Charm and Logic Offensive
"Our military is the greatest the world has ever known. And when we take even limited strikes, it has an impact on a country like Syria.If you're going cross-eyed parsing that statement from Assad, don't be too concerned; it's an Alice-in-Wonderland kind of rabbity-Red Queen statement not intended to make sense because it cannot; Bashar is simply parroting what he has heard and read about his own regime and his own actions and pasting it all on to the United States; he is so innocent of wrong-doing, he should be rocked in a baby crib, chucked under the chin and given a bottle of breast milk.
"If we can accomplish this limited goal without taking military action that would be my preference. On the other hand if we don't maintain and move forward with a credible threat of military pressure I do not think we will get the kind of agreement I would like to see.
"We have to be skeptical because this is not how we've seen them operate over the last couple of years."
U.S. President Barack Obama
"As long as the United States doesn't obey the international law and tramples over the charter of the United Nations, we have to worry that any administration, not only this one, would do anything. But according to the lies that we have been hearing for the past two weeks from high-ranking officials in this administration we have to expect the worst.... It's going to get worse with any foolish strike or stupid war. Worse because nobody can tell what the repercussions of the first strike ... you are talking about one big region, it's not only about Syria. It's interlinked region ... If you strike somewhere you have to expect repercussions somewhere else in different forms in any way that you don't expect..."
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
To bomb or not to bomb, that is the vexing problem that confronts the American president. The House of Representatives is largely against his proposal for a limited bombing mission. The Senate numbers are little better. And the American public is definitely in a majority denial of waving their military off on yet another mission of war in the Middle East. Exhausted with all the turmoil of the past dozen years and fed up with the loss in lives and treasury.
Mr. Obama cited the humanitarian need, spoke of children gassed, of countless refugees, and the need for the world to act. The world is acting, quite clearly distancing itself from the prospect of intervention. Even while it is unequivocal in its collective horror of the events playing out in full display through the media. Disgust looms large for both the regime of Bashar al Assad and the rebels compliant with the presence of jihadis among them.
Good idea to be skeptical. That there is any solid intention on the part of the Syrian regime to surrender any part of its sovereignty to a foreign power. The United States, France, Turkey, United Nations' "peacekeepers" all fit that designation. The Islamic Republic of Iran, Syria's great mentor does not, nor does Lebanon's Hezbollah, a creature of the Iranian Republican Guard.
The prospect of taking possession of a thousand tons of chemical agents, dispersed in some 60 caches around the country, its handling and care, the delicacy of its removal and transference in the midst of a raging civil war where neither side recognizes any notional display of humanity one toward the other is not an entertaining one for the fainthearted.
Blowing the depots to hellish smithereens seems a more attractive prospect, but with its own disturbing and difficult aspects, not the least of which would of course be the dispersal of deadly gases that would ensue, floating their suffocating evil over cities, towns, villages and farming communities in a wide geographic arc; mass slaughter by any other means a definite potential.
For his part, the man who is at the centre of the current most pressing world concern gave warning that his region was an "area where everything is on the brink of explosion. You should expect everything", and of course, anything, anything at all. "It could happen, I don't know. I'm not a fortune teller to tell you what's going to happen", said he happily of possible retaliation by his allies against the U.S.
If it should happen that the United States decided, after all the vacillating that is keeping Mr. Assad well and truly entertained with expectation, does decide to attack there would be "repercussions, somewhere else, in different forms; direct and indirect". Questions about the opacity of the statement? Well, "You have different parties, you have different factions, you have different ideology."
"You are going to pay the price if you are not wise with dealing with terrorists. This war is against the interests of the United States", he warned, gloatingly. The American president was dismissive; Syria hasn't the retaliative capabilities. "Iran does. But Iran is not going to risk a war with the United States over this", he said with full confidence in his own crystal-ball prognostications.
"We're not talking about war. We're not going to war. We will not have people at risk in that way. We will be able to hold Bashar al-Assad responsible without engaging troops on the ground or any other prolonged kind of effort. That is exactly what we're talking about doing -- unbelievably small limited kind of effort", assured John Kerry, Obama's dauntless Secretary of State.
Labels: Chemical Weapons, Conflict, Intervention, Syria, United States
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, September 11, 2013
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