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by JackRiddler » Fri Jul 05, 2013 10:50 am
by seemslikeadream » Fri Jul 05, 2013 10:52 am
by slimmouse » Tue Jul 09, 2013 6:00 am
According to a Fars News Agency report, senior intelligence officials from US-NATO and allied countries including the US, Britain, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Qatar met on June 7, behind closed door at the residence of the British Ambassador in Ankara.
The topic for discussion was the defeat of the US-NATO sponsored Al Nusrah rebels following the battle of Al Qusseir which led to the victory of Syrian forces. The planning of a renewed rebel offensive was envisaged:
“Top intelligence officials of the US, Britain, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan convened in an urgent meeting at the British ambassador’s residence in Ankara on June 7 to discuss an immediate rebel attack on the Syrian government and army positions in reprisal for the Syrian army’s recent victory in Al-Qusseir,” a liaison officer coordinating the meeting told FNA.
According to the report, the participants of this Ankara secret meeting included (with the exception of Jordan) the regional intelligence directors of the seven countries directly involved in supporting the insurrection.
The source, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of his information and for fear of his life, said, “All the aforesaid countries sent their regional directors to the meeting, except for Jordan which was represented at a lower level.”
The meeting acknowledged the lack of morale among rebel forces and the need “to assess the psychological impacts of the Syrian army’s victory in Al-Qusseir on rebel groups and work out a morale-boost response to Damascus.”
The formulation of a renewed and coordinated rebel offensive was outlined, including the channeling of additional sources of financing, the delivery of weapons to the Al Qaeda affiliated “opposition” rebels (in defiance of international law and US anti-terrorist legislation):
“Given the defeat and withdrawal of the rebel groups from Al-Qusseir, the meeting studied possible geopolitical replacements for delivering arms shipments to the rebels,” the source added and continued, “Also participants discussed the focal points and methods that need to be dealt with by the western and Arab media to boost the morale of the rebels.”
The source said participants also “decided to increase financial aids to the rebels through Saudi Arabia and Qatar”.
”They also discussed several plans to retaliate the rebels’ crushing defeat in Al-Qusseir,” he concluded.
(Fars News, July 6, 2013)
Two weeks following the Ankara intelligence meeting on June 7, The Friends of Syria gathered in Qatar (June 22, 2013). France’s President Francois Hollande and US Secretary of State John Kerry were present.
The representatives from the “11 core members” of the Friends of Syria group agreed in a final statement “to provide urgently all the necessary materiel and equipment to the opposition on the ground”. The aid to the rebels was to be channeled through the Syrian opposition’s Supreme Military Council.
In addition to the funds channeled by the 11 core member states of the Friends of Syria, large and undisclosed amounts of financial aid are being channeled through private foundations based in the Gulf States.
In recent developments, the Syrian opposition has chosen a new Saudi backed leader, Ahmad al-Jarba:
“Jarba belongs to the large al-Shammar tribe, whose members extend into Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and he is related by marriage to one of Saudi King Abdullah’s wives.”
by seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 13, 2013 4:16 pm
US Officials: Israel Behind Recent Syria Attack
Strikes Targeted Coastal Base in Latakia
by Jason Ditz, July 12, 2013
Last Friday, a series of explosions tore through a coastal base in the Syrian port city of Latakia, destroying a cache of anti-ship missiles acquired from Russia. No one claimed responsibility at the time.
But US officials are now confirming that the attack was the result of a series of Israeli airstrikes against Latakia, the latest in a series of Israeli attacks against Syrian military targets.
The strike killed between 10 and 20 Syrian soldiers according to various reports from last weekend, and Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon hinted at responsibility, saying that Israel would be blamed for any attack in the Middle East anyhow, but not denying anything.
It’s the fourth confirmed Israeli attack on Syria in the past six months, though Israel hasn’t officially commented on any of them and seems contented to just strike at will and forget about it.
by coffin_dodger » Thu Jul 18, 2013 3:18 pm
by seemslikeadream » Thu Jul 18, 2013 3:22 pm
by seemslikeadream » Mon Jul 22, 2013 9:20 am
Pentagon: Syria’s War Could Last for Years, Empower al-Qaeda
Dagestan President: Russia Needs to Stop Islamists Traveling to Syria
by Jason Ditz, July 21, 2013
Far from a foregone conclusion of a war that is always just a few weeks from being resolved, Pentagon officials say that the Syrian Civil War could well last for “multiple years” from this point without being settled.
