Speaking for an audience gathered by the New America Foundation, U.S. Ambassador and National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice laid out the Administration’s case for intervention in Syria on the basis of the regime’s chemical weapons use.
Hitting the keys:
Chemical weapons are different from conventional in scope and scale;
Syrian stockpiles among the largest in the world;
Only Assad has chemical weapons stocks, “the opposition does not”;
Senior officers planned the August 21 attack and covered the evidence with subsequent shelling;
The Assad regime has used chemical weapons since March, and with fewer casualties, but the regime appears to be lowering the threshold for use;
Failure to respond means that more will die from similar attacks, that the same will bring us closer to the day when chemical weapons are used against Americans abroad and at home, and that the door will be opened to the use of other weapons of mass destruction and the madmen that would use them.
That leaves out a lot (I just couldn’t scribble fast enough), but Rice went on to discuss the meaning of a limited, defined, proportional response to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons, noting that such an effort would take away any battlefield advantage to the regime relative to their cost to use.
Said Rice: “The United States will not take sides in sectarian struggles . . . but can and will stand up for certain principles in the region.”
Update – 9/9/2013/1337ET
” . . . this atrocity has been most gut wrenching . . . children lined up in shrouds, their voices forever silenced, devastated mothers and fathers kissing their children goodbye, pulling the white sheet up around their faces as if tucking them in. There are no words . . . for capturing such infinite cruelty. Where words fail us, actions must not.”
To this day, many Jews continue to decry an evident lack of interest in saving Jewish lives either at the start of Hitler’s genocidal campaign or toward the end when rail lines may have been bombed to slow the feed to the ovens.
Well, here we are again, but it’s not the Jews who are suffering.
In fact, many in the path of Assad’s brutality would seem to hate America and Jews and “the west” at the very least out of language habit, although with the large and loose assembly of Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda-type forces displaying their own brutality in the field, more than and other than talk must be shaping defense and political policy between the White House and the Pentagon.
This business of discerning who to save continues to have a “no good dog in the fight” feel to it, this despite assurances from Qatar and the rallying presence of General Salim Idris, who may be the commander in the western suit but not the supreme disciplining force across his own battle space.
* * *
Syria may also remind how for all the philosophical and political talk, the business of war remains intensely geographical (spatial) and physical in nature.
For one thing, Syria has become the most isolated and transparent hot conflict and political laboratory on the planet. Not only do the primary antagonists rate among the least sympathetic of human figures — again: the forces of a brutal dictatorship would seem to share the field, in part, with those of the most absurd religious extremism — but they’re doing “their thang” across a landscape broad and remote enough (and, damaged and emptying enough) to afford, from the talk to the walk, their own display.
Approach it with a toolkit — a few ships, say — or roll it into the operatory known as the UN, but give it a good look because, at the moment, the Syrian Civil War is its own machine with the broken and working parts fairly well lit up for viewing.
* * *
No one really wants to bring peace to that sandbox of a nation, no more than the local constabulary wants to knock on the door behind which a vicious domestic has broken out with flying furnishings, which one hears through the walls, and perhaps broken bottles, knives, and guns, which, alas, one must open the door to see.
At least on a “domestic” the scale is small and the police a force larger than it.
A civil war across a landscape awash in criminal and gambler’s money, arms, blood, death, and suffering and steeped in obsessive cruel and vengeful thinking — that’s a whole other threshold for crossing, one for which the confirmed use of chemical weapons takes the absurdity and inhumanity of it beyond the capacity of conscience for either bearing or controlling.
Truly, a whole world is watching Syria, and I should think that it must be thinking about what it is actually seeing and doing so in ways apart from immediate self-interest, for in the theater we may now call “Syria On Display” what would seem to be on display would seem to comprise also the worst of the worst behavior in humanity.
* * *
Just a moment for fiction here:
“I kill you and cut out your heart and eat it!”
______
“I make you and your people — infants, children, mothers, old men — die in agony without warning. And I do it with impunity!”
* * *
Which world do you want to live in: the one that intervenes — or the one that let’s it go on?
Syria has serious problems, but it appears no one has yet figured out to whom those problems belong.
Then too while the world believes it watches such a spectacle from the outside, that would seem true only until it discovers itself inside of it after all.
Indeed, in the First Age of the Internet (or is it “Internet 2.0” or “3.0”) and an era filled with agressive Islamism and related violence, we all may have to ask whether state boundaries serve to isolate cultural and political systems in necessary ways while also guiding and defining a practical global politics in ways that may have been more helpful as little as 15 years ago.
The congressman, who opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the military surge in Afghanistan, strongly supports a “surgical strike” against Syria’s chemical weapons capabilities.
