US using ‘beheadings to sway public opinion’ in favor of another war:
““It’s very clear that these ‘beheadings’ of American ‘journalists’ is being used as a catalyst to sway public opinion. Now you have [President Barack] Obama, [Vice President Joe] Biden, [Defense Secretary] Chuck Hagel, [Secretary of State] John Kerry all in unison talking about an all-out offensive against ISIS,” Rickard said, using an alternate acronym for the terrorist group.
“Let’s be clear that ISIS has under 10,000 mercenaries from 80 different countries around the world. They have been recruited and trained and supplied and getting harbored in NATO countries, in Kurdistan [region], in Turkey obviously, in Jordan,” he added.
“These individuals have received incredibly advanced equipment from Qatar, and from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates. This is not a group that is not unfamiliar with intelligence training and also intelligence assistance in the region,” he stated.
Rickard went on to say that “some of the individuals in the mercenary forces may have decided to do something that was not in the plan for the intelligence community” that controls them.
“They will not completely destroy ISIS; they will only destroy the individuals within the mercenary forces that are not cooperating with Western intelligence on their initiatives in the region because they still want to go after Syria, and they still want to create a Kurdish state, that has been an initiative since the Iran-Iraq war for the United States and West. And that is what’s going on now today,” he noted.
ISIL controls large parts of Syria’s northern territory. The group sent its fighters into neighboring Iraq in June, quickly seizing large swaths of land straddling the border between the two countries.”
***
More NATO Aggression Against Syria?:
Syria will be an important subject of discussion at this week’s NATO Summit meeting in Wales. The US and NATO powers will evaluate whether to expand air strikes against ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq & Syria) into Syria, whether to do it in cooperation with the Syrian government and whether to increase support to the “moderate” armed opposition. The US mainstream media and politicians have been beating the war drums with Republican Senator McCain calling for military escalation and Democratic Senator Feinstein criticising President Obama for being “too cautious”.
There has been little mention of the fact that it is one year since the highly publicized chemical weapons attack in the Ghouta outskirts of Damascus. The same elements who are pushing for “regime change” military action now were doing so one year ago. Since then, the case that the Syrian government was responsible for the attack has been effectively discredited. The diplomatically negotiated agreement to remove all Assad’s chemical weapons has been successfully implemented. One would think this would merit attention, but it has been widely ignored.
One good thing in the media this week is recognition that Libya is now in chaos. This is the country which was “liberated” by NATO bombing which led to the murder of President Ghadaffi and collapse of that government. Nine months ago a plurality of Libyans said they are worse off than before the regime change. It’s very likely that even more Libyans are unhappy with their externally imposed regime change today. Three years ago NATO members were congratulating themselves on the air war against Libya. Now they are hopefully more sober as it goes public that Libya is in chaos, the airport shut down, competing extremists fighting for dominance, with one faction enjoying themselves in the US Embassy swimming pool.
The Obama Administration is at another turning point where it may choose to escalate its aggression against Syria. Clearly Obama and team do not want to go solo. The dreams of a“New American Century” with unchallenged US dominance have been broken by reality in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. But the hounds of war and aggression are noisy and persistent.
As NATO begins to deliberate whether and how to escalate aggression against Syria, let’s review some recent and long standing myths and lies about the Syrian conflict.
Myth #1.
Some articles and even the (current) Wikipedia entry for James Foley (journalist) claim that he was a prisoner of the Syrian military and that they turned him over to ISIS. This is in perfect keeping with the pervasive demonization of the Assad government. However it’s false. A serious investigation into the disappearance of Foley is in the May 2014 Vanity Fair. Foley was captured by Nusra Front (or allied rebels) in November 2012 and later transferred or sold to ISIS.
Myth #2.
Both NY Times’ Anne Barnard and John McCain suggest or assert that the Syrian government has collaborated with ISIS. The “evidence” of this is that the Syrian Army did not actively attack ISIS in eastern Syria during the past year.
