The past ten days have seen what could be the start of an historic turning point away from endless war in the Middle East.  Public opinion in the United States, in harmony with the majority of people in the world, has clearly rejected U.S. military intervention in Syria.

But for this turn away from war to be complete and lasting, greater awareness is needed of the forces that have been pushing the United States into these wars, and will surely continue to do so until they are clearly and openly rejected.

An American friend who knows Washington well recently told us that “everybody” there knows that, as far as the drive to war with Syria is concerned, it is Israel that directs U.S. policy. Why then, we replied, don’t opponents of war say it out loud, since, if the American public knew that, support for the war would collapse?  Of course, we knew the answer to that question. They are afraid to say all they know, because if you blame the pro-Israel lobby, you are branded an anti-Semite in the media and your career is destroyed.

[pullquote] In large measure the Zionist lobby is effective because it has a huge number of assets in the American media, and because far too many American Jews, especially the billionaires, support Israel unconditionally. They also contribute disproportionally to the Democrats’ coffers. The combination of constant misinformation on Israel, the money muscle and the media threat make most American politicians —rarely noted for principle—wary of confronting the lobby with any resolve. On the other hand it is among American Jews that the nation has many of its most progressive thinkers and activists. [/pullquote]

One who had that experience is James Abourezk, former Senator from South Dakota, who has testified:  “I can tell you from personal experience that, at least in the Congress, the support Israel has in that body is based completely on political fear – fear of defeat by anyone who does not do what Israel wants done. I can also tell you that very few members of Congress–at least when I served there – have any affection for Israel or for its lobby. What they have is contempt, but it is silenced by fear of being found out exactly how they feel. I’ve heard too many cloakroom conversations in which members of the Senate will voice their bitter feelings about how they’re pushed around by the lobby to think otherwise. In private one hears the dislike of Israel and the tactics of the lobby, but not one of them is willing to risk the lobby’s animosity by making their feelings public.”
Abourezk added : “The only exceptions to that rule are the feelings of Jewish members, who, I believe, are sincere in their efforts to keep U.S. money flowing to Israel. But that minority does not a U.S. imperial policy make.”[1]

Since we do not have to run for Congress, we feel free to take a close look at that highly delicate question. First, we’ll review the evidence for the crucial role of the pro-Israel lobby, then we’ll discuss some objections.

For evidence, it should be enough to quote some recent headlines from the American and Israeli press.

First, according to the Times of Israel (not exactly an anti-Zionist rag): “Israel intelligence seen as central to U.S. case against Syria.”[2] (Perhaps the fact that it is “central” also explains why it is so dubious[3].)

Then, in Haaretz[4]: “AIPAC to deploy hundreds of lobbyists to push for Syria action”. Or, in U.S. News and World Report[5]: “Pro-Israel lobby Seeks to Turn Tide on Syria Debate in Congress”. According to Bloomberg[6]: “Adelson New Obama Ally as Jewish Groups Back Syria Strike”. The worst enemies of Obama become his allies, provided he does what “Jewish groups” want. Even rabbis enter the dance: according to the Times of Israel[7], “U.S. rabbis urge Congress to back Obama on Syria”.

The New York Times explained some of the logic behind the pressure: “Administration officials said the influential pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC was already at work pressing for military action against the government of Mr. Assad, fearing that if Syria escapes American retribution for its use of chemical weapons, Iran might be emboldened in the future to attack Israel. … One administration official, who, like others, declined to be identified discussing White House strategy, called AIPAC ‘the 800-pound gorilla in the room,’ and said its allies in Congress had to be saying, ‘If the White House is not capable of enforcing this red line’ against the catastrophic use of chemical weapons, ‘we’re in trouble’.”

Even more interesting, this part of the story was deleted by the New York Times, according to M.J. Rosenberg[8], which is consistent with the fact that the lobby prefers to act discreetly.

