It was decided by a vote in the house of commons not by the US executive. I suspect that MPs in these circumstances may have looked at other data sources than official communiques. Sent from Huawei Mobile
Louis Proyect <[email protected]> wrote: On 3/26/14 5:59 AM, William Cockshott wrote: > The new media opposition to the official media line on Syria prevented a > repeat of the Libyan colonial adventure last year. Not really. I don't think the White House pays much attention to Voltairenet, Global Research, Moon of Alabama, or DissidentVoice. American imperialism has very little interest in seeing a Jacquerie Sunni revolt succeeding in Syria. Keep in mind that Hillary