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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFormer CIA analyst Ray McGovern: The Hope Behind Putin’s Syria Help
This is a very important analysis of the Syrian situation that we are hard-pressed to find addressed, even the most tangentially, in our so-called "newspapers of record".
(ConsortiumNews allows free use of its content.)
President Obama insists on looking the gift horse of Russian military help for Syrias embattled government in the mouth. Rather than welcome assistance in blocking a Sunni extremist victory, Obama bends to the neocons and liberal hawks, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern explains.
McGovern, October 4, 2015:
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Think of this piece as an attempted antidote to the adolescent analysis by Steven Lee Myers front-paged in Sundays New York Times, and, for that matter, much else thats been written about Syria in the Times and other mainstream U.S. news outlets. Many articles, in accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of bad faith, have willfully misrepresented his vow to strike at all terrorist groups as meaning only the Islamic State as if Al Qaedas Nusra Front and other violent extremists dont qualify as terrorists.
However, if Washington finally decides to face the real world not remain in the land of make-believe that stretches from the White House and State Department through the neocon-dominated think tanks to the editorial pages of the mainstream media it will confront a classic devil-you-know dilemma.
Does Washington really think that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as demonized as he has been as a key player in a conflict blamed for killing more than 250,000, is worse than the beheaders of the Islamic State or the global-terrorism plotters of Al Qaeda? Does President Obama really think that some surgical regime change in Damascus can be executed without collapsing the Syrian government and clearing the way for an Islamic State/Al Qaeda victory? Is that a gamble worth taking?
President Obama needs to ask those questions to the State Departments neocons and liberal interventionists emplaced by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who like Israels leaders positively lust for Assads demise. Regime change in Syria has been on the Israeli/neocon to-do list since at least the mid-1990s and the neocon idea last decade was that Assads overthrow would immediately follow the Iraq regime change in 2003, except the Iraq scheme didnt work out exactly as planned.
But there may be some reason to hope. After all, Obama showed courage in overcoming the strong resistance of the neocons to the recent nuclear deal with Iran. So, he may have the intelligence and stamina to face them down again, although you wouldnt know it from his recent rhetoric, which panders to the war hawks arguments even as he resists their most dangerous action plans.
At his news conference on Friday, Obama said, in my discussions with President Putin, I was very clear that the only way to solve the problem in Syria is to have a political transition that is inclusive that keeps the state intact, that keeps the military intact, that maintains cohesion, but that is inclusive and the only way to accomplish that is for Mr. Assad to transition (out), because you cannot rehabilitate him in the eyes of Syrians. This is not a judgment Im making; it is a judgment that the overwhelming majority of Syrians make.
But Obama did not explain how he knew what the overwhelming majority of Syrians want. Many Syrians especially the Christians, Alawites, Shiites and secular Sunnis appear to see Assad and his military as their protectors, the last bulwark against the horror of a victory by the Islamic State or Al Qaedas Nusra Front, which is a major player in the so-called Army of Conquest, as both groups make major gains across Syria.
Obamas cavalier notion, as expressed at the news conference, that regime changes are neat and tidy, easily performed without unintended consequences, suggests a sophomoric understanding of the world that is stunning for a U.S. president in office for more than 6 ½ years, especially since he adopted a similar approach toward Libya, which now has descended into violent anarchy.
Obama must realize that the alternative to Assad is both risky and grim and some of the suggestions coming from presidential candidate Clinton and other hawks for a U.S. imposition of a no-fly zone over parts of Syria would not only be a clear violation of international law but could create a direct military clash with nuclear-armed Russia.
But the U.S. government chose a different course, one of permanent global hegemony with American troops as the worlds armed-up policemen. Gulf War I, led by the United States in January-February 1991 to punish Iraq for invading Kuwait the previous summer, injected steroids into leading arrogant neocons like Paul Wolfowitz already awash in hubris.
Shortly after that war, Gen. Wesley Clark recalled Wolfowitz (then Undersecretary of Defense for Policy) explaining the thinking: We learned (from Gulf War I) that we can use our military in the region, in the Middle East, and the Soviets wont stop us. And weve got about five or ten years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes Syria, Iran, Iraq before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.
Clark highlighted this comment in an Oct. 3, 2007 speech, apparently thinking this might somehow enhance his credentials as a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination (see this highly instructive eight-minute excerpt).
Clark added that neocons like Bill Kristol and Richard Perle could hardly wait to finish Iraq so they could move into Syria. It was a policy coup. Wolfowitz, [Vice President Dick] Cheney, [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld, and you could name a half-dozen other collaborators from the Project for a New American Century. They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control. (See Consortiumnews.coms Neocon Chaos Promotion in the Mideast.)