The reality is that Syrian Army needs to pick and choose its battles and priorities. They are weakened by over three years intense conflict resulting in at least 65 THOUSAND Syrian army and militia deaths. For reference, the total US death count in Vietnam was 58 thousand and Syria today is one tenth the size of the US in the 1970’s. In the past year the Syrian military has focused on confronting armed opposition in Aleppo (the largest city), Homs, outer Damascus and the Lebanese border area. The Syrian military has gained ground in each of these areas along with implementing the national “reconciliation” policy.
In the past two months, ISIS has gone on the offensive in eastern Syria and is pressing towards Aleppo and central Syria with US equipment and weaponry captured in Iraq. The battles have taken a heavy toll on both ISIS and the Syrian military. According to rebel aligned Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), 346 ISIS fighters were killed in a four day assault on Tabqa Air Base near Raqqa. The fighting has been brutal with heavy losses on both sides.
Longtime Mideast journalist Patrick Cockburn writes, “A conspiracy theory, much favoured by the rest of the Syrian opposition and by Western diplomats, that Isis and Assad are in league, has been shown to be false.”
In contrast with the myth, ISIS has in fact been aided and abetted by US allies. This includes funds from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, ideology and recruitment by Saudi media, transportation and safe haven through Turkey.
Myth #3.
It is usually claimed that the Syrian conflict is a civil war that started with peaceful protests in 2011. In reality the seeds of the conflict were planted much earlier. General Wesley Clark’s 2007 memoir described plans for “regime change” in Syria and other countries. Also in 2007 Seymour Hersh documented the US strategy of fomenting conflict in Syria (and Iran) by working with Sunni extremists:
“The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”
When mass protests began in Syria they included violent attacks and murders of police from the beginning. The situation was the same in other regions. Jesuit priest Father Frans Van Der Lugt was widely respected by Sunni Muslims and Christians in the Old City of Homs. He described the start of the protests thus:
“From the start, the protest movements were not purely peaceful. From the start I saw armed demonstrators marching along in the protests, who began to shoot at the police first. Very often the violence of the security forces has been a reaction to the brutal violence of the armed rebels.”
The conflict in Syria has been primarily instigated and continued by some of the world’s wealthiest and powerful governments. They make no secret and call themselves, with Orwellian chutzpah, the “Friends of Syria”. Their division of labor including who pays the salaries of the rebel mercenaries, who supplies communication equipment, who does training and who supplies weapons. Thus the conflict in Syria is primarily a war of aggression using domestic and foreign mercenaries.
Myth #4.
It is often suggested the “moderate opposition” is popular, democratic and secular.
President Obama has recently proposed giving $500 million to the “moderate opposition”.
Patrick Cockburn sums up the reality in the newly released book “The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising”:
“It is here that self-deception reigns, because the Syrian military opposition is dominated by ISIS and by Jabhat Al Nusra, the official Al Queda representative, in addition to other extreme jihadi groups. In reality there is no dividing wall between them and America’s supposedly moderate opposition allies.”
This situation is not new. A NY Times article in summer 2012 discussed the hidden presence of Al Queda within the “Free Syrian Army”. When he read this, James Foley sent out a tweet linking to the article and pondering whether the photographed black flag was necessarily Al Queda. He did not recognize the flag and wondered whether it was “some misc jihadi group”….
Foley’s last article documented the overall unpopularity of the rebels in Aleppo:
“Aleppo, a city of about 3 million people, was once the financial heart of Syria. As it continues to deteriorate, many civilians here are losing patience with the increasingly violent and unrecognizable opposition — one that is hampered by infighting and a lack of structure, and deeply infiltrated by both foreign fighters and terrorist groups.”
Myth #5.
Finally there is the myth that the Free Syrian Army and other “moderate opposition” groups were not supported. In reality, huge quantities of weapons and ammunition have flowed which is exactly what has allowed the terrorist organizations to continue the mayhem and bloodshed. Starting in November 2012 three thousand TONS of weapons and ammunition were flown from Zagreb to Turkey and then transferred to the Syrian rebels. In addition there were huge shipments from Benghazi Libya and more shipments paid by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
…If the US and NATO really are worried about ISIS they can and will implement measures such as the following:
* shut down the Jihadi Highway through Turkey.
