Which Nation is More Powerful, Syria or the U.S.?

Sound silly? Read on.

So far, the U.S. has failed to deter the Assad regime from using chemical weapons, despite Obama's warning that such use would cross a "red line." In fact the regime has used them several times, increasing the size of the attacks.

On the other hand, there is much worrying and anxious hand-wringing in the U.S. elite discussion of what to do about possible "consequences." There is fear of scary things happening, of Assad, Iran, Hezbollah retaliating. Right now, it doesn't even look as if Congress will give Obama a green light for a military attack.

In other words, the U.S. is being deterred by the Assad regime of Syria.

So if Syria isn't deterred by the U.S., but the U.S. is deterred by fear of Syria, which is the more powerful nation?

Shades of Nixon's fear of the U.S. becoming a "pitiful, helpless giant."

Of course it isn't that. The U.S. will attack other nations in the future. In fact it is attacking various Islamists right now in various countries, with drones.

But it's scared of Syria.

Funny, Israel isn't. It keeps bombing stuff there. Just bombed a weapons cache and a convoy earlier this year. Syria pretended it didn't happen. Just like they pretended Israel didn't bomb the nuclear reactor North Korea was building for them.

Too bad the U.S. can't ask Israel to take out Assad's air force for it.

I wonder how much stock Israel is going to put in the U.S.' promises that it'll bomb Iran to stop its nuclear program, so Israel should just keep holding its fire.

Credibility, credibility, credibility...the word is going to haunt the dreams of the American foreign policy mangers if this wimpy vacillating goes on much longer.

But Barack Obama can be tough- on journalists, whistleblowers, dissidents, medical marijuana dispensaries, hapless immigrants without the proper papers- in a word, the weak.

But Assad is too strong for him.

Why do the words "coward" and "bully" (two character traits often linked) spring to mind?

Turns out "French-speaking cheese-eating elitist" John Kerry (Secretary of State) is the tougher one. (Well, of course- he killed people himself in the Vietnam War.) (Contrary to the right wing libel machine, Kerry really did earn his medals there- not that I approve of anyone agreeing to fight in that criminal enterprise.)

To repeat the most important fact in this whole issue: if the U.S. doesn't make Assad pay a price, it is virtually guaranteed that there will be more chemical attacks. And the U.S. will be weaker, its enemies emboldened. If it DOES exact a price, there is a CHANCE Assad will desist in using his nerve gases.

And who should be more afraid of escalation: the weak nation, or the World's Only Superpower?

Yes, the U.S. is hypocritical and cynical. It helped Saddam Hussein use the same gases against "his own people" (the Kurds) and Iranian troops, by supplying targeting information against Iranian soldiers, and by having the Defense Intelligence Agency (the Pentagon's faux-CIA created by Robert McNamara apparently in a fit of CIA-envy) put out a report claiming the Iranians had gasses the Iraqi Kurds. (A Protocols of the Elders of Zion operation.) I suppose the "peace" camp (there IS no peace, there already is a war) would prefer consistency to hypocrisy and have the U.S. permit Assad's atrocities. Yeah, two wrongs always make a right.

Too bad the U.S. bosses won't be honest, own up to their past crimes (and the crimes of their predecessors) including the support for Hussein, and the U.S.' own use of napalm, white phosphorous, tear gas (to asphyxiate Vietcong in underground tunnels, for example), the lies to gin up war fever against Iraq in 2003, all the stuff that undercuts their moral posturing now. Then they could say, We now want to partially atone for our past sins by intervening for the Syrian people.

Anyway, at least give violence a chance. That's all I'm saying.  "Peace" (U.S. passivity) has had two years to work, and hasn't.  Let Vice pay its Tribute to Virtue in the form of Hypocrisy.

Looks Like I Was Right Again- This Time About the NSA

One of the great frustrations for me in living on this planet is seeing things clearly that are obvious but that most other people cannot see. Even as a child I was perspicacious. I was 12 when I was against the Vietnam War (this was the early 1960s), before my parents were. A few years earlier the pictures of Oswald's assassination looked arranged to me. Even then I sensed the malevolent fascistic forces of the U.S. deep state lurking behind events.

For years now I have simply assumed that the NSA collects all the phone calls and other communications it possibly can, and that with its supercomputers and mission of code-breaking, it could probably decrypt much encrypted traffic, but maybe not the most sophisticated kind used by other major powers.

Now, thanks to Edward Snowden, we have learned some details of what should have been obvious. Indeed, the NSA reads encrypted traffic. Furthermore, they have subverted the encryption programs themselves by making secret deals with companies that sell encryption software, so the companies cooperate in making their products vulnerable to NSA penetration via backdoors and various flaws and weaknesses.

Shouldn't surprise us that a fascistic state and corporations cooperate. Ultimately the U.S. is a corporate oligarchy, and the deep state is the protector of the status quo. That is why the CIA for example overthrows regimes in countries that aim to better the lives of the majority of their populations. (Not just the CIA of course. The Pentagon and State Department always play roles in these coups. And of course when there are outright invasions, such as of the Dominican Republic under Lyndon Johnson, or the invasions of Haiti, Grenada, Lebanon a couple of times, and earlier conquests of the Philippines and Mexico (which cost Mexico half its national territory) its a straight-up military operation.

One heartening sign is that within parts of the establishment itself there appears to be some pushback against the growing oppressiveness of the secret secret police state. The New York Times put the Snowden revelations on page one, in a major story. Editorially, it has lately turned from taking Obama's patently insincere and false rhetoric at face value, to being openly critical and making demands for reform. Other media outlets too (but not enough, alas, and there are plenty of reactionaries in the establishment media defending the secret police state) are exposing and opposing Obama's creeping totalitarian regime.

Unfortunately the American political class is apparently hopeless. Or maybe that's too pessimistic. One can look at the House ALMOST passing a law to rein in the NSA. (Of course even it it had passed, the Senate would have had to pass it. And then, after Obama's inevitable veto, which would have contradicted all his bullshit rhetoric about reform, both chambers of Congress would have needed to muster two-thirds votes in favor to override the veto, an impossibility given the current membership of those bodies.)

They do keep reauthorizing the abominable, anti-human rights "Patriot" Act, which basically makes the Bill of Rights a dead letter. Amazing how much traction they are still getting from those twin towers collapsing. It's been twelve years and they're still milking it! Just today, the government propaganda radio network in the U.S., NPR, started playing the sad violins, so to speak, reminding us that the "twelfth anniversary" is coming up, and starting a daily series of tearjerker stories about people who were killed. News flash for NPR; everybody dies, eventually. How many more years are you going to brainwash people with your ersatz, never-ending grief? Oh by the way, a bunch of kids were burned to death in Syria right after that sarin attack, when one of Assad's jets- the ones Obama has steadfastly refused to take out for 2 years, despite his bullshit calls for Assad's ouster- dropped a firebomb on a playground in Aleppo. And you can't pretend you didn't know about it- the BBC happened to have a crew on hand to report the event. You forgot to cover it, as it most of the U.S. media. (Oddly, an NPR woman- forgot who- mentioned about a week ago that it was barely reported here! She was too diplomat to say "including NPR.")

Since my "negative" and "cynical" perceptions are generally proven correct, perhaps realist would better describe my outlook.

Until a lot more people face reality, and then resolve to change it together, things will remain hopeless. We need a lot MORE "cynicism" and "negativity" to have a positive effect on the world we live in.

Crafty Obama Gives Congress What It Wants

There's an old adage: Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it.

The U.S. Congress has been fluttering its feathers and making noises about how Obama needs to “consult” with them before launching a military attack on the Assad regime in Syria, how he had to abide by the War Powers Act, etc. 140 Congressmen even signed a letter to Obama demanding a vote by Congress. [1]

Obama's obliged them. He says Congress will have to vote on a military attack.

Which means, of course, that if Obama does eventually attack, and things go badly, Congress will co-own the policy along with Obama.

Clever fellow.

Obama long ago proved he was a shrewd politician (and a totally amoral person, and cynical manipulator who is willing to make numerous false promises he never intended to keep in order to get elected).

I think he did the right thing here anyway, aside from the cynical, calculated, self-protective motive. The very same (GOP) politicians demanding an attack would be the first to criticize if things go badly. (They would have done things differently, of course, is what they'd say.)

But some people are never satisfied. Already Representative Peter King is complaining that Obama should NOT ask Congress to vote, because that undermines future Presidents. He couldn't even wait one day to attack Obama. (Oh, did I mention that King is a Republican? Is it even necessary to state something so obvious?) Needless to say, King would be criticizing Obama if Obama took action “unilaterally.” You can't win with some people- namely fanatical partisans of one's rival party. [2] But King can't be totally dismissed in this case. He says he's going to vote for the Congressional authorization Obama seeks, yet “I strongly believe that the commander in chief has the absolute right to take military action.” Furthermore, “The president seems like he's weak at every level.” (Well, not at the level of creating a super secret police state, for example.)

