U.S. And NATO Allies Initiate Libyan Scenario For Syria
Rick Rozoff
On April 29 the White House issued an executive order to enforce new and more stringent sanctions against Syria and appealed to European North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies to follow suit.
In a letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives President Barack Obama wrote, "I have determined that the Government of Syria's human rights abuses....constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States, and warrant the imposition of additional sanctions."
His order targeted among others Syrian President Bashar Assad's brother Mahir and cousin Atif Najib and also included - in an indication that broader objectives are also being pursued however tenuous, even farfetched, the link - the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, with the presidential demarche contending: "Despite the Government of Iran's public rhetoric claiming revolutionary solidarity with people throughout the region, Iran's actions in support of the Syrian regime place it in stark opposition to the will of the Syrian people."
Immediately afterward a White House official threatened that President Assad himself could be sanctioned next.
On February 25 Obama issued a comparable - in fact an almost identical - order against Libya, only ten days after anti-government protests began in the nation and three weeks before U.S. cruise missiles and bombs landed on its soil.
Employing a standard template in which only proper and place names need be changed, the earlier version stated:
"I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, find that Colonel Muammar Qadhafi, his government, and close associates have taken extreme measures against the people of Libya...The foregoing circumstances...pose a serious risk to its stability, thereby constituting an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat." [1]
One cannot help be reminded of the couplet of Percy Bysshe Shelley:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
Washington seized $32 billion dollars worth of Libyan assets in the U.S., with special emphasis placed on those belonging to "any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State...to be a senior official of the Government" or "to be a child of Colonel Muammar Qadhafi."
Twenty-two days later bombing missions and missile attacks were unleashed against Libya, initially under U.S. Africa Command's Operation Odyssey Dawn and since March 31 through NATO's Operation Unified Protector, which are continuing into their seventh week.
Libya and Syria are the only two Mediterranean nations and the sole remaining Arab states that are not subordinated to U.S. and NATO designs for control of the Mediterranean Sea Basin and the Middle East.
Neither has participated in NATO's almost ten-year-old Operation Active Endeavor naval patrols and exercises in the Mediterranean Sea and neither is a member of NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue military partnership which includes most regional countries: Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania. Lebanon is subject to a naval and internal (that is, on its border with Syria) blockade run overwhelmingly by NATO nations under the post-2006 expanded United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon mission.
Jordan and Morocco are supporting the NATO war against Libya and members of another NATO partnership program - the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative - Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, are supplying fighter-bombers for combat missions over Libya. Fellow Istanbul Cooperation Initiative partner Kuwait announced on April 24 that it will grant $180 million to pay the salaries of employees of the rebel Transitional National Council in Libya.
With renewed efforts earlier this year to recruit Cyprus into NATO's Partnership for Peace transitional program [2] - member Sweden, for example, has provided eight Gripen warplanes for the campaign against Libya - Libya and Syria were prospectively the last outposts of independence and non-alignment in the entire Mediterranean region.
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