The violence in 2011 was the catalyst for the civil war as Assads forces cracked down on an Arab Spring uprising that while largely peaceful included extremist elements who killed police and ambushed troops. But the repeated unconditional-surrender demands from Secretary Clinton and other U.S. leaders that Assad must go, plus covert U.S. support for rebels fighting against Syrian government forces, surely raised expectations that Assad would bow out, making the capture of Damascus a promising prize for a variety of Sunni militants.
Particularly pathetic has been Washingtons benighted, keystone-cops support for so-called moderate rebels an embarrassing fiasco if there ever was one. For a while, the mainstream media actually was taking note of this disaster within a disaster, after the Pentagon recently acknowledged that its $500 million project had produced only four or five fighters still in the field.
Even earlier, President Obama recognized the fallacy in this approach. In August 2014, he told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that trust in rebel moderates was a fantasy that was never in the cards as a workable strategy. But Obama bent to political and media pressure to do something.
As journalist Robert Parry pointed out, Official Washingtons most treasured fantasy is the notion that a viable moderate opposition exists in Syria or could somehow be created. That wish-upon-a-star belief was the centerpiece of congressional (approval in September 2014 of) a $500 million plan by President Barack Obama to train and arm these moderate rebels.
Even Pentagon-friend Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies recently conceded that what is very clearly not happening is there has not been any meaningful military action or success on the part of any of the rebels that we have trained.
The U.S. media also has downplayed where the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) came from. It was an outgrowth of the Sunni resistance to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 when the group was known as Al Qaeda in Iraq. It later splintered off from Al Qaeda over a tactical dispute, whether a fundamentalist Sunni caliphate should be started now (the ISIS view) or whether the focus should be on mounting terror attacks against the West (Al Qaedas view.)
Many recruits come from Libya whose statehood was destroyed as a result of a gross violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1973. And now radical groups are joined by members of the so-called moderate Syrian opposition backed by the West. They get weapons and training, and then they defect and join the so-called Islamic State.
Id like to tell those who engage in this: Gentlemen, the people you are dealing with are cruel but they are not dumb. They are as smart as you are. So, its a big question: whos playing whom here? The recent incident where the most moderate opposition group handed over their weapons to terrorists is a vivid example of that.
So the question becomes: Will Obama bring himself to see Russian military intervention as a positive step toward stabilizing Syria and creating the chance for a political settlement or will he cling to the Assad must go precondition, rejecting Russias help and risking an ISIS/Al Qaeda victory?
There is another element here, creating an even graver risk. It is no longer 1991 when the triumphant neocons brushed aside hopes for global military de-escalation and instead pressed for worldwide U.S. military dominance. Under Putin, Russia has made clear that it will no longer sit back and let U.S. and NATO tighten a vise around Russias borders.
Regarding its front yard in Ukraine, Putin has sharply admonished those in the West who want the Ukrainian government to destroy all political opponents and adversaries (in eastern Ukraine). Is that what you want? Thats not what we want and we wont allow that to happen.
Putins deployment of aircraft and other arms to Assad reflects a similar attitude toward events in Syria, which Russia considers part of its backyard. The message is clear: Overthrow Assad with the prospect of a terrorist victory? We wont allow that to happen.
The risk here, however, is that the American neocons and liberal interventionists remain drunk on their dreams of a permanent U.S. global hegemony that doesnt broach any rivalry from Russia, China or any other potential challenger to Americas full-spectrum dominance. If these war hawks dont sober up and if Obama remains their reluctant enabler the chances that the crises in Ukraine or Syria could escalate into a nuclear showdown cannot be ignored.
Thus, Russias move last week was truly a game-changer; and Putin is no longer playing games. One can only hope Obama can break free from the belligerent neocons and liberal war hawks. (For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.coms Obama Tolerates the Warmongers.)
(emphasis added)
Thank you, Ray McGovern, for trumpeting these facts. Sadly, for Americans, it is a continuous battle against the swamp of propagandized media, to find the truth.
bbgrunt
(5,281 posts)writing it!
seafan
(9,387 posts)Somehow, we've got to get this truth out to everyone.
Infuriatingly, our "mainstream media" have a vested interest to do just the opposite.
Ray McGovern is a treasure.
Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)draining the Neo-Con swamp. Unfortunately,many of these Cons are still with us in the State Dept and hanging around the White House only to be protected by the press and social connections. Read this piece earlier and thanks to Ray McGovern for laying out the Mid East in understandable language. Putin and Obama have a end game and most people in Washington are pissed.
malaise
(269,194 posts)Rec
You know American propaganda has been very self destructive. Time to face the truth from WW2 to now.
The planet needs a better balance of power.