{"id":71034,"date":"2017-04-10T16:12:05","date_gmt":"2017-04-10T20:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=71034"},"modified":"2017-04-10T16:12:51","modified_gmt":"2017-04-10T20:12:51","slug":"luring-trump-into-mideast-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=71034","title":{"rendered":"Luring Trump into Mideast Wars"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nExclusive:<\/strong> After launching a missile strike on Syria, President Trump is basking in praise from his former critics \u2013 neocons, Democrats and mainstream media \u2013 who want to lure him into more Mideast wars, reports Daniel Lazare.<\/h3>\n

By Daniel Lazare
\nConsortiumnews.com<\/p>\n

Donald Trump entered military terra incognita on Thursday by launching an illegal Tomahawk missile strike on an air base in eastern Syria. Beyond the clear violation of international law, the practical results are likely to be disastrous, drawing the U.S. deeper into the Syrian quagmire.<\/p>\n

But it would be a mistake to focus all the criticism on Trump. Not only are Democrats also at fault, but a good argument could be made that they bear even greater responsibility.<\/p>\n

For years, near-total unanimity has reigned on Capitol Hill concerning America\u2019s latest villains du jour, Russia\u2019s Vladimir Putin and Syria\u2019s Bashar al-Assad. <\/strong>Congressmen, senators, think-tank strategists, and op-ed analysts all have agreed that Putin and Assad are the prime enemies of \u201cpeace,\u201d by which is meant global American hegemony, and that therefore the U.S. must stop at nothing to weaken or neutralize them or force them to exit the world stage.<\/p>\n

Until recently, in fact, just about the only politically significant dissenter was Trump. Accusing reporters of twisting the news at a tumultuous press conference in late February, he told them, \u201cNow tomorrow, you\u2019ll say, \u2018Donald Trump wants to get along with Russia, this is terrible.\u2019 It\u2019s not terrible. It\u2019s good.\u201d<\/p>\n

But since getting along with Russia was terrible for America\u2019s perpetually bellicose foreign-policy establishment, Official Washington declared war on Trump, building on Hillary Clinton\u2019s charge<\/a> during the last presidential debate that he was Putin\u2019s \u201cpuppet.\u201d It became the conventional wisdom that Trump was a \u201cSiberian candidate<\/a>\u201d being inserted in the White House by a satanic Kremlin determined to bend freedom-loving Americans to its will.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Inauguration Day approached, President Obama\u2019s intelligence chiefs pulled out all stops to persuade the public that (a) Russian intelligence had engineered Clinton\u2019s defeat by hacking the Democratic National Committee\u2019s computers and placing thousands of embarrassing emails in the hands of WikiLeaks and that (b) Trump was somehow complicit in the effort.<\/p>\n

The campaign was highly effective. The alleged Putin-Trump relationship was a major feature at the anti-Trump protests surrounding his inauguration and the major U.S. news media pounded on the Russia \u201cscandal\u201d daily.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Feb. 13, barely four weeks after taking office, Trump crumbled under a mounting barrage of political abuse and gave National Security Adviser Michael Flynn the boot after it was revealed that he had talked with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition, supposedly in violation of the 1799 Logan Act, an absurd piece of ancient legislation that even The New York Times referred to<\/a> as \u201ca dusty, old law\u201d that should have been repealed generations ago.<\/p>\n

\"Trump<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Under Media Pressure<\/strong><\/p>\n

A day later, the administration reeled again when the Times charged in a front-page expos\u00e9 that \u201cmembers of Donald J. Trump\u2019s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.\u201d<\/p>\n

The article provided no evidence and no names and said nothing about whether such contacts were knowing or unknowing, i.e., whether they involved a John le Carr\u00e9-style midnight rendezvous or merely an exchange of pleasantries with someone who may or may not have been connected to the FSB, as Russia\u2019s version of the CIA is known.<\/p>\n

In a March 6 article entitled \u201cPause This Presidency,\u201d Times columnist Charles M. Blow called for little less than a coup d\u2019\u00e9tat: \u201cThe American people must immediately demand a cessation of all consequential actions by this \u2018president\u2019 until we can be assured that Russian efforts to hack our election \u2026 did not also include collusion with or cover-up by anyone involved in the Trump campaign and now administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

How \u201cthe American people\u201d would demand such a cessation or who would provide such assurances was not specified.<\/p>\n

On March 31, CNN quoted<\/a> an unnamed senior administration official saying that Trump\u2019s hopes of a rapprochement with Russia were fading because he \u201cbelieves in the current atmosphere \u2013 with so much media scrutiny and ongoing probes into Trump-Russia ties and election meddling \u2013 that it won\u2019t be possible to \u2018make a deal.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, Trump found himself increasingly boxed in by hostile forces. But he still tried to fulfill his promise to concentrate on defeating terrorists in Syria and Iraq. On March 30, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced that the U.S. administration \u201cpriority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out,\u201d but to concentrate on defeating Al Qaeda and ISIS instead.<\/p>\n

But the more Trump contemplated his predicament in the following days, the more he realized how untenable it had come. Tuesday\u2019s poison-gas incident in Idlib thus offered a way out regardless of who was actually responsible. The only way for Trump to make peace with the \u201cdeep state\u201d in Washington was by waging war on Syria.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Finally, on Thursday, hours before Trump sent a volley of cruise missiles wafting towards Syria, Hillary Clinton taunted him by declaring<\/a> that America \u201cshould take out his [Assad\u2019s] airfields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people.\u201d<\/strong> The effect was to all but force Trump to show that he was every bit as macho as the former First Lady.<\/p>\n

