Syrian officer who witnessed Houla massacre Defects

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7. It looks to have been in The Guardian via Atlantic Wire.

Last edited Sun Jun 3, 2012, 06:27 PM - Edit history (5)

Too bad, the Guardian used to be a great newspaper before it was taken over by the neocons. Atlantic has also become a neocon mouthpiece.

But, that doesn't make this story untrue. My first reaction when I heard about the massacres was, also, this was largely the work of pro-regime Shi'ia militias, which is further evidence that this has become a full-scale religious war. I'm merely saying, now, I would hold off on promoting that as fact until there is better confirmation from other sources, which may never come or may show up on the screen in the next five minutes.

On edit: I wanted to add this about the Guardian's neocon line and general support for more active intervention in Syria and Iran by the US and NATO. About The Atlantic, in this regard, nothing need be said. For years, I respected and relied upon The Guardian for progressive international coverage. I began to detect something was wrong in 2007 when that paper championed a hard-line confrontation with Iran over the capture and short-term detention of a Royal Navy boarding party in the Shaat-al-Arab, that turned out to be a transparent provocation of Iran's al-Quuds naval units in that area in the period after the Israeli bombing in Lebanon and leading up to Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

In March, this is what a Guardian columnist had to say about the summit between Obama and Cameron in Washington, and the Iraq and Afghanistan disengagement agenda they discussed. Read between the lines, and there is more than a streak of neocon pining for a more militant stance in Washington. It's a classic case of an ironically titled headline, in this opinion piece by Martin Kettle, entitled, "Cameron and Obama ended the neocon era. But the era of Assad goes on: David Cameron and Barack Obama buried the neocons in Washington. But the west will pay a price for the quiet life" http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/14/cameron-obama-ended-neocon-era

"People get weary," said Obama, in a moment of frankness. The pullout (from Afghanistan) will happen because the voters have lost the will to fight.

The similar surface noise over Iran and Syria also conceals a deeper current, a long withdrawing roar of disengagement. Cameron and Obama dwelt less on Iran and Syria than they did on Afghanistan. That's partly because there is less they can do there, even the Americans, certainly the British. The Washington Post joint article emphasised that there is time and space to pursue a diplomatic solution in Iran, buttressed by stronger sanctions. There is not an iota of ambiguity in the toughness of the language, but the unspoken reality is that Obama would do almost anything to avoid getting trapped into a military strike against Iran. That doesn't mean that it won't happen. But it does mean that he thinks, rightly, that it would be a mark of failure if it did.

In Syria the limits of engagement are even more stark. At the White House press conference, Obama spoke about aid to the opposition, about pressure on the regime, about mobilising the nations and tightening the sanctions. Cameron threatened the Assad dynasty with the international criminal court. It all sounds like action, and it is all useful incremental stuff. But it is action at a distance, with strict limits. It is not intervention, because the international order has a collective interest in inaction and because the costs – not least the political costs at home – are deemed too high.

All this is, in very large part, the politics of where we are now. Faced with all three of these grim situations at once – a decade-long losing struggle against a feudal patriarchal narco-state, the threat of nuclear weapons in the hands of a paranoid revolutionary theocracy, and the readiness of a corrupt Arab socialist autocrat to kill his own people for the sake of the revolution – it is hardly surprising that Obama and Cameron hold back. Who's to blame them for doing so? The historic failure in Iraq leaves them little choice. But so does the fragility of the global economy. Even if the US and the UK were faced with only one of the three problems, Iraq and the recession would make them think twice.

A large part of all of us breathes a huge sigh of relief at this. The post-George Bush era finally beckons. Withdrawal from Afghanistan means no more pointless deaths of young soldiers, no more massacres, insults and acts of desecration against Afghans – at least by Americans. Western nations think in instant gratification terms and short timescales and this has all gone on too long. The west has had enough of fear and shame and hard times, of making enemies out of strangers and realising that getting people to change their ways is harder than it first seemed. People get weary, just like Obama said.

Another part of us, though, ought to reflect on what is being lost by this overwhelming collective disengagement. The disengagement is happening because the mistakes – crimes if you prefer – of the past have created a collective war-weariness that has now become a collective war-wariness. It is natural to want the conflict to end.

Who wouldn't? It's not wrong to want a quiet life, but how right is it when it comes at a price that someone else will inevitably have to pay? That wasn't acceptable to earlier generations who scorned non-intervention in Spain or Abyssinia. Obama and Cameron closed the door on the George Bush era on Wednesday, to the general relief of the world. But the era of Mullah Omar, Ayatollah Khamenei and Bashar al-Assad goes on, posing questions that will one day have to be answered.

Unfortunately, Mr. Kettle, the neocon era is not over. It just continues as such by moving to new targets.