From the start of the Syrian conflict, President Obama has wanted to take two very different approaches to it. On the one hand, he has been disciplined about the definition of American interests and the use of force. On the other hand, he has sought a way to respond to Bashar Assad’s human-rights atrocities.
The United States must intervene in Syria for humanitarian reasons.In 1994, the world watched as Hutu soldiers, armed with machetes, hacked apart the Rwandan countryside. Despite clear evidence of genocide from the United Nations observers and human rights watch groups, the U.S. decided it had no permanent interests in the region and sending a small deployment of soldiers would have been too risky. By the time the civil war ended three months later, 900,000 Rwandans had been slaughtered.
They are embarrassed to be associated with the amateurism of the Obama administration’s attempts to craft a plan that makes strategic sense. None of the White House staff has any experience in war or understands it. So far, at least, this path to war violates every principle of war, including the element of surprise, achieving mass and having a clearly defined and obtainable objective.
Perhaps the two boys are playing an old game with old cards and broken chips.
“I see you lost some states there,” says one.
“The cause lost some states, but, you know, people don’t change much. They’re still ours, and I see there’s more like them on the table.”
* * *
It’s an evil old game cooked by one party with crude assumptions: the other cannot walk away; the other cannot win; the other is there for beating and controlling; the stakes will be useful, pleasing, but of themselves are not important.
Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Thursday the United States — which, in addition to being one of his country’s chief adversaries, has led the push to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government over chemical weapons — has no right to make “humanitarian claims (given) their track record” in Iraq, Afghanistan and at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Putin said this week that any one-sided action would be rash. But he said he doesn’t exclude supporting U.N. action if it’s proven that the Syrian government used poison gas on its own people.
“Leaning forward” is one of Donald Rumsfeld’s favorite expressions. An old cold-war term, familiar to soldiers and spies, it means the willingness to be aggressive, to take risks. “I want every one of you to know how forward-leaning we are,” the secretary of Defense told a room full of Marine generals and Navy admirals at the North Island Naval Air Station, near San Diego, last month.
So somebody overheard something — purely circumstantial guff is what that comes to.
So we’ll go on but with something like ‘preponderance of the evidence” for guidance.
* * *
With Maher al Assad well known and with a peerless reputation, some media have dragged out an old familiar (to policy wonks): Bandar bin Sultan.
Beneath the banner, “Saudi Arabia’s ‘Chemical Bandar’ behind the Syrian chemical attacks?”, RT came out shouting, “Nothing the US claims about what happened in Syria adds up. We are being asked to believe an illogical story, when it is much more likely that it was Israel and Saudi Arabia who enabled the Obama Administration to threaten Syria with war” about half a day ago.
Of course, those who may lie know it’s the first one that counts, so going on to say, “The Obama Administration’s intelligence report on Syria was a rehash of Iraq,” seems only fair.
This finger pointing at the Saudi prince has been joined by, among others DigitalJournal, CounterPunch, OpEd News (from the video on the page and within its first 11 seconds, “It is growing increasingly possible that public outcry might make the imperial force of American exceptionalism with its humanitarian war sites set on Syria back down or at the very least delay”), PressTV, MintPress News, Larouche Pac, InfoWars, etc.
For InfoWars, Paul Joseph Watson wraps up with something between a disclaimer and validation:
UPDATE: Associated Press contacted us to confirm that Dale Gavlak is an AP correspondent, but that her story was not published under the banner of the Associated Press. We didn’t claim this was the case, we merely pointed to Gavlak’s credentials to stress that she is a credible source, being not only an AP correspondent, but also having written for PBS, BBC and Salon.com.
Proving integrity may be as difficult — it certainly is a sensitive issue — as proving dishonesty in a dimension or region in behavior in which plans, good or evil, rife with brutality, deflection, dishonesty, and disingenuous speech or listening, searching, defensive, and protective — are put together out of range of public sight and oversight.
* * *
If rebel forces suffered a mortal oops, it would seem more characteristic in Arab language culture to point the finger at someone else.
If a brigade under Maher al Assad’s command done it, it would be mafia cool to do it — record it, leak it, plaster it across the web — as rebels.
According to Iran’s PressTV, Bandar was under house arrest for an attempted coup,[35][36] while opposition sources said he was in Dhaban Prison.[34] Some rumors alleged that his coup was exposed by Russian intelligence services because of his frequent trips to Moscow to encourage cooperation against Iran.[34]
A month ago rebels fired rockets at Bashar’s motorcade as he headed for a Mosque in the centre of Damascus. The attempt to kill the President failed but one of his bodyguards, said to have been a particular favourite of his children Hafez, Karim and Zein was killed.
Many inside and outside Syria believe this may have been the last straw for the hot-headed Maher. No assassination attempt of Bashar al-Assad could go unpunished, especially not one in the heart of the capital.
