Only fools and liars will blame Assad
So, here’s how it is.
1) There is still no evidence – that has been presented to the public – that Assad ordered a chemical weapons (CW) attack.
2) Yes, that evidence should be made public, discussed and debated by Congress, and a vote taken before we use force. I acknowledge that the War Powers Resolution gives the President the authority to use force for 60 days – but the interests of peace and stability are better served through a debate and a democratic process as opposed to a unilateral decision made in secret, especially when the military action is punitive and not in our immediate national defense interests.
3) Even if Assad ordered the attack and is responsible, the above still applies – that is, if “America First” actually means “America First”, though it is becoming rapidly clear that it means nothing at all from Trump’s mouth.
4) Our government has lied us into wars in the past and may be doing so again.
5) We are relying on “intelligence” from countries and organizations with vested personal interests in seeing Assad removed from power – just as we did with the Iraq and Libya fiascoes. History is repeating itself beat for beat here.
6) The Syrian government’s account of things makes sense to me, though I will listen to anyone who wants to point out holes in the logic – yes, Syrian warplanes did fly over that town, and yes, they did drop something from their planes. They were conventional bombs that took out a depot housing chemical weapons owned and controlled by one of the rebel groups (probably not ISIS). This accounts for the low number of casualties and the fact that aid workers in the pictures are not in full protective gear. It was the amount of sarin that might be released from the bombs being destroyed as opposed to detonated. Am I wrong? I admit I am certainly no expert and I will gladly accept correction here.
7) No foreign policy decision has ever been based upon “protecting innocent lives.” I’m sorry, but that isn’t the way the world works. This is about escalating conflict with Russia, as part of a long-term, ongoing geopolitical strategy to prevent the rise of superpowers that can challenge the United States. The speed and hysterical pitch of Nikki Haley’s denunciations of Russia at the UN today are proof enough of this.
8) Assad really had no reason to do this – to risk the wrath of the international community and Western military intervention – to kill fewer than 100 people and obtain no strategic advantage. You have to have a Saturday-morning cartoon supervillianish view of the man to believe this. It is not an adult, rational analysis or perception of reality.
9) ISIS and other jihadist fanatics have been emboldened by these strikes and are attacking targets once under the protection of the airfield that was hit – proving once again that you cannot simultaneously fight ISIS and the enemies of ISIS.
10) It is not in our interest to escalate tensions with Russia. It is not in our interest to avenge the deaths of people who may have been killed by Assad. In fact, it is the height of hypocrisy. How many children did we kill in Mosul just recently? How many children were blown to bits in Yemen by weapons we provided to Saudi Arabia? How many dead in Libya? How many in Iraq? The United States has the blood of hundreds of thousands of children on its hands. It has no moral high ground. NO COUNTRY DOES in this regard. So if you allow yourself to be moved by such arguments, you are a dupe, a sucker and a fool. It is a non-issue, because we are all guilty.
If you blindly cheer a course of action that can lead to a third World War, on a planet full of nuclear weapons, you’re not only a fool – but all of your moral posturing is in vain, because “your team” has murdered far more people, including children, than “their team.” So even your own sense of self-righteousness, no matter how hotly it burns within you, is in objective reality a total delusion.
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The classic British middle class education system isn’t so much about knowledge, but giving the impression that one has knowledge. It’s about adopting a posture, accepting and then displaying ‘class signals’ that separate the elite form the masses, like a good working knowledge of Shakespeare, for example. Wit and a sense of humour is highly prized, as is ‘irony’, because one can use this to avoid really communicating anything of real substance or principle which might lead one into conflict with the norms and attitudes of the ruling elite. The prime motivation behind Monbiot and the others who work for the Guardian/BBC is to make themselves indispensable and highly paid servants of the state/corporations, and one doesn’t do that by fundamentally questioning the structure of society, power relationships and class associations or the UK’s foreign policy.
It seems to be an occupational requirement that our leading journalists and opinion makers in the media are incredibly arrogant and conceited and bursting with an all-consuming pride in themselves that’s staggering. Monbiot’s like this, so is Freedland, so is Jones. They really consider themselves towering authorities and people able to see more clearly than others and separate the truth from lies in an almost magical fashion.
It’s Mobiot’s sacred certainty that he… Knows and is Right and his disdain for anyone stupid enough not to agree with him and take his words as gospel, that frightens me so. It’s a kind of cultural and intellectual impersialism. We, in the West, know best. We, in the West, know best. We, in the West, know best.
And he’s identified Moscow as the source of all falsehoods in the world. If the Russians say anything, disaree with our version of events, this alone, this Russian audacity, becomes proof that they are lying and our views are the truth. We, in contrast, are a fountain of truth and veracity. The best of all possible truths. When one reads Monbiot one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Have you seen George Monbiot’s Tweets about this? Just unbelievable. Only reinforces my belief that many people who are very academic really have no common sense.
Too many to choose from but here’s a classic:
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So ISIS manages to get the Americans to enter the Syrian conflict… as its airforce, using the low-budget techniques of a grotesque piece of gore filled theatre that looks like home movie… amazing. Obviously tainted and fake, but it’s images we want to believe. Questioning this narrative is like questioning the existance of witchcraft when the town has been gripped by hysteria and is hunting for proof of witches everywhere. Denying that witches and Satan’s devils are real, in circumstances like this, is taken as proof that one is in league with the demons, so sane people keep quite and hope that the madness will run its course before too many people are killed.