* shut down safe haven and supply routes of ISIS and other terrorist groups in Turkey
* provide useful information from surveillance flights to the Syrian army which is doing the main on-the-ground fighting
* demand and check that Saudi Arabia and Qatar stop broadcasting TV programs featuring hate speech which serve to recruit jihadis to join ISIS.
* demand and check that Saudi Arabia and Qatar implement measures to stop funding for ISIS through their banks and other financial operations.
Will the US and NATO take practical steps to counter ISIS or will they escalate their aggression against Syria, violating Syrian air space and looking for a pretext to impose a “no fly zone” as done in the disastrous aggressions against Iraq and Libya?”
***
The rise of ISIS in Iraq is a neocon’s dream:
The scheme was described by U.S. private intelligence firm Stratfor, which observed in October 2002: “The new government’s attempts to establish control over all of Iraq may well lead to a civil war between Sunni, Shia and Kurdish ethnic groups… The fiercest fighting could be expected for control over the oil facilities” – exactly the scenario unfolding now as ISIS rampages across Iraq.
Fracturing the country along sectarian lines, continued Stratfor, “may give Washington several strategic advantages”:
“After eliminating Iraq as a sovereign state, there would be no fear that one day an anti-American government would come to power in Baghdad, as the capital would be in Amman [Jordan]. Current and potential U.S. geopolitical foes Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria would be isolated from each other, with big chunks of land between them under control of the pro-U.S. forces.”
Equally important, Washington would be able to justify its long-term and heavy military presence in the region as necessary for the defense of a young new state asking for U.S. protection – and to secure the stability of oil markets and supplies. That in turn would help the United States gain direct control of Iraqi oil and replace Saudi oil in case of conflict with Riyadh.”
This sort of strategic thinking drove the U.S. to covertly arm both sides. As one U.S. Joint Special Operations University report said: “U.S. elite forces in Iraq turned to fostering infighting among their Iraqi adversaries on the tactical and operational level.” This included disseminating and propagating al-Qaeda jihadi activities by “U.S. psychological warfare (PSYOP) specialists” to fuel “factional fighting” and “to set insurgents battling insurgents.”
…influential neoconservative U.S. officials Cheney and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz co-authored a hair-brained plan to re-engineer the region through the sectarian partition of Iraq into three autonomous cantons for Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites.
…This divide-and-rule strategy has fueled sectarianism not just in Iraq, but across the region. For the last decade, both the Bush and Obama administration have worked with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf states to supply arms and military support to groups across the Middle East that could counter Iranian influence. Those most capable of doing so, it turns out, are extremist Sunni groups affiliated to al-Qaeda.
The short-sighted strategy has included extensive financing and training of jihadist groups in Syria to the tune of up to a billion dollars – a policy that began as early as 2009 according to a former French foreign minister.
A glimpse of the end-vision for this strategy was revealed in a 2006 Armed Forces Journal paper by Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters, former head of future warfare in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence. His paper called for a complete re-drawing of Middle East borders through “ethnic cleansing.”
This would somehow establish the “security” and “democracy” necessary to secure “access to oil supplies in a region that is destined to fight itself.” The plan repeated the Cheney-Wolfowitz scheme to split Iraq into three, but also included breaking apart Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan through “inevitable attendant bloodshed,”
…What is playing out now seems startlingly close to scenarios described in 2008 by a U.S. Army-funded RAND Corp report on how to win ‘the long war.’ Recognizing that “for the foreseeable future, world oil production growth and total output will be dominated by Persian Gulf resources,” the document advocated a “Divide and Rule” strategy to cement U.S. access to Gulf oil.
On the one hand, this would involve fostering conflict amongst the jihadists themselves – “exploiting fault lines between the various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts.” On the other, it would entail fostering conflict between Sunni and Shi’a by “shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan as a way of containing Iranian power and influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.””