The answer to “Syria’s CW Whodunit” may come to light if one intelligence industry or another turns up its cards and reveals its methods, capabilities, and limitations.
“So-and-so said” seems to be working to confuse rather than inform the public.
In addition to the challenge involving “Political Spychology” there is that other political psychology involving the character in personality associated with “malignant narcissism”, the features of which include delusions of grandeur, messianic complexes, paranoia, resistance to criticism, etc. (I’ll lay out a page on the language associated with that subject soon).
Through the lens that looks into dictatorship and across dictatorships, things may look a little different, for the want to control the subjugated by controlling a large information environment (“gaslighting” on a large scale) would seem inseparable from other behaviors having to do with hiding things while deeply controlling others.
This humility about the difficulty of reporting on a covert, invisible attack in the midst of a chaotic civil war actually adds to the credibility of the Mint account. It’s those who are most certain about matters of which they clearly lack firsthand knowledge who should make us most skeptical.
It’s not such a silly question. After all, the Americans are continually attacking everybody, aren’t they?
Then there’s the Israelis always doing a bit of assassinating, phosphorus spraying and creeping genocide in Palestine (although they’re never particular about confining their activities to Palestine).
“The Mosques are our barracks; the minarets our bayonets. The domes are our helms. The believers are our soldiers”
This was the Islamist poem quoted by the mayor of Siirt, Turkey in December 1997. Charged with using inflammatory speech, he was ejected from office and sentenced to jail by the Ankara High Court.
Today he is president [STET] of Turkey. During a decade in office, he has slowly but inexorably pushed secular Turkey, a member of NATO, toward an unabashedly Islamist future.
Only a few years ago, conservative “Islamophobes” would raise the call for “moderate Muslims”: where are you? why do you not protest? why are you silent on Osama Bin Laden and so many, too many, murderous acts against unarmed others whom you do not know?
Times change.
Islamic humanism and pluralism, or perhaps I should put the “humanism and pluralism” first, restating all of a contemporary and thoughtful cast as “Humanist and Pluralist” (to be followed by cultural-ethnic-religious affiliation from “Atheist” to “Polytheist”).
One way or the other, we’re stuck with “us” — all of us — and we know that in the main “humanity of humanity” that we are not murderers and should not be so beset by those whom we know are exactly that and nothing much beyond.
He was given a ten-month prison sentence (of which he served less than four months, from 24 March 1999 to 27 July 1999)[21] for reciting a poem in Siirt in December 1997, which, under article 312/2 of the Turkish penal code was regarded as an incitement to commit an offense and incitement to religious or racial hatred.[22] It included verses translated as “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers….”[10] The aforementioned verses, however, are not in the original version of the poem. The poem was from a work written by Ziya Gökalp, a pan-Turkish activist of the early 20th century.[7] Erdoğan claimed the poem had been approved by the education ministry to be published in textbooks.[23] With the conviction, Erdoğan was forced to give up his mayoral position. The conviction also stipulated a political ban, which prevented him from participating in parliamentary elections. He completed his sentence on 24 July 1999.
Note: Turkey’s current President is Abdullah Gül; Erdoğan serves as Prime Minister.
However, I say in full confidence and pride that the secular democracy and civic society that the U.S.A. has produced so far are still the healthiest on earth and the best available attempt to understand God’s pluralistic creation of humanity.
This morning’s live feedfrom Fox featuring President Obama and Prime Minister Reinfeldt stunned me, really, as being the most open, most candid, most off-the-cuff press conference I’ve been aware of since the inauguration.
In it, Obama talked about Syria every which way — either he couldn’t get away from the subject or the reporters could not — including asserting that a transition from the Assad regime seemed impossible given the tens of thousands of civilian lives taken by the regime. Obama then noted that President Putin seemed to disagree with that logic, thereby throwing the policy-on-Syria hot potato to Putin who may look increasingly disingenuous and transparent clinging to his lines on behalf of Bashar and Maher al Assad.
If the “center will not hold” will there be a center?
When I started receiving the CTC Sentinel (from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point) I don’t believe I was vetted in any way but, so my impression was, on a controlled list for a publication neither secret nor to be redistributed.
Again, that was some years ago, and here I may be merely befuddled, paranoid, whatever.
Over the years, I’ve kept reference to CTC to myself and partially for the effects of its “granularity” — the detail in reported relationships — involved in combat arenas from Afghanistan to Somalia. Such material, I thought, wouldn’t tell anyone involved on any side of “field operations” what they didn’t already know, but it would suggest how deeply American defense intelligence and analysis gets into societies of interest, and that may have promoted some resentments in my social networks.
A few weeks ago I had cause to ask CTC (Facebook) about distribution and got back this answer: “We publish all of our research in the open source (on our website and in social media), and from there, we don’t have any control over its distribution.”
