Daily Times Editorial Sept 1, 2013

The Empire prepares to strike The US is ratcheting up its propaganda campaign to justify unilateral military action against Syria for the Bashar al-Assad regime’s alleged gas attack in Damascus. US Secretary of State John Kerry has made a strident case for the guilt of the regime even before the UN team in Damascus has reported back (latest reports say the team has left Syria on its way back to New York). Kerry bases himself on a four-page unclassified intelligence report produced by the US that in Washington’s eyes at least, clinches the case for military action against the “indiscriminate, inconceivable horror” perpetrated by the “thug and murderer” Bashar al-Assad. The report states that the Damascus attack, unlike earlier lesser estimates, killed 1,429 people, of whom 426 were children. This act cannot be allowed to go unpunished, according to Kerry, especially since it is only the latest in a series of such attacks over the past year. The US’s problem however is that it wants to avoid an open-ended commitment to a new war, while ensuring that such a gas attack is not repeated. How Washington intends to guarantee that it will not be dragged into what is likely to be an explosive fallout in the Middle East and further abroad of a unilateral military attack on Syria is known only to Kerry and the US administration. The rest of the world can only hold its breath at the audacity of the Empire. What beggars logic is that when the Damascus regime had UN investigators in Damascus (to look into reports of earlier gas attacks), why would it commit hara kiri by carrying out such an attack just a stone’s throw from where the UN team was staying? President Barack Obama has proved to be a worthy successor to George Bush (of the infamous ‘sexed up’ dossier purporting to show Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to justify the 2003 invasion and overthrow of Saddam). More accurately, as insightful observers of the Washington scene predicted in 2008 amidst the euphoria over a black man being elected president of the US for the first time in its slavery and racialism riddled history (no doubt a welcome development), Barack Obama would not be able to escape the clutches of the Washington defence, security and foreign policy establishment that considers itself the permanent guardian of US ‘interests’ worldwide. Everything since has gone according to the script. The Libyan intervention was facilitated by recourse to the Right to Protect (R2P) resolution of the UN Security Council and, much to Russia and China’s chagrin, later resulted in regime change and the murder of Gaddafi. This time round, Moscow and Beijing are far more sceptical, if not downright hostile, perhaps having concluded that R2P is merely a Trojan horse for the Right to Attack (R2A) and regime change. Washington therefore faces problems in persuading not only its war weary public (only 10 percent of the American people support another foreign war), but also sceptical US Congress members who advocate caution, unconvinced as they are by the administration’s briefings, and reluctant allies (the British parliament has voted against military action; only France is gung ho). If this translates into unilateral US military action without even the fig leaf of a UN mandate (as in Iraq in 2003), the world could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that the Empire is putting into motion a plan to degrade if not destroy the Syrian army through strikes. That would achieve a number of Washington’s goals in the region. One, it would pave the way for the Syrian rebels to make a comeback after disastrous recent setbacks on the battlefield. Two, it would remove the most consistent Arab regime to oppose Israel. Three, it would deprive Iran and Russia of one of their closest allies in the Arab world, thereby bringing satisfaction to Israel at the weakening of the front for resistance against its expansionist designs. What Washington is forgetting though is that such a blatant aggression against a sovereign country would evoke even more hatred and resistance to US interests in the Middle East, the Muslim world, and the globe at large. The Israeli tail may be wagging the US dog towards war once again, but saner voices in Washington need to restrain Obama from another adventure that could tip the scales further against the US worldwide in terms of credibility. Even more seriously, the prospect of US interests being hit all over the world should give pause to the warmongers in Washington.