And today, or media has abandoned all pretense to critically examine the allegations and stories coming out of Syria, sourced from dubious rebel groups with links to terrorists. Our airforce is put at ISIS disposal and our ‘free’ media functions as their Ministry of Propaganda. This last part is truly astonishing. Brain-dead acceptance of nonsense as truth and virtually no proper scrutiny of the veracity of the outlandish claims, which signals the death of journalism.
”Over the tannoy comes the announcement: ‘The chocolate ration is being raised from 30 grammes to 20 grammes per week”’ Thunderous cheers and applause from the party seats.’ Parsons to Smith, ‘Yes miniplenty has done a really good job this year, eh Winston”’ Orwell 1984.
In H.G.Wells dystopian short story, ”The Time Machine” the time traveller finds himself in the far distant future where the human race has mutated into 2 different species. The Elois a patently useless, self-centred, airhead, post-modern crowd, who are descended from the bourgeois and petty-bourgeoisie and live above ground, and the Morlocks, a cannibalistic meat eating, species descended from the proletariat who live below the ground keep the whole show running and feed off the elois.
In one scene a siren starts to wail, a hangover from the atomic wars of a pervious age. The stupid, brain-dead elois simply start to walk into the bomb shelters where they will be on the Morlock menu for supper.
Only a story perhaps, but in a sense this is where western civilization seems to be headed. The only hope for the human race in the face of the oncoming twin disasters of nuclear war and global warming is that there will be some survivors in Chile, South Africa, Fiji
You have absolutely no idea how many Americans will deny everything you just said even though the facts prove you 100% correct. Speaking to the brain dead population of America is the same as speaking to a blank wall, because a blank wall has as much understanding as the bulk of Americans do.
It is remarkable, isn’t it? That ardent Trump haters now laud him…that Trump supporters who despised Clinton and Obama now celebrate the war they advocated for?
Many conservative friends of mine are applauding Trump for his ‘decisiveness’. They answer skepticism with accusations of being ‘anti-American’, failing to realize that a leader who unilaterally starts wars is as unpatriotic and undemocratic as it gets.
Meanwhile my liberal friends, such as they are, hail this sudden attack as Trump’s first ‘presidential’ act. These people who rightly opposed Iraq now accuse me of being complicit in murder because I question the evidence surrounding Assad’s alleged chemical attack. How they fail to make the connection between Assad’s WMDs and Saddam’s WMDs is beyond me.
Trump supporters who railed against ‘fake news’ from the likes of the WaPo and NYT now accept their reporting on Syria as incontrovertible fact.
Political thought in this country has been reduced to sports team style loyalty. Allegiances are inflexible. Root for ‘our’ side no matter what, and rationalize whatever ‘our’ guy does.
Issues like the Syria conflict become sacred cows that cannot be questioned. You must stick with the program and ask “When will the world do something!??” lest you ‘enable’ Assad’s increasingly unlikely and illogical murder sprees. Any deviation from this script means you’re a monster.
Forgive my lengthy rant…patience is running thin…
I agree with most of what you’re saying. I don’t agree that Americans, and the people who make these decisions are stupid. Their objective might be immoral, but stupid, nah. They know exactly what they’re doing and so does Russia. We are fodder and collaterals.
Unfortunately Iraq and Libya were not fiascos for the US master class. Mission accomplished in terms of the ‘geopolitical strategy to prevent the rise of superpowers that can challenge the United States’ that you rightly identify, because, by preventing the rise of a Middle East power that could oppose Israel, they promote US interests against Russia, China, etc.
“Only fools and liars will blame Assad”
I thought wholesale censorship was something off grain was against.
Autospell meh
What censorship?
How is this censorship? It is a point of view, one happen to agree with, but it is not censorship. Have you been censored? Censorship means that certain views have not been published. Have you been subjected to this practise? If so it is incumbent upon you to supply details.
You claimed on another article that international observers had already been to the scene. Still not heard anything back from you on who they are.
There’s a lot, a lot of grotesque irony here. Our leaders and the media court surrounding, protecting and not least, serving them, fit and select the ‘facts’ in situations like this, around what they already know and believe. The facts, which are supposed to be almost sacred these days, are bent and forced into shape around core dogmas, like the evilness of Russia and the monster that Assad is, and anything that doesn’t support their beliefs, is simply ignored. Of course, this sounds a lot like religeous faith and a belieft system that doesn’t need to be logical or rational, because belief trumps all of that.
The Russians have bolstered the Syrian air defences, so now we have a standoff in the Eastern Mediterranean. Let’s hope the crazy jihadists in the Pentagon can be kept in line. By Trump, even if exercises any control at all? It doesn’t inspire much confidence.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/breaking-dramatic-military-escalation-in-syria/5584217?utm_campaign=magnet&utm_source=article_page&utm_medium=related_articles
This post is very well positioned .Well thought out ,and very reasonable.The must be a hell of a lot of very unreasonable people out there to believe the lies pushed by the MSM.
No, just people who have not realised that the media are not priest-like truth seekers, rather private corporations looking to make money.
Once you have knowledge of any field to a deep level, you soon learn the widespread ignorance of journalists about such matters.
From there, it is but a short step to say: ‘if they are so ignorant about this, how much do they know about everything else?’
The first key lesson every child should learn between 13 and 16 is never to trust the media and asking why they say what they say, when what they say is so obviously wrong……
Sadly no government would be seen dead educating its people in that way….,
Exactly!
“Syrian Tonkin Gulf – Trumpillary”: https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2017/04/07/syrian-tonking-gulf-trumpillary-der-syrische-tonkin-golf/