So there.
Short of subscribing to Jane’s, taking lonely walks (in the rain) around Foggy Bottom, and hanging out in Georgetown (now that I’m 90 minutes northwest of all of that — way out of town!), I think the following two links to Combating Terrorism Center and Foreign Policy (Magazine) reports are pretty good — and granular.
Rebels have been told by these states that they must endorse the SMC and its politics to gain access to future arms shipments.[5] Recently, the United States, the United Kingdom and France have all indicated that they will channel money and possibly weapons via the SMC.[6]
The SMC has provided wildly varying estimates of the total number of fighters in its member groups. In June 2013, Idris claimed to control 80,000 fighters, but days later an SMC representative insisted that the true figure is 320,000.[7] In practice, a meaningful headcount of rebels is almost impossible to make, both due to the scarcity of reliable information and to myriad problems of definition.[8] There is no disputing, however, that most of Syria’s large rebel factions have chosen to publicly align themselves with the SMC, recognizing it as the best way to tap into Gulf, Western and other support.
“We should all be aware of the fact that when revolutionary – not evolutionary – changes come, things can get even worse. The intelligentsia should be aware of this. And it is the intelligentsia specifically that should keep this in mind and prevent society from radical steps and revolutions of all kind. We’ve had enough of it. We’ve seen so many revolutions and wars. We need decades of calm and harmonious development.”
Yes, sir! Says I, but, say, didn’t you put Maher al-Assad back in the fray?
We’re not going to get away from Syria’s chief challenge and problem, i.e., that of an absent middle or moderating political base that has left much of the the conflict “on the ground” to tyrants and extremists.
The AP interview covers, among a few other items, Putin’s views on CWs, S-300s, Obama, Snowden, gays, and terrorists.
The other great American ally in the region, Israel, has for the most part recused itself from the Syrian conflict. Its only direct action has been to strike Hezbollah supply networks that might have carried threatening missiles into Lebanon, and to shell Syrian fighters who brought their war too close to the Israeli frontier. In fact, although Saudi Arabia and Israel are technically enemies, their interests coincide very closely in Syria. Both want to see Iran weakened, neither wants to see Assad last, and neither want to see the Brotherhood or al Qaeda take control. In such a situation, a protracted war draining the resources of its enemies is not the worst thing that could happen from Israel’s point of view.
We don’t put humans in zoos (except for criminals best kept in cages): some “uncontacted people” we, well, the world of scholars, try to leave alone; some primitive tribes enjoy nominal to effective state-based protective security with freedom to choose their communal way exclusively or assimilate incrementally under their own volition.
Noting that and sometimes likening Sunni vs. Shiite strife to “two mad wasps in a bell jar,” one may well view Syria’s agony and its surround of political drivers, from the post-Soviet interest of neo-oligarch Russia to the alien-to-the-west ambitions of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as taking place in a political crucible so isolated as to be compared an island or pit expressly designed for viewing Homo sapiens sapiens at its worst.
It’s not called a “theater” for nothin’.
* * *
Last Wednesday, in the hours after a horrific chemical attack east of Damascus, an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanged panicked phone calls with a leader of a chemical weapons unit, demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people. Those conversations were overheard by U.S. intelligence services, The Cable has learned.
I may disagree here with Christopher Dickey as regards the effects of a punitive strike against the Syrian military to discourage additional chemical weapons attacks: the mentality involved has long proven itself beyond criticism, conscience, and prudence.
Maher is accused of multiple human rights abuses and is considered the most feared man in Syria. Aside from the recent chemical attacks, there are several examples of horrible atrocities carried out by troops he commands. In March 2011, his fourth division lead a siege against a “group of schoolboys” who were calling for Bashar to leave. Maher ordered them all killed.
Theologist Thomas Berry placed man as the enabled living agent in an unfolding earth process: we’re able to live with the earth, respond to our own presence in it (as we do with anti-pollution controls, laws, and strategies). Beside that thought I would place the idea that the World Wide Web and its social networks form a nerve-type skein around the globe’s human affairs — even “human process” — too, and we know where life is burning and where it is sweet, where correction is wanted and peace is needed.
I’ve never really liked the brand name “Google” (goes with a child’s rattling toy) nor the slogan “Islamic Awakening” but ironically, oddly, both terms may refer to an organismic acquisition of a new consciousness and conscience. Not since God sewed skins for Adam and Even on their way out into their human journey has mankind enjoyed such an expansion of awareness.
Whatever the cloaks and covers, the excuses and the temptations, it’s not what anyone wants or should want.
What is happening around Syria, whether with concerns for refugees, with “tracking” the conflict, with ideas in an Awesome Conversation taking place around the world in real time 24/7/365, that is what is wanted.
BackChannels 