SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
martin dempsey
American Hypocrisy: Against Muslim Sharia Law at Home, Calls it 'Moderate' in Syria
Oct 20, 2015
I just watched the 5 pm news hour on CNN anchored by Wolf Blitzer, and the editors had decided that the lead was that the Russian bombing in south Aleppo risks creating a new wave of refugees. They also stuck to the cover story that the Russians are only attacking the "moderate rebels."
American bombing of populated areas has never been reported in that way on mainstream cable news. The US bombing thatkilled Sanafi al-Nasr said to have been the no. 2 man in the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, the Support Front, was reported on the same show as a great victory. But was he in a completely deserted area? Were any civilians killed around him? It has now come out that most US drone strikes don't even kill the intended target; probably, it is the landlord's family that mainly dies. Was al-Nasr a renter?
Nor did CNN lead with civilian casualties when it covered Israeli PM Netanyahu's bombardment of defenseless little Gaza in the summer of 2014.
Russian bombing of populated areas, like all such bombing, is killing civilians, of course. The point isn't that CNN is wrong but that it is selective.
Whether Russian bombing is more or less egregious than any other can could be debated. I suspect it is less egregious than the Syrian air force, though that wouldn't be saying much. Robert Fisk reports that the Syrian Arab Army is frustrated with the Russians precisely because their air force is very cautious about civilian casualties:
"The Syrians have found that the Russians do not want to fire at targets in built-up areas; they intend to leave burning hospitals and dead wedding parties to the Americans in Afghanistan. This policy could always change, of course. No air force bombs countries without killing civilians. Nor without crossing other people's frontiers. But the Russians are now telling the Turks - and by logical extension, this information must go to the Americans - their flight coordinates."
Note that the Syrian regime has been dropping barrel bombs on civilian areas for years now, and no CNN news hour has begun with this headline. It appears to me that they mind when Russia bombs but not when anyone else does. I should underline that I oppose the Russian intervention in Syria and think it will likely go to dark places. But I also insist that it be reported and analyzed exactly as the actions of the US and its allies are. And this is not the case. The Fisk point of view should be noted, as I just did, even if one has reservations about it (as I do).
As for the "moderate rebels," who have suddenly reappeared in American official discourse only after Russia intervened, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey wrote Congress in the fall of 2013 that he did not want to intervene in Syria because he could not be sure that the victorious rebels would support US interests:
" In an August 19 letter to Representative Eliot Engel, obtained by the Associated Press, Gen. Dempsey effectively ruled out even limited intervention, including US cruise missile attacks and other options that wouldn't require US troops on the ground. "Syria today is not about choosing between two sides but rather about choosing one among many sides," he said. "It is my belief that the side we choose must be ready to promote their interests and ours when the balance shifts in their favour. Today, they are not."
What he was saying was that by the middle of 2013, the democratic forces in the Free Syrian Army had either collapsed or their units had joined or closely allied with one of the two major al-Qaeda offshoots, Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) or the Support Front (Jabhat al-Nusra, which reports to al-Qaeda 9/11 mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri).
There are many small rebel groups in the hinterlands of Homs, Hama, and Aleppo, as well as in Idlib province, who are not al-Qaeda. But most have become hard-line Salafis a la Saudi Arabia who want Sharia law and allow how they might not kill all the Alawis, Christians, Druze, and other minorities that come under their rule but keep them as second-class citizens under a dictatorship. Some are still Muslim Brotherhood, some of whom want a Muslim state but with elections.
However, these groups are small and not very effective fighters and have been forced to ally with al-Qaeda to avoid being killed by the Syrian Arab Army and in hopes of taking more territory. Moreover, the amount of Syrian territory now held by rebels who want democratic elections and full legal equality for all Syrians would be, in my estimation, zero percent. Almost all Syrian rebels now want a society ruled by Sharia or a hard-line medieval notion of Islamic law. (Sharia itself, as private practice and individual choice, is as inoffensive as Jewish Halakha or Roman Catholic canon law, but making a fundamentalist interpretation of it the basis for national law is a whole set of human rights crimes waiting to happen).
Note the irony. The same GOP politicians who denounce all US Muslims for allegedly wanting to impose Sharia or Muslim law on all Americans are talking about the Syrian rebels who want a Sharia society as "moderates" and "US allies" being targeted by Russia. (The allegation about American Muslims, who, in my experience, love the US Constitution half to death, is incorrect).
When Wolf Blitzer interviewed Rep. Adam Schiff, he asked a leading question about the Russians attacking the "moderate rebels." Schiff concurred that that was what Moscow was doing and spoke of these forces as being backed by US allies in the Gulf. He did, however, veer off script by admitting that Russia isalsoattacking al-Qaeda in Syria. He complained, however, that Russia is not attacking Daesh/ ISIL.
Russia is, of course, occasionally bombing Daesh. However, that organization mainly holds territory in the country's far east, away from the western population centers. It is Syrian al-Qaeda that holds a great deal of Idlib Province and spearheads the Army of Conquest coalition of Salafi jihadis who control the rest of Idlib Province.
So why is it objectionable that Russia is attacking an organization reporting to al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, who killed nearly 3,000 Americans in 2011? Or that Russia is attacking groups that have political or tactical alliances with al-Qaeda in Syria? Wouldn't that make them like the Taliban in Afghanistan? Is the US wrong to bomb the latter because they were only allied with al-Qaeda?
And how can the same news hour report positively on the killing by American bombing of al-Qaeda's al-Nasr and slam the Russians for bombing . . . al-Qaeda?
