HARPER: OBAMA'S SYRIA OBSESSION BOOSTS AL QAEDA

On Wednesday early evening, driving back from Washington, I heard a National Public Radio interview with Virginia State Senator (R-Loudoun) Richard Black. Senator Black had sent a letter last month to Syrian President Bashar Assad, congratulating him for his efforts to protect Christians and other religious minorities in his country, who were facing brutality--executions, rape, kidnapping--at the hands of Al Qaeda linked "rebels."   His letter was posted on President Assad's twitter page and it immediately generated news coverage in the United States.  Most of the coverage was, needless to say, critical.  I was struck by the fact that the Senator, a retired Marine Colonel, was not in the least defensive.  Asked why he wrote the letter, he explained that he is a combat veteran who visited the wounded at Bethesda every month and agonizes over the lives lost and damaged.  He warned that if Assad is ousted, he believes a Jihadist regime will be installed in Syria and it is foolish for the U.S. to align with such a regime.  He gave precise military details of the combat in the mountain region of Syria where a majority of the country's Christians either live or once lived.   He lamented that others were not speaking out in the face of the atrocities and that it fell on a State Senator from Virginia to speak.  He stated that he hoped that his letter and the controversy that it has stirred will lead to a healthy public debate in the United States.  His concluding words were:  "Americans have fought against Al Qaeda for 12 years in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I find it abhorrent that we train and equip those same men to fight against American interests in Syria."

I know that many Obama apologists will argue that the United States is not backing Al Qaeda, but is carefully picking the rebel forces that are being trained and armed against the Assad regime.  But only yesterday, I read combat reports from Syria, indicating that the American and Saudi backed forces are conducting joint operations with the hardcore Al Qaeda group Nusra Front.  Under the fog of war, it is impossible to draw clear lines of distinction between "Jihadists" and "freedom fighters."   We learned that lesson the hard way when the offsprings of the 1980s "freedom fighters" we backed in Afghanistan against the Red Army crashed those planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11.

I hope that Senator Black's comments do indeed spark the kind of debate that is so urgently needed.  He gave that NPR interview the same day that President Obama was delivering the commencement address to America's next generation of warriors at West Point.  In that speech, he announced an accelerated U.S. training program for "select" Syrian rebels who will be backed to overthrow the Assad regime. 

Comments

[Alba Etie]

Harper
We all need to thank State Senator Black for his thoughtful letter to President Assad . I am not a President Obama apologist - but I do have a working theory - that is all of the supposed aid to the 'Syrian Rebels ' is kabuki theater by the present administration . That is we make noises like we support overthrowing Assad , but where is the physical evidence the manpads , updated TOW systems , - or even our seizing Assad's oversea assets. I believe this has been Kabuki theater ever since the administration lost the AUMF vote in Congress to bomb Syria because of the chemical weapons meme.

[William R. Cumming]

Question for all? Would a timeline of the Arab Spring reveal any interesting connections? For example, when exactly and how did the USA enter the foray into each of the nation-states of MENA impacted by the ARAB SPRING and is that entry still resulting in USA involvement?

Perhaps my question has a twist! Did the USA in fact start or kickoff the Arab Spring in any of the MRNA countries? Apparently the CIA for many years has funded and armed anti-Assad forces!

Has any other nation-state in US history funded anti-government armed organized forces against the US? WBS?

[turcopolier]

WRC

The US fomented all these revolts sub rosa. pl

[Bandolero]

WRC

I think a timeline of the arab spring should include the foundation two major things:

1st) The creation of MEPI announced in a December 2002 by GWB

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_Partnership_Initiative

2nd) Obama's secret but partially leaked "Presidential Study Directive 11" from August 2010. David Ignatius wrote on this:

"... Though Obama seemed to be accommodating the region's authoritarian leaders, in August 2010, he issued Presidential Study Directive 11, asking agencies to prepare for change. ..."

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/03/06/obamas_calculated_gamble_109123.html

As I remember, August 2010 was a couple of months after the Israel/Palestine talks collapsed which Obama wanted to make a big topic in his first term and one month after it got clear that the state department cables were leaked to Wikileaks. Though I can't prove it, I'ld find it logical if Obama's Presidential Study Directive 11 would have been influenced by these events.