Frog-Marching Trump<\/strong><\/p>\n

Trump is certainly a fool for going ahead with such an attack in clear contravention of international law and entangling the United States more deeply into the complicated Syrian conflict. But the blame also should go to the people who frog-marched him to the precipice and then all but commanded him to step over the edge.<\/p>\n

Within hours, all the usual suspects were congratulating one of the most scorned U.S. presidents in history for taking the leap.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said: \u201cMaking sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do.\u201d House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi described Trump\u2019s missile barrage as \u201ca proportional response to the regime\u2019s use of chemical weapons.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Republican super-hawks Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, previously as anti-administration as any Democrat, issued<\/a> a joint statement declaring that Trump \u201cdeserves the support of the American people,\u201d while liberal heart-throb Sen. Elizabeth Warren also agreed<\/a> that \u201cthe Syrian regime must be held accountable for this horrific act.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Guardian, as fiercely anti-Trump as it is anti-Putin and anti-Assad, conceded<\/a> that \u201cDonald Trump has made his point\u201d and that the next step would be up to Russia. All in all, Trump had never gotten such good press.<\/strong> It\u2019s clear that Official Washington was pleased with Trump\u2019s handiwork and was eager to encourage him to do more.<\/p>\n

But the missile barrage was not just an assault on Syria but on reason and good sense, too. Although the Washington Post\u2019s Adam Taylor tried to make it seem that the only critics of the missile barrage are members of the alt-right<\/a> \u201cknown for espousing racist, anti-Semitic and sexist points of view,\u201d the fact is that criticism flowed in from other quarters.<\/p>\n

At Alternet, Vijay Prashad pointed out that there were few independent observers in\u00a0Khan Shaykhun, the farming town where the April 4 incident occurred, to provide an accurate account. Eyewitnesses \u201cwith the densest relationship to the armed opposition,\u201d he wrote<\/a>, \u201care the first to claim that this attack was done by the government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consortiumnews\u2019 Robert Parry pointed out<\/a> that rather than dropping the gas themselves, Syrian or Russian warplanes could well have triggered an outbreak by bombing a facility containing \u201cchemicals that the rebels were planning to use in some future attack.\u201d Parry also noted that Al Qaeda, which controls Idlib province, could have \u201cstaged the incident to elicit precisely the international outrage directed at Assad as has occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Previously, United Nations investigators have received eyewitness testimony from Syrians<\/a> about rebels staging an alleged chlorine-bomb attack so it would be pinned on the Assad regime.]<\/p>\n

Something similar may well have occurred in August 2013, a sarin-gas missile attack on the outskirts of Damascus that killed hundreds and that appears to have been launched from a rebel-controlled area two kilometers away. The two incidents are curiously parallel.<\/p>\n

The August 2013 incident, which horrified the world and brought the Obama administration to the brink of its own attack on the Syrian government, occurred just days after a U.N. team had arrived in Damascus to investigate an alleged chemical attack by rebels against Syrian government troops some four months earlier.<\/p>\n

It made little sense for the Assad regime to have invited U.N. investigators in and then launch a more horrific chemical-weapons attack just miles from the investigators\u2019 hotel.<\/strong> It would be a bit like someone inviting a police inspector to dinner and then committing a murder in full view.<\/p>\n

\"Trump<\/p>\n

Not Making Sense<\/strong><\/p>\n

As one independent analysis noted<\/a> in 2013, the Assad regime would have to have decided to carry out a large-scale attack \u201cdespite (a)\u00a0making steady gains against rebel positions, (b) receiving a direct threat from the US that the use of chemical weapons would trigger intervention, (c) having constantly assured their Russian allies that they will not use such weapons, (d) prior to the attack, only using non-lethal chemicals and only against military targets.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Assad government would also have had to decide \u201cto (a) send forces into rebel-held area, where they are exposed to sniper fire from multiple directions, (b) use locally manufactured short-range rockets, instead of any of the long-range high quality chemical weapons in their arsenal, and (c) use low quality sarin.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of which seems supremely unlikely, but much of the mainstream U.S. media still treats the 2013 sarin-gas attack as the undeniable case of Assad crossing Obama\u2019s \u201cred line\u201d against using chemical weapons. And the highly dubious 2013 incident is cited as a key reason to believe that Assad has done it again. [Recently, The New York Times has quietly backed off the 2013 claims<\/a> although not explicitly retracting its earlier reporting blaming the attack on the Assad regime.]<\/p>\n

Assad would have possibly even stronger reasons not to deploy sarin gas on April 4, 2017. He would have to make a conscious decision to court world opprobrium at a time when the tide of the war was finally turning in his favor with the liberation of Aleppo last December and with most world leaders having concluded that the Assad regime was here to stay.<\/strong><\/p>\n

To have produced and deployed a sarin bomb would have meant deliberately risking military intervention more than three years after Syria reached an agreement with the United Nations to destroy its entire chemical-weapons stockpile so as to avoid \u2026 military intervention.<\/p>\n

All of which seems supremely unlikely as well. It would be an act of suicide \u2013 and after holding off a combined U.S., Saudi, Qatari, and Turkish assault for half a decade or more, one thing that Assad does not appear to be is suicidal.<\/p>\n

Although Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said<\/a>, \u201cthere is no doubt in our mind that the Syrian regime under the leadership of Bashar al-Assad is responsible for this horrific attack,\u201d in reality there is plenty of doubt.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Trump decided to fire away before the facts were in because the enemy he is most worried about is not the one half a world away in Syria, but the Democratic-neocon alliance in his own backyard.<\/strong> The political warfare in Washington is now generating more agony from real wars in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

___
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