and it has built illegal settlements in the Israeli-controlled side of the area. It has long been a Syrian goal to regain the Golan Heights, and negotiations between the two sides have accelerated over the past decade with that goal in mind. But they have not been successful, and Israel continues to control part of the Heights.

[Little Star]

1. Well this part is not what many on DU were saying just yesterday.......

From your link:

President Barack Obama first showed his hand in 2011, when he said, “ the time has come for President Assad to step aside.” By the next year, the CIA was training Syrian rebels in Jordan, a longstanding ally of the U.S. now playing an important role as a base for the rebels and a haven for millions of refugees. CIA agents have trained a small group of FSA fighters with anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons in the hopes of helping American-vetted rebels gain an upper hand in the civil war. And in March 2013, the New York Times reportedthat “with help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters.”

They said it was only when the WMD's were used in Damascus & the red line was crossed that Obama/USA wanted Assad out.

I call bullshit on those that buy that fairytale.

[morningfog]

2. Obama still won't admit or acknowledge that the US seeks regime change by military force.

It is just "punitive" and a humanitarian bombing.

[Little Star]

5. I don't buy the humanitarian excuse as being sincere....

it's just an excuse to try and get the masses on board. I 100% believe it is about regime change & punitive. Assad is somehow interfering with our so-called interests and it has something to do with their location regarding oil. It's also more than just the pipeline, though that is part of it, imo.

But the poor people who have been gassed by both sides of that civil war are just an excuse to bring Assad down. And we need to kill more innocents to reach our objective. It's shameful & disgusting!

I honestly thought after GWB/Iraq, we would not see this kind of thing again. I was sadly mistaken.

[Hotler]

11. I knew it! This whole mess has CIA stink all over it. n/t

[Little Star]

13. Yep! Sure does.

[Ichingcarpenter]

3. Number 7 is the International Banking Cabal

The “end-game” would require not just coercing support among WTO members but taking down those countries refusing to join. Some key countries remained holdouts from the WTO, including Iraq, Libya, Iran and Syria. In these Islamic countries, banks are largely state-owned; and “usury” – charging rent for the “use” of money – is viewed as a sin, if not a crime. That puts them at odds with the Western model of rent extraction by private middlemen. Publicly-owned banks are also a threat to the mushrooming derivatives business, since governments with their own banks don’t need interest rate swaps, credit default swaps, or investment-grade ratings by private rating agencies in order to finance their operations.

Bank deregulation proceeded according to plan, and the government-sanctioned and -nurtured derivatives business mushroomed into a $700-plus trillion pyramid scheme. Highly leveraged, completely unregulated, and dangerously unsustainable, it collapsed in 2008 when investment bank Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, taking a large segment of the global economy with it. The countries that managed to escape were those sustained by public banking models outside the international banking net.

These countries were not all Islamic. Forty percent of banks globally are publicly-owned. They are largely in the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—which house forty percent of the global population. They also escaped the 2008 credit crisis, but they at least made a show of conforming to Western banking rules. This was not true of the “rogue” Islamic nations, where usury was forbidden by Islamic teaching. To make the world safe for usury, these rogue states had to be silenced by other means. Having failed to succumb to economic coercion, they wound up in the crosshairs of the powerful US military.



http://www.alternet.org/economy/larry-summers-and-syria?paging=off

[xchrom]

4. +1

[Junkdrawer]

6. +2

[countmyvote4real]

7. +3

[AnotherMcIntosh]

8. +4

[Ilsa]

10. +5. Controlling debt

provides a lot of power. Sometimes armies aren't even needed if you get the financing controlled.

[oberliner]

12. The International Banking Cabal?

Where have I heard that phrase before?

[Little Star]

14. +6

[felix_numinous]

15. +7

Here we go, follow the $$$$$$$$$!

[Jesus Malverde]

16. Interesting...this could be it's own op...nt

[Egalitarian Thug]

17. +8

[drynberg]

9. #5 is Russia and #6 is Saudi Arabia

These last two weren't mentioned in the above article, but crucial in thinking/acting in this sensitive situation. Russia, remember, has 30,000 of it's citizens living currently in Syria...if we bomb we could kill hundreds of them. Something tells me this could be more than awkward...widening this "war" could happen in a flash. Isn't anyone even thinking about this while we defend our pissing contest red line remark made by Mr. O. more than a year ago? It's so hypocritical of our Empire to pick on chemical attack when we sponsored Iraq using chemicals against Iran or dropping huge amounts of the chemicals that burns right through bodies (napalm) or our huge stockpiles of white phosphorus (maybe even worse than napalm). We used this terrible poison on other nations, not within our own boarders...Anyway, we all need to rally behind the NO VOTE on attacking Syria, as this is so important and maybe very close. Get off your rear and call senators and reps, email, write to newspapers and FaceBook, etc. The life you save may be your own...