***
General McInerney acknowledges presence of extremists within so-called moderate faction:
“Retired U.S. General Thomas McInerney, a Fox News contributor, acknowledged that in Syria the United States backed a faction of the Free Syrian Army -supposedly “moderate” – which constitutes the Islamic State – now classified as as “extremist.”
Thus far, the official narrative has been that the two groups were distinct and opposite. However, the publication of a photograph showing Senator McCain rubbing elbows with FSA commanding officers, including the self-proclaimed Caliph Ibrahim, as well as the release by the Syrian government to the UN Security Council of a letter from the FSA Chief of Staff arranging – at the behest of France and Turkey – for the distribution of weapons to Al-Qaeda, have put an end to this myth.
For General Thomas McInerney, the United States made a big mistake by entrusting to an Al-Qaeda offshoot group the smuggling operation of Libyan arms to Syria, organized by Ambassador Chris Stevens. Since then, and despite the assassination of the Ambassador on September 11, 2012, the U.S. continues to support the “wrong types” in the Middle East.”
***
The Slaying of Journalists and the Islamic State (ISIS) “Made in America”. Using ISIS Provocations to Justify US Military Intervention in Syria:
“…within the nebulous territory of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), two American journalists have also been purportedly killed – allegedly executed by ISIS terrorists. Despite even many Western sources admitting the execution video of American journalist James Foley was staged, and with the latest video depicting Steven Sotloff’s execution featuring the same fictional executioner, at the same location, using the same props, the hysteria and justification for direct US military intervention in Syria has reached a fevered pitch.
If the Pentagon had an office dedicated to starting wars, and were in particular looking to create a war with Syria, it could not do a more effective job at corralling the American people with fear and hysteria behind the cause of war better than ISIS. With the NATO summit in Wales unfolding, ISIS’ timing with the alleged execution of a second US journalists, stokes the fires conveniently just ahead of public decisions that will be made regarding the military conglomerate’s many conflicts raging around the globe. Pressuring members to join a “coalition” will be all the easier with Sotloff’s alleged execution still making Western headlines.
Simultaneously threatening Russia’s interests in Syria, while seeking to counter Russian opposition to its agenda in Ukraine, strengthens NATO’s hand – all thanks to ISIS’ impeccable timing. For the uninformed, if they had not suspected ties between ISIS and the West’s agenda before, they should now.
…The problem with the US using ISIS’ provocations to justify military intervention in Syria is that ISIS is in fact the intentional, engineered creation of the US in the first place.
…Before the inception of ISIS by the Western media, and as far back as 2007, Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran journalist Seymour Hersh would portend the creation of just such a terror group in his 9-page report in the New Yorker titled, “The Redirection Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” He stated that (emphasis added):
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
That “by-product” is ISIS. Through America’s own premeditated conspiracy to plunge not only Syria, but the entire region into genocidal sectarian bloodshed – resulted directly in the alleged murders of both Foley and Sotloff, not to mention tens of thousands of Iraqis, Syrians, Lebanese, and many others.
…The quandary those supporting American “interventionism” face is the fact that it is not “interventionism” at all. It is imperialism dressed up as “interventionism.” Crises and threats are intentionally engineered to justify what would otherwise be unjustifiable, naked military aggression, conquest, and socioeconomic geopolitical subjugation.
…in the end, US “interventionism” is cover for naked imperialism. Without a real moral imperative, the West is attempting to sustain hegemonic aspirations across the globe through deceit and staged provocations. It is demonstrably a losing proposition….”
***
ISIL completely fabricated enemy by US: Former CIA contractor:
“Former CIA contractor Steven Kelley says that the ISIL terrorist group is a completely fabricated enemy created and funded by the United States.
“This is a completely fabricated enemy,” he said in a phone interview with Press TV from Anaheim, California on Thursday.
“The funding is completely from the United States and its allies and for people to think that this enemy is something that needs to be attacked in Syria or Iraq is a farce because obviously this is something that we create it, we control and only now it has become inconvenient for us to attack this group as a legitimate enemy,” Kelley added.
…
“If you want to get to the root of the problem and remove this organization, the first thing they need to do is to remove the funding and take care of entities responsible for the creation of this group,” Kelley said.
“I believe that this ISIS group would probably go away, would be easily defeated by the armies of [Syrian President] Bashar Assad,” he said.”
***
- In this photograph released by the Islamic Emirate, we see one of its fighters armed with a French Famas while Paris denies any contact with this organization. In reality, France has armed the Free Syrian Army with instructions to donate two-thirds of its equipment to the Al-Nosra Front (that is to say, Al Qaeda in Syria), as evidenced by a document provided by Syria to the Security Council of the UN. Subsequently several units of Al-Nosra rallied with their weapons to the Islamic Emirate. Moreover, contrary to official statements, the commander of the Islamic Emirate, the current caliph Ibrahim, combined his duties with those of a member of the staff of the Free Syrian Army.
…in January 2014, a secret session of Congress voted financing and arming the Free Syrian Army, the Islamic Front, and Al-Nosra Front of the Islamic Emirate until September 30, 2014 [1].
Then, on February 6, the US Secretary of Homeland Security brought together major European Interior Ministers in Poland asking them to maintain European jihadists in the Levant by prohibiting their return to their countries of origin, so the EIS would be numerous enough to attack Iraq. [3] Finally, in mid-February, a two-day seminar at the US National Security Council was attended by heads of allied secret services involved in Syria, definitely to prepare the EIS offensive in Iraq. [4]
…There is nothing new in public butcheries and crucifixions: for example, the Islamic Emirate of Baba Amr, in February 2012, had established a “religious court” which condemned to death by slaughtering more than 150 people without raising any Western response nor at the United Nations [5]. In May 2013, the commander of the Al-Farouk Brigade of the Free Syrian Army (the famous “moderate”) aired a video in which he cut a Syrian soldier and ate his heart. At the time, the West continued to portray the jihadists as the “moderate opposition”, desperately fighting for “democracy”.
…The case of Caliph Ibrahim is illuminating: in May 2013, during the visit of John McCain to the ASL, he was both a member of the “moderate” staff and leader of the “extremist” faction [6]. Identically, a letter from General Salim Idriss, Chief of Staff of the ASL, dated January 17, 2014, certified that France and Turkey were delivering ammunition to the ASL (one third) and to Al Qaeda (two thirds) via the ASL. Presented by the Syrian ambassador to the Security Council, Bashar Jaafari, the authenticity of the document has not been disputed by the French delegation. [7]
- John McCain and the chiefs of the Free Syrian Army. In the left foreground, Ibrahim al-Badri, with which the Senator is talking. Next to him, Brigadier General Salim Idris (with glasses).
Since 1979, Washington, at the instigation of the National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, decided to support political Islam against Soviet influence, reviving the policy adopted in Egypt to support the Muslim Brotherhood against Nasser.
Brzezinski decided to launch a major “Islamic revolution” from Afghanistan (then governed by the Communist regime of Muhammad Taraki) and Iran (where he himself organized the return of Imam Ruhollah Khomeini. Subsequently, this Islamic revolution was to spread throughout the Arab world and take with them the nationalist movements associated with the USSR.
The operation in Afghanistan was an unexpected success: the jihadists of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) [8] recruited Muslims and, led by the anti-Communist billionaire Osama Bin Laden Brothers, launched a terrorist campaign that led the government to appeal to the Soviets. The Red Army entered Afghanistan and was bogged down there for five years, accelerating the fall of the USSR.
The operation in Iran was rather a disaster: Brzezinski was amazed to find that Khomeini was not the man he was told – an old Ayatollah trying to recover his estates confiscated by the Shah -, but a genuine anti-imperialist. Considering a little later that the word “Islamist” held not at all the same meaning for all, he decided to distinguish good Sunnis (collaborators) from the poor Shiites (anti-imperialist) and entrust the management of the former to Saudi Arabia.