One of Assad's flunkies says the fact that Obama is going to Congress proves there's no evidence and it's all “a big lie.” Uh-huh, right, Bub.

“We have a President who does, what he says he's going to do,” says Sec. of State John Kerry, defending his boss. Well, sometimes.

Congress is sharply divided, and the division doesn't break down along partisan lines. Perversely, Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham, who have been loudly beating the drums for military action against Assad's regime for a long time now, both say they'll vote AGAINST Obama's permission slip, because it's too weak and they want more robust (i.e. more violent) U.S. military action. They should take the half loaf and keep pushing for a meaningful attack. At a minimum, Assad's air power must be largely destroyed, and key nerve centers of regime command and control degraded.

Unfortunately Obama is already signaling a weak and largely symbolic strike, stressing over and over how “limited” the putatively planned strike will be, how short in duration, even saying on the government-controlled TV network PBS (Thursday August 29^th) that it would be a “shot across the bow,” i.e. a warning shot! The time for that was back in April, after the first chemical weapons attack!

Earlier in the week it looked like Biden was elbowing Obama to attack, declaring that Assad had used chemical weapons, without a doubt. (This is similar to how Biden nudged Obama to declare for gay marriage rights, forcing his hand by doing it first.) Then Kerry gave a speech midweek blasting the Assad regime for the sarin attack and making it clear military retaliation would follow.

But then it wasn't so clear, because Obama suddenly pulled the rug out from under them. He announced that he would go to Congress, which isn't even in session, for a vote on the matter. The New York Times reports that Obama's top political and “national security” advisers opposed this.

But Kerry is a loyal trooper, just as when he was in the Navy in Vietnam, commanding a river patrol boat. He put the best face he could on this abrupt move by Obama.

Kerry made the rounds of the Sunday morning TV gab shows which function as platforms for the Washington D.C. political elite to discuss issues. Kerry had an obviously rehearsed line which it felt like he uttered fifty times in his various appearances on TV. For example, on ABC, in defense of Obama's decision to get a permission slip from Congress instead of ordering Bombs Away, he said “The United States is much stronger when we act in unity,” “and America is stronger when we act in unity.” Yeah, true, but probably the vote in Congress will be sharply divided, which will underline disunity. But Kerry is making the best of a bad situation. His boss, Obama, pulled the rug out from under him without warning. Asked why the Obama regime was “waiting,” he flatly asserted “we aren't waiting,” even though Congress doesn't come back into session until Sept. 9^th, and Obama did not call it back. (Just as well, since currently he would lose the vote.)

On Murdoch's reactionary Fox News Sunday TV elite politics show, Kerry insisted that the curveball Obama suddenly threw, announcing he's kicking the ball to Congress, is “a smart decision by the President, it's a courageous decision.” (Actually it's more like ducking and covering, covering his ass.)

Kerry also denied that he was blindsided by Obama's sudden pivot to Congress. “The Vice President a whole group of people believe it is a courageous decision,” he reiterated in his denial of what the media is reporting about Obama pulling a fast one on his own underlings.

Kerry repeated over and over the “we're stronger this way” line he trotted out in all his appearances. “I think we are stronger” by going to Congress, “America will show the face of our democracy and great strength,” and the delay is actually a good thing because “we can fine tune our strategy” (assuming you have one) and “find a unity of purpose here that makes us much stronger and is much more damaging for Assad.” (If only. In Syria, the regime's propaganda apparatus is crowing, calling it a “U.S. retreat.” I hope that's just bravado, but it's probably renewed confidence. This is a gangster regime, and gangsters are good at taking the measure of others.)

When someone has to assert so obsessively how “strong” they are, you have to wonder what weakness they're trying so desperately to cover up.

So going to Congress puts us in “a much stronger position,” Kerry insisted. He also denied, on TV show after show, that Obama would lose the vote in Congress. Pressed on “but what if you do, what will Obama do?” in every appearance he waffled, saying Obama still has the ability to order a strike, but carefully avoiding saying Obama would order an attack, even when he was asked directly on the programs that exact question. The hosts couldn't get Kerry to say Obama will order an attack if he loses the Congressional vote. (For that matter, can we even assume Obama will attack if he gets Congressional approval? Probably, I guess, but I wouldn't bet money on it.)

That gives me a sinking feeling. That is dangerously squishy. Obama obviously still isn't committed to making Assad pay a price for his latest atrocity.

It looks like Biden and Kerry were pushing a reluctant Obama. If he had made the Assad regime pay a price after the first use of chemical weapons, perhaps the regime would have been deterred from this much worse attack. Certainly not exacting a price only encourages more nerve agent attacks.

If the threats from Iran and Syria to attack Israel, for example, deter the U.S., while U.S. threats do nothing, than who is the more powerful? That turns the U.S. into a “pitiful, helpless giant” in Nixon's morbidly insecure words. Fear of unintended consequences is paralyzing if dwelled upon. To be sure, it is prudent to make careful calculations. Seems like Obama has done plenty enough of that already. It's time to act. The French, whom Americans habitually smear as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” seem to be harboring no Hamlet-like indecisiveness about this.(“To strike or not to strike, that is the question...”)

Congress might have to impeach Obama and let Biden do it, to avoid a disastrous loss of U.S. credibility and influence. (That was a joke, for you political unsophisticates out there.)

The worst of it is, where Obama should have spine, he doesn't and where he shouldn't, he's relentless and aggressive: persecuting whistleblowers, unauthorized exposers of state crimes, dissidents; crushing the Occupy Movement and others; creating a massive police state super-surveillance system, which he refuses to back off of one iota in the face of strong objections even from sections of the establishment; spying on and moving to criminalize journalists (AP, Fox News, the New York Times, and of course Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald and documentarian Laura Poitras) and even murdering at least one, Michael Hastings, or at least overlooking his murder. With Obama, you get the worst of both worlds. Weakness and vacillation where strength is required, and steely, remorseless resolve when it comes to repression and making repressive changes permanent. Obama is destroying investigative journalism, which alone radically changes American society. The permanent omnisurveillance state (NSA unleashed to collect and store all messages without limits in time or extent; cameras everywhere with face recognition, license plate recording and other technology; domestic drones, and god knows what else) whose creation Obama is overseeing will be irreversible, as it will be impossible to organize opposition or resistance. And this isn't just my opinion- cf. Chris Hedges, for example.

1] The War Powers Act “requires” the President to “notify” Congress after he launches a military attack. (See, Congressmen don't get news from TV, newspapers, radio, etc. like the rest of us do, so they need the President to tell them.) It was a face-saving maneuver by Congress to put a figleaf over the fact that they long ago ceded their war-making power to the President. (The U.S. Constitution, a Holy Document that is allegedly the fundamental law of the land, grants Congress the sole power to declare war. Yet for centuries presidents have waged military actions, including full-fledged wars as in Korea and Vietnam, without any such declaration of war by Congress.) For his own inscrutable reasons, Obama refused to obey even the pro forma requirements of the War Powers Act during the U.S. air campaign in support of the Libyan uprising against Qaddafi.

2] King is a vicious cretin who thinks Glenn Greenwald should be prosecuted for informing the public about the suffocating police state the NSA-FBI-CIA are putting in place. For good measure King libeled Greenwald on TV, claiming Greenwald “threatened to reveal” CIA officers' identities. Greenwald pointed out that not only did he do no such thing, he does not have such information. Anyone interested in hearing just how ignorant and thuggish this knuckle-dragging brute straight out of the 1950s is can watch news clips of him on youtube.com.

Assad's Useful Idiots

It's getting tiresome that every time it looks like we're going to be treated to a rare use of U.S. power to do good, the usual suspects pop up to screech in opposition. We saw it in the Balkans, during the Serbian depredations there. We saw it in Libya, when the Libyan people, inspired by the Tunisians, became part of the Arab Spring and rose up against their pathological dictator Qaddafi, and the U.S. and some European powers provided critical air support to the rebellion. (This is called “bombing Libya” and “the war in Libya” by the knee-jerk anti-American crowd.) Now they're at it again, rushing to protect the loathsome Assad tyranny in Syria.

There are now 1,429 people, including 426 children, counted as the dead from the latest Assad poison gas attack on August 21^st. Another approximately 1,500 are suffering the aftereffects of whatever poison Assad unleashed on them. Presented in this light, the victims are just numbers. Unless you have an imagination. But you don't even need an imagination. You can view some of the numerous videos of the victims. You can listen to the anguished and outraged voices of the survivors (on BBC anyway; I haven't heard the voices on U.S. media, including the “alternative” media, which confines itself to people demanding that the U.S. not “invade” Syria. Apparently firing cruise missiles constitutes “invasion”).