Now, to the objections:

There are indeed forces other than the Israel lobby pushing for war.  It is true that some neighboring countries like Saudi Arabia or Turkey also want to destroy Syria, for their own reasons. But they have nowhere near the political influence on the United States of the Israel lobby.  If Saudi princes use their money to try to corrupt a few U.S. politicians, that can easily be denounced as interference by a foreign power in the internal affairs of the United States. But no similar charge can be raised against Israeli influence because of the golden gag rule: any mention of such influence can be immediately denounced as a typical anti-Semitic slur against a nonexistent “Jewish power”.  Referring to the perfectly obvious, public activities of the Israel lobby may even be likened to peddling a “conspiracy theory”.

But many of our friends insist that every war is driven by economic interests. Isn’t this latest war to be waged because big bad capitalists want to exploit Syrian gas, or use Syrian territory for a gas pipeline, or open up the Syrian economy to foreign investments?

There is a widespread tendency, shared by much of the left, especially among people who think of themselves as Marxists (Marx himself was far more nuanced on this issue), to think that wars must be due to cynically rational calculations by capitalists.  If this were so, these wars “for oil” might be seen as “in the national interest”.  But this view sees “capitalism” as a unified actor issuing orders to obedient politicians on the basis of careful calculations.   As Bertrand Russell put it, this putative rationality ignores “the ocean of human folly upon which the fragile barque of human reason insecurely floats”.  Wars have been waged for all kinds of non-economic reasons, such as religion or revenge, or simply to display power.

People who think that capitalists want wars to make profits should spend time observing the board of directors of any big corporation: capitalists need stability, not chaos, and the recent wars only bring more chaos. American capitalists are making fortunes in China and Vietnam now that there is peace between the U.S. and those countries, which was not possible during hostilities. As for the argument that they need wars to loot resources, one may observe that the U.S. is buying oil from Iraq now, and so does China, but China did not have to ruin itself in a costly war.  Like Iraq, Iran or Syria are perfectly willing to sell their resources, and it is the political embargoes imposed by the U.S. that prevent such trade. As for the “war for oil” thesis in the case of Libya, the Guardian recently reported that “Libya is facing its most critical moment since the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi with armed groups blockading oil fields and terminals, choking output to a 10th of normal levels and threatening economic disaster.”[9]As for Iraq, Stephen Sniegoski has shown, in The Transparent Cabal, The Neoconsevative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel, that the war was only due to the neoconservatives and that the oil companies had no desire whatsoever to go to war.  Indeed, there is no evidence of an “oil lobby” sending its agents to urge Members of Congress to vote for war, as AIPAC is doing.

And how does one explain that many of the most determined opponents of war are found on the right of the political spectrum?  Do the Tea Party, Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, Justin Raimundo and antiwar.com, Paul Craig Roberts, among others, fail to see the wonderful profits to be made by capitalists in a devastated Syria?

The fact is that in the post-colonial period, wherever profits can be made through war, they can be made much more reliably in peaceful conditions, and most capitalists seem to have understood that. There is no need to conquer countries in order to purchase their resources, invest in their economies or sell them our products.  Most countries are in fact eager for legitimate trade.

On the other hand, it can be argued that the huge military-industrial complex (MIC) benefits from wars.  Doesn’t the MIC need wars to maintain the lifeblood of military appropriations? Here the matter is complex. The MIC benefits above all from various hyped-up threats of war, most notably the Soviet threat during the Cold War, which kept the credits and contracts flowing through the Pentagon.  But long, botched wars such as in Afghanistan or Iraq tend to give war a bad name, are economically ruinous and lead to questioning the need for the huge U.S. military. The MIC doesn’t need another one in Syria. Many military officers are openly hostile to mounting at attack against Syria.

The interests that profit directly from recent U.S. wars – and not from mere “threats” – are very few. They are above all the giant construction firms, Bechtel, Halliburton and their subsidiaries, which, through their connections with officials such as Dick Cheney, win contracts to build U.S. military bases abroad and sometimes to rebuild infrastructure destroyed by the U.S. Air Force. This amounts to a recycling of American taxpayers’ money, which in no way “profits” the United States, or American capitalism in general; besides, those construction firms are not big compared to major U.S. corporations.  These profiteers could never pose as a “justification” for wars, but are the mere vultures feeding off conflicts.

