When Cuba didn't knuckle under after more than 50 years of sanctions, I as a citizen thought: "Perhaps there is another way of making the world safe for warmongers."
Imperial Madness
Marching Toward Syria and Beyond
by BEN SCHREINER
CounterPunch WEEKEND EDITION AUG 30-SEP 01, 2013
EXCERPT...
Playing the tried and true chemical weapons card—played each time the U.S. has moved to publicly deepen its level of intervention into the Syrian crisis—U.S. strikes are now reportedly a matter of when, not if. Accordingly, the propaganda machine revs up.
SNIP...
See Damascus, Think Tehran and Beyond
Ever since Jimmy Carter declared Middle East oil to be a “vital national interest” of the United States, the U.S. military has laid perpetual siege to the region. Yet, the one state American planners have always coveted—and once held in their vice—continues to slip the imperial trap. And for this defiance, Iran has become an obsession of U.S. planners. Thus when it comes to U.S. strategic thinking on Syria, it’s really all about how to best to weaken Iran.
Indeed, as Anthony Cordesman of the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies writes:
If Bashar al-Assad wins or survives in ways that give him control over most of Syria [which failing Western intervention, looks more and more likely], Iran will have a massive new degree of influence over Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon in a polarized Middle East divided between Sunni and Shi’ite and steadily driving minorities into exile. This will present serious new risks for an Israel that will never again be able to count on a passive Assad. It will weaken Jordan and Turkey and, most importantly, give Iran far more influence in the Gulf.
Likewise, Richard Hass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, argued on the PBS Newshour that a strike against Syria is necessary “not simply to discourage them [the Syrian government] from using chemical weapons again, but to send a message to Iran.”
(One wonders if the message received on Tehran’s end will be that nuclear weapons provide the only immunization from U.S. attack.)
Of course, Syria has long been about Iran—not only for the U.S. As Efraim Halevy, former director of the Israeli Mossad, crowed back in early 2012, the Syrian crisis “created an opportunity to defuse the Iranian threat.” Knock off Tehran’s main Arab ally, the notion goes, and it won’t be long before the Mullahs are brought to their knees. And failing that, destroying the Syrian state and any value it can offer as an ally to Iran will do just fine.
CONTINUED...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/30/marching-toward-syria-and-beyond/
I'm so proud to think this is a democracy.
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