If Barack Obama decides to attack the Syrian regime, he has ensured - for the very first time in history - that the United States will be on the same side as al-Qa'ida.
Quite an alliance! Was it not the Three Musketeers who shouted "All for one and one for all" each time they sought combat? This really should be the new battle cry if - or when - the statesmen of the Western world go to war against Bashar al-Assad.
The men who destroyed so many thousands on 9/11 will then be fighting alongside the very nation whose innocents they so cruelly murdered almost exactly 12 years ago. Quite an achievement for Obama, Cameron, Hollande and the rest of the miniature warlords.
This, of course, will not be trumpeted by the Pentagon or the White House - nor, I suppose, by
al-Qa'ida - though they are both trying to destroy Bashar. So are the Nusra front, one of al-Qa'ida's affiliates. But it does raise some interesting possibilities.
Maybe the Americans should ask al-Qa'ida for intelligence help - after all, this is the group with "boots on the ground", something the Americans have no interest in doing. And maybe al-Qa'ida could offer some target information facilities to the country which usually claims that the supporters of al-Qa'ida, rather than the Syrians, are the most wanted men in the world.
There will be some ironies, of course. While the Americans drone al-Qa'ida to death in Yemen and Pakistan - along, of course, with the usual flock of civilians - they will be giving them, with the help of Messrs Cameron, Hollande and the other Little General-politicians, material assistance in Syria by hitting al-Qa'ida's enemies. Indeed, you can bet your bottom dollar that the one target the Americans will not strike in Syria will be al-Qa'ida or the Nusra front.
And our own Prime Minister will applaud whatever the Americans do, thus allying himself with al-Qa'ida, whose London bombings may have slipped his mind. Perhaps - since there is no institutional memory left among modern governments - Cameron has forgotten how similar are the sentiments being uttered by Obama and himself to those uttered by Bush and Blair a decade ago, the same bland assurances, uttered with such self-confidence but without quite enough evidence to make it stick.
In Iraq, we went to war on the basis of lies originally uttered by fakers and conmen. Now it's war by YouTube. This doesn't mean that the terrible images of the gassed and dying
Syrian civilians are false. It does mean that any evidence to the contrary is going to have to be suppressed. For example, no-one is going to be interested in persistent reports in Beirut that three Hezbollah members - fighting alongside government troops in Damascus - were apparently struck down by the same gas on the same day, supposedly in tunnels. They are now said to be undergoing treatment in a Beirut hospital. So if Syrian government forces used gas, how come Hezbollah men might have been stricken too? Blowback?
And while we're talking about institutional memory, hands up which of our jolly statesmen know what happened last time the Americans took on the Syrian government army? I bet they can't remember. Well it happened in Lebanon when the US Air Force decided to bomb Syrian missiles in the Bekaa Valley on 4 December 1983. I recall this very well because I was here in Lebanon. An American A-6 fighter bomber was hit by a Syrian Strela missile - Russian made, naturally - and crash-landed in the Bekaa; its pilot, Mark Lange, was killed, its co-pilot, Robert Goodman, taken prisoner and freighted off to jail in Damascus. Jesse Jackson had to travel to Syria to get him back after almost a month amid many clichés about "ending the cycle of violence". Another American plane - this time an A-7 - was also hit by Syrian fire but the pilot managed to eject over the Mediterranean where he was plucked from the water by a Lebanese fishing boat. His plane was also destroyed.
Sure, we are told that it will be a short strike on
Syria, in and out, a couple of days. That's what Obama likes to think. But think Iran. Think Hezbollah. I rather suspect - if Obama does go ahead - that this one will run and run.
Reader Comments
O'Bomb'em does as he's told. AlKYDA is a CIA invention and the Syrian 'rebels' are simply paid mercenaries of the "west". Mr. Fisk is wasting good paper with articles like this.
These are quotes from the attached link
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"In the late 1980s, Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, concerned about the growing strength of the Islamist movement, told President George H. W. Bush, "You are creating a Frankenstein."
The U.S. says that all of its funds went to native Afghan rebels and denies that any of its funds were used to supply Osama bin Laden or foreign Arab mujahideen. However, even a portion of those native Afghan rebels would form parts of the Taliban, fighting against the US military.