Lost in the struggle over a response to this atrocity is yet a newer atrocity, reported by BBC Panorama on BBC World Service radio, which had a team on the scene in Aleppo when an Assad jet dropped a firebomb on a school playground, instantly killing ten children and horribly burning scores of others, most of whom will probably die without the advanced medical treatment they require. (The survivors will be left gruesomely scarred.) This has gone virtually unreported by the U.S. media. If the U.S. had taken out the six remaining Assad airbases already, as it should have long ago done, this latest atrocity would have been prevented. (Assad's other air bases have been captured, at great cost, by the rebels, sloughing it out on the ground against enormous odds.) But there are hopeful signs that Obama's dithering is nearing its end: a sixth U.S. destroyer packing cruise missiles has been dispatched to the eastern Mediterranean sea, within striking distance of Assad's assets. (Assad is already placing human shields in and around possible targets, as I anticipated he'd do, so the regime can scream about civilian casualties if the U.S. attacks. That'll be rich. And privileged elites in Syria are scurrying for shelter.)

But don't think Americans are callous. The story of a subway line being shut down in New York City while a couple of kittens were rescued from the tracks not only made it onto radio stations, but rated an article in the Newspaper of Record, the New York Times. [August 30^th.] Awww, that's so heartwarming! (Hey, don't get me wrong. I think kittens are cute too. But how about caring about human beings under brutal, unrelenting assault? Or is there only enough available compassion to care either about kittens or humans?)

But about those useful idiots. In both the U.S. and UK, they roll out common tropes to oppose U.S. military action. Here is a good example that encapsulates the themes of this “anti-war” campaign,

from a presumably intelligent fellow, given charge over an academic center by an American University,* who conflates missiles fired from offshore with an “invasion,” a guy by the name of Bassam Haddad, who first presents Assad regime atrocities as hypotheticals, and additionally equates them with rebel atrocities in sooo even-handed fashion (hey, during World War Two there were Jews who killed Nazis, so I guess that gets the Nazis off the hook for the Holocaust) with emphases added by me:

“What I think we should do first, before we actually begin to talk about any of this, is to recognize that this is not—no longer about the Syrian regime and whatever atrocities it may have committed and whatever atrocities the rebels may have committed. This is about invading a sovereign country before even the evidence is out, before even the U.N. inspectors are out. There are decisions to already invade, to attack, to launch a strike on Syria, by a country that we should actually check the record of. The United States is not qualified to do what it claims it wants to do, as a result of its own record in violating international law for a very long time and supporting dictators and rogue regimes and the apartheid state of Israel in opposition to all manners of international law. The United States violated international law by attacking and invading a country on false premise, which is Iraq in 2003. And most importantly, the United States, in Iraq, has actually used nerve agent, mustard gas and/or white phosphorus in Fallujah and beyond, left depleted uranium all over the country in Iraq, ruined and destroyed the lives of generations as a result, and now claims that it needs to do this to protect Syrian civilians, which is exactly the opposite of what will happen in any invasion or any strike on Syria, which is not possible to happen in the surgical manner that is being discussed right now.” [Democracy Now, August 30, 2013.]

He really touches all the bases there, eh? (Actually he forgot to mention slavery, and the near-extermination of the American Indians.) To his implied assertion that the U.S. has no right to act militarily because it has unclean hands, I would say this; standing idly by while a slaughter is occurring, when you have the power to stop it or at least impede it, is at least a moral crime. And the U.S. cannot atone for its past sins by refusing to use its power for good. To the contrary. And what other nation has the means- that isn't allied with Assad- to intervene? And to that dishonest bit about “invading a sovereign country before even the evidence is out, before even the U.N. inspectors are out,” I don't think more “evidence” would change Haddad's thinking one iota either. There is already no doubt that chemical weapons were used. And the UN team is explicitly NOT going to weigh on on who fired them.

And by the way, Bassam, what alternative universe are you living in that you think the U.S. is about to invade Syria? Obama MIGHT order some cruise missile strikes from the Mediterranean. He's made it abundantly clear that NO WAY WILL HE EVER INVADE. And there is no reason to doubt it.

But Bassam is not totally insensitive to the Syrians suffering, he's just “sensible.” Read on:

“What is happening in Syria is horrific, not just what just happened in the past week. The death of more than 100,000 people, the existence of more than two million refugees—many of them, if not half, are children—is, as we have heard in the earlier report, is just horrendous. This is actually all the more reason not to take such actions, because any strike will actually end up escalating the situation beyond any control.” (All emphases added.)

Will it? And what does doing nothing do? Solve the problem? Cause Assad to stop his war? At least other nations should degrade the regime's military assets, and try and deter it from using poison gas again. The regime already tested that “red line” Obama verbally drew earlier this year, and nothing happened. The pattern is clear: escalating use of nerve toxins, testing whether the U.S. will actually back up its words with deeds. Doing nothing will make things worse, guaranteed. And as others in the Hands Off Assad chorus do, Haddad uses a number of somewhat contradictory arguments to try and talk the U.S. out of striking- that it'll be ineffective; that it'll make things worse for the Syrians; that it'll unleash a regional catastrophe and a massive war that the U.S. will be embroiled in. Well, is it just a symbolic pinprick or Vietnam War redux? It can't be both.

I love his boldness is citing the mass death and suffering as “all the more reason not to take” military action. The worse things get, the more reason not to intervene. So counterintuitive, which no doubt is part of its attraction to an academic mind such as his. Academics HATE HATE HATE the obvious. It's so unsubtle. And it doesn't take a smart person to figure out. (Rendering academics superfluous.) Unfortunately for their preferences, the obvious is usually true. That's why it's obvious.

But you can't win with these people. The U.S. is blamed, rightly, for allowing the mass slaughter in Rwanda to occur, by blocking UN intervention there. But these jokers always oppose any use of military force by Western powers, based on the premise that any such use is ipso facto imperialist. (Although even if we were to concede the point, I'll bet that the people butchered in places like Rwanda would much prefer to be living “victims” of “Western imperialism” than dead victims of their own countrymen.) They wring their hands and condemn the West for not stopping every bad thing, but object to military action. They think the West is omnipotent, but rule out use of Western military power.

They have this airy notion that “negotiations” are the solution to all problems. So if someone had just “negotiated” with the machete-wielding maniacs in Rwanda, for example, they would have “Okay, we won't kill all the Tutsis.” Or Assad would say “Okay I'll allow free and fair elections and give up power peacefully.”

Like I said, useful idiots.

Stunning naivete even made it into the U.S. corporate media, in the person of Tavis Smiley, a radio host, who appeared on one of the Sunday morning Washington elite gab shows (This Week with George Stephanopoulos, on ABC, Sept. 1^st.) Smiley invoked Martin Luther King, Jr, whose whose 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech at the large rally in D.C. that year has just been memorialized on its 50^th anniversary by the establishment AND “alternate” media. He said King would oppose military action. (So what? So would Gandhi, and Howard Zinn, and all committed pacifists. Zinn came to believe that it was unnecessary to fight fascism in World War II.) Smiley repeatedly said this would lead to mutual annihilation. His “solution”? Some vague peaceful resolution, with no actual plan to bringing such an unrealistic thing about.

Apparently the “any conflict can be solved by negotiations” crowd didn't notice that several UN special envoys tried futilely to engage Assad, and that the U.S. and others have been dickering with the Russians and Chinese for two years in the Security Council. (Some joker on the BBC just called for “talks with all parties,” including the Russians. As if multiple efforts to “talk” haven't occurred already.)

Never thought I'd ever agree with Peggy Noonan about anything, who was on the same show with Smiley, but she nailed it exactly right. It would be awful for the world to stand by and just watch while a dictator gassed his own people, she said. (Unfortunately that has happened before, indeed worse. During the Iraq war of aggression against Iran in the 1980s, Saddam Hussein gassed Kurdish villages in his own country, thanks to chemicals sold to him by the U.S. and Europe. Oh, and the Pentagon's “Defense Intelligence Agency” put out a bogus report blaming Iran for the gassing! In other words, covering for Hussein. Going back farther, the first use of poison gas against civilians was by Winston Churchill in the 1920s against uppity Kurdish tribes in then-British-ruled Iraq who were being ornery about submitting to their English masters. One more point about Noonan: too bad she didn't have the same moral clarity when she worked as a propagandist for Ronald Reagan, the butcher of Central America and southern Africa, during the 1980s)

Now it's true that the U.S. is imperialist, and commits many crimes. That doesn't make everything it does criminal. Nor does it mean that anyone or nation it attacks is an innocent victim of U.S. aggression. And I'm certainly not so naïve as to think that moral or humanitarian concerns motivate U.S. behavior, the fine words of its officials and propagandists notwithstanding. As I have said before, a good act is still good even if the motives are selfish, calculated, political. It is unrealistic to demand purity of motive. Doing the right thing is good enough, and certainly better than not doing it. It ill behooves people who present themselves as progressive, humanitarian, and peace-loving to block action that could save victims of vicious tyrannies. But increasingly that's what many leftists are doing. In this they are the mirror-image of the right. The right defends U.S.-allied dictators and attacks ones the U.S. opposes. With the left, it's exactly the opposite. In both cases, intellectual and moral dishonesty is required for the exercise. Both cloak their ideologically-driven positions in moral terms. That is a sham, as their inconsistencies prove.

