The reaction in Israel to President Obama’s decision to ask for congressional authorization to strike Syria is truly bizarre. As far as I know, Israel has never been able to decide what they want to happen in Syria. Certainly, they would like to see Iran’s influence diminished in both Syria and Lebanon, and that argues for a defeat of the Assad regime. If it’s true that the Assad regime is increasingly willing to use chemical weapons, that is also a major concern for the Israelis. But Israel has lived for decades in a technical state of war with Syria without it ever being much of an existential concern. They’d rather deal with the devil they know than with the uncertainty of a failed state or a Salafist regime allied with al-Qaeda. This is why you haven’t seen much pressure from Israel-aligned lobbyists for the United States to enter the civil war in Syria.
Yet, the Israelis have been pushing the argument that chemical weapons are being used by the regime and making the case that the “red line” has been crossed. And they seem to think that President Obama’s failure to act so far is an indication that America can no longer be depended upon to enforce “red lines,” including a potential decision by Iran to fully-enrich their uranium stockpiles for nuclear weapons.
What’s not clear is why Israel thinks it is in their interests for the Obama administration to carry out a very limited punitive attack on Syria that won’t affect the outcome of the war there. Since they are not even convinced that the demise of the Assad regime is in their interests, it is confusing that they think a failure to strike the regime is a troubling precedent.
The only thing I can conclude is that they fear that America has lost the resolve to act in their interests, even if it is not clear that acting in this particular case would be in their interests. They want us to do something not so much because they think doing something would be productive but to prove that we’re still capable of doing something.
This whole thing is just strange.
Al Jazeera is really doing a good job on unpacking this. A commenter there made the point that we need to recognize that despite the impossible suffering the Syrian people are undergoing, those that fight the civil war, and indeed the broader reminder of Arab Spring message, was to break down the iron fist of dictatorships in the region.
In that regard, Obama’s decision to engage the Congress was exactly the kind of representation that these insurgents have been fighting and dying for.
Back around to Israel and their power. It is connected to the US warships, not the people of Syria.
A conflict elsewhere in the Middle East diverts attention from the final stages of the creation of the single apartheid state in Israel and the appropriation of East Jerusalem.
An action that does not distract or that creates too much chaos is not in the interest of this agenda.
The phony peace process between Israel and the Palestinians so trumpeted by John Kerry is now officially dead.
Also, mission creep in Syria puts the PNAC seven-nation plan back in operation. The fantasy of “remaking the Middle East” never dies. And AIPAC is a hybrid of Israeli and US neo-con interests.
Hello, Lambert? Is that you? Hello?
The heat-fever hallucinations of Paul Wolfowitz do not work on autodrive.
Oh, I dunno. Especially with further US intervention (“further” since we’re already arming the opposition), Syria could take as long to reach some sort of uneasy peace as Iraq did. Presumably you trust Obama to not advance or fall prey to that sort of agenda, but do you trust the next president in 2017? I don’t. I don’t trust Hillary Clinton, I don’t trust Joe Biden, and I sure as fuck don’t trust any Republican. In fact, it’s really hard to imagine any of the presumptive 2016 candidates in this situation where the attacks wouldn’t already have been launched, and with plenty of them we’d have had boots on the ground a year or two ago.
I’ll always remember the Onion’s headline for Dubya’s inauguration in 2001: “Bush: At last the long national nightmare of peace and prosperity has come to an end.” Regardless of who’s in the White House, the US government at this point has some pretty strong structural biases toward looting and killing. We forget that at our peril.
As for Syria, there are no good options, but plainly some are a lot worse than others.
The is only one reason that the Authorization to Use Military Force is so broad–to give the President a blank check. That blank check means that mission creep is inevitable.
The heat fever dreams of Paul Wolfowitz don’t work on overdrive, but there are still folks in the military and intelligence community who still are pushing that agenda. McChrystal and Petraeus put forward a vague plan about the Afghanistan surge and tried to mission creep it into much more. The President has been able to resist this only because Karzai played his role as foil perfectly. I don’t see how mission creep from a Syria operation can be resisted once combat has begun. And when we’ve blown a billion dollars and Assad is still using chemical weapons, what does the President do but escalate. Or when Iraq starts falling apart as a result of political reaction to the air strikes, what does the President do? The political pressure for “regional transformation” by the McCain-Graham gang and their allies within the military and intelligence community is still there, and it has not yet been exposed as a failed policy.
And yes, Bibi is delighted about the distraction. Looked at the land possession maps for the former British colony of Palestine recently? The Likud dream is almost a reality. There is no serious peace process.
My impression, is that Bibi is just a slightly smarter version of W.
