German Economic News Interviews Seymour Hersh on Obama’s Syria Policy
by Eric Zuesse, summary translation from the German:
On January 14th, German Economic News interviewed the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh regarding Obama’s war against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad:
German Economic News: You recently issued a highly acclaimed essay in the London Review of Books in which you demonstrate that the US military was against the US invasion of Syria, but Obama didn’t listen to their advice. Why?
Hersh: I don’t know, I have no explanation. The fact is that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had gone to Obama and told him: If Assad falls, chaos will break out. General Dempsey said that we must support Assad against the Islamists. Even the Federal Intelligence Service (BND [Germany’s intelligence agency]) supplied information to the Americans indicating that Assad is firmly supported by the Syrian people. I can’t read the thoughts of the President, but it was clear at the outset that there was no so-called “moderate opposition” [such as Obama constantly referred to]. There were radical Islamists against Assad, but the vast majority of the Syrians were terrified of those fighters as being dangerous crazies. Syrians were fleeing from the Islamists, toward Damascus as refuge, because they felt protected by the Syrian Army. …
The Americans failed on one thing above all: not recognizing that Syria, like Iraq and Libya, was a secular ally of the West. Instead, we overran these countries, overthrew their governments, and helped the rise of our worst enemies — ISIS or Daesh and all the other extreme Sunnis.
German Economic News: Why didn’t Obama recognize what he was doing?
Seymour Hersh: I don’t know. …
Hersh: I don’t know, I have no explanation. The fact is that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had gone to Obama and told him: If Assad falls, chaos will break out. General Dempsey said that we must support Assad against the Islamists. Even the Federal Intelligence Service (BND [Germany’s intelligence agency]) supplied information to the Americans indicating that Assad is firmly supported by the Syrian people. I can’t read the thoughts of the President, but it was clear at the outset that there was no so-called “moderate opposition” [such as Obama constantly referred to]. There were radical Islamists against Assad, but the vast majority of the Syrians were terrified of those fighters as being dangerous crazies. Syrians were fleeing from the Islamists, toward Damascus as refuge, because they felt protected by the Syrian Army. …
The Americans failed on one thing above all: not recognizing that Syria, like Iraq and Libya, was a secular ally of the West. Instead, we overran these countries, overthrew their governments, and helped the rise of our worst enemies — ISIS or Daesh and all the other extreme Sunnis.
German Economic News: Why didn’t Obama recognize what he was doing?
Seymour Hersh: I don’t know. …
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
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What is that is said about finding power? “Follow the money”……??
We have to ask “What is in Obama’s current and – more importantly, perhaps – future benefit?”
Sorry to be so venal-sounding – but isn’t that the truth?
I believe that Obama did not want to go full blast against Syria not because this administration finally started to use their heads and reason. The real reason is that Russia and China had opposed an invasion and Russia had started building up military equipment in the port of Tartus. What these Zionist boys have been doing is to attack countries who can’t defend themselves as in the case of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Uganda, Yemen Palestine. But when they saw Russia building up in Syria, they decided no to mess with the bear who could give them a black eye.
bushes senior and junior destroyed Iraq, Obama plus puppets killed gaddafi
s lybia now he wants to kill assad. all this is being done to remove all Israels enemies. only iran is left. but "they are on the table".s obama is repeating the deeds of Nazi Germany.like a pedofile who is abused by his father; Israel
Obama surely recognized what he was doing. The question is, What motivated him to do it?
A Fellow named Meyer Lansky
Not sure what you mean. Lansky died in 1983.
Motivated is probably the wrong word here. As events in Ukraine have shown very clearly, US Foreign Policy is not run by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but by unelected, neo-cons like Robert Kagan and his ‘let the eat cookies’ wife Victoria Nuland. They tend to cherry-pick advice, tending towards any they believe will further their aim of establishing global chaos, which, in their warped vision, they see as a vacuum of opportunity for US hegemony to fill. Preferring to take tips from right-wing crackpots, they use information from people like retired general, and convicted criminal, David Petraeus to support their bid for world domination. While Director of the CIA Petraeus was caught releasing secret files to a woman he was screwing, who just happened to be writing his biography at the time. It happens to the best of us. Unsurprisingly, for a man with so many friends in high… Read more »
I suppose this fundamentally still is a lefty stamping ground, and that’s fine, but surely you can’t be telling yourself the fairytale poor innocent hope-and-change obama was co-opted by the nasty neocons? A. Progressive democratic presidents have been in charge of almost all major US conflicts since 1900 with the notable exception of the War of Terror. Woodrow Wilson in particular was instrumental in laying the seeds of WWII with his 14 points for peace and wholesale slashing and burning of the Austria-Hungarian empire (like Obama, he had all the fashionable views about liberal democracy being that which people magically gravitated to once old structures were swept away). B. The neocons simulated the progressive foreign policy in its global outlook, except they tended to focus more on God, glory, and an exceptional America bestowing democracy on lesser countries. C. Read your history. Before Iraq 2, the democrats were firmly lined… Read more »
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