Finally, considering the renewal of the alliance between Washington and Saud, President Carter announced, during his speech on the State of the Union on January 23, 1980, that henceforth access to Gulf oil was a goal related to US national security.
Since then, jihadists were tasked with all the low blows against the Soviets (and Russians) and against nationalist or recalcitrant Arab regimes.
…Things have returned to clarity in 2011 with the formal collaboration between the jihadists and NATO in Libya and Syria.
For 35 years, Saudi Arabia has financed and armed all political Muslims as long as (1) they were Sunnis, (2) they afirmed the business model of the United States as consistent with Islam and (3 ) that in the event their country had signed an agreement with Israel it would not be questioned
….while the Security Council has condemned the Islamic Emirate in its presidential statement of July 28th and in its resolution 2170 of August 15th, it is clear that the jihadist organization still has state support: in violation of the principles recalled or enacted by these texts: Iraqi oil plundered by the EIS transits through Turkey. It is loaded at the port of Ceyhan on oil tankers calling in Israel, then returning to Europe. For now, the names of corporate sponsors are not established, but the responsibility of Turkey and Israel is evident.
Russian and Syrian foreign ministers, Sergey Lavrov and Walid Moallem, called for building an international coalition against terrorism. However, the United States, while preparing ground operations on Syrian territory with the British (“Force Black intervention” [12]), refuses to ally itself with the Syrian Arab Republic and continues to demand the resignation of the elected President Bashar al-Assad.
…Does the United States really have the intention of destroying the Islamic Emirate they created and no longer control or will they simply weaken it and keep it as a regional policy tool?…”
***
ISIS terrorists kill and crucify citizen in Deir Ezzor:
“Terrorists from the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) on Friday executed a citizen in al-Ashara town in Deir Ezzor countryside.
The town’s locals told SANA that ISIS terrorists killed Ali al-Khalaf on charges of “apostasy and infidelity,” before crucifying him at the town’s square.
Killings, crucifixions, beheadings and lashing are daily occurrences in the areas overrun by ISIS.”
***
Haidar calls for devising a clear international policy for combating terrorism:
“State Minister for National Reconciliation Affairs Ali Haidar on Wednesday met director of the UN envoy’s office Martin Griffith, affirming to him the need for devising a clear international policy for combating terrorism.
Haidar said that Europeans must be aware of Syria’s cultural and historic background, and that what is currently needed is creating an objective atmosphere for dialogue and involving all elements of the Syrian society in the reconciliation process.
He said that the UN envoy must help build trust and work and coordinate with the State Ministry to support reconciliations.
…Griffith stressed the need for preparing a work plan that involves reconciliations and the reconciliations process.
Haidar also met the central committee for popular reconciliations, asserting that the conditions are currently suitable for benefitting from social and civil initiatives to achieve reconciliation as the international climate is currently favoring resolving the crisis in Syria by combating terrorism, reconciliation, and dialogue.
He noted that civil initiatives can do more than official efforts, and that any Syrian can become involved in them, lauding the efforts exerted by the committee and the achievements it realized.
…Haidar met a delegation from the National Accord Forum, discussing with them the Forum’s role in terms of reconciliation efforts, noting that the State Ministry is committed to dealing with the issue of missing people and abductees.”
***
Western Leaders Fear-Monger to Mobilize Support for Air-Strikes on Syria:
“…Western officials have ramped up a campaign of deception to provide a pretext for military intervention in Syria to combat ISIS but which may very well serve as a Trojan horse to escalate the war on the Syrian government.
The foundations of the campaign were laid in March, when US officials began warning that Islamists bent on launching strikes against Europe and the United States were massing in Syria. [1] The campaign kicked into high gear with ISIS’s territorial gains in Iraq and the organization’s beheading of US journalist James Foley. Now US officials say they are contemplating air strikes against ISIS targets in Syria.