[William R. Cumming]

Thanks Bandolero for your comment and useful links!

[William R. Cumming]

Thanks PL and your clear statement answers my underlying questions.

Did Congress have a clue, does it have a clue now that your conclusion is the correct one?

[confusedponderer]

So to speak:

http://api.ning.com/files/6vIMLmuhUcrtFn4P3225qipBSISQHt4kysjoMBoFxRhFt0Zfuq1LPTyRXkx8emrSxMlsdeK8CdysKlHDE5Ku5Sn1lz9sdYxZ/PamphletsinUkrainehandedoutduringprotestsandpamphletsthatwerehandedoutinEgypt.png?width=737&height=443

[Karim]

PL,

A little off topic: some weeks ago I wrote here of a comment under some article that caught my eye because it claimed that in September 2013 the US had fired 2 missiles toward Syria which Russian ships or forces in Tartous had brought down by jamming their GPS signal. Nobody here replied to it, and I didn't see the info repeated anywhere else, so I dismissed it, until yesterday I watched a clip of a French ex-Air Force colonel repeating the allegation (except that he claimed SAMs, not GPS jamming, had brought the missiles down). His source was "a Lebanese newspaper".

In your view, is this at all credible? Would the US have fired two missiles before a decision for a full attack had been made? Would it fire them over the heads of the Russian ships? Would the Russians really shoot them down (and could they)? I imagine that the Russian forces would have no time to phone Putin for instructions, so if this is true, they would have had instructions in advance to shoot any US missiles down. Presumably they would have made this clear to the US beforehand? Would the US have tried to call their bluff? That would seem incredibly reckless.

[turcopolier]

karim

I think it is not credible. The US armed forces are highly disciplined and no such thing would have occurred as a matter of indiscipline. Neither would the US government rifle with the Russians. pl

[Karim]

PL,

Thanks. Another Lebanese journalist passing off hearsay and rumour as fact then.

[Bandolero]

turcopolier, karim

I remember that on September 3, 2013 (just two days after many in the world thought the US would strike Syria) there was a quite odd item of news in the media. Quote Sky News:

Syria: Israel Fires Missiles In Mediterranean
Russia's missile early warning system spots two launches heading towards Syria, before Israel admits it was carrying out a test.

Israel says it has carried out a joint missile test with the United States in the Mediterranean, amid continued tensions in the region over the crisis in Syria.

Israel's defence ministry said it had tested a single Sparrow target missile, which it said was "successfully" detected and tracked by its Arrow missile-defence system.

Russia's defence ministry had said two ballistic "objects" were fired towards the eastern Mediterranean from the central part of the sea. ...

Source:

http://news.sky.com/story/1136479/syria-israel-fires-missiles-in-mediterranean

Assafir had about a week later a very off interpretation of that story, translated by Al Manar. Quote Al Manar - from mirror, cause Al Manar seems down due to DDoS:

Truth of US-Russia Confrontation

Aggression was over the Moment those Two Missiles were Fired

A well informed diplomatic source told As-Safir newspaper that “the US war on Syria had started and ended the moment those two ballistic missiles were fired, leaving inconsistent information, as Israel denied and Russia confirmed, until an Israeli statement was issued indicating they were fired in the context of an Israeli-US joint drill and fell in the sea, and that they were not related to the Syrian crisis.”

The source further told the Lebanese daily that “the US forces fired these two rockets from a NATO base in Spain, and were instantly detected by the Russian radars and confronted by the Russian defense systems, so one of them exploded in the airspace and the second one diverted towards the sea.” ...

Source:

http://www.thetotalcollapse.com/truth-of-us-russia-confrontation/

It sounds quite odd for me to do a US-Irsaeli missile interception test at that location when all world - and especially Russia - thinks a US strike on Syria may be in the cards, but the story of the Russians having intercepted one or two US missiles sounds odd for me, too.

I find both stories not very convincing - and I think it will be interesting to see if I live long enough to wait until the official archives are opened and truth emerges.