From Ted Snider, at antiwar.com:
A pattern is emerging across current events from Syria to Iran to Ukraine. The pattern has two parts. In the first, America is increasingly in conflict with her natural allies. America, contrary to its mythical image as the cops of the world, fans the flames of conflict and finds itself in conflict with the Europeans who are running from flame to flame trying to put them out. Just as unnatural and surprising is that, in the second part, the President of the United States sides with Europe and finds himself in conflict with a US government – either the congress or the State Department – over which he has lost control.
The pattern began in Syria. America wanted regime change and, as in Iraq, clothed it in a push to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. So chemical weapons became the red line in Syria. But it was never really about chemical weapons.
The chemical weapons were never the red line that, if crossed, would lead to US intervention and regime change in Syria. Regime change was the goal long before the chemical weapons. On July 30, 2006, the Jerusalem Post reported that, during the Israeli-Lebanese war, “Defense officials told the Post . . . that they were receiving indications from the US that America would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria”. As early as May 23, Robert Parry says, Bush “urged Israel to attack Syria”. Stephen Zunes says that the American push to extend the war beyond Lebanon into Syria was no secret. “In support of the Israeli offensive, the office of the White House Press Secretary released a list of talking points that included reference to a Los Angeles Times op-ed . . . . The article . . . urges an Israeli attack against Syria”: “Israel needs to hit the Assad regime. Hard,” the op-ed argues.
In August 2011, two years before the chemical weapons strikes, Obama had publicly declared that “the time has come for President Assad to step aside” as the only solution to the Syrian crisis.
The goal, then, has always been regime change in Syria, not the elimination of its stockpile of chemical weapons. The chemical weapons were supposed to provide the excuse for the regime change. Perhaps that’s why the US tried to prevent the U.N. from inspecting the site of the Syrian chemical weapon strike, as investigative historian Gareth Porter has shown. And perhaps that’s why Secretary of State John Kerry rejected Syria’s granting of unlimited access to sites said to have been hit by chemical weapons as “too late to be credible,” even though the Syrians agreed to the UN request for unlimited access the very day after they received it. A State Department spokesperson has confirmed that Kerry then intervened and pressured UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to call off the UN investigation.
Kerry’s efforts were, ultimately, unsuccessful. But the State Department seems not to have wanted to locate and remove the weapons because the voluntary surrender of the weapons would remove, not only the weapons, but the excuse for regime change.
So, America fanned the flames in Syria and tried to ignite a regime change. They continued to fan the flames by blaming the Assad government for the sarin gas attacks long after it was clear that it wasn’t clear that the Assad regime was responsible for the sarin gas attacks. America asserted that the red line had been crossed when the red line hadn’t even been drawn. US intervention was on the horizon.
It took the Russians to douse the flames and forestall another American Middle East war. In accordance with a plan worked out by Russia, and finalized by the US and Russia, Assad signed the international convention against chemical weapons, placed Syria’s chemical weapons under international control and swore off the future development of chemical weapons. And the Syrians came through.
Putin had saved Obama from his own hardliners. But the hardliners, especially those in the State Department, would not soon forgive that cooperation. And they would drive a wedge into it and put an end to Obama’s warming toward Russia.
That wedge was Ukraine. The State Department fanned the flame in Ukraine by kindling a coup.
To continue reading: America Fans the Flames
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