To justify the possibility of an air-war in Syria, US officials employ nebulous language about safeguarding US “security interests,” but neglect to spell out what those interests are or how they’re threatened. US defense secretary Chuck Hagel calls ISIS an “imminent threat to every interest we have,” adding that ISIS “is beyond anything that we’ve seen.” [2] Hagel doesn’t say how ISIS is a threat to even one US interest, let alone all of them, while his elevation of ISIS to a threat “beyond anything that we’ve seen” is transparent fear-mongering.
Hagel also invokes 9/11, suggesting that ISIS “is more of a threat than al Qaeda was before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.” [3] Invoking 9/11 invites the conclusion that without airstrikes on Syria to eliminate ISIS, that an attack on the United States on an order greater than 9/11 is a serious possibility, if not inevitable. France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, also points to 9/11 to buttress the case for airstrikes, noting that “The attacks in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, cost $1 million. Today, we estimate the Islamic State has several billions.” The obvious conclusion Fabius wants us to draw is that ISIS will launch thousands of 9/11s. [4] The implied conclusion, however, is no more credible than the implied conclusion that the United States is on the brink of vaporizing the planet because it now has a nuclear arsenal that is vastly greater than the tiny one it had when it atom-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Capability does not necessarily equate to motivation or action. What’s more, the “FBI and Homeland Security Department say there are no specific or credible terror threats to the U.S. homeland from the Islamic State militant group.” [5]
General Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered his own contribution to the emerging campaign of fear-mongering. Dempsey observed that ISIS aspires to absorb “Israel, Jordan, Kuwait and Syria into its caliphate.” [6] This is manifestly beyond ISIS’s capabilities, and merits no serious discussion. Dempsey nevertheless adds that if ISIS “were to achieve that vision, it would fundamentally alter the face of the Middle East and create a security environment that would certainly threaten us in many ways.” [7] This is tantamount to saying “If Haiti had an arsenal of 200 thermonuclear weapons and an effective anti-ballistic missile defense system it would certainly threaten us in many ways.” What’s important here is the word “if.” If Barack Obama was a woman he would be the first female US president. If ISIS has the capability of absorbing a large part of the Middle East into a caliphate, it would be a threat to US control of the Middle East. But ISIS does not have this capability. Still, even if it did, it would not be a threat to US security, but to the security of Western oil industry profits.
… beheadings, carried out by ISIS and other Islamists in Syria, and those carried out by US-ally Saudi Arabia against its own citizens, have hardly galvanized Washington to action. Washington’s Saudi ally “beheaded at least 19 convicted criminals since Aug. 4, nearly half of them for nonviolent offenses, including one for sorcery.” [9] These beheadings have been passed over by Western leaders in silence. They certainly haven’t been invoked as a reason to launch air strikes on the Saudi tyranny.
…Washington’s campaign to mobilize public opinion for air strikes on Syria, then, has nothing whatever to do with eradicating medieval menaces. Nor has it anything to do with preventing the rise of a caliphate in the greater part of the Middle East, since ISIS hasn’t the capability to accomplish this aim.
Lastly, until ISIS achieved startling territorial gains in Iraq, Washington was perfectly willing to allow, indeed, even to foster (what it now calls) “the cancer” of ISIS to “metastasize” throughout Syria. It expressed no apprehensions then about ISIS launching 9/11-style attacks on the United States, and did nothing to stop the flow of money to the anti-Assad group from supporters based in countries that make up its Friends of Syria (read Friends of US Imperialism) coalition. Warnings of an ISIS-engineered 9/11-style attack are, therefore, pure fear-mongering.
In light of the above, we ought to ask whether, once launched, a US air-war in Syria will expand its target list from ISIS to Syrian government forces? Is the campaign to mobilize public support for an air war against ISIS in Syria a Trojan horse to escalate the war on the Assad government, and on a broader level, against the interlocked Hezbollah-Syria-Iran resistance against US domination of Western Asia?“
***
see more at: endthesanctions.comFiled under: Syria