The basic responsibility for war of the U.S. military-industrial complex is simply that it is there.  And as Madeleine Albright famously said, “what is the use of having that splendid military if we don’t use it?”  In fact, ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union (and indeed arguably ever since the end of World War II), there is no obviously good reason to use it, and it might well be dismantled and resources redirected toward modernizing U.S. infrastructure and other useful and profitable activities.  However, an intellectual industry called “think tanks” has developed in Washington devoted to justifying the perpetuation of the MIC.  It specializes in identifying potential “threats”.  Over the years, these think tanks have increasingly come under the influence of billionaire benefactors of Israel such as Haim Saban (founder of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution).  Since there are in reality virtually no serious threats to the United States calling for such colossal military strength, alleged “threats to U.S. interests” in the Middle East are invented by adopting supposed threats to Israel as threats to the United States.  Example number one: Iran.

People on the left are not wrong in supposing that Washington would want to defend “American geo-strategic interests”. Those certainly exist, and are a proper object of controversy. But the crucial question here is whether support for Israeli policy aims in the Middle East is among them.  Indeed, there is a sector of the U.S. foreign policy establishment that promotes an aggressive global foreign policy that amounts to a sort of world conquest, with U.S. military bases and military exercises surrounding Russia and China, as if in preparation for some final showdown.  But the fact is that the most active advocates of this aggressive policy are the pro-Israel neoconservatives of the Project for the New American Century that pushed the Bush II presidency into war against Iraq, and now, as the Foreign Policy Initiative, are pushing Obama toward war against Syria.  Their general line is that U.S. and Israeli interests are identical, and that U.S. world domination is good, or even necessary, for Israel. Such close identification with Israel has caused the United States to be intensely hated throughout the Muslim world, which is not good for the United States in the long run.

Perhaps because genuine, material or economic U.S. interests in going to war are so hard to find, the emphasis has shifted in the past decade to alleged “moral” concerns, such as “the responsibility to protect”, packaged with a catchy brand name, “R2P”.  Today, the strongest advocates of going to war are the various humanitarian imperialists or liberal interventionist, who argue on the basis of R2P, or “justice for victims”, or alleged “genocide prevention”.

There is a large overlap between humanitarian interventionism and support for Israel. In France Bernard Kouchner, who first invented and promoted the concept of the “right to intervene”, stated in a recent interview that “Israel is like no other country.  It is the result of the terrifying massacre of the Holocaust.” It is therefore “our duty” to protect it.  Bernard-Henry Lévy prodded the French government to start the war against Libya, making no secret that he considered he was acting as a Jew for the interests of Israel; he is now the foremost and fiercest advocate of bombing Syria.  In both France and the United States, advocates of “humanitarian” intervention justify bombing Syria by referring to the Holocaust in the past and to a hypothetical, and totally unsubstantiated, intention by Iran to risk national suicide by attacking Israel in the future.

In the United States, these concerns of the Israel lobby are given ideological and institutional expression by such influential advisors as Samantha Power, Madeleine Albright and the two Abramowitz’s (Morton the father and Michael the son, in charge of “genocide prevention efforts” at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum).  The argument is used repeatedly that because “we” did not intervene quickly enough against Auschwitz, we have an obligation to intervene militarily to prevent other possible slaughters.

On September 6, the Cleveland Jewish News published a letter from “leading rabbis” urging Congress to support President Obama’s plans to strike Syria. “We write you as descendants of Holocaust survivors and refugees, whose ancestors were gassed to death in concentration camps,” the letter said.  By authorizing bombing raids, the rabbis said, “Congress has the capacity to save thousands of lives”…

Without such dramatization, obscuring the reality of each new crisis with images of the Holocaust, the whole notion that the best way to promote human rights and protect populations is to wage unilateral wars, destroy what is left of the international legal order and spread chaos would be seen for the absurdity it is.  Only the fervor of the champions of Israel enables such emotional arguments to swamp reasonable discussion.

