Here’s a bit more on the bloody mess that is Homs:

The United States of America has no policy, consistency, credibility, or predictability in foreign affairs. This has been true for almost our entire history. I am struck that now it also applies to our Domestic affairs.

Didn’t the U.S. just reopen its Syrian embassy a short time ago?

Has Asad started unplugging neonatal incubators and throwing infants on the floor yet?

Can someone please explain what is driving American policy on Syria? There is no oil there. It is difficult to see U.S. caring about human rights, deaths or anything else. We also have no moral high ground, as we have and still are killing more innocent people in our wars in the Muslim world. So what is the goal of our policy?

The U.S. has been utterly predictable & consistent in foreign affairs. It declared itself god’s chosen people with a manifest destiny to rule everything even before it was a country.

The rest of what you observe is just tactics & details.

The closest anyone has come to an explanation that makes sense to me is that it’s the neocon dream of throwing the entire ME into chaos (under cover of Arab spring) so that everything fractures and no ‘state’ is left standing that can in any way challenge Israel’s dominance.

Libya has wayyyy more oil than Syria so Nato will stand down on this one. O already said so basically.

That’s not a fair assessment. US foreign policy revolves around strengthening Israel and US domestic policy revolves around strengthening Wall Street profits./s

Righto. Except that apparently Gaddafi’s weapons are flooding the hands of the ‘dissidents’ in Syria, as are AQI vets flooding in to help, fresh from Libya. Or at least there are reports to that effect. Who knows WTF is accurate.

U.S. will not do anything overt either. Syria is way too messy.

Suspect that both Israel & U.S. are deeply involved in fomenting.

The U.S. is revolving around many goals in foreign policy, revolving and revolving…endlessly revolving.

Did you mean devolving? *g*

I’m pretty sure that PNAC designated 7 countries where the governments had to be replaced in order to ensure US hegemony. Perhaps Syria was one. I’m sure the Saudis would welcome the removal of a friend of Saddam and Iran, as would Bibi and the Zionists.

It is interesting to note that the other thirteen members of the security council (other than Russia and China) voted in favor of the resolution, given prior abstentions by South Africa and India. As for where the whole thing puts the Security Council with respect to the protesters? “The Tsar will not help us!” sums it up pretty well.

It’s about time………..What took us so long???? We’re lucky nobody got hurt.

Then, there’s the EGYPT crisis. Nothing but a bunch of dumbasses at the state department.

Whadya mean???? The Arab League has this well under control. /s

I don’t even think that it has to be a specific set of countries. Whatever the list was, it was prolly more along the lines of suggestions. Remember: Ya gotta throw some shitty country against wall every so often just to show them who’s boss.

It is to destabilize Syria in the run-up to the war on Iran. Assad is more popular in Syria than Western media lets on. And yes, these are armed groups with ties to Western countries. Indeed, Libyan Salafists are fighting in Syria now, courtesy NATO–this from Philip Girardi.

It seems the US and Israel will be content if Syria descends into civil war, tying up the regime with domestic issues, rather than being able to respond when Iran gets blown up. This is why the US and Israel are increasingly desperate for some sort of regime change.

You mean this little thing? From that fateful year of 2001?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSNyPS0fXpU

Waiting for another “Pearl Harbor-type event” to galvanize the American people again. Wigwam passed along this yesterday:

“wigwam February 5th, 2012 at 9:43 pm «

Per this article from 11/8/2007:
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2007/11/08/01932.html

‘The U.S. neoconservative agenda to Sacrifice the Fifth Fleet – The New Pearl Harbor’”

This is not about Syrians, anymore than we went to Iraq for the good of the Iraqis despite the Pollyanna stories about how the Empire cannot help itself from spreading light and goodness all over the globe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strategy_for_Securing_the_Realm

“Securing the Northern Border”

“Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon, including by: —striking Syria’s drug-money and counterfeiting infrastructure in Lebanon, all of which focuses on Razi Qanan. —paralleling Syria’s behavior by establishing the precedent that Syrian territory is not immune to attacks emanating from Lebanon by Israeli proxy forces…. “[1]

“Israel also can take this opportunity to remind the world of the nature of the Syrian regime. Syria repeatedly breaks its word. It violated numerous agreements with the Turks, and has betrayed the United States by continuing to occupy Lebanon in violation of the Taef agreement in 1989. Instead, Syria staged a sham election, installed a quisling regime, and forced Lebanon to sign a “Brotherhood Agreement” in 1991, that terminated Lebanese sovereignty. And Syria has begun colonizing Lebanon with hundreds of thousands of Syrians, while killing tens of thousands of its own citizens at a time, as it did in only three days in 1983 in Hama….Given the nature of the regime in Damascus, it is both natural and moral that Israel abandon the slogan comprehensive peace and move to contain Syria, drawing attention to its weapons of mass destruction programs, and rejecting land for peace deals on the Golan Heights.”[1]

There was no penalty for starting the war in Iraq. Do it again with feeling this time.

I think I became aware of the PNAC plan from a Democracy Now program, perhaps with Seymour Hersh as a guest. I’ll see if I can determine the source.

Not to mention that Syria was a decisive factor in Israel losing both wars against Lebanon.

Lebanon, for crying out loud, no piece of geography could be so powerless as Lebanon.

Israel’s sting of humiliation from those 2 defeats will spur it on to more & more reckless behavior.

Widely reported. I didn’t save any links.

Thanx Evelyn. Now I can go make dinner rather than doing research.

I know that PNAC changed their identity, but not their mission. World domination is still the objective.

“‘The Arab Spring is coming to China.’ McCain’s remarks obviously strayed away from the subject of the panel….In shifting its strategic focus, the US is carrying out its Asia ‘pivot’ strategy.”

http://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/694685/Anxiety-paranoia-lead-to-US-shooting-from-the-hip.aspx

It’s a global game between the Empire which now controls most of the Middle East, and their rivals China and Russia. But, first the Empire has to bag the Middle East.

Syria next, then on to Tehran, and then take it away, John McCain.

He would have the Slim Picken’s part in this epic movie.

This is such crap. People die by the thousands, and you ignore it. Sit around babbling conspiracy theories and junk. And then expect to point fingers and raise the moral high ground.

The protests in Syria were largely people on the street and largely peaceful well into the Fall. Neutral observers said that. They ascribed the violence to the government crackdowns. Then very late in the Fall, there was an influx of guns and an increase in the level of violence, both between the government and groups, and sectarian violence as well. But still many neutral observers described a lot of the protests as peaceful by and large. Now they are not, and the neutral observers are describing people as afraid to leave their homes.

But not you. You are describing a lot of global foreign policy power plays that sound like bi-polar cold war crap. Listen to yourselves. What you describe sounds little or nothing like what is heard over the channels that come from people rendering aid or observing in the streets. But you insist that you are the experts, and you listen to Russian TV as if the Russians weren’t Syrian government allies supplying arms into this. You’re too smart by a half. You aren’t describing reality, you’re finding ways to blind yourself to civilian deaths. You might as well be drone apologists or neocons yourselves for all the defenses you put up not to hear the cries and deaths of civilians.

So much for the vaunted American anti-interventionist movement. Supporters of crimes against humanity at the drop of a hat as long as it suits their purpose.

Our government also seems to see destroying Syria as a coherent nation to be a good thing for controlling or destroying Iran.

We’ve been working assiduously to surround Iran militarily.

We are a very warlike and belligerent nation.

I can’t prove that the numbers of people being killed are accurate, nor can I prove how many non-opposition civilians and government forces have been killed.

But, I keep wondering why the MCM (Mainstream Corporate Media) is presenting the opposition’s numbers with nary a mention of “alleged” or otherwise noting that the numbers cannot be corroborated. The BBC did, recently, note that none of their reporters were eye witnesses to the opposition reported attacks. A site by Lizzie Phalen, an Australian reporter who worked in Libya during that takedown, pointed out that a pile of bodies which were supposedly killed during Syrian government tank fire had their feet found and the hands bound behind their backs. The question was how did the government personnel manage to get in to bind these people — and then decide to shoot at them from a fair distance away? Might be interesting to click around her site.

I do not trust our MCM, I do not trust our US government sources when they are ginning up for illegal wars, and I do not trust headlines which, given their similarity from country to country, seem to come from the same propaganda organs.

Also, Bernard at Moon of Alabama has been casting a skeptical eye on Western MCM reporting on Libya and Syria, as well as much else in the ME and in the countries where the US is waging undeclared wars. A good site to root around.

Bernard achieved trusted status with me for pointing the impending credit default swaps, et al, well before even most lefty blogs did.

BTW, Glenn Greenwald posts about the US deliberately targeting rescuers of victims of our drone attacks, then following up with attacking mourners at their funerals. A government which will do that will lie and plant lies, so, please, be a bit more skeptical of what we’re being fed by our government and MCM.

I guess. Except that the 5400 figure isn’t from “opposition’s numbers” it’s from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the stuff I just said about peaceful protesters was from the ICRC ex-pat delegate in Homs. Compared to Moon of Alabama, I’ll take the UNHCHR and ICRC anyday, they actually have people there.

Glenn Greenwald has nobody in Syria, I don’t know that he’s even written much about it, he’s writing about drones in Pakistan. I do know enough about geography to know that Pakistan is in South Asia, and Syria is not.

