Bashar al-Assad
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Shooting from the hip with
unerring accuracy was the Wild West according to Hollywood. As anyone
who has ever fired a pistol will tell you, it is improbable, and
historically the West's few gun duels were rather unremarkable. The
latest hip-shooter is, of course, Donald J. Trump, whose foreign policy
seems to turn on a dime -- from not interested in removing Bashar
al-Assad to his having no place in a future Syria, all within a week.
The
U.S. has a powerful military and it is very good at breaking things, so
it is no surprise that presidents are tempted to use it. It does not matter that the problem requires shrewd diplomacy and difficult negotiations; the president is making a point.
Who
knows what happened in Idlib, when there hasn't been time for a proper
investigation. Eyewitnesses report a plane dropping a bomb which is not
much to go on. But a conventional bomb does its damage through its
explosive force and would show much greater physical destruction at the
site than a chemical weapon using a small quantity of explosive as a
means of dispersing the gas. An examination of the site could prove or
disprove the Russian claim that a conventional weapon hitting a
storage/manufacturing facility released organophosphates.
No
such analysis from anyone, least of all Mr. Trump as he shed crocodile
tears for the poisoned 'babies'. Instant death from gas is clearly more
humane than shrapnel. It is why you won't see any pictures from Yemen
where Mr. Trump's allies are making mincemeat out of men, women and
children alike, even using cluster bombs in civilian areas. That does
not cross Mr. Trump's 'many lines'. The Convention on Cluster Munitions
bans their use and has been ratified by a majority of the world's
nations.
It was another time
but the same place, the UN, when Secretary of State Colin Powell accused
the Iraqis of concealing WMDs. The denials of the Iraqi Ambassador
were brushed aside, and the subsequent war continues in one
form or another. A million plus dead and many millions displaced, an
ISIS monster born, war in Syria and a refugee crisis in Europe. The
latter tipping the scales in Britain's narrow Brexit vote. Who could
have imagined the consequences or the ultimate cost -- initially
estimated at $64 billion, but nearly $5 trillion and counting according
to a Sept 2016 report by the Watson Institute at Brown University.
Now we have UN
Ambassador Nikki Haley's undiplomatic language accusing Syria of using
chemical weapons. The question not being asked in this propaganda war
is simple: What in heaven's name does Syria gain from using sarin gas
on its own civilians? Assad is not an idiot. Syria does not need the extra firepower, it
certainly does not need the opprobrium of the world, and, if one may
recall, it surrendered all its chemical weapons (under international supervision) after the last such incident
four years ago.
Quite frankly, this
accusation makes as much sense as the one about Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait
removing premature babies from hospital incubators leaving them to die,
to steal the incubators. That one by the Kuwaiti Ambassador's daughter Nayirah al-Sabah was gospel at the time, even corroborated by Amnesty
International, and helped propel the first Iraqi war under George Bush
Senior. It was absolutely false.
When
President Trump now says he is changing his mind about Assad, the
objective seems to have been achieved. Whether it was a shot fired by
intransigent rebels to disrupt the Russia-sponsored Syria peace talks in
Astana, Kazakhstan, or an accident, the results are highly satisfactory
for those who do not want peace. Again, it points not to Assad but
elsewhere.
Dan Kaszeta also a former military man concurs with Bretton-Gordon. Yet in 2013, the hexamine in government storage prompted him to blame the Assad regime for a chemical attack. However, hexamine has many uses. It was also determined that the triggering devices used containers and explosive not in use by the Syrian army. The experienced Swiss prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, a member of the then UN Independent Commission of Enquiry on Syria, expressed "strong concrete suspicions" of rebel culpability. A former Swiss attorney general and respected prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, her conclusion was categorical: "This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities," she had ascertained . Are military analysts unconsciously biased?
Now we are being told this is the second time Syria has used chemical weapons. The fake news never stops and neither do leaders or their representatives. Their currency is never counterfeit ... until it's too late. In the 2013 incident, the fake news would have had us believe that Assad invited UN inspectors and then exploded a chemical weapon 10km from their hotel.
It is important not to demonize Assad not only because it is unconscionable if he is innocent of these war crimes, but also because peace without him is at present unattainable. As a British MP, George Galloway, not taken in by the hysteria at the time said, "he may be bad but is he mad?" Here we are back again and it's time to repeat his question. Also one more ... the elephant-in-the- room question: WHY?
'Remember
the Maine' before the Spanish-American War; the Lusitania carrying
weapons despite Germany's strong warning before the First World War; the
'Gulf of Tonkin' before the Vietnam war; the 'undeniable evidence' of
WMDs in Iraq; and now Syria -- an unrepentant tarnished history of
varnished mendacity costing millions of lives and tens of millions of
refugees in a trail of horrendous human suffering.
Truth would be refreshing, but it comes at a tremendous cost. Ask some recent purveyors.
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