The comments from Deputy DIA Director David Shedd also included a warning that al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda factions of the region, are gaining growing influence and could wind up taking over the rebellion outright as the war drags on.
The comments are being spun as an excuse for US intervention, though of course it can be debated that al-Qaeda already has effective control of the rebellion, at least the fighting forces with a meaningful impact, and that seems like a very good reason not to invade on their behalf.
Shedd claimed “at least 1,200″ different rebel factions, with a lot of them small local groups with a single grievance or two. He added that previous DIA predictions of Assad’s ousted in early 2013 had not panned out.
Concern about an Islamist takeover of the rebellion is also looming large in Russia, where the president of the subject Dagestani Republic Ramazan Abdulatipov urged the Federal Security Service to make it more difficult for Islamists in Russia’s southern regions to go to Syria and join the rebellion. Large numbers of fighters from the Caucasus nations have joined the rebellion in Syria, making up one of the largest foreign groups vying for influence.
by seemslikeadream » Mon Jul 22, 2013 12:11 pm
JULY 22, 2013
“Many, many months to multiple years.”
The Long War in Syria, and Why the U.S. Should Stay Out
by GARY LEUPP
Two years ago, Barack Obama announced that Syrian President Bashar Assad must “get out of the way.” “The time has come,” he declared on August 18, 2011, “for President Assad to step aside.”
Needless to say, Assad ignored him. He was probably not surprised at Obama’s demand, given the unrelenting U.S. hostility to his regime, and that of his father, Hafez Assad, for several decades. This is due mainly to Syria’s close relationship with Iran and its support for Lebanon’s Hizbollah and Palestinian organizations including Hamas, and the deployment of Syrian troops in Lebanon to 2005. U.S. hostility to Syria (listed by the State Department as a sponsor of terrorism) reflects that of Israel, which illegally occupies Syria’s Golan Heights.
The proximate reason for Obama’s call was that Assad had fired on his own people. One must question Obama’s authority to make that moral judgment, given that police in the U.S. fire on unarmed people, especially young black men, all the time (especially in Chicago, L.A. and Philadelphia); and that the U.S. arms security forces in countries including Egypt and Bahrain that fire on their people as well.
Obama was simultaneously (from March 2011) accusing Libya’s Moammar Qaddafi of “attacking his people” and planning mass slaughter (a charge many analysts questioned, there being little evidence for it). It was just another Big Lie, comparable to the Big Lie that the Taliban was in bed with Osama bin Laden and complicit in 9-11. Or that Saddam Hussein was aligned with al-Qaeda and producing weapons of mass destruction.
But it served as the pretext of U.S.-NATO intervention on behalf of armed rebels and their western-trained front men, who have plunged Libya into chaos and made it fertile ground for al-Qaeda-linked groups since the fall and murder of Qaddafi in October 2011.
On the other hand, the Obama administration did not call on Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to step down even as his forces fired on the people, killing 850 in 2011. It delayed giving Mubarak his marching orders until February, when the mass upheaval had become so powerful, and the U.S. so despised for its complicity in repression, that it became impossible to extend the Egyptian dictator further support. And it has never called upon the Bahraini king to step down, even as he attacks his own people. Many people paying attention see some hypocrisy here.
If Obama thought that Assad would be driven from power, or step down at his arrogant command, he was badly mistaken. David R. Shedd, deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, now says the conflict in Syria will likely last “many, many months to multiple years.” (I don’t believe he indicated, in a talk at the Aspen Security Forum, whether or not further supply aid from the U.S. would likely shorten the conflict. Imagine a proxy war going on a decade, like the U.S. proxy war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.)