Besides, he was the one who constantly lambasts everyone who isn’t just as critical about Obama as they were about Bush on things, whether or not the issue he’s writing about really warrants that as an explanation, isn’t he? Well…During Bush, and even into Obama, both he and everyone who follows him rightly blasted the U.S. for their sending people into torture in Syrian prisons. Now that Syria is imprisoning protesters by some accounts up to 30,000 of them, we’re what? Supposed to think the stories about them torturing them are all made up out of whole cloth because RT says so and Pepe Escobar believes them?

No. I don’t think you get to suddenly play Assad as an angel because of my enemy’s enemy. Nor do I take the word of a guy who is good at ferreting out credit default swaps over the ICRC and PHR on observing violations of international law. Hell, I’m pretty good on CDSs too, I can burn your ears off on the interaction between a gaussian copula and a baker’s transformation and how a senior tranche can have arbitrarily close to zero worth in finite time. I predicted the 1987 crash, and we saw the housing bubble coming from decades away. That means absolutely nothing about human rights in Syria.

And for your final point: You don’t get to assert that what is going on in Syria is a U.S. instigated plot merely by saying that the U.S. government is a bad entity. You need to prove the U.S. is instigating in Syria. So far, nobody has come up with that at all. Possibly because they’re not. The world is fully capable of having more than one mechanism for conflict. Only during a brief period during the Cold War did it even appear that there were only two sides to everything. And even then it wasn’t true.

Characterizing the protest movement as “armed extremist groups” plays into Assad’s hands.

So you have chosen a side. Thanks for your clarification.

Security concerns for the embassy were already heightened due to two suicide car bombings in Damascus last month at the offices of Syrian security installations.

Accordingly, is this an example of Bashar Al Asad crushing the popular uprising?
Do civilian protesters generally ape the tactics of sunni terrorists?

Reports claim

Source?

There are protestors and they exist on both sides. They aren’t the same as the armed extremists groups.

Civilians are being killed in crossfire between the armed mercenaries and Syrian Military.

Dead Bodies from both sides are being traded when the hostilities subside.
Civilians are being targeted by the Armed Sunni Mercenaries outside of fighting with the military.

Syrian Military have not been observed simply firing on civilian protestors.

It’s all here in the official observers report, which is being ignored by ideologues and regime change proponents:
League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria
Report of the Head of the League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria for the period from 24 December 2011 to 18 January 2012

I recall last spring, or so, the Libyan rebels promised the oil contracts were to be set aside in favor of France. Tit for tat.

You don’t have sources in Syria either.
Lets see links to your official sources – UNHCHR and ICRC , and where they are getting their figures.
We can examine and weigh them for credibility sans your synthesis and moralizing for empire.

It was Hizbollah which smacked Israel, and that secured a place in the hearts of the Lebanese, and legitimized their involvement in politics.

Israel’s sting of humiliation from those 2 defeats will spur it on to more & more reckless behavior.

Exactly, unless the defeat is so bad and the price is so high that they won’t want to engage in it anymore. As it is, war is a vanity project for Israel. How else can the picnics on the hill to observe the destruction of Gaza be explained?

Warmonger in Haaretz:

Or perhaps the only purpose of a wide-scale operation is to satisfy the lust for prestige because a state cannot allow its people to be attacked every day and stand idly by. After all, something must be done, and there is nothing wrong with an occasional showcase operation, …

“Besides, the trauma of Lebanon must heal, and there is nothing like a successful war to heal a failed war. “

Finkelstein describes Shock and Awe, and that it’s aim is the same as “throwing a little country up against the wall from time to time.”

Finkelstein said that the (Israeli) attack on Gaza which killed more than fourteen hundred innocent Palestinians had very little of anything to do with what the people of Gaza did or what Hamas did. “If you read in the “Israeli” newspapers, they (Israelis) were very clear they said the purpose of the attack on Gaza was to restore what they call their deterrence capacity. This “deterrence capacity” is “Israel’s” fancy term for the Arab world’s fear from “Israel”,” Finkelstein said.

The scholar underscored “The defeated “Israel” suffered in 2006 during the attack on Lebanon and this “Israel was determined to undo that defeat. “Israel” felt after its defeat in 2006, that the Arab world wasn’t afraid of it, and so it had to do something to restore this fear…

Finkelstein said that “Israel” adopts “The Dahiyeh Doctrine” noting “Meaning that if you get in our (Israel’s) way, we will do to you what we did to the Dahiyeh in 2006.”
“The Shock and Awe” ideology is that which “Israel” adopts in its wars, the same strategy the US used in Iraq in 2003, highlighted Finkelstein.

Daniyeh is a neigborhood in Beruit.