While there is no evidence that the CIA had direct contact with Osama Bin Laden and US funding was directed to Afghan Mujahedin groups, critics of U.S. foreign policy consider Operation Cyclone to be substantially responsible for setting in motion the events that led to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 commonly known as the term blowback. William Hartung argues that the early foundations of al-Qaida were built in part on relationships and weaponry that came from the billions of dollars in U.S. support for the Afghan mujahadin during the war to expel Soviet forces from that country. According to Christopher Andrew, and Vasily Mitrokhin there is "no support" in any "reliable source" for "the claim that the CIA funded bin Laden or any of the other Arab volunteers who came to support the mujahideen." Peter Bergen writes that "the real problem is not that the CIA helped bin Laden during the 1980s, but that the Agency simply had no idea of his possible significance until the bin Laden unit was set up within the CIA in January 1996."
This is not true at all. We created al-Qa'ida in Afganistan to fight the Russians during their occupation of that country. We have always been on the side of al-Qa'ida, they even gave the Shrub the excuse to go to war, what more could you ask for in a slef created ally/enemy???
Does Obama know that he is taking orders from the CIA... aka 'Al Qaeda'? Does he know he is taking orders from the banksters? Or the various other corporations that nearly every president in the USA has taken 'orders' from when they needed to send in the Marines to arrange a coup and get rid of some local presidente who has ideas about helping his people or democracy etc?
Does a puppet or strawman, or frontman like Reagan, Bush, or Obama really need to know? Isn't the fact that they do their bidding enough? Do we really need to dot every i or cross every t to see the bit picture?
A better question is why hasn't Robert Fisk taken the next step in this 'waking up' process? IMO, that's more interesting. What's holding him back? Is it the usual belief that if not for the regime in charge, our country would be 'good' again? If only we had a 'savior'? Does he really think some hero is going to ride in on a white stallion and save the day? Set things right and leave the people in peace? If he knows history, he knows how this will end. Same as always.
"The men who destroyed so many thousands on 9/11 will then be fighting alongside the very nation whose innocents they so cruelly murdered almost exactly 12 years ago"
So the American will be fighting alongside afghanis / iraqis ... I get confused since they have destroyed so many innocent nations
first time on the side of al-qaeda? what's this guy talking about?! these journalists really need some history lessons. america created al qaeda to fight the soviets in afghanistan. this world feels more and more like orwell's nightmare
Please, let's all take a deep breath. What Mr. Fisk so generously shared is not well-known by many in the West. He is trying to do us a favor. Likely, he full well knows more than can be shared, digested, by others. Transitioning from belief in Santa Claus is hard. The process is known as "Witghensteins' ladder".
That al-CIAda was developed by Zebig B. (can't stand names that can't be spelled) is so well-known, it's almost laughable to point out. That these "tension", so-called geo-political strategy games are what keep the psychopaths humming, regardless of not only no discernible benefits to the citizens of nations involved, but to their actual detriment, is provable. Box cutters, jet fuel, OBL did what? That's a frontman burn game. For example, Google "Who created Hammas?". With that you will learn about the Muslim Brotherhoods' deliberate "creation" by Britan the 1920s through the present, Normal, good people can not fathom the level of deceptive evil which goes on around them. This is known as "normalcy bais".
What can be done against this? Well, it's being done on this site and many other alternative new sites around the world. Like vampires, the psychopaths who rule us, game us, can't stand exposure or reflections of their images. (Silver bullets are TBD.) Like Dr. Frankenstein, they fear the masses. That is why they try so hard, and mostly succeed, at fooling the masses. Ridicule and quiet, passive resistance are also effective measures against them. If all the slaves are willing to lie down and die laughing at the whippings, the masters loose. In the end they will have no laborers or tax base. Study the red terror, (hugely bad and the "masters" won) that is what we are facing - complete, planned chaos to further enslave us. Please don't "kill the messengers". Please search all links you can now. Learn! Write/call your representatives against this. Don't give the psychopaths your blood or energy. Make them melt at dawn!