Haaretz on Syria: "Bobby Bitman" Weighs In

Getting an interested bystander's point of view on a situation can be quite enlightening. A recent article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz makes some thought provoking, irrational, observations.

www.haaretz.com...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reported to have said, "after a special military consultation", that Israel is not a player in the Syrian conflict but would respond forcefully if attacked.

This is as expected.

An American strike, meant to punish and deter, is seemingly only days away. The United States will have to act soon since any further delay will be embarrassing to the Obama administration after a pattern of indecisiveness in the face of crises in the Arab world in general, and Syria in particular.

There is a faction in the United States that would agree with this assessment. I don't agree with it myself, but I am thinking more in terms of American strategic interests than the writer for Haaretz is doing, Israeli interests being foremost in this person's mind.

"An American strike, meant to punish and deter, . . . " is a phrase that the Obama administration would be happy with. That is how this impending action is being sold to the public in the US and around the world.

I don't think this is the real reason why America will strike Syria. I think that they will strike in order to topple the Assad regime.

Further on in the article the writer for Haaretz says,

Still, the apparent decision to carry out a strike against Assad as punishment for the massacre of civilians does not mean that the it will act to topple the regime.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The United States intends to topple the regime, has been acting to topple the regime and will topple the regime. The writer for Haaretz is writing from the world of make believe journalism that most journalists have inhabited since 9/11. The axiom upon which this sort of journalism is built is that the public can't remember what happened yesterday.

Situations no longer develope organically in the press. Political developments on the world stage are seen as a sequence of disconnected events that can be couched in any terms whatever, as they happen, depending on the political purpose of the moment.

No matter how many times Hillary Clinton may have said that the Assad regime must go, the current situation in Syria is being reported as if completely separate and disconnected from that.

Of course that is nonsense.

The article moves on to tactics. This is quite an interesting subject. If the aim is, as Haaretz states " . . . to carry out a strike against Assad as punishment for the massacre of civilians . . . ", the question of what to strike, how many civilians to massacre in response, in short what constitutes appropriate punishment for a gas attack, looms large. It would take the talent of someone like SCTV's "Bobby Bitman" to explain the rationale for this American led counter strike, so let's leave justification aside and concentrate on details.

What is "NATO" likely to hit?

Here's what Haaretz says:

Most likely, the U.S. will do the bare minimum and attack but then swiftly disengage. Such an approach dictates a particular set of targets: Not symbols of the regime but strictly military targets such as missile bases, anti-aircraft batteries and perhaps chemical weapons sites.

"Perhaps chemical weapons sites." If they have time? If they knock out all the missile batteries and anti-aircraft batteries first?

Why would the anti-aircraft batteries be a target? There is no rebel airforce. Have the anti-aircraft batteries even fired a shot since this civil war began?

Will this American led strike on Syria really be a riposte to a chemical attack or is it a preliminary to the imposition of a "no fly zone" and subsequent NATO assisted takeover by the Free Syrian Army advancing under NATO air cover?

I would suggest that this is exactly what it will be, notwithstanding the attempts by Haaretz and the rest of the mainstream press in the world to pretend otherwise.

The last paragraph in the Haaretz article is a priceless example of how the world's press applies and then abandons logic with adolescent capriciousness, whenever it suits them.

Early in the article, Israeli intelligence was lauded.

Still, intelligence estimates that Assad will not to open another front with Israel must be taken with a grain of salt. Indeed, common sense says he will refrain from attacking Israel, just as he remained quiet after at least four Israel strikes in Syria. On the other hand, the same logic cannot explain why Assad decided to allow the massacre of the citizens in a chemical attack last week.

On the contrary, the same logic tells one that Assad did not in fact launch a chemical attack on Syrian citizens.

The thing about logic is that it must be consistently applied to be useful. One can't simply adopt its conclusions only in cases where they suit one's agenda.

Israeli interests in this case are that Syria should be weakened militarily. The alleged chemical attack is irrelevant. Israel wants NATO to kick the crap out of Syrian air defences. Israel does not want regime change. Israel does not want the cannibals in charge in Syria.

This is where Israeli and American interests diverge.

This is a good test case for those who think Israel controls the United States. The Americans are going to topple Assad and don't give a flying fadoo what Israel thinks about it, just like they toppled Gaddafi.

There is no way, adequate to the situation, to respond to a chemical attack on civilians except to remove those responsible from positions of power to carry out such attacks. Consequently, NATO should be doing everything in its power to get the Free Syrian Army and themselves out of Syria.

The chemical attacks in Syria were probably carried out by Delta Force, or the SAS. Assad wouldn't do it and even the Salafist extremists of the al Nusrah Front wouldn't carry out such a large false flag attack on their own allies. For something like this, you need to outsource the job.

The fact that fingers are pointing so convincingly in all directions makes me think Special Forces were involved.