But one may reasonably ask what are the interests of Israel itself in inciting the United States to fight in Syria?  Israelis seem to have frightened themselves into believing that the very existence of another power in the region, namely Iran, amounts to an existential threat.  But the mere fact that a policy is pursued does not mean that it is necessarily in the interests of those who pursue it. That is again ignoring the “ocean of human folly”. Napoleon and Hitler had no interest or desire in bringing Russian troops to Paris or Berlin, but their policies led to precisely that. The emperors of Germany, Austria and Russia had no interest in launching the First World War, since, in the end, they all lost their thrones as a result of the war. But launch it they did. The future is unpredictable, and that is why it is difficult to deduce intentions from consequences.  Israel’s hostile policy toward its neighbors can reasonably be seen as self-defeating in the long run.

Oddly enough, some observers deny the obvious, arguing that Bashar al Assad has allowed Israel to occupy Syrian territory on the Golan Heights and has kept the border quiet (without explaining what else he could have done, given the relationship of forces) and concluding that Israel has no interest in toppling him.  But what matters is that Assad is allied with Hezbollah and with Iran. Israel hates Hezbollah for its successful resistance to Israeli occupation of Lebanon, and sees Iran as the only potential challenge to Israeli military supremacy in the region.

Even so, it is not certain that Israel’s war aim would be to overthrow Assad. A clue to Israel’s strategy is provided by a September 5 article in the New York Times[10]: “Israeli officials have consistently made the case that enforcing Mr. Obama’s narrow ‘red line’ on Syria is essential to halting the nuclear ambitions of Israel’s archenemy, Iran. More quietly, Israelis have increasingly argued that the best outcome for Syria’s two-and-a-half-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, is no outcome. For Jerusalem, the status quo, horrific as it may be from a humanitarian perspective, seems preferable to either a victory by Mr. Assad’s government and his Iranian backers or a strengthening of rebel groups, increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.”

“This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win — we’ll settle for a tie,” said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York. “Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here. As long as this lingers, there’s no real threat from Syria.”

So, the real goal of the limited strikes (and the reason why they ought to be limited) would be to send a message to Iran, about its nonexistent nuclear arms program and, in Syria, let both sides “bleed to death”. How nice! Waging a war based on the flimsiest of evidence only to prolong a bloody conflict may not be a very moral endeavor for all those who claim to act out of passion for “our values” and for deep concern over the “suffering of the Syrian people”.

In its zeal to serve what it considers Israel’s interests, AIPAC and its affiliates practice deception concerning the issues at stake. The lobby misrepresents the interests of the United States, and even ignores the long term interests of the Jewish people whom it often claims to represent. It is pure folly for a minority, however powerful and respected, to try to impose an unpopular war on the majority. Since Israel often claims to represent the Jewish people as a whole, if the majority of Americans are forced to pay an unacceptable price for “defending Israel”, sooner or later voices will be raised blaming “the Jews”.  Indeed, this can be seen by a brief look at what already gets written, anonymously of course, on social media, ranging from various conspiracy theories to outright Jew-bashing.

We, who are totally opposed to the notion of collective guilt, wish to avoid such an outcome. Far from being anti-Semitic, we deplore all forms of “identity politics” that ignore the diversity within every human group.  We simply want to be able to say “no” openly to the pro-Israel lobby without being subjected to moral intimidation.  This has nothing to do with Jewish religion or identity or culture: it is entirely political.  We claim our right to refuse to be drawn into somebody else’s war.  We believe that these endless wars are not “good for the Jews” – or for anyone else.  We want to contribute to efforts at mutual understanding, diplomacy, compromise and disarmament. In short, to strengthen “the fragile barque of human reason” adrift on the ocean of human folly.  Otherwise, that folly may drown us all.