There are several reasons for this projected long duration. Assad’s forces are stronger than Obama expected and have scored some notable victories lately against the rebels. The opposition is divided into about 1,200 groups. The strongest rebel military force is the al-Qaeda faction, the Al-Nusra Front. If the U.S. and its allies want to strengthen and use the non-jihadi forces (whom they are aiding with weaponry, and who may or may not wish to create a western-friendly, non-Islamist “democracy”) they will have a lot of work to do since even the “moderates” seem to appreciate the superior fighting skills of the Islamist fighters. And Russia and China stand behind Assad, promising to veto any UN resolution such as the one used to legitimate the assault on Libya, ostensibly to “protect” its people.
Nicholas Burns, a George W. Bush-era undersecretary of state, writing in March 2011 about U.S. support for anti-Qaddafi forces in Libya, noted, “This is the first time in American history when we have used our military power to prop up and possibly put in power a group of people we literally do not know.”
(The world has since come to know them, through such events as the attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi; the repeated resignations of ministers in the dysfunctional, impotent cabinet in Tripoli; the persecution of blacks and Tuaregs; inter-tribal clashes, etc.)
But it seems Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry would like to do this a second time—that is, take a risk and place in power people they don’t know. One wonders what their real reasons might be. Surely Israel plays a major role in their reasoning, but Israel may be ambivalent about U.S. arms to rebels who might be as hostile to it as Assad. And Assad has in fact offered to recognize Israel following the return of the Golan Heights. Israel appreciates the fact that he has maintained peace along the border, even importing Golan-grown apples. His secular, religiously tolerant Baathist regime is preferable to an Islamist one.
Surely a key U.S. goal is to weaken Iran, and the Syria-Iran-Hizbollah alliance. But if that goal were to be obtained through handing a central Arab state to al-Qaeda, would it be worth it?
Al-Qaeda once seemed scattered, vitiated, defeated. But then the U.S. invaded Iraq, and al-Qaeda which had never been there before mushroomed overnight in Al-Anbar province, causing the occupation big headaches. Libyan jihadis flocked to Iraq, and returning home created a new Maghreb branch of al-Qaeda, which in turn spawned a Sahel branch now causing mischief in Mali. The majority of the al-Nusra fighters in Syria seem to be arriving from Iraq.
Meanwhile U.S. missile strikes on Yemen build sympathy for Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula—totally counterproductive.
The lesson is, U.S. imperialism (which once worked alongside bin Laden in Afghanistan; and which alienated bin Laden through its unlimited support for Israel, its support for hated Arab regimes, its sanctions on Iraq which killed half a million children, etc.) positively nurtures al-Qaeda and its affiliates. Even as the interminable terror war justifies the limitless expansion of the surveillance state, unprecedented prosecution and abuse of whistle-blowers and the continued practice of torture.
The more the U.S. and its allies get involved in Syria, the more jihadis will likely get involved. Al-Qaeda has proven that it thrives on U.S. interventions. This is just one reason to demand the U.S. stay out of Syria.
by justdrew » Mon Jul 22, 2013 7:45 pm
Al Qaeda militants flee Iraq jail in violent mass break-out
By Kareem Raheem and Ziad al-Sinjary
BAGHDAD/MOSUL, Iraq | Mon Jul 22, 2013 8:51am EDT
(Reuters) - Hundreds of convicts, including senior members of al Qaeda, broke out of Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail as comrades launched a military-style assault to free them, authorities said on Monday.
The deadly raid on the high-security jail happened as Sunni Muslim militants are re-gaining momentum in their insurgency against the Shi'ite-led government that came to power after the U.S. invasion to oust Saddam Hussein.
Suicide bombers drove cars packed with explosives to the gates of the prison on the outskirts of Baghdad on Sunday night and blasted their way into the compound, while gunmen attacked guards with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
Other militants took up positions near the main road, fighting off security reinforcements sent from Baghdad as several militants wearing suicide vests entered the prison on foot to help free the inmates.
Ten policemen and four militants were killed in the ensuing clashes, which continued until Monday morning, when military helicopters arrived, helping to regain control.
By that time, hundreds of inmates had succeeded in fleeing Abu Ghraib, the prison made notorious a decade ago by photographs showing abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers.