From the first word of the latest nerve agent attack, voices in the Western media have cast doubt on the regime's guilt by claiming it would be irrational for then to do it (as if the regime is rational!). After all, it makes the regime look bad, they reasoned. And there was already a UN inspection team in country to investigate previous chemical attacks. And cui bono, who benefits? Why, the rebels do! (As if the rebels could count on Western intervention. They've given up on that, through two years of bitter disappointment and empty promises. There has been plenty of examples of them voicing their disillusionment and sense of betrayed in the western media. I doubt if they'd calculate “Aha! Let's gas ourselves! Then the U.S. will intervene!” Obama had just broken yet another promise- to send arms. Apparently the skeptics have a lot more faith in the eagerness of the West to get involved than the rebels do.)

The truth is, the regime benefits plenty. They already knew they'd just lie. And they calculated that once again, the U.S. would do nothing. And they would just claim the rebels gassed themselves, just as they'd previously pinned their own atrocities on rebel forces. And they could count on useful western idiots speculating that indeed the rebels did it to their own people, to provoke a Western military response. (Assad's backer, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, is helping out by asserting that the rebels gassed their own turf to provoke the U.S. into riding to their rescue. Only problems with that little theory: 1) the rebels don't have the extensive poisons used in the attack, not to mention all the evidence proving the regime did it, and 2) the rebels have given up on the U.S. helping them.) [1]

The Assad regime is utterly ruthless. Apparently the skeptics are blithely unaware of how savage and extreme their violence has been. And the area attacked was a Damascus suburb, dangerously close to the center of the regime's power, Damascus itself, a launching pad for rebel attacks on the preeminent stronghold of the Assad regime. If Assad lose Damascus, Syria would fracture into pieces. The rebels needed to be stopped there decisively. There was no reason NOT to use gas, to inflict mass casualties on the “terrorists” (anyone in rebel-held areas).

For the morons who just won't accept facts (including not just “alternative” media but even U.S. establishment media, including the government's National Public Radio system, who keep calling the gas attack “alleged,” not who did it being alleged, but the fact of the gassing itself even occurring), here's some of the evidence:

96 videos documenting the victims suffering and deaths.

Numerous reports from Syrians trapped in the area.

Doctors Without Borders, which sponsors the medical facilities in the areas, reporting on what happened, and their rushing more atropine, the antidote to nerve agents, to the area.

Satellites tracked he launching of rockets from Assad areas into the victims' location.

Assad regime forces donned gas masks.

Assad regime officials and officers overheard discussing the attack, before and after. One heard worrying about the UN inspectors finding evidence. (What a “wimp,” by Assad regime standards!)

The regime bombarding the area after the attack to destroy evidence.

Stalling the UN inspectors from going to the area for five days, and then shooting at their vehicles, forcing them to turn back.

Of course, the Assad-Alawite regime says it's all “fabricated.”

As we have seen, one line that various “anti-war activists” (a disingenuous and deceptive designation for a motley crew of sectarian leftists and people with an extreme allergy to American power, and ONLY to American power) are pushing is that the U.S. used chemical weapons (white phosphorous, and depleted uranium, which they misrepresent as a chemical weapon, used in tank shells) in Iraq, (some also toss in the fact that Israel used white phosphorous, which indeed is nasty, and in the case of using it on Gaza hospitals during their last full-fledged invasion there, a crime) with the implication (I presume, since they don't spell out any of the following) that therefore the U.S. has no right to retaliate against Assad for doing the same (or maybe it's okay if Assad uses sarin on the people he insists on either ruling or killing since the U.S. did such and such) and is hypocritical. (I can think of worse sins than hypocrisy. Standing idly by while a depraved dictator commits atrocities and doing nothing, for example. And besides, Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, so it isn't always so bad.)

By that logic, the U.S. shouldn't have fought on the same side as the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany because the Soviet Union did bad things too. Power is not pure.

Oh, and don't forget, the rebels have done some nasty things too. (Surprise! When people are subjected to atrocities, they sometimes take revenge, and not always justly.)

In their alternative universe, the “anti-war” leftists seem to be under the delusion that the U.S. is going to invade Syria. (Some perhaps know better and are simply being cynical.) They keep talking about a U.S. “invasion” and “troops going into Syria.” No such option is under consideration, which is obvious. It's simply irrational to present the issue in these terms.

“Hey hey, ho ho, war in Syria has got to go!” So went a chant by several hundred sectarians and professional anti-Americans (who claim to be “anti-war,” but they seem to be real selective about which “wars” they oppose) and pro-Assad Syrians at an “anti-war” rally in Times Square, in New York City. Another catchy slogan they bellowed went “We Don't Want No World War Three!” Right. According to this ilk, any proposed U.S. military action automatically starts World War III. Opinions of participants at the rally: “We are tired of U.S. aggression around the world...the U.S. doesn't have the moral authority” to intervene, and U.S. wars such as in Iraq and Afghanistan “end badly;” “We here don't want another war...wars don't bring peace.” (Actually they do, once they end, although “bring” is the wrong word. Of course wars aren't supposed to bring peace, they occur in order to resolve conflicts by force in favor of one side. Sometimes they do this, sometimes they partially do this, sometimes they fail utterly to resolve underlying conflicts.) The rally was mostly Syrian supporters of Assad, and a gang called “The International Action Center.” Their “action” consists of rushing to denounce and trying to block any action against dictators on the outs with the U.S., such as Slobodan Milosevic, the Serb who wrecked Yugoslavia. A former “Communist” political hack, he decided the best way for him to grab power post-Tito was by stoking murderous Serbian chauvinism- aka “nationalism.” When, finally, after years of atrocities like the massacre of 8,000 defenseless Muslim men and boys, the years-long siege of Sarajevo, rape camps, and much else, the West was finally forced to do something, the IAC saw it as U.S. “aggression” designed to steal “Yugoslavia's” oil. (Huh? Yeah, that was actually their line. I know, they're nuts. Their current line on Syria parrots exactly the Assad regime's line, namely the whole thing is a case of U.S.-sponsored terrorism and war against Syria. And Turkey's an aggressor too. You remember Turkey. That's the country whose citizens Assad has shelled and murdered, and a couple of whose jets the Assad regime shot down over the Mediterranean. That aggressor.)

Too bad the “anti-war” crowd doesn't seem to oppose the civil war Assad is waging against 80% of the Syrians. Or the war the Serbs waged against the Croats and Muslims. Or the war Saddam Hussein waged against Kuwait- that was also an occupation and annexation. And why oppose just the Israeli occupation of Lebanon and not the Syrian one? Speaking of hypocrisy and double-standards, it's not just the U.S. that is guilty of them.

Of course they have a boilerplate “solution,” always the same one. “Dialogue.” Fine. As if no one has tried to talk to Assad for two years. As if several high-level UN envoys weren't dispatched to try and reason with him. As if there hasn't been two years of futile palaver in the UN Security Council. Or to take Afghanistan, the U.S. has been desperate to engage the Taliban in peace talks. So far all that has happened is the payment of millions of dollars in bribes to con men, and the sequential murder of the top Afghan peace negotiator, appointed by Karzai, twice, by Taliban assassins. You know, sometimes you can't talk your way out of a problem. (These clowns might learn something if they look up the record of a fellow named Hitler, Adolf, and the various negotiations and deals that were cut with him and how those ended up.)

But the “average” American apparently agrees that the U.S. should do nothing about Syria. A Zogby poll finds only 7% support U.S. military intervention. Similarly the British public is opposed to involvement. The indifference of Western populations contrasts in a way unflattering to them with the heroic fortitude of the 80% of the Syrian populace under unrelenting, savage assault from the sociopathic Assad regime.“We can't be the world's policeman” is a sentiment now voiced by “average” Americans. Thus the objection to the U.S. being the “world's policeman” has migrated from the political margins to the mainstream. (The idea that U.S. aggression and imperialism to impose desired regimes on other countries constituted a form of law enforcement actually originated in U.S. Imperialist jargon, to distort and cover the illegitimacy of coups, invasions, and impositions of U.S. client dictators on victim peoples. So now the very idea of a global cop is discredited, even though there is a need for enforcement of international law, including humanitarian law, and laws of war, such as prohibition on use of chemical weapons. Unfortunately the U.S. does commit crimes too, and refuses to submit to international law, as when it blew off the World Court verdict against it for crimes against Nicaragua in the 1980s.)

