Syria: Obama’s delayed aggression

On the night of August 31 everyone was busy waiting for President Obama’s speech. Back in the Iraqi days such unplanned speeches of the White House dwellers, especially delivered on a weekend basically meant that one should time the flight time of Tomahawk cruise missiles flying yet again towards the Middle Eastern shores. In case of Damascus the approximate travel time of those rockets from the allied ships amounts to 15 minutes. But when those minutes had finally elapsed nothing terrible happened. After blaming Assad for the usage of chemical weapons against its own people, after labeling his as a “dictator”, Obama affirmed that he’s willing to launch an attack against Syria even despite the fact that he had no approval from the UN whatsoever, despite the lack of support in the NATO ranks, but seconds later Obama out of the blue rejected his idea of attacking Syria, even if it was only a brief delay. He, as a Noble prize winner has suddenly feared to leave behind himself an image of a war criminal that launched a military campaign against a country that has never done anything wrong to the United States all by himself. Should he decided to launch this attack he would place himself in the line with Adolf Hitler that at the beginning of his European campaign have occupied Czechoslovakia, Poland and Austria. He didn’t want the weight of this responsibility to be place on his shoulders, so he asked the Congress to ignore the international law and common sense together with him. In his eyes an approval of the State is somehow relevant on the international level.

The alpha-male of the American law has finally triumphed over the international law! There was not a glimpse of respect towards other countries, towards the United Nations, towards their allies. That’s a hell of a new Reich! What they’ve basically said is: “We place America above all, so we decide who to listen and who to protect on the international scale”. Isn’t that a new world order? Haven’t we heard the very same words from the mentally impaired self-proclaimed dictator of the Nazi Germany? What was the price for this kind of arrogance? Millions of people dying in the World War 2, that brought the Nazi empire to collapsed. Haven’t Mr. Obama learned history in his University?

What has actually happened ten days ago after a relatively long period of delivering monotonous speeches which can be summed up in the phrase: “Assad should be punished.” The United States unexpectedly announced that they had it all covered – all sorts of military intervention plans, ranging from air and missile strikes to the full-fledged warfare that should involve Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and a large number of NATO members. It turned out all the respective U.S. military ships were on their positions to strike Syria immediately, even a number of cruise missiles that were to be launched had already been carefully counted. So carefully that they’ve really got an exact number of missiles to be shot – 420.

All of this reminds of the 1998 USA military aggression against Iraq, which was accused of failing to comply with the UNSCOM demands, even though the Iraqi officials tried to do it desperately. But Bill Clinton, the President of the United States at the time was trying to shift the public opinion from the sexual scandal he was involved in, when the gun lobby came to him, saying that 400 Tomahawk missiles are to reach their out of service date pretty soon. And if they were to be launched, than the gun lobby could produce 400 more missiles for billions and billions of dollars, the taxpayers money. The only downside was that the innocent people were to be killed, but at the end of the day – who cares?

Today nothing has really changed, the new shipment of the Tomahawk missiles are to reach their out of the service date pretty soon, and the gun lobby really wants its billions to produce even more useless missiles. The economy is not doing very well today, you know, so it must be stimulated, but there’s a routine obstacle again – even more innocent people dying.

There’s another aspect of the current crisis – this summer the Syrian regular troops were extremely successful at fighting the rebels. This was partially achieved by the disturbances that the “Syrian friends” are anticipating today. Turkey have found itself at the very verge of the  “Arab spring”, the Islamist regime in Egypt have yielded to the regular army, and as for Qatar after a change of power its political presence can be qualified as nonexistent.

What’s especially important is the situation in Egypt. Since June this country has been on the brink of a civil war. After a coup d’etat the Muslim Brotherhood refused to admit defeat and they wanted to get revenge. The bloodshed have started. It was unclear for a long time who was to win in this face-off. It’s only at the beginning of August the situation in Egypt has stabilized. Egypt is one of the key countries in the region, moreover it’s by far the most important country for the United States in terms of regional security. And while the United States were occupied with Egypt for a while they simply had no time to attack Syria. For this reason they tried to trick Moscow into preparing the Geneva-2 conference by making it believe that they are actually willing to settle the conflict in Syria in a peaceful manner. Than out of the sudden the White House announced that it is not going to participate in a scheduled meeting that was a part of the Geneva-2 preparations. The news came within 24 hours before the actual meeting, so it looked like a slap in the face to Moscow, even though the manners of the Obama administration are well known around the Globe. At the same time Obama has rejected to hold a meeting with the Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G20 summit that is to take place in Saint-Petersburg, all this due to the Snowden case. Edward Snowden have found his refugee in Moscow, but after what he has told the world about the global surveillance the NSA is using against its “possible rivals” and “possible friends” was it Mr. Obama who should have gotten offended?

So here’s another reason to attack Syria – in revenge to the Snowden case, despite all the legitimate protests the Russian side will make. The humiliation factor, knowing that Russia won’t send its troops to take part  in this conflict, is what brings joy to the hearts of the White House dwellers. So they wanted to tell everybody loud and clear: “We are the kings of the world, don’t make friends with Russia since they are not going to fight for you”.

The childish nature of Barak Obama  who was so offended that the White House has actually hired the terrorists to attack the Russian embassy in Damascus. This could be a misinformation of some sort, but ten years ago the United States urged the Russian embassy in Baghdad to leave in order to save their lives from the mythical Iraqi aggression (!). When the American troop have actually entered Baghdad and the Russian embassy was leaving, there was a “friendly fire” case in which five diplomats where injured. The American troops opened fire on the Russia convoy even though they had the exact plan and timing of the Russian evacuation.

The questions are a plenty. It’s clear that the plan to launch a blitzkrieg against Syria has been disrupted. Some power broker has had a thorough discussion with Obama since he was forced to back off, showing the world that he’s not that tough as he likes to be depicted. For ten days the military propaganda has been stomping the media space and than… Nothing.

From now on Obama’s political carrier will be in a steady decline, since his authority has gone, his credibility is inexistent, it’s all over now. And no matter how hard he tries, he won’t be able to return his face that he has lost so carelessly. Should he resort to the nonsense like refusing to go to Saint-Petersburg on G20 or should he launch another media campaign in order to boycott the Sochi-2014 Olympics, is not important. The Congress first hearing is scheduled on September 9 and no matter what he does, there’s no changing it. Long before the Congress should have a chance to decide anything, the UN commission must publish its findings.

It’s crystal clear that the United States is not the master of the Middle East anymore. But the vacant place wont be empty in the region for long, it will be taken by Wahabis and the Muslim Brotherhood. But this time around a military coup like the one that was carried out in Egypt won’t do the trick. We are witnessing a historical event – the dawn of the American Empire. The Empire that left nothing behind itself but scorched soil, ruined Libya, grieving Iraq, unstable Turkey, Yemen at war, poverty-stricken Afghanistan and finally Egypt on the very verge of collapse. These are treasures of the empire, the ones it will leave behind for the generations to come.

 Peter Lvov, doctor of political sciences – especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.