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Foreign Affairs
Related: About this forum"The Day After Damascus Falls"
By Robert Parry (who allows long snips of his articles to be posted)
April 29, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "Consortium News" - If Syrian President Bashar al-Assad meets the same fate as Libyas Muammar Gaddafi or Iraqs Saddam Hussein, much of Official Washington would rush out to some chic watering hole to celebrate one more bad guy down, one more regime change notch on the belt. But the day after Damascus falls could mark the beginning of the end for the American Republic.
As Syria would descend into even bloodier chaos with an Al-Qaeda affiliate or its more violent spin-off, the Islamic State, the only real powers left the first instinct of American politicians and pundits would be to cast blame, most likely at President Barack Obama for not having intervened more aggressively earlier.
A favorite myth of Official Washington is that Syrian moderates would have prevailed if only Obama had bombed the Syrian military and provided sophisticated weapons to the rebels.
Though no such moderate rebel movement ever existed at least not in any significant numbers that reality is ignored by all the smart people of Washington. It is simply too good a talking point to surrender. The truth is that Obama was right when he told New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman in August 2014 that the notion of a moderate rebel force that could achieve much was always a fantasy.
As much fun as the who lost Syria finger-pointing would be, it would soon give way to the horror of what would likely unfold in Syria with either Al-Qaedas Nusra Front or the spin-off Islamic State in charge or possibly a coalition of the two with Al-Qaeda using its new base to plot terror attacks on the West while the Islamic State engaged in its favorite pastime, those YouTube decapitations of infidels Alawites, Shiites, Christians, even some descendants of the survivors from Turkeys Armenian genocide a century ago who fled to Syria for safety.
Such a spectacle would be hard for the world to watch and there would be demands on President Obama or his successor to do something. But realistic options would be few, with a shattered and scattered Syrian army no longer a viable force capable of driving the terrorists from power.
The remaining option would be to send in the American military, perhaps with some European allies, to try to dislodge Al-Qaeda and/or the Islamic State. But the prospects for success would be slim. The goal of conquering Syria and possibly re-conquering much of Iraq as well would be costly, bloody and almost certainly futile.
The further diversion of resources and manpower from Americas domestic needs also would fuel the growing social discontent in major U.S. cities, like what is now playing out in Baltimore where disaffected African-American communities are rising up in anger against poverty and the police brutality that goes with it. A new war in the Middle East would accelerate Americas descent into bankruptcy and a dystopian police state.
The last embers of the American Republic would fade. In its place would be endless war and a single-minded devotion to security. The National Security Agency already has in place the surveillance capabilities to ensure that any civil resistance could be thwarted.
Can This Fate Be Avoided?
But is there a way to avoid this grim fate? Is there a way to wind this scenario back to some point before this outcome becomes inevitable? Can the U.S. political/media system as corrupt and cavalier as it is find a way to avert such a devastating foreign policy disaster?
To do so would require Official Washington to throw off old dependencies, such as its obeisance to the Israel Lobby, and old habits, such as its reliance on manipulative PR to control the American people, patterns deeply engrained in the political process.
At least since the Reagan administration with its kick the Vietnam Syndrome fascination via public diplomacy and perception management the tendency has been to designate some foreign leader as the latest new villain and then whip up public hysteria in support of a regime change. [See Consortiumnews.coms The Victory of Perception Management.]
---------------Snip
Another consequence of the Saudi air campaign has been to boost Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula which has exploited the Saudi targeting of Houthi forces to seize more territory in Yemens east.
Yet, as tragic as the Yemeni situation is becoming, the more consequential crisis is emerging in Syria, where some analysts are seeing signs of a possible collapse of the Assad regime, a chief goal of the Saudi-Israeli alliance. Senior Israelis have been saying since 2013 that they would prefer a victory by Al-Qaeda over a victory by Assad.
For instance, in September 2013, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Prime Minister Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post in an interview: The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc. We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who werent backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran. He said this was the case even if the bad guys were affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
In June 2014, Oren expanded on this thinking at an Aspen Institute conference, extending Israels preference to include even the hyper-brutal Islamic State. From Israels perspective, if theres got to be an evil thats got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail, Oren said.
During Netanyahus March 3, 2015 speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, he also downplayed the danger from the Islamic State with its butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube compared to Iran, which he accused of gobbling up the nations of the Middle East. However, Iran has not gobbled up any nations in the Middle East. It has not invaded any country for centuries. [See Consortiumnews.coms Inventing a Record of Iranian Aggression.]
Yet, while the Saudi-Israeli alarums about Iran may border on the hysterical, the alliances combined influence over Official Washington cannot be overstated. Thus, as absurd and outrageous as many of the claims are, they are not only taken seriously, they are treated as gospel. Anyone who points to the reality immediately becomes an Iranian apologist.
But the power of the Saudi-Israeli alliance is not simply a political curiosity or an obstacle to sensible policies. As it creates the conditions for an Al-Qaeda/Islamic State victory in Syria and the possible reintroduction of the U.S. military into the middle of the Middle East the Saudi-Israeli alliance has become an existential threat to the survival of the American Republic.
As the nations first presidents wisely recognized, there are grave dangers to a republic when it entangles itself in foreign conflicts. Its almost always wiser to seek out realistic albeit imperfect political solutions or at least to evaluate what the negative ramifications of the military option might be before undertaking it. Otherwise, as the early presidents realized, if the country plunges into one costly conflict after another, it becomes a martial state, not a democratic republic.
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More of a long article which goes back to the Reagan years in narrative....
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41724.htm
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"The Day After Damascus Falls" (Original Post)
KoKo
May 2015
OP
bemildred
(90,061 posts)1. Well I think it depends on whether Assad's backers can step up too.
But yeah, back in the early days of this war, a jihadi takeover, that was the nightmare scenario that was warned against, and here it is.