He has that same, for lack of a better term – “neocon dickishness” – about him.
When you’re about as bright as a hammer, the whole world looks like it’s full of nails.
My thinking is along these lines as well, it’s just that Israel of two extremely unhealthy things that they think are paramount to their security. First, they have convinced themselves that the only reason the entire region has not turned on them and tried to smother them out of existence again is that they continue to show off their individual might when they engage in disproportionate actions in Gaza or Lebanon.
The other side of that coin is that they have pulled off something similar to what the GOP has here in that they believe their own bullshit about the “red lines” and urgent need to act because of Iran. That only tough talk and swinging their military at any threat no matter how small or large is from the US Their posture has been to pretend that they are only one step away from taking unilateral action against this threat (forever 6 months away), and that the US is just “holding them back” by asking them to wait for negotiations and sanctions to take effect.
So, just like the GOP the Israeli cabinet seems to think pointless action is a sign of strength even if weakens your own position or outright harms you. Also, that there is never time to stop and think about other options when you already have one decided for you by your chosen path of diplomacy in the region.
My basic sentiment has been that we have to do something, IF it is proven that Assad carried out the attack. If you allow a bully like that to ignore your warnings, his behavior, and that of other bullies, will only get worse. But taking the time to make sure we’re doing the right thing seem like an obvious good. And if Israel doesn’t like it, I’m inclined to be even more careful and move even more slowly. I don’t trust that government any more than Syria’s.
If the Israeli government is upset about our course in Syria, that’s an excellent sign. Given that Netanyahu has likely killed, tortured, and imprisoned without charges far more of the people in his jurisdiction than Assad has – and I’m under no illusions about Assad – Bibi is an excellent moral barometer of what not to do.
This situation has the potential to be a major crack in the neo-zio-mila-corpo con narrative and offensive. In fact, it already is no matter what paths lead from here. Whether Congress says “Yes” or “No”, whether Obama stays tight or goes large, or how the other players react, this past and coming week marks a new level of awareness dawning.
To shepherd us to such a position is precisely what I hoped Obama could accomplish.
The “case” for warmongering has been seriously undermined this past week. Why the Rush To Judgment?
THAT is the “tell”.
If it’s a real thing (that Syria unleashed the gas attack), why not let the UN inspectors do their job? Why not parade it in the UN Security Council? Make a big show of it! I’m old enough to remember Adlai Stevenson holding up something that had a hidden KGB mike in it and Oh! the Horrors.
Until we decide we will not be lied to, things will remain cloudy and bizarre. Once we step out of the media and cultural bubbles, with their storylines of this and that and “him” or “her”, which we identify with and thus let rule us, the fog gradually lifts. And then we see the drivenness (we must do something!) and the general WTF!?! of it.
So we are at a time now where some very large truths are coming to light. It’s not that these truths haven’t been expressed before but rather the public mind is shifting in ways that folks focused on direct life and survival frequently don’t perceive.
Sorry for being so philosophical on a basically political blog, but the time, (RIGHT NOW, this week), demands focus and standing for simple truth.
I’m a STRONG Obamabot! And I support many of his activities. In this case, there are other agendas running which aren’t fully recognized. He’s been really lying a lot lately. Another reason for things seeming bizarre.
I think he’s doing a good job. He’s been trying to wake people up through inspiration. That’s a tough job because a lot of people are pissed upon being awakened and the awaker is often the first person to feel the displeasure……….(AG is that you?)
Anyway, here goes. The first order of business is to find out what happened. Any proposing of an action which does not RESPECT finding out FIRST what ACTUALLY happened, is acting out of BAD FAITH.
PERIOD. It’s the warmongers mentality. Verdict first, then the trial.
Time for the American People to stop lying to ourselves.
For sure, not enforcing red lines: BAD. But also, I think any example of unilateral military action against Israel’s enemies is looked on positively just for the normalizing of said behavior. Also, it undermines the UN.
Sorry, I don’t think incitement for the US to act impulsively by folks from Israel is strange at all. They have done it plenty of times themselves:
Chaos favors the prepared and they think of themselves as very well prepared and the Arabs as woefully unprepared.
The warrior mindset has completely overtaken the Israelis. And they think they are invincible.
For the past 30 years and especially for this Israeli Government, having the US involved in military affairs in the Middle East is always a good idea, anytime, any place.
They want us around, so we can attack people that they would like to attack, so they won’t have to. And every time we do a military operation in the middle east, we are more bound to the Israeli’s.
One of the main objectives of Israeli PR is to convince Americans that Israel’s enemies are also America’s enemies. Once that point is established, we can be heckled into attacking Israel’s enemies for them.