But a few cruise missiles blowing up some buildings doesn't amount to a war. The actual war in Syria is the savage civil war started by the Assad regime gunning down protesters for democracy in the streets of Syrian two years ago. Limited U.S. strikes wouldn't be a war, although they would be acts of war if the Assad regime chose to so construe them. (Those experts on international law, the Russians, have weighed in with the assertion that a U.S. attack would be illegal. Thanks for the free legal consultation, comrades. Much obliged. Oh, almost forgot to mention- the Russian are continually resupplying the Assad regime with the weapons to keep slaughtering Syrians. By the way, the Russians are “experts” in crushing insurrections. Take a look at the photos of what they did to Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, Looks like Berlin, 1945.)

Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan has just called for Assad's ouster. Good idea. But that won't be easy, since Assad has powerful allies in Russia and Iran, plus Hezbollah, which is firmly embedded in Lebanon. And there is reasonable trepidation about unpredictable consequences, such as region-wide sectarian violence, terrorist attacks, and Assad playing the Israel card by attacking Israel. And the always feckless and morally disgusting “Arab League,” a club of dictators and oligarchies, declines to call for a U.S. response to the gassing. (Human rights? What are those?)

But is doing nothing really preferable? What a pathetic cop-out that would be. (And morally craven to boot.) But it seems Obama maybe realizes now that he has no choice, having painted himself into a corner with his “red line” bluff. Now U.S. credibility is on the line, a precious commodity that other U.S. politicians insist must be defended. So as usual, if the morally justified (indeed morally imperative) is to occur (in this case attacks to degrade Assad's ability to slaughter), it is only because coldly calculated political pragmatism forces it.

To a great extent, recent acts of imperialism are catching up with the U.S in the current crisis, namely the invasion of Iraq. (The long war in Afghanistan is also lumped in with that, although it is simplistic to see that as imperialism, or only imperialism.) And the cynical alibi and pretext the Bush-Cheney regime drummed up to invade Iraq, the fake “weapons of mass destruction” hoax, is coming back to bite the successor Obama regime on the butt. That obviously fraudulent “intel” is now being invoked to discredit or at least cast doubt on the overwhelming evidence that Assad is using lethal nerve agents to defeat the rebellion against his monstrous misrule. But this time it really is different.

First, there IS NO DOUBT that Assad HAS these weapons. It is no fabrication to say that. No one denies it, not even the Assad regime. (The situation was the opposite in the case of Iraq. The regime of Saddam Hussein denied having so-called weapons of mass destruction- and many Western experts agreed, including former disarmament inspector Scott Ritter- and in fact the regime didn't have them.) And the evidence in the Syrian case is solid. Even before Iraq was invaded, the “evidence” was discredited, although the U.S. media ignored that fact for the most part. [2]

It's unfortunate that Kerry's speech, the content of which was perfectly reasonable and true, unavoidably sounded like Colin Powell's fraudulent UN presentation when he pounded the table presenting the “case” that Iraq had WMD, including imaginary mobile chemical weapons labs. (Or were they bioweapons labs on wheels?) That's the trouble with lying; when you get caught, you lose credibility. (The other kind of credibility, that is, trustworthiness.) The speeches certainly sound the same, superficially: a tone of moral outrage, with claims of atrocious and unlawful behavior. So the opponents of doing anything, who range from the war weary masses (don't see why they should be war weary, it's not as if they've been under bombardment, or subject to rationing, or to onerous taxation, or have lost millions or hundreds of thousands or even tens of thousands of dead) to the professional anti-Westerners and various sectarian cultists, have an easy layup shot here, (dare I call it a “slam dunk”?), invoking the Iraq invasion with its attendant false claims to provide a pretext.

Another big difference between Iraq and Syria, besides the fact that this time the call to action is not based on lies, is that the U.S., or at least its President, DOESN'T want to get involved, and certainly doesn't want to invade and ISN'T GOING TO INVADE.

Finally, there was no concern at all for the welfare of the Iraqi people in the U.S. invasion of that country. Here concern for the Syrians provides pressure to act. (Of course the primary motives are restoring U.S. credibility, and responding to the possible threat of future use of chemical weapons against U.S. targets or its allies, by Syria, terrorists, or other states emboldened by U.S. fecklessness. Humanitarianism is NEVER sufficient motive to prompt U.S. military action, not in the Balkans, not in Haiti, not anywhere ever. That's a sad commentary on the backward state of our species' evolution. The entire world should always respond to stop atrocities. That would be what one would expect. The fact that it doesn't happen points to the dangerously undeveloped condition of homo sapiens.) [3]

The Assad regime's response is smarmy, disingenuous, insulting, and at least in large measure the opposite of truth, as always. They're '”waiting for normal nations, for civilized nations, to realize that we are fighting al-Qaeda here,” in the words of an Assad accomplice. And of course denying they used sarin, the rebels did it to themselves. [On Sunday Sept. 1^st, John Kerry revealed on his TV talk rounds that chemical proof of sarin was found in hair and blood samples taken from victims.]

To take another case where “peaceniks” and “anti-(only U.S.)imperialists” see the U.S. and its allies as the culprits; who is bringing suffering to the Afghan people? They don't notice the Taliban terrorizing people, assassinating anyone with a job connected to the foreigners, murdering Afghan police, targeting women who refuse to be chattel, planting bombs that blow up busloads of Afghan civilians and more. (They just kidnapped a female legislator, by the way.) Here's another fact that eludes their notice: 80% of the civilian deaths in Afghanistan are caused by the Taliban. You'd think that would be germane to a discussion of what's going on there, and who really is the root of the problem.

Some people just have a problem with moral complexity, I guess.

*Haddad is Director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Mason University.

1] Putin confidently asserted the gassing was a rebel “provocation” to draw the U.S. in. He demanded the U.S. show evidence to the UN. Which the U.S. should, since it's already been reported that they have satellite data and electronic intercepts. They won't be revealing “sources and methods” or telling the Assad regime anything they don't now know. (Word to the wise: one of the NSA's specialties is code-breaking, which includes cracking encrypted messages, both voice and data.)

2] Recall that when Ambassador Joseph Wilson exposed the fact that there was no purchase or attempt to purchase uranium yellow cake from Niger by Iraq, the Bush-Cheney regime retaliated by exposing the identity of his undercover CIA officer wife, Valerie Plame, a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act for which Robert Novak, the reactionary “commentator” and Washington, D.C. fixture who was fed the information and made it public, was not prosecuted. In fact no one was, although Cheney's lieutenant, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, ended up convicted for lying to Federal agents and to a Grand Jury. Bush commuted his prison sentence so he did no time. But Cheney was bitter that Bush let the conviction stand. Cheney called it “leaving the wounded on the battlefield.” What a fanatic. The fact that Bush wouldn't wipe out the conviction leads me to suspect that he was kept in the dark about the conspiracy to out Valerie Plame. Blowing her cover infuriated the CIA, necessitating the subsequent investigation.

3] Another difference, which some might find ironic: in the Iraq invasion, the UK performed its usual role as the parrot on the U.S. pirate's shoulder, seconding everything the U.S. said and participating in the invasion and occupation. This time, the UK Parliament has effectively blocked Prime Minister David Cameron's attempt to participate with the U.S. in military action. France, which in the Iraq case was excoriated and reviled in the U.S. for refusing to fall into line (the American Congress renamed French fries and French toast on their food service menus “Freedom fries” and “Freedom toast,” an obnoxious, chauvinistic, juvenile move) this time backs the U.S. France was and is correct, in both cases. If the U.S. had announced that it was invading Iraq to free the Iraqi people, that would have been arguably justified morally, if not legally under international law. Of course it did nothing of the sort, contrary to the version presented by the rewriters of history.

BONUS ENDNOTE: Short roundup of other saps helping Assad, (unwittingly or not):

Phyllis Bennis, of the Institute of Policy Studies, who is a reliable ally of anyone under U.S. pressure, says “We may not be able to determine who is responsible” for the gas attacks. (Counterspin, August 30^th, the radio program of FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, which generally does good work analyzing and exposing corporate media awfulness, but sometimes falls into the Anyone-America-doesn't-like-must-be-right attitude.)

Speak for yourself, Phyllis. Why did the regime stall the UN inspectors from entering the area for five days, and then have their goons shoot up their lead vehicle to force them to turn back? She doesn't have to answer that since she and her interlocutors simply ignored that fact, among many other damning facts against Assad, who they talk like they're defense lawyers for.