For now, the threat of war has been avoided, or at least “postponed”. Let us not forget that Iraq and Libya also gave up their weapons of mass destruction, only to be attacked later. Syria is likely to abandon its chemical weapons, but without any guarantee that the rebels, much less Israel, won’t retain such weapons. The popular mobilization against the war, probably the first one in history to stop a war before it starts, has been intense but may be short-lived.  Those whose war plans have been interrupted can be expected to come up with new maneuvers to regain the initiative.  These past days have given a glimpse of what can be accomplished when people wake up and say no to war.  This must be an inspiration for continued efforts to make diplomacy prevail over bullying, and mutual disarmament over endless war. If people really want peace, it can be possible.

JEAN BRICMONT teaches physics at the University of Louvain in Belgium. He is author of Humanitarian Imperialism.  He can be reached at Jean.Bricmont@uclouvain.be

DIANA JOHNSTONE is author of Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions.  She lives in Paris and can be reached at diana.josto@yahoo.fr

Notes.

[1]  http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m28769

In the back and forth about Syria, there is surprisingly little discussion about Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar.  Even though Bandar apparently took over the Saudi covert account last year and has driven the Kingdom’s hard line against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria.

It’s also clear that Saudi Arabia has slipped the leash and is no longer a cooperative US ally.  The general narrative is that the Saudis got disgusted and disillusioned by the Obama administration’s dithering in Egypt.

Maybe it wasn’t just dithering.  Maybe the Obama administration was consistently supportive of civilian rule and insufficiently sedulous in the attention it paid to the Egyptian army and its role in assuring the institutional continuity (ahem) and stability of Egyptian political life.

It is also possible that the Saudis finally decided that it would not try to paper over the disagreements between the US and the KSA over persistent US support for the Morsi regime, especially since the Saudi government was determined to overwhelm US attempts to control the Egyptian military through withholding the US aid package of $1.2 billion by “flooding the zone” with a promise of $12 billion from Riyadh.

So a clean break was marked by a coup, a defiant massacre of America’s preferred political partners in Egypt, and orchestration of a vociferous and extremely public anti-US PR campaign that has made the Obama administration’s name mud in pro-coup activist circles.

My thoughts returned to Prince Bandar on the occasion of a piece on Kevin Drum’s blog about President Obama’s miserable Syrian options.

In a previous post I speculated that the Syrian gas attack might have been a false flag attack designed to force the Obama administration to intervene in Syria.

At the time I wasn’t aware of the reporting on Prince Bandar’s extensive involvement in Saudi Arabia’s Syria project, so I coyly referred to the hypothetical visitor as “Prince B—“.  But based on Mour Malas’ August 25 piece in the Wall Street Journal—including the revelation that Saudi Arabia had already been trying to push the Obama administration over the chemical weapons red line several months ago—we can certainly fill in the blanks and speculate about Prince Bandar’s possible role in a false flag attack:

That winter, the Saudis also started trying to convince Western governments that Mr. Assad had crossed what President Barack Obama a year ago called a “red line”: the use of chemical weapons. Arab diplomats say Saudi agents flew an injured Syrian to Britain, where tests showed sarin gas exposure. Prince Bandar’s spy service, which concluded in February that Mr. Assad was using chemical weapons, relayed evidence to the U.S., which reached a similar conclusion four months later. The Assad regime denies using such weapons.

According to Malas, Saudi Arabia has also been repeatedly telling the Obama administration its stature in the Middle East is toast unless it acts firmly on Syria.

Connoisseurs of US Congressional diplomacy will also be pleased to know that Senator John McCain, who has been all over the airwaves pushing for a US response of regime-change dimensions and not a symbolic slap on the wrist, is hand-in-glove with Prince Bandar.

Anyway, as cited by Kevin Drum, Malas’ most recent piece fills in (boldface by Drum) some of the blanks, making the case that President Obama’s rather more genuine dithering on Syria resulted from the unwillingness to knock down the Assad regime until the U.S. and Syrian opposition moderates had gotten their act together and could field a plausible team to handle New Syria transition and governance.

The delay, in part, reflects a broader U.S. approach rarely discussed publicly but that underpins its decision-making, according to former and current U.S. officials: The Obama administration doesn’t want to tip the balance in favor of the opposition for fear the outcome may be even worse for U.S. interests than the current stalemate.

….The administration’s view can also be seen in White House planning for limited airstrikes—now awaiting congressional review—to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for his alleged use of chemical weapons. Pentagon planners were instructed not to offer strike options that could help drive Mr. Assad from power: “The big concern is the wrong groups in the opposition would be able to take advantage of it,” a senior military officer said. The CIA declined to comment.

….Many rebel commanders say the aim of U.S. policy in Syria appears to be a prolonged stalemate that would buy the U.S. and its allies more time to empower moderates and choose whom to support….Israeli officials have told their American counterparts they would be happy to see its enemies Iran, the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and al Qaeda militants fight until they are weakened.

“Slow and steady” is manifestly not the strategy that Prince Bandar prefers in Syria.  Given the dysfunction of the Syrian overseas opposition—as opposed to the murderous efficiency of the distinctly non-democratic jihadis—one can’t really blame him.

The Geneva peace talks, by the way—which embodied the US hopes of some kind of negotiated transition involving the Syrian opposition democratic goodniks—are not going ahead, thanks to the gas attack.

As the Russian media reported:

Earlier on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the timing of the chemical attack “suited” the opposition, “who obviously do not want to negotiate peacefully”, instead they want to “sabotage” the talks.

“Why go to a conference if you believe that the regime’s infrastructure will all be destroyed anyway by allies, and then you can just march into Damascus unopposed, and take control?” said the official in Moscow.

Good question.

Anyway, Prince Bandar has been very active on the Syrian brief.  He arranged the high profile shipment of arms to the rebels out of Croatia and also—according to disputed but plausible reports—unsuccessfully cajoled/threatened Vladimir Putin to drop Assad by promising that Saudi Arabia could in return deliver a) support for Russia’s gas export ambitions and b) hold in check the Chechen rebels who otherwise might do awful, awful things to Putin’s Olympics in Sochi.

Inevitably, there are also mumblings linking Saudi Arabia to the supply of sarin gas to the rebels.

Now, thanks to President Obama’s injudicious red line/chem munitions remark, he’s being forced to make a choice, to “get off the fence”.

Well, maybe the choice has been made for him.  Maybe he got pushed off the fence.  By Prince Bandar.

I think we are creeping closer to confirmation of the hypothesis I’ve been advancing since November of last year: that Saudi Arabia had not only decided to push the Qatar-backed Muslim Brotherhood out of the leadership of the Syrian opposition (something which has subsequently been confirmed and reconfirmed), but that the Saudi strategy for Syria involved regime collapse first, rejecting the strategy of cutting a deal with  Assad to get him to the bargaining table after prolonged bleeding for some kind of negotiated capitulation and a democratic transition.

Anyway, in the proxy war for Syria it looks like we now have a debate between the rather conflicted but intensely risk-averse and regime-transition fixated Obama administration and Saudi Arabia + John McCain’s regime collapse advocacy.

And everybody’s waiting for Israel—which is uncomfortable with a jihadi-led insurrection but probably feels that clout and initiative are slipping out of President Obama’s fingers—to get off its fence and either push for a strike, a big strike, or nothing at all.

Wonder how that will work out.

In any case, if we’re talking about Syria, we need to talk about Prince Bandar.

Peter Lee edits China Matters. His ground-breaking story on North Korea’s nuclear program, Japan’s Resurgent Militarism, appears in the March issue of CounterPunch magazine. He can be reached at: chinamatters (at) prlee. org.