"The number of escaped inmates has reached 500, most of them were convicted senior members of al Qaeda and had received death sentences," Hakim Al-Zamili, a senior member of the security and defense committee in parliament, told Reuters.
"The security forces arrested some of them, but the rest are still free."
One security official told Reuters on condition of anonymity: "It's obviously a terrorist attack carried out by al Qaeda to free convicted terrorists with al Qaeda."
A simultaneous attack on another prison, in Taji, around 20 km (12 miles) north of Baghdad, followed a similar pattern, but guards managed to prevent any inmates escaping. Sixteen soldiers and six militants were killed.
CONVOY ATTACK
Sunni insurgents, including the al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq, have been regaining strength in recent months and striking on an almost daily basis against Shi'ite Muslims and security forces amongst other targets.
The violence has raised fears of a return to full-blown conflict in a country where Kurds, Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims have yet to find a stable way of sharing power.
In the northern city of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber detonated a vehicle packed with explosives behind a military convoy in the eastern Kokchali district, killing at least 22 soldiers and three passers-by, police said.
Suicide bombings are the hallmark of al Qaeda, which has been regrouping in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city and capital of the Sunni-dominated Nineveh province.
A separate attack in western Mosul killed four policemen, police said.
Relations between Islam's two main denominations have been put under further strain from the civil war in Syria, which has drawn in Shi'ite and Sunni fighters from Iraq and beyond to fight against each other.
Recent attacks have targeted mosques, amateur football matches, shopping areas and cafes where people gather to socialize after breaking their daily fast for the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.
Nearly 600 people have been killed in militant attacks across Iraq so far this month, according to violence monitoring group Iraq Body Count.
That is still well below the height of bloodletting in 2006-07, when the monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.
by seemslikeadream » Tue Jul 23, 2013 8:48 am
Pentagon: Military Involvement In Syria Could Cost $1 Billion A Month
CATHERINE THOMPSON 8:07 AM EDT, TUESDAY JULY 23, 2013
The Pentagon has determined that U.S. military involvement in Syria could cost billions of dollars, the New York Times reported Monday.
A letter from Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) described the logistics and costs of several military options available to the United States in aiding the opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
In his letter, Dempsey estimated the cost of training rebel troops in Syria at almost $500 million a year, while employing long-range strikes on military targets could wind up costing billions, according to the Times. Factor in a no-fly zone, and the costs would be even higher.
Dempsey wrote that in hypothetical efforts to thwart the use of chemical weapons, “thousands of Special Operations forces and other ground forces would be needed to assault and secure critical sites” at costs of over $1 billion per month, as quoted by the Times.
by justdrew » Wed Jul 31, 2013 12:13 am
by seemslikeadream » Mon Aug 05, 2013 8:51 am
by Project Willow » Mon Aug 12, 2013 1:54 am
by seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 13, 2013 7:19 am
The ‘Do-Something’ Myth in Syria
August 12, 2013
A common refrain in Official Washington is that President Obama should have intervened militarily in Syria’s civil war and that somehow that would have solved the problem. But there’s no reason to think that U.S. meddling would do much good, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.
By Paul R. Pillar
As the Syrian civil war spun up and drew in radicals on the anti-government side, worries mounted in the West, to the point now of front-page attention in the New York Times, about a new extremist haven being established in Syria. How should we approach this problem?
One way we definitely should not approach it, which unfortunately has been all too common in overall discourse about the Syrian civil war, is to feel we must “do something” — anything — in response to our concerns. A more sober approach is to break the problem down into some constituent parts, each with an associated question.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
One question concerns exactly what is the danger we are worried about. The concept of a physical safe haven is one of the more overrated components of a presumed terrorist threat. In a globalized era, a patch of physical real estate has not proven to be one of the more important variables determining the degree of such a threat — and is less important than exploitable grievances in a target population. Preparations for significant terrorist attacks — including the big one, 9/11 — have not been confined to such a patch or depended on control of one.
Even if a physical haven contributes to the strength of a terrorist group, it is a fungible commodity. We used to talk more about Afghanistan as the critical place in this regard. Today there is more worry about Yemen, and more talk about a shift of the center of our fears from South Asia to there. Maybe some fear a shift from Yemen to Syria. If Syria were somehow brought under control, why wouldn’t there be further shifts elsewhere?