Republican Senator Rand Paul went on TV Sunday morning Sept 1^st (Meet the Press, NBC) sounding like he was channeling leftie peaceniks and sectarians. No war, he says. He invoked Vietnam, quoting (more or less) Kerry about “how can you ask someone to be the last man to die in a mistake. well I would ask him how can you ask someone to be the first American to die in a mistake.” (No Americans military personnel are going to die firing cruise missiles from ships hundreds of miles from Syria, Rand.) Paul, like the lefties, asserts that taking military action will make things worse, will increase the chance of more chemical attacks, etc. (Funny how they figure that doing nothing lowers the chance of a repeat of sarin attacks, and exacting a price from Assad raises it.) Paul, like his father, is an “isolationist,” as we say, someone who wants the U.S. to be as uninvolved as possible in the world. He says “American interests” aren't “threatened” in this case.

Paul of course is the son of retiring Republican House member Ron Paul, a stubbornly persistent presidential candidate over the years. Father and son are both libertarians, meaning they think except for police and the military, government shouldn't exist. Why the media thinks first-termer Rand is worthy of coveted slots on TV over and over (he's one of 100 Senators) is something the corporate propaganda system should explain.

And finally, the West's top Holy Man, the Godfather of the Roman Catholic Church, the “Pope,” chimed in helpfully, calling use of chemical weapons a no-no and putting forth his divine solution: negotiations and prayer. He called for “world peace” for good measure. Hey, the guy's infallible, so it can't miss!

No Shock And Awe as Obama Tiptoes Up to Military "Action" Against Syrian Regime

Like a man being sucked into the sea by an undertow, the demands that he shore up U.S. credibility is pressuring Obama to blow something up that belongs to the Assad regime in Syria. Various politicians are demanding a military attack since Assad crossed the "red line" of chemical weapons use- the line that Obama foolishly drew himself, once again falling haplessly victim of his own tendency to bluff at times. (The same pattern has been on display during the games of budget chicken he played with the GOP in the past.)

Of course, Assad crossed the line months ago. The latest attack, which the U.S. and even much of the Western media has been strangely reluctant to acknowledge, (notice how often the establishment media in the U.S., and BBC in UK, preface the nerve gas attack with the word "alleged") is so massive and brazen that Assad (and Putin too) will surely hold Obama in contempt if he once again looks the other way.

Doctors Without Borders, who supply the hospitals where the victims were taken, reports over 3,000 were gasses, with 355 fatalities. "Alleged" attack? Really? Get off it, cowardly West. THERE WAS A MASSIVE GAS ATTACK! Ok? Stop trying to create doubt as an excuse for inaction.

After the first attack, Obama should have said something low key, like "Assad knows where the line is," and then a few weeks later launched a surprise aerial attack. (Using cruise missiles or jets firing munitions from outside Syria, for example.) Any attack now, being anticipated well in advance, will lack any shock value. You don't telegraph your punches.

Anyway, if command and control centers are attacked, that can degrade the regime's power to kill and destroy to some extent, And with tons of nerve agents, the regime can murder hundreds of thousands of Syrians. Strong action short of invasion (which is rightly off the table) is required, otherwise Assad will no doubt increase the use the sarin and whatever.

Meanwhile in Syria, the scene of the crime, the UN inspectors, after five days of stalling by the regime, finally got permission to go to the area of the attack. On their way they were promptly fired on by regime snipers, forcing them to turn back. Following their standard playbook, the regime absurdly claimed the rebels fired on the well-marked UN vehicles.

It looks like years of horrors lie ahead for the people of that benighted land.

Does U.S. Muscle in the Mediterranean Have Syria in its Sights?

Or is it just another muddled message?

We the public are being kept appraised of the addition of U.S. warships in the Mediterranean, with the media adding the detail that they packing cruise missiles. (Obviously the Obama regime made a point of mentioning this to reporters so they'd pass it along to us- and not incidentally to the horrendous Assad regime in Syria.)

The latest crisis within this ongoing tragedy (now over two years old, with over 100,000 dead, 7,000 of whom are estimated to be children, and millions of internal and external refugees- oh yes, and the country's infrastructure is being systematically reduced to rubble by Assad's bombardments) is of course prompted by the latest Assad regime atrocity- another poison gas attack. So far, the UN inspectors inside Syria have been blocked from going to the area. (A rebel pocket in a Damascus suburb which is surrounded by Assad forces.)

Obama is being pulled by the political undertow to at least look like military "action" is a possibility. But a hard-core thug like Assad is hardly going to be impressed by a few warships. He already knows the U.S. has a Navy. And two years of U.S. standing by and mainly issuing verbal denunciations and doing not much more must give Assad confidence that the "red line" Obama drew- namely "no chemical weapons use," was a pure bluff. Meanwhile Russia pours arms into Syria to prop up Assad, Iran does likewise, plus sends "advisers" to help the war effort, and Hezbollah sends its fighters from Syria to help.

Obama is in an unenviable position, but one partly of his own making. Remember when the uprising began? It looked like Assad's days were numbered. That is why Obama and his then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, both repeatedly said "Assad must go." They said that because they believed it would happen. And it may have, if serious armaments had been shipped to the rebels. (Before foreign jihadists got in on the act, much later!) I haven't heard anyone in the U.S. Government saying "Assad must go" in quite a while, not even anonymously. Now they vaguely talk about a "diplomatic solution," whatever that's supposed to be. Maybe everyone will just stop fighting, if we say the right thing!

If Obama actually goes ahead and blows up something Assad cares about (his chemical weapons stockpiles would be a good place to start!) there are real risks. What if Assad tried to drag Israel in? It would be easy to do- just launch some missiles or artillery shells across the border- or a chemical munition! And the U.S. of course knows that Iran and Hezbollah, Assad's allies, don't "fight fair." They employ "terrorism," which means the U.S. has to wage "asymmetrical warfare." (I.e. B-2 bombers and aircraft carriers can't really defeat people sneaking around planting bombs, or blowing up trucks or themselves at U.S. embassies and consulates or businesses overseas, or in throngs of American tourists. Of course the U.S. also plays dirty- but that's called "special ops" or "covert ops" or "unconventional warfare," not terrorism, even though it's often indistinguishable in its civilian targets and methods, except for the suicide part.)

My guess is this is a feint by Obama, the sending of a couple of destroyers, (not even a cruiser! much less an aircraft carrier) and it is going to reinforce the impression of weakness when nothing happens. I hope I'm wrong, even though there are risks to using force. But as of now no one among Arabs and Muslims loves the U.S. At least if it sided with the rebellion, the millions of Arabs in the region who care about the plight of the people under siege would have a reason to feel more positively towards the U.S. There's not much point trying to straddle the fratricidal divides in the Arab world. But Obama is obviously anxious about jihadists managing to land a visible punch on American "interests." Not an irrational anxiety.

Oh by the way, that recent U.S. promise to finally send some small arms to the rebels? Not a single gun or bullet has been sent yet. Credibility's the watchword!

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Whatever Happened to “American Credibility”?

The dog that didn't bark; the GOP.

Usually when American “credibility” is “tested,” there is intense political pressure on U.S. presidents to react forcefully (often violently); pressure from the national political establishment and the commanding heights of the elite media.

Today we have a situation that would ordinarily fit this bill. Yet there haven't been howls that Obama is creating a “disaster” for U.S. credibility, that his “weakness” is sapping American power. (Credibility meaning the weight that U.S. demands and threats carry, based on the expectation that the U.S. will enforce its will, with military assault if necessary. Having one's bluff called is highly destructive to credibility. And as a large part of what power is and what creates power is the perception that an entity or person is powerful. Thus loss of credibility results in actual loss of power, in that others are less afraid to resist demands and threats. Power is the ability to impose one's will, to make others obey, and to control events.)

Some time back, Barack Obama declared a “red line” that Syria's Assad better not cross- namely using chemical weapons on the people under his misrule.

Assad crossed that line some months ago, gingerly, testing, probing Obama's “resolve,” as seriousness of commitment is called in the vernacular of “international relations.” And he did it somewhat cunningly. He lied about doing it, while also floating the idea that the rebels might have chemical weapons. He must have been thrilled when some in the U.S. and European political and media elites decided to give some credence to these insulting lies, saying it was “unclear” what happened, and if something happened, who did it. (The general sleaziness of some of the rebels didn't help any, as it raised doubts about their claims and evidence. In their defense, it is understandable that desperate people would say and do almost anything to get help.)

Now it appears that Assad has escalated the use of chemical weapons against the Syrian population. Videos apparently show the results of a large attack that has killed up to 1200 or so Syrians, including children. One doctor trying to treat the victims with inadequate resources was interviewed by the BBC.

Once again, some in the West are grasping at reasons not to believe it. Their line is Why would Assad do this just when a UN chemical inspection team is in the country?

Because he's brazen, a shameless liar, and doesn't care what you think anyway. He knows you aren't going to stop him from killing. (Doing so would involve a war, and Iran and Russia are backing Assad, and Hezbollah in Lebanon is fighting by his forces' side in Syria. There would be no quick victory without a ground invasion, and the Iraq experience is a good sample of what would ensue, only worse, as Saddam Hussein had no one to stand by his side, unlike Assad. Plus, in what friendly neighboring country would the U.S. mass its invasion force? Turkey? Turkey nixed the use of its territory to invade Iraq, although this situation is different, as Turkey is burdened with fleeing Syrian refugees and Assad has shelled Turkey, killing Turkish citizens, and shot down a couple of Turkish jet fighters. How about Israel? Imagine that! Israel would be crazy to allow it. That's the one thing that could unite Arabs, Sunnis and Shiites. Well, the U.S. could always invade Lebanon, I guess. It's done that a couple of times, under Eisenhower and Reagan.)

The Syrian regime has responded to the latest denunciations and “expressions of concern” with the usual brazen denials and blame-shifting. (There were no chemical weapons! And the terrorists did it!) And for good measure the regime denounced the likes of Sky TV and Aljazeera for “having the blood of Syrians” on their hands. (How's that one for infuriating gall?) Russia has weighed in with skeptical comments about the reality of the atrocity. (Yet they're stymieing an investigation by a UN team already in Syria to look into chemical weapons attacks. Gee, that's odd. If they think Assad is getting a bum rap, how come they don't want a UN investigation which would clear Assad? I just can't figure that out, can you?)

At the moment Germany is the most out-front in demanding a proper UN investigation. (Is the U.S.”leading from the rear,” as during the aerial support for the Libyan people when they rose up against the psychopathic tyrant Qaddafi? It doesn't appear that way. By the way, the Western intervention in Libya was totally justified, and just, and a rare and welcome use of Western and U.S. military power to do some good in the world, even if the motives weren't pure. Doing the right thing even for the wrong reasons is better than doing wrong things for bad reasons. Yes, the aftermath is an unfortunate mess. Qaddafi hollowed out civil society and governmental institutions during his long misrule. And jihadists inevitably move in where there is weakness. Still, the Libyan people deserve a chance to build a better society than Qaddafi's nightmare which was imposed on them. Now if only the West would pay compensation for the few bad bombing strikes, they could hold their heads up with pride.)

Assad is giving Obama a fig leaf to save face by denying any chemical attacks, and/or attributing them to the rebels. (This attack was in a rebel-controlled area, so hard to see why they would gas their own territory. Maybe they're crazy!) So those so inclined can exaggerate causes for doubt. (Hey, maybe the whole attack is a hoax, using old videos. But it doesn't seem like it.)

Usually, when a much smaller foreign nation defies (or is perceived to defy) the U.S., force is swiftly exerted to make an example of the miscreant nation and thus reinforce U.S. power. (Notice that Cuba is still being squeezed in the coils of U.S. power, going on 54 years now, because it won't knuckle under.)

But “defying” the U.S. has become more noticeable of late. Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia have been “defying” it in the last few years under independent presidents. (Respectively, Chavez and his successor, Correa, and Morales.) This is reflective of changes in the world political situation, which has created subtle shifts in the balance of power, diffusing power among other countries.

Russia and China are backing Assad. Syria in effect is a pivot point where those rival powers to the U.S. see an opportunity to stymie the U.S. and weaken the U.S. by letting it damage its own credibility. With their backing, Syria is protected from diplomatic moves against the Syrian regime at the UN since China and Russia have veto power on the UN Security Council. (The only part of the UN with any actual power.) Syria is now a place where various tectonic plates are rubbing against each other: not just distant large powers but regional ones including Turkey and the Gulf oil sheikdoms, plus the religious factions within Islam.

So it is a truism that the situation is “complex.” And now that the U.S. missed a chance to make a difference by refusing for two years (especially early on when the rebels seemed to be on a roll) to provide weapons and ammo to the rebels, the only real option left that could make a difference would be U.S. bombing of regime targets. Given the support of Russia and Iran for Assad (not to mention Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has sent combatants to fight on Assad's side), such an escalation would have unpredictable consequences. Plus, after two years of dithering, U.S.-fretting over jihadists moving in has finally come to pass. Now there really aren't any good options.

Remember way back when, two years ago, when Obama and his then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly stated publicly that Assad had to go? We haven't heard that in awhile. Apparently that goal has been quietly abandoned. (Isn't that the definition of failure? Stating your aim and not achieving it?)

So much for “credibility.”

Yet the Republicans have been notably restrained in attacking Obama over this loss of “credibility.” Even those calling for military action, such as Senator John McCain, haven't attacked Obama or accused him of “weakness.” This would seem to point to a near consensus among the imperial elite in Washington that the U.S. had best not get too involved.

The costs of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, costs that will stretch far into the future (wounded and mentally damaged veterans, interest on the debt incurred, for example) could be a factor in Washington's newfound gun-shyness. Especially since neither were rousing victories, but have left muddled and unstable situations in their wakes.

Of course, the flip side of caution is being drunk on power. That leads to messes like the Indochina war. That war, and the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, provide valuable lessons to those in power about the limits of their power, of which they apparently require periodic reminders via disasters of their own making.

But they aren't the ones who pay, in blood or limbs. And only an infinitesimal part of the trillions in dollars squandered (that could instead have been used to make life much better for people) comes out of their own pockets.

Regarding the Syrian tragedy, at this point all the U.S. is concerned with is appearances. Surely the high apparatchiks who make policy realize there is no diplomatic solution to be had here. (That was obvious two years ago to me, given the nature of Assad and his regime. He wasn't going to be talked out of power! A person who commits the kind of extreme atrocities his regime has to hang on to power obviously will never give it up voluntarily.) So the game now is to issue denunciations, expressions of concern, wring ones hands, go through the motions at the UN of trying to get Russia and China to agree to some more toothless resolutions, and so on. Make it look like the U.S. cares about human beings. But the U.S. is just another powerful nation, that only cares about power. U.S. talk about “human rights” has always been only about public relations and political leverage over adversary and enemy regimes. It is part of propaganda.

After all, the U.S. is a nation that was founded on the twin pillars of genocide and slavery, (which it abolished well after most other nations did), and while it has evolved (fitfully) along with the rest of the world, its long history of domestic repression (which has been increasing greatly since the Al-Qaeda attack of 9/11/01, in part engineered by the FBI and CIA precisely to permit the current increase in police state power with its ever-more-omniscient surveillance and policing of dissent) is enough to convincingly refute the incessant propaganda about American “freedom.”

WHO Did You Say “Endangers Lives”?

Bradley Manning is currently groveling in the sentencing phase of his military show trial, apparently in a bid for mercy. (Maybe his tormentors will let him out of military prison when he's an old man, if he's “lucky.” Looks like he signed up for the Army for life, unwittingly.) [1]

This is as good a time as any to refute the propaganda line we keep hearing, including at this “trial,” that Manning (and Julian Assange, and now Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald), “endanger lives” by revealing U.S. crimes, surveillance, and oppression.

The U.S. power establishment constantly throws out the demonstrably false claim that the aforementioned people and their ilk “put lives at risk” by exposing U.S. crimes against humanity (as well as revealing various tittle-tattle, snarky comments about “allies,” and dirt from State Department cables and such). [2]

Of course, for a mass murdering empire to squeal when its “secrets” are revealed that “You're endangering lives!!” is the height of hypocrisy and breathtaking chutzpah (in addition to being calculated bullshit designed to manipulate ignorant public opinion). [3]

But there's another aspect of the establishment's hypocrisy that is less obvious. Take the New York Times, the establishment's self-anointed “newspaper of record.”

Today's print edition (August 16^th) has an article on the top of page one, “In Tense Cairo, Islamists Look To Next Move.” Subhead: “New Protests Expected After Friday Prayer.” The background: Two days ago the military oligarchy attacked the Muslim Brotherhood sit-in protest in Cairo. (The military overthrew the first democratically-elected president in all of Egypt's history, the Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi, who they've kept in custody since.) Using snipers and other brutal methods, the military murdered 638 people and wounded almost 4,000. (Those figures are from the article.)

The author, David D. Kirkpatrick, interviewed some men outside a mosque being used as a morgue for some of the bodies. The last sentence of the fourth paragraph says of the men, “A few argued openly for a turn to violence.”

The next paragraph starts with a quote: “'The solution might be an assassination list,' said Ahmed, 27, who like others refused to use his full name for fear of reprisals from the new authorities. [Actually the same old military “authorities” who have been in power since Col. Nasser led a military coup that ended the monarchy.”Authorities” is a term that legitimizes whoever is in power. {4}] 'Shoot anyone in uniform. It doesn't matter if the good is taken with the bad, because that is what happened to us last night.” [That is, on Wednesday, August 14^th.]

Why was it necessary for the NYT to give Ahmed's age? Couldn't they have said “a young man” or “a man in his 20s”? What useful information does jeopardizing him with this detail serve?

But that's nothing. It gets much worse.

