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OBAMA’S NEWEST WAR GAME

Aug 28, 2013 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

 

Obama seems set to drag America into yet another global conflict. This time the pretext for the use of force is the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria.
US Defence Secretary, Chuck Hagel has ratcheted up the war drums when he suggested that America was prepared for the first strike against Syria should the President give the order.
The warmongering Obama administration is seemingly not prepared to wait on the verdict from the UN team that is presently in Syria. It is seemingly not even willing, should it be discovered who used chemical weapons in Syria, to explore new diplomatic options. It is at the ready, willing to bomb Syria regardless, it would seem, whatever is the outcome of the UN investigation.
The statements emanating from Washington suggest that regardless of the findings of the UN inspections, America is ready for air strikes.
The Russians should not allow this war dance by the Americans to continue. They should signal in no uncertain manner that they are prepared and at the ready to come to the defence of Syria should the Americans attack. They should insist that the Obama administration await the outcome of the UN inspections team report, as well as await the deliberations by the UN Security Council on the situation in Syria.
Before these deliberations take place, the UN team has to establish that an atrocity has taken place, but the mere fact that an atrocity has taken place does not form the basis for force to be used against Syria. The justification for the use of force on humanitarian grounds has to be the ongoing atrocities, and the use of force to repel any atrocity can only, under international law, be undertaken after all peaceful means of resolving the dispute have been exhausted.
The American threat is therefore premature and unwarranted. But for the Obama administration it may be politically expedient. With mid-term elections looming soon, there may be the temptation for Obama to order airstrikes against Syria to boost the popularity ratings of Democrats just as how Ronald Regan responded to American humiliation in Lebanon by invading the tiny and insignificant island of Grenada in Operation Urgent Fury, thirty years ago.
The Americans, of course, are keen to blame the Assad administration in Syria for what seems to have been a chemical attack that is believed to have killed in excess of one thousand persons in an area that the Syrian was fighting to gain control. But as some commentators have pointed out, there is no evidence as yet as to who was responsible.
It cannot be ruled out that this attack emanated from the rebels. After all, if one of their ranks was found eating the human remains of his victims, anything is possible.
What the Americans want badly is a game-changer. They want to enter the civil conflict in Syria to alter the balance, since the tide has long swung in favour of Assad. The chemical attack may well become the pretext to do in Syria what was done in Libya.
But the Americans never learn. They have turned the Arab Spring into a snowstorm of instability. They are destroying the Arab World by seeking to impose their own regimes in parts of that world, by force and by influence.
The consequences of this will be both political and economic. There will be a continued backlash against the western world. The strategy will also be ineffective, because Assad has nowhere to run this time, and airstrikes will only intensify the severity of war and increase suffering as happened in the Balkans.
There will also be severe economic consequences.  Just yesterday, the BBC was reporting that oil prices have risen in response to both the US’s warmongering threats and a serious decline in oil production in Libya.
If the Americans launch airstrikes against Syria, it will most definitely see a further increase in oil prices and this will hurt the American economic recovery and the Democrats in the forthcoming elections.
Obama may be willing to take that gamble, but has he factored in the Russian response? Why does he believe that the Russians are simply going to roll over and allow him to do as he pleases in Syria?
It will not be that easy.

 

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