Even if we agree that precluding any physical haven for a terrorist group is preferable, the next question is what measures are available to the United States and how effective would they be in promoting that objective. The United States cannot determine the outcome of the Syrian civil war, short of large-scale military intervention that would be beyond the tolerance of the American public as well as being unacceptably costly in other respects and still would not achieve lasting positive effects.
Arguments that smaller forms of interference in the war would be enough to determine its outcome are based on multiple forms of wishful thinking. It is unrealistic to think that in the disorganized and ever-shifting Syrian opposition landscape, in which weapons often change owners and fighters often change primary allegiances, it is somehow possible to aid good rebels while vetting out the bad ones. It is also unrealistic to think that something like aid in the form of materiel buys moderation or buys gratitude.
Even if the course of the war were more subject to outside manipulation, a further question is what outcome of the war would be best with regard to the incipient terrorist haven we are supposed to be worried about. In the short term probably the best outcome in that respect would be prompt re-establishment of control by the Assad regime.
Over the longer term rule by a brutal autocracy with a narrow sectarian identity would not be good for counterterrorism, but that does not mean the most likely alternative would necessarily be any better. A lesson is provided by Libya, where enough time has passed since the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi to demonstrate how the new order may not be much of an order at all but a form of disorder that provides more operating space for violent groups than there was before.
Regardless of the nature of the regime, the United States can consider unilateral means of trying to attack would-be terrorist havens, especially with drones. Here the most relevant lesson is in Yemen, where, as Gregory Johnsen explains, the net counterterrorist effect of the drone strikes has probably been negative, owing to the resentment and revenge that the strikes have incurred.
A broader question concerns the overall strategy to apply to whatever terrorist threat does emanate from Syria. Fareed Zakaria has the right idea, after rejecting counterinsurgency and more focused kinetic methods such as the drones, in recommending a third approach: “to try to get local governments to fight the terrorists.” Zakaria acknowledges that some of the very places we are concerned about are in large part ungovernable, yet points out:
“The best policy in the long run would be to shift the struggle over to locals, who can most effectively win a long war against militants in territory they know better than any outsiders. It also shifts the struggle over to Muslims, who can most effectively battle al-Qaeda in the realm of ideas.”
This does not mean the United States doing nothing. It can do a lot to affect the environment in which terrorists or would-be terrorists, in Syria or elsewhere, are either empowered or marginalized.
Marc Lynch provides an insightful explanation of how the early chapters of the Arab Spring marginalized them, by effecting meaningful political change without resort to the sort of violence pitched by the extremists. Much of that beneficial effect has been undone, Lynch points out, by more recent developments such as the military coup in Egypt and the blurring of distinctions between Islamist terrorists and the Muslim Brotherhood.
The implications for U.S. policy ought to be plain: construct policy toward politics and political conflicts in the Middle East that weaken, rather than strengthen, the extremist narrative. Besides policy toward the current situation in Egypt, this also involves exercising enough clout and political courage to make success possible in the just-begun negotiations to address what is the most salient issue to people across the Middle East: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Fortunately no one seems to be advocating anything like a repetition of the Iraq War, one of the chief selling points of which had to do with supposedly striking a blow against al-Qaeda-style terrorism. But lest we forget: among the enormous costs of that blunder was the creation of a haven of sorts for Islamist terrorists that did not previously exist, and the creation of a terrorist group — al-Qaeda in Iraq — that did not previously exist.
The legacy of that result is being felt very directly today in the activity of extremists in Syria.
by seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 15, 2013 7:16 am
Blaming Obama for Syrian Mess
August 14, 2013
Exclusive: As the Syrian civil war drags on, al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists are emerging as the fiercest fighters in the rebel coalition and complicating how the conflict can be resolved. So, U.S. neocons are trying to pin the blame on President Obama, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
The neocons, who provided the propaganda framework for the disastrous Iraq War, are creating a new and dangerous conventional wisdom on Syria, blaming the emerging hardline jihadist dominance of the anti-government opposition on President Barack Obama’s failure to intervene militarily much earlier.
Official Washington is now awash in the message that Obama’s grudging agreement to deliver some light weapons to non-Islamist rebels is a case of “too little, too late.” A corollary of this neocon analysis is that only a much more aggressive U.S. military policy, including air strikes against Syrian government targets, can now salvage the situation by forcing President Bashar al-Assad into negotiations preconditioned on his surrender.
National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice briefs President Barack Obama on foreign policy developments during Obama’s summer break on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, on Aug. 12, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
In other words, the neocons, who survived the Iraq War debacle with amazingly little harm to their standing within the Establishment, are offering their usual response to every political crisis in the Muslim world: U.S. military intervention and forced “regime change” of a leader deemed hostile to Israel.
However, the neocons are again living in their own reality. The truth is that it has been the Syrian opposition that has been the chief obstacle to peace negotiations, not Assad’s government. Earlier this year, talks scheduled for Geneva were blocked not by Assad, who agreed to participate, but by the opposition, which insisted on a fresh supply of weapons and a delay until rebel forces had reversed their recent string of military defeats.
Even earlier, however, when the rebels seemed to have the upper hand in the conflict, they showed little interest in a negotiated, power-sharing agreement. Then, the rebels were set on an outright defeat of Assad’s government and rebuffed Assad’s overtures of constitutional and political reforms.
That is not to say that Assad’s military did not respond to the civil unrest in 2011 with excessive force or that the Assad dynasty has not been among the most unsavory Arab dictatorships over the decades. The Assads, like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, have represented some of the worst examples of repression in a region that has been long known for repression.
However, as with Iraq’s Hussein, the U.S. news media has painted the Syrian situation in blacks and whites. The opposition is noble and the government is evil. Every extreme claim about Assad, as with Hussein, is accepted as fact with almost no skepticism allowed. That pattern of journalistic malpractice contributed to the unprovoked U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 when little credence was given to Iraq’s denials that it possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Hussein also received little credit for maintaining a secular government that cracked down on Islamic extremism. Instead, President George W. Bush’s administration sold to the U.S. news media the myth that Hussein was ready to share WMDs with al-Qaeda. It was only after Bush’s invasion and the failure to find the WMDs that Iraq did become a home for al-Qaeda extremists – and the U.S. press corps came to understand how the neocons had sold a false bill of goods.
But that awareness has slipped away as neocon commentators still dominate the op-ed pages and the think tanks, enabling them now to define the parameters of the debate over Syria.
The Neocon Strategy
It has long been central to the neocons’ geopolitical strategy to seek “regime change” in Muslim countries that are considered hostile to Israel and – by doing so – to undermine Israel’s close-in enemies, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestine’s Hamas. The neocon thinking was that if pro-U.S. governments could be installed in Iraq, Syria and Iran, then Israel would have a freer hand to dictate a final “peace” to the isolated Palestinians, who would have little choice but to accept the final borders demanded by Israel. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War.”]
However, the neocons have operated with a cartoonish view of the Muslim world. They have shown no sophistication about how the geopolitics of their schemes might actually play out.
For instance, their dreams about the Iraqis welcoming U.S. invaders as “liberators” didn’t exactly go that way. Ultimately, a Sunni autocrat (Hussein) was replaced by a Shiite autocrat (Nouri al-Maliki) with Iran gaining more influence than the United States, the erstwhile occupying power. Similarly, the overthrow-murder of Libya’s secular dictator Muammar Gaddafi – a bloody demise cheered by the neocons – has created new space for Islamic militants to expand their influence in northern Africa.
The neocons’ only real argument for “success” is that their mischief-making over the last decade has inflicted so much violence and destruction in the Muslim world that the region’s wealth and unity has been sapped, thus limiting how much support can be provided to the embattled Palestinians.
Likewise, the shattered nation of Syria is now preoccupied with its own devastating civil war, leaving little time and money to bolster the Palestinians. But the neocon strategy to press for a military victory over Assad also carries grave risks. The Sunni-led rebellion against Assad, an Alawite representing a branch of Shiite Islam, has been an invitation for al-Qaeda militants to cross the border from Iraq into Syria, a move that was inevitable whether Assad surrendered or resisted.
Perhaps the best hope for Syria would have been for the opposition to have entered into serious power-sharing negotiations in 2011, but then the scent of outright victory was too strong. The opposition’s hubris – urged on by American neocons who smelled Assad’s blood – overwhelmed any thoughts of reconciliation. The view was that the only viable solution required ousting Assad and eradicating any remnants of the Assad dynasty.
But that uncompromising position spread fear among many of Iraq’s Alawites, Shiites and Christians who foresaw possible revenge from Sunni extremists. The hardline rebel stance also forced the Assad regime to stiffen its spine and push back against the gains of the rebels. The prospect of another “Western-engineered” ouster of an Arab leader – following the violent “regime change” in Iraq and Libya – also raised alarms in Iran and Russia as well as inside Lebanon’s Hezbollah Shiite militias.
An Internationalized Conflict
Iran and Russia stepped up military supplies and Hezbollah dispatched reinforcements, enabling Assad’s forces to gain the upper hand. That, in turn, drew in even more al-Qaeda and other Sunni militants. Journalists from the region are now reporting that these extremists have emerged as the dominant military force among the rebels.
Anne Barnard and Eric Schmitt reported for the New York Times that “As foreign fighters pour into Syria at an increasing clip, extremist groups are carving out pockets of territory that are becoming havens for Islamist militants, posing what United States and Western intelligence officials say may be developing into one of the biggest terrorist threats in the world today.”
Similarly, Liz Sly reported for the Washington Post that “A rebranded version of Iraq’s al-Qaeda affiliate is surging onto the front lines of the war in neighboring Syria, expanding into territory seized by other rebel groups and carving out the kind of sanctuaries that the U.S. military spent more than a decade fighting to prevent in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
So, like a case of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the neocons have helped whip up another new flood of trouble in the Middle East. But the neocons are not about to accept blame for the mess that is now sloshing around Syria. Thus, an alternative narrative is necessary: that it’s all President Obama’s fault for not committing the U.S. military to another invasion of a Muslim nation.
That is indeed the new conventional wisdom spreading across Official Washington: If only Obama had dispatched the U.S. Air Force to shoot down Syrian planes and bomb government troop positions – while also arming the anti-Assad rebels with modern weapons – all would be well. The opposition would have prevailed and a pro-Western (and pro-Israeli) democracy would be governing Syria.
Instead, according to this conventional wisdom, Obama dithered, dragging his heels on committing U.S. warplanes and weapons, even now only approving some light weapons if they can be channeled to carefully vetted moderate elements of the opposition.
But the neocon narrative ignores how messy and how dangerous a violent overthrow of another Arab government would have been. There would have been no assurance that the Sunni-led rebels would not have taken bloody revenge on the Alawites, Shiites and Christian sects that have been the backbone of Assad’s regime.
There likely would have been Libyan-style chaos with Islamic militants still swarming into Syria to fill the political void. Indeed, the outcome might well have been the establishment of an Islamist regime representing the country’s Sunni majority, replacing the relatively secular Assad government backed by the various Muslim and Christian minorities.
If indeed such an expectation would have been more realistic than the neocons’ rosy scenario, Obama could be criticized more for his failure to press the Syrian rebels into accepting some power-sharing compromise with Assad’s forces in 2011 or 2012 when the opposition’s prospects were brighter.
However, Obama was involved in a bitter reelection battle with Republican Mitt Romney, who was assiduously courting the Israelis and portraying Obama as lacking sufficient ardor for the Jewish state. By the time Obama was sworn in for a second term in 2013, the battlefield had begun to swing toward Assad’s advantage.
When the Obama administration did begin a push for a negotiated settlement this year, Assad was quick to agree but the splintered rebel coalition balked, demanding instead an escalation of military support from the West so the war could be tilted again into the rebels’ favor.
That wishful thinking, however, has expanded the opening for al-Qaeda and other Sunni extremists, a development that was always predictable but one that the neocons don’t want blamed on them. Thus, the new conventional wisdom pinning the evolving Syrian disaster on Obama.
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