The next paragraph goes like this: “Mohamed Rasmy, a 30-year-old engineer, interrupted. 'That is not the solution,' he said, insisting that Islamic leaders would re-emerge with a plan “to come together in protest.”

The NYT fingered the hapless and naïve Mr. Rasmy with his full name, his age, and his occupation. Hey, why not publish his ID number too?

It's obvious what happens next. The secret police [aka “intelligence agents” or “security forces” as the Times calls secret policemen of "friendly" -to the U.S., of course- nations] pick up Mr. Rasmy for interrogation and torture, which is routine in Egypt. Kirkpatrick helpfully provided them with avenues of interrogation. What are your leaders plans? Who is the terrorist Ahmed?

And what if he doesn't know who Ahmed is? Then the only way t6o stop the torture is to finger someone else. And if the secret police decide he lied about that, then it gets worse.

The NYT knows full well that that is how things work in Egypt. You don't even have to be particularly sophisticated to know that.

Yet they named this man.

What useful information is imparted to the public by giving a full name, an exact age, and occupation of a stranger? He could be called “Mohamed, a professional in his 30s.” We lose nothing of value with that description. (Ironically, the NYT routinely blacks out very important information that they think it's better we don't know, often at the “request” of the government, especially “the White House.”)

The truth is, no one in a dangerous situation should even talk to the NYT. Secret police infiltrators could see you talking to them, as also may well have happened on this occasion. It would be quite incompetent of the Egyptian “security forces” to NOT have plants in that crowd, and also to not be shadowing the likes of Kirkpatrick, which doubtlessly they are. (Just as the FBI and CIA tails many foreign journalists in the U.S, and abroad too in the case of the CIA.)

The NYT consistently shows this callous indifference to the well-being of “nobodies” they use. They have done it during the Syrian uprising against Assad, endangering people rebelling or living in areas under siege. They did it to Libyans during the revolution against Qaddafi. Those are just the most recent examples.

They do this sort of thing all the time, with lowly average people in foreign lands. (They do it in the U.S. too, with the poor, the persecuted, the dissident. But many poor people are wised up enough to not give their names to such disreputable people as the NYT. For example, in the same issue of the NYT, in “Teenager's Errant Gunfire at Project In Bronx Leads to His Fatal Beating,” on page A21, not everyone in a public housing project will give the Times their names, which the Times attributes to fear of retaliation, probably correctly in this case. Fear of the police is another good reason for poor blacks to avoid mention in the establishment's media.)

The only people the NYT is interested in protecting is other members of the power elite. Daily, unnamed “officials” appear in their stories whispering alleged facts into the ears of Times reporters. Oftentimes the “information” is obviously “classified,” as I have pointed out elsewhere. [See “The New York Times Breaks the Law Again Today.”]

Might as well mention one other bad (and deceitful) habit of the NYT, which predictably occurred in the Kirkpatrick article. They like to hide the most important or damning to “authority” information that they are deigning to report (they refuse entirely to report even more important or critical info) in the third-to-last paragraph of articles. In this case, that's paragraph 26 of a 28 paragraph story. It describes what Kirkpatrick apparently saw in a mosque where victims of the slaughter were brought. Here is what it reveals:

“Many [bodies] were charred beyond recognition by the fires that Egyptian security forces set to eradicate the tent city.” It goes on. The important information, that the Egyptian military dictatorship burned people alive (or after shooting them) is deeply buried near the end of a long story. The rest of the U.S. media, especially broadcast, has virtually refused to report this detail at all, or tap-danced around the facts. At least Kirkpatrick tells it straight. My advice when reading the NYT: if you're pressed for time, just read the few and last couple of paragraphs of stories. The rest is mostly filler and repetition, many times.

1] A few words are in order here about that oh-so-fair “trial,” military court martial, technically. No transcripts, no recording devices allowed, reporters (real ones, not the establishment propagandists who only showed up on the first and last days) forced to act like spies to try and get info and report, military goons standing behind them in the press pen and spying on their computer screen, secret “evidence,” and so on. The officer acting as “judge” was promised a promotion to an appeals tribunal during the “trial.” A not so subtle message to her to make sure she reaches the expected decisions, in which case she will be rewarded. In other words, blatant bribery of the judge on behalf of the prosecution side, the military and government. Like I said, a real fair trial.

There's an old saying: military justice is to justice as military music is to music.

Of course, there is plenty of precedent for the government bribing judges. Most cases stay secret. One that didn't is the offer of the FBI directorship to the judge presiding over the prosecution of Daniel Ellsberg for exposing the Pentagon Papers. When it was revealed during the trial, the judge insisted it didn't influence him. Contrary to myth, the charges were not dismissed because of this. Rather, the egregious misconduct of the Nixon regime (burglarizing Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office to find dirt on Ellsberg, having Cuban fascist exile goons beat him up, and so on) is what led to the dismissal of charges by the judge. So Ellsberg wasn't “exonerated” by the courts, as a not guilty verdict would have done. Not that he needs exoneration from a criminal system.

2] The same day as the NYT printed Kirkpatrick's report (the 16^th, probably a day after it went up online), the former State Department Chief Flack, P.J. Crowley, was on Democracy Now, pushing the propaganda lines that Manning “endangered people” and he “violated his oath” and deserves severe punishment,

3] I'll just touch briefly on the most obviously galling aspect of this: namely that this power establishment caused the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqis (at a minimum) with an unprovoked war of aggression, falsely and cynically portrayed as self-defense against an imminent threat from non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” in the hands of Saddam Hussein. (Hussein never made any threats to attack the U.S., so the propaganda was doubly false. The Bush regime used the 9/11/01 suicide airliner attacks, which were carried out under the watchful eyes of the CIA and FBI, which deliberately allowed them to proceed, as a golden political opportunity to carry out a long-held desire among the right wing of the power establishment to emplace a client regime in Iraq. In fact, back in the 1990s they'd even written a paper saying that “another Pearl Harbor” would be a perfect opportunity to carry out their scheme.)

Or take that the trove of military documents exposed by Manning and Assange.* The military records provided plenty of incriminating evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq. (See: “Dispatches – Iraq'sSecret War Files” a powerful documentary produced by Channel 4 (UK) and the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, that mined the Manning trove to great effect. Naturally, it wasn't on U.S. television. There is also the “collateral murder” video, taken in Baghdad, Iraq, and viewable in various forms on youtube.com and elsewhere, which you should watch if you haven't already. That video shows a murderous U.S. helicopter crew champing at the bit to slaughter a group of obvious civilians just walking in the street below, unaware of their imminent deaths at the hands of flying barbarians. Two Reuters photographers were among those slaughtered, as well as a father of young children who, seeing the bodies in the street, behaved like a decent human being and stopped his van to help. When they shot his children, the helicopter crew laughingly sneered that that's he gets for being so dumb as to take his kids to a “combat zone.”

By the way, when the U.S. military murders civilians, they call it “engaging the enemy” or “the target.” As these murderous goons did. Engage is their antiseptic euphemism for “gun down” or “blow to smithereens” human beings.

Putting this evidence of murder into the public domain is probably Manning's greatest “crime,” in the minds of the U.S. rulers.

For this service to humanity, Bradley Manning is going to be imprisoned for the rest of his life. (They would execute him if they hadn't calculated it would be politically unwise.)

* To a lesser extent establishment newspapers in several countries, including the New York Times in the U.S., also revealed some of what is contained in the Manning trove. The NY Times showed its gratitude to Assange with a long term campaign of character assassination and juvenile sniping, including a ludicrous, junior high school dissing of Assange in a NYT Sunday magazine cover story by former executive editor William “Bill” Keller, who seems to have psychological problems of his own. [See: “Bill Keller's Character Assassination Hatchet-Job on Julian Assange.”]

Another ingrate was the Guardian (U.K.) Apparently personality is more important than issues to these high level hacks. If you don't charm them, they'll knife you. Or maybe it was a political decision to erect a wall between “real” journalists, namely made members of the establishment, and outsiders who are anti-establishment. In short, like the World War II alliance between the capitalist West and the Soviet Union against the Axis powers, this was a temporary and uncomfortable compact of convenience which the poohbahs of establishment propaganda found distasteful, especially the NY Times.

4] The word “authorities” to refer to those in power places an aura of legitimacy around them. It also presumes that one should submit to them. We are all trained from childhood to submit to “authority.” The word “authority” also means one with superior knowledge, as in “Professor X is an authority on the use of political euphemisms to shore up structures of power.” This sense of the word bleeds over into its usage to refer to those with power. Authoritative, derived from authority, means that which can be relied on as true, the last word on something, the truth that must be accepted and deferred to. An authoritative source is one that trumps your worthless opinion, jack. This meaning too subliminally rubs off on “the authorities.”

That's not to say that all ideas are equal, or that there are no facts. It just means be skeptical, verify things, and think for yourself. That is the rational, human way.