You have to ask: does Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have a death wish, launching a chemical attack within miles of a U.N. chemical inspection team? He must. Like those cloistered mullahs in Qom, whom Zionist sage Benjamin Netanyahu claims would fire a nuclear warhead at Tel Aviv the moment one fell into their hands, a mere fait accompli. Even though Iran would be instantly vaporized by American WMDs. Even though all those coiling spires would turn to dust. Because, as Bibi makes clear, you have to set aside the survival instinct when you’re dealing with madmen.

Framing the Enemy

Assad, of that nefarious Alawite sect, must have similar dementia, since according to the Obama administration he launched a chemical weapons attack on Syrian “rebels” in Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, at perhaps the most ill-advised moment in the two-year conflict. A moment when Assad had just welcomed United Nations chemical weapons inspectors into his country to see whether accusations of a May chemical attack were true. The latest attack has generated a freshet of rhetorical fraud we haven’t seen since the lofty height of the Bush administration, when Dick Cheney was touring the Sunday talk shows waving his imminent-threat manifesto and sneering uncontrollably at spineless pacifists. It’s Iraq all over again. Just like the fabricated charges against a fangless Saddam Hussein, Assad awaits the verdict of history—a false accusation, a war fever in the West, and then the falling skies. There’s no preventing it. Nobody mainstream has bothered to point out that Assad would have to be suicidal to launch an attack with inspectors in-country, and with the use of chemical weapons being President Barack Obama’s vaunted “red line” across which no sovereign Shi’ite government can cross.

[pullquote] Aren’t you gagging yet from the thick barrage of lies and hypocrisy being served by the media to justify an attack? Leon Panetta —in full Orwellian mode—just told NBC that the US must attack Syria for the sake of world peace! Only in a system in which both politicians and mainstream journalists are prostitutes can such things which insult a person’s intelligence be seen with total impunity. [/pullquote]

Rebels in Desperate Straits

The sociopathic duo: they truly deserve each other. All crimes neatly wrapped in self-righteous pronouncements.

On the other hand, there are plenty of perfectly reasonable pretexts by which the so-called “Free Syrian Army” might have launched a chemical weapons attack, as they likely did in May, according to Carla Del Ponte of the U.N. and the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria. She has now suggested the latest attack may have again been launched by the rebels. Despite the support  of al-Qaeda and their al-Nusra Front affiliates, who each want Assad gone for very different reasons, this mercenary melting pot has been ceding territory to Syrian government forces at an alarming rate in recent months. It would behoove them to stage a chemical attack that the Americans could quickly attribute to the Assad regime, and begin fueling the drones and launching destroyers. Otherwise, the government might subdue all the factions ranged against it, consolidate its power, and be that much more difficult to unseat. Better to conjure a crossed line from the dust of civil, sectarian, and proxy strife. Baseless accusations can then issue from the White House lawn, being loudly seconded in Tel Aviv, where lawmakers have just rubberstamped another bank of illegal settlements for prime West Bank real estate, while Palestinians refugees in Ramallah are shot in murky dust-ups with the IDF. Illegal interventions. Outlawed occupations. Suspect crackdowns. World conflicts in miniature are always afoot in the Knesset.

The Bi-Partisan Blueprint

Regardless of the trigger mechanism, the administration seems intent on pushing through Donald Rumsfeld’s old madcap blueprint for the Middle East, which involved toppling the governments of seven consecutive countries on the way to unchallenged dominion over Arab and Persian fossil fuels. Their eyes are on the prize. The rest is detail. It seems to make little difference to the Americans what becomes of Syria, only that Assad is overthrown, and the warlord that plants his flag atop the wreckage is hostile to Tehran and is willing to viciously put down any foolhardy bids for self-determination that might emerge from the populace. After all, the U.S. has left a trash bin of fallen monuments and blown infrastructures in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. If the entire Arab world is a flaming midden whose only functional entities are oil derricks, what cause for concern is that to our imperial chieftains? Let the Islamists slaughter each other on the peripheries of the bonfire while we vacuum every ounce of natural gas and petroleum from the core of the earth. (One conjures visions of Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood, mocking his young evangelical rival and shouting, “I drink your milkshake!”)