This isn't news reporting. This is government propaganda.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Obama Does Have a Strategy in Iraq: Escalation
Even as Obama admits there's no military solution in Iraq, the Pentagon is pouring more U.S. troops and weapons into its floundering war on the Islamic State.
Jun 11, 2015
Almost nine months after President Obama admitted that "we don't have a strategy yet" to challenge the Islamic State -- and just days after he said he still has "no complete Iraq strategy" -- the non-strategy suddenly has a name: escalation.
According to reports in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, the Obama administration is poised to send 400 to 500 additional troops to Iraq immediately and to build a new U.S. military base in restive Anbar province to house them -- and potentially many more.
"If anything, the ongoing air war -- and the flooding of the region with arms -- is making a diplomatic resolution less likely."
These troops would not be limited to the officially narrow training mission of the 3,100 U.S. troops already on the ground in Iraq. They would still be considered trainers and advisers, but their mission, according to the Times, would be "to help Iraqi forces retake the city of Ramadi and repel the Islamic State."
The escalation isn't exactly the massive deployment of ground troops called for by some hawks in Congress and by neo-conservative commentators, who continue to blame the rise of the Islamic State on Obama's earlier withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq -- rather than on George W. Bush's initial invasion and occupation of the country, which actually led to the creation of the group in 2004.
But the Journal still recognized that "the new plan is a marked if modest expansion of the U.S. military role in Iraq. It would expose American forces to greater risk of being drawn into direct combat with Islamic State forces that already control territory around likely sites for a planned U.S. training base."
A Series of Setbacks
The official reason is linked to the Islamic State's recent seizure of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province and a key city only 70 or so miles from Baghdad. (As Business Insider so nicely put it, Ramadi is closer to Baghdad than New York is to East Hampton.)
Obama and other top U.S. officials initially attempted to downplay the significance of Ramadi, describing the inability of the Iraqi military to defend it as simply a "tactical retreat." But there's no question that the loss of the city, followed quickly by the Islamic State's seizure of the strategic Syrian city and ancient ruins of Palmyra, reflected a serious consolidation of the group's military power.
Since then it's been a rough few weeks for Obama's war on ISIS.
On June 2, news broke that the Iraq military had managed to lose 2,300 armored Humvees, at least 40 M1A1 tanks, 74,000 machine guns, and 52 or more howitzers, mainly to the Islamic State. Weapons were abandoned by fleeing troops, captured on the battlefield, and in some cases likely sold to ISIS and other militias. In a Reuters article caustically titled "Dude, Where's My Humvee?" Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi admitted blithely, "we lost a lot of weapons."
The Reuters writers were equally direct: "The United States is effectively supplying the Islamic State with tools of war the militant group cannot otherwise hope to acquire from its patrons."
Despite the bluster of hawks who crave a deeper war in Iraq and Syria, it isn't true that Obama has no strategy against the Islamic State. There is a strategy -- but it's wrong, and it's losing.
The Obama administration has so far been unable or unwilling to act on its own oft-repeated understanding that "there is no military solution" to the so-called ISIS crisis. Instead, the U.S. strategy has relied almost solely on military action, with little or no investment in the funds, personnel, or political capital to wage the kind of powerful diplomacy that's so desperately needed. If anything, the ongoing air war -- and the flooding of the region with arms -- is making a diplomatic resolution less likely.
Same Old Mistakes
As the war escalates, Congress is largely sitting on the sidelines.
A new measure sponsored by Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy calls for a prohibition on ground troops being sent to Iraq or Syria. But while symbolically important, it would have a very limited impact on the ground, particularly since -- on paper at least -- Obama has already staked out a similar position. Murphy has made clear that his real goal is to limit potential troop escalations by a post-2016 Republican president.
For now, the latest escalation -- like those before it -- is taking place without any congressional authorization, indeed without even any discussion or debate.
And it could get a lot worse before anything gets any better.
Martin Dempsey, the Pentagon's top general, is retiring soon. He will be replaced by Marine General Joseph Dunford, who commanded U.S. troops in Afghanistan and is credited with persuading Obama to slow down the U.S. withdrawal from the country. His appointment as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff may signal a broader new commitment to escalating Obama's global war on terror.
That would mean repeating many of the same mistakes we've already made.
In May, the Pentagon said it was sending 2,000 anti-tank rockets to the Iraqi military to use against ISIS car bombs. In response to Iraq's recent loss of U.S. tanks and Humvees, the Pentagon announced its intention to send 1,000 more anti-tank weapons to the Iraqi military -- to use against the same tanks it had sent previously, now in ISIS hands.
Bookmakers haven't yet announced their predictions for how long it will be before those rockets end up in the Islamic State's hands as well. But at the current rate of escalation, they won't be the last things to blow up.
Keep ReadingShow Less
House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing on Syria
Kerry, Hagel, and Dempsey will present Obama's case for war to important committee in the House
Sep 04, 2013
The Obama administration continued its effort to persuade members of the House of Representatives to sanction its push for war in Syria on Wednesday as Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey appear before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The hearing follows a similar one that took place before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday. That hearing resulted in the formulation of a new resolution penned by committee members that could receive a vote as early as Wednesday.
In the Senate, Obama is likely to need 60 votes to overcome a potential filibuster, USA Today notes, while at least 217 votes are necessary in the House, which currently has two empty seats.
However, Obama has suggested that he may go through with an attack on Syria regardless of how the votes turn out.
_________________________________________
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular