Yes, it appears that the rebels are losing as they must when outside
intervention is ruled out. The Arab Spring confronted the
dictatorships head on and gave then a choice of retreat or a blood
bath. Libya chose the bloodbath and that was stopped by overwhelming
US power. Belatedly, the Obama administration is waking up to this
reality and is now trying to muster support for intervention before
the rebel collapse.
Unfortunately, imposing a no fly zone now is pretty dicey after two
years of hard fighting.
The truth has always been that a Sunni dominated Syria is very much
in the interests of the US because it eliminates an unwelcome
dictator happily working with the Iranians and their running dogs in
Lebanon. It may even allow progress on Iraq and the Kurds. There
was plenty to gain which is why they tentatively supported the rebels
however dysfunctional it was.
If now that is not going to happen, then retreat becomes a little
messy. Yet that is sometimes the least risky option for the USA.
The Fate of the
Middle East in the Balance: Syria Endgame Approaching Fast
Wednesday, 15 May 2013
09:35By Shamus Cooke,
The tempo of events in
Syria has accelerated in recent weeks. The government forces have
scored significant battlefield victories over the rebels, and
this has provoked a mixture of war provocations and peace offers from
the U.S. and its anti-Assad allies.
With Obama’s
blessing Israel fighter jets recently attacked Syria on three
occasions; in one massive air strike on a military installation in
Damascus 42 Syrian soldiers were killed. Shortly thereafter Obama
finally agreed to a peace conference with Russia, which had been
asking for such talks for months.
Obama is entering
these talks from a weakened position; the Syrian government is
winning the war against the U.S.-backed rebels, and success on the
ground is the trump card of any peace talks. Obama and the
rebels are in no position to be demanding anything in Syria at the
moment.
It’s possible that
Obama wants to avoid further humiliation in his Syria meddling by a
last minute face-saving “peace” deal. It’s equally likely,
however, that these peace talks are a clever diplomatic ruse, with
war being the real intention. It’s not uncommon for peace talks to
break down and be used as a justification for an intensification of
war, since “peace was attempted but failed.”
And Obama has plenty
of reasons to pursue more war: he would look incredibly weak and
foolish if Syria’s president were to stay in power after Obama’s
administration had already announced that Assad’s regime was over
and hand picked an alternative government of Syrian exiles that the
U.S. — and other U.S. allies — were treating as the “legitimate
government of Syria.”
Here’s how the BBC
referred to Obama’s Syrian puppet government:
“… the Syrian
opposition’s political leadership – which wanders around
international capitals attending conferences and making grand
speeches – is not leading anyone. It barely has control of the
delegates in the room with it, let alone the fighters in the field.”
If an unlikely peace
deal is reached, these Syrian exiles — who only a tiny minority of
the rebel fighters actually listen to — will be the ones to sign
off on the deal.
4
Many politicians in
the U.S. are still clamoring for war in Syria, based on the unproven
accusation that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against
the rebels. In actuality, however, the UN so far has only
indicated that the exact opposite is true: there is significant
evidence the U.S.-backed rebels used chemical weapons against the
Syrian government:
Of course this fact
only made the back pages of the U.S.media, if it appeared at
all. Similarly bad news about the U.S.-backed rebels committing
large scaleethnic/religious cleansing and numerous human
rights violations didn’t manage to make it on to the front
pages either. And the numerous terrorist bombings by
the U.S.-backed rebels that have indiscriminately killed civilians
have likewise been largely ignored by U.S. politicians and the media.
The U.S. position is
weakened further by the fact that the majority of the rebel fighters
are Islamic extremists, who are fighting for jihad and sharia law,
not democracy. The Guardian reported recently:
“Syria’s main
armed opposition group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), is losing
fighters and capabilities to Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist
organization with links to al-Qaida that is emerging as the
best-equipped, financed and motivated force fighting Bashar
al-Assad’s [Syrian] regime.”
The New York
Times adds:
“Nowhere in
rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak
of.”
But even with all
these barriers to the U.S. dictating its terms to the Syrian
government, Obama has trump cards of his own: the U.S. and the
Israeli military.
It’s possible that
the Israeli airstrikes on Syria were used as a bargaining chip with
the proposed peace conference in Russia. If Obama threatened to bomb
Syria into the Stone Age there is plenty of evidence —Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya — to back up this threat.
Following through with
this kind of threat is actually considered intelligent foreign policy
to many politicians in the U.S., since a country not aligned with the
U.S. will have been weakened and fragmented as an opposing force,
lowering the final barrier to war with Iran.
U.S. foreign policy is
now completely dependent on using the threat of annihilation. As U.S.
economic power has declined in relation to China and other countries,
the economic carrot has been tossed aside in favor of the military
stick. Plenty of U.S. foreign policy “experts” are demanding
that Obama unsheathe the stick again, lest this foundation of U.S.
foreign policy be proven to be just talk and no action.
This is the essence of
U.S. involvement in Syria, which is risking regional war that
could include Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Israel, Iran, Jordan, and
Saudi Arabia with the potential to drag in the bigger powers
connected to these nations, the U.S. and Europe on one hand and
Russia and China on the other.
The fate of the
already-suffering Middle East is hanging in the balance
S
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