Revving Up the Propaganda Machine

The more controversial actions of state always require a heavy dose of cheerleading from the press, the better to manufacture the consent of the general population, or at least seed enough doubt to prevent a riot. To that end, The New York Times is back in the organ well, lifting its chorus of fearmongering to new heights. The Washington Post is cranking up the shrill calls for intervention. The ‘Situation Room’ is firing on all cylinders. Fox News is delivering thumping polemics on how slow-footed Obama is on foreign policy. Liberals stare blankly from the sidelines while their “lesser evil” does another expert impression of the “greater evil”. Obama channels Clinton. Kerry channels Cheney. But this is par for the course; justification cometh before the sword. It feels like 2003 again. All we need is Judith Miller to surface with a source in the chthonian depths of the Assad administration. Or Colin Powell to crack open PowerPoint and lift a few hollow tube photos from Google. And for someone to climb into the bully pulpit and tell us in mournful tones that yes, yes, we must once again wage war on those nomadic savages pitching their tents above our God-given bounty.

Four Steps to War

What can you expect in the coming days and weeks? Here’s a sneak preview. It’s none too surprising, since the formula has been refined over decades. Its architects have their names inscribed on the walls of the White House, infamy emeritus. The model calls for Obama to undertake a series of anti-democratic and pro-war actions that will be reformulated as pro-democratic and anti-war:

* First, he’ll ignore the people that elected him. He’ll cite some moral platitude from a posture of deep anxiety—the man of peace forced to confront the need for noble violence. His wrinkled brow will slowly morph into the steely eyed gaze of determination—the defender of liberty come to rescue the hapless Syrian proles. He’ll wave a flag of universal human rights, declare that actions have consequences, and point a heavy finger at Bashar al-Assad. Just nine percent of the American population want this. But Obama will be too transfixed by his moral crusade to take notice.

* Next, he’ll ignore Congress. This is the formal equivalent of ignoring the people. But unlike laughing off a Reuters poll, disregarding the entire legislative branch of government will require some nuanced prose from the Department of Justice (DOJ). No problem. For the Libyan war, the DOJ asserted that the provision of guns, drone strikes, missile launchers, and other weaponry didn’t collectively amount to “hostilities.” Hence there was no war. Hence no need to bother with Congressional approvals.

* Feeling more confident by the day, Obama will then ignore the United Nations. He and deputy John Kerry have already said it is too late for U.N. weapons inspectors in Damascus to investigate the new claim of chemical weapons abuse. They offered a smattering of nonsense about “corrupted” evidence, despite the fact that sarin can sit in the soil for months. In any case, the U.N. could normally be relied upon to roll over in the General Assembly and Security Council on war authorization, but for the annoying presence of Russia, finger poised above the veto button, awaiting for the Obama administration to ask the Security Council legitimate its belligerence. Russia, of course, is itself hiding behind a façade of shocked innocence, saying it was fooled by America on Iraq in 2003 and won’t be fooled again. This, too, is sophistry.

* Then he’ll bomb. Missiles will be fired from the safety of the Mediterranean or the comparative calm of high clouds. The missiles will target heavily populated areas in Damascus, much to our great leader’s great regret. Images of wailing Muslims will dot the airwaves. NGOs will assemble lists of the collateral dead. The refugee count—already at one million—will climb toward two. And Syria, part of the cradle of civilization, will begin to resemble Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya in its kaleidoscopic mix of blasted infrastructures, sectarian slaughter, rampant abuse of women, genetic deformities in the birth population, and the steady buzz of Predators and Reapers policing the carnage from the sky.

But, in the end, the oil and gas will be ours, and in Washington, that’s all that matters.

 Jason Hirthler is a veteran of the communications industry. He lives and works in New York City and can be reached at jasonhirthler@gmail.com.