Obama’s Bombs

The Syrian people are holding their breaths. And if you read Western media and believe their correspondents in … Beirut (who are surrounded by March 14 supporters who are members of the same Saudi coalition with the Syrian exile opposition), then the Syrian people – who have been receiving bombs from the Syrian regime, the Syrian armed opposition and Israel – are eager for more bombs from Barack Obama to fall on them. The West never intervenes and never invades and never enslaves and never colonizes without invoking high moral values. Why should this time be different? We knew that both John Kerry and Obama would invoke high moral views and feign outrage. They want us to believe that they just could not stomach watching scenes of carnage in Syria. But why did their stomach not turn when they watched scenes of carnage of the US-funded Egyptian army? And what about Bahrain and Palestine? But the list is too long.

But Kerry was more audacious. He stumbled upon new adjectives for Bashar: a “thug and murderer.” But why did Kerry have intimate one-on-one meetings with the thug and murderer, and why did he have private family dinners with the thug and murderer and his wife? Western governments often pretend that they never knew that their allies and friends were committing human rights abuses until they decide to take a stand for reasons that have nothing to do with human rights abuses.

But Obama drew a line in the sand and created a red line and is now compelled by virtue of imperial hubris and machismo to bomb. Not that Obama has stopped bombing. Thus far, Obama has bombed Mali, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the list is growing. The man who faulted Bush for launching a “dumb war” (his language carries no sense of idealism, of course), is about to launch another “dumb war” by his own terminology. A sign of typical American imperialist arrogance is the insistence that the US can manage to keep an attack or a war of aggression “limited.” The US engagement in Lebanon between 1982 and 1984 was supposed to be limited until it got out of hand and until Reagan declared – not an end to the US involvement – but a mere “re-deployment” of US troops (and the US troops were never re-deployed back in Lebanon since.)

US media typically cheer any president who is about to launch war on another country. In the 30 years that I have lived in the US, I would say that US media consistently support military interventions by a sitting president with the exception of interventions in Latin America. When it comes to US interventions in Latin America, some in the US establishment media raise questions and express skepticism. But that is not the case when a US president declares war on Middle East or African countries. There you see liberals and conservatives in agreement. Nicholas Kristof (the patronizing columnists for The New York Times who fancies himself as a modern Indiana Jones-type who goes on a white horse to formerly-colonized lands to rescue native women from bad native men) sounds very much John McCain when it comes to Syria. For some reason – call it Israel – there is no right and left, Republicans or Democrats, when it comes to the Middle East.

The US plan is based on a simple premise: that the US will satisfy – not the Syrian people – but rising demands from Saudi Arabia (the symbol of the falsehoods of US rhetoric on democracy and human rights) for military “action” in Syria, and that the limited nature of the motives of Obama would certainly result in limited consequences and responses. Obama has been cautious on Syria and not for any moral or strategic reasons per se. His caution represents the lack of consensus in the pro-Israeli community. For the first time, the president of the US considers a major military intervention in the Middle East without having clear specific guidance (or instructions in some cases) from AIPAC. AIPAC has been rather absent in the debate on Syria.

The pro-Israeli community in Washington, DC (call it the US Congress) has been of two minds about US policy in Syria. On the one hand, Israel appreciates the tight control that the Assad ruling dynasty has exercised over the border between Syria and occupied Palestine, and on the other hand, Israel is fully aware that the fall of the regime would result in mini-Islamic republics and sectarian enclaves around Syria, and that armed groups which are hostile to Israel would for the first time since 1973 find it easy to attack Israeli targets.

But American military intervention could easily spiral out of hand: the same Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah coalition that agreed to not respond to previous Israeli attacks on Syria may find it more difficult to not respond to an American attack on Syria. If the coalition finds that there is a Western appetite for bringing down the regime by force, or even if they suspect that this was the thrust of the US action, then all bets are off. The coalition may resort to the “all-out scenario” that some Iranian and Hezbollah leaders sometimes hint at.

But even if US military action doesn’t trigger the “all-out scenario,” the coalition will now have a much freer hand in open and more extensive military intervention in Syria. The US and its Western allies which are now openly intervening in Syria (as if the imminent US attack represents the first US military intervention in Syria when the US itself was presiding over the rebels’ assault on Damascus that preceded the news of a chemical attack in Rif of Damascus), will have a hard time reiterating their previous calls for Hezbollah to end its intervention in Syria.

We don’t know much about the Russian role in Syria beyond what is reported in the news, but it is unlikely that Putin will play the role of the savior of the regime, as some propagandists in the pro-Syrian regime media are predicting. All sorts of tales about Putin’s meeting with Bandar are being spun, and the famous journalist, Sami Kleib, wrote an account in which Putin urges Bandar to “go back to the central Palestinian question” instead of whipping up hostility against Iran. Putin, in those accounts, sounds more like George Habash. Statements and rhetoric that never were used even by Soviet leaders are being attributed to Putin in pro-Syrian regime media. The bombs will fall on Syria, and more innocent Syrians will die. The US never drops bombs without killing civilians. But the spectacle has been seen before and the stage will be set yet again: The White House or the State Department will invite “acceptable” Syrians (i.e. those hand-picked by Saudi intelligence service) and they will swear that US bombs were quite enjoyable and pleasurable. They will even chant that they will sacrifice themselves “with blood and with spirit” for Obama.

Chemical weapons may have been used in Syria: we have to wait to for UN confirmation because the US and its allies can’t be trusted in any of their claims. They have too long of a history of deception and lies. And both sides in Syria (the regime and the pro-Saudi and pro-Qatari armed groups) have been confirmed as war criminals who are willing to resort to all brutal and savage methods to advance their causes. But who will punish whom in Syria? Does the US, after its savage assault in Fallujah, have any credibility on the subject of incendiary chemical weapons? And are the declarations of Western powers about the Middle East to ever be believed? And does anyone think that Ahmad al-Jarba represents anyone except Prince Bandar, who appointed him by virtue of his relations to two wives of the Saudi King? People in Syria should not be killed – not by conventional weapons and not by chemical weapons. But the US has a brilliant idea: It wants to drop more (presumably conventional) bombs on Syria in the name of ending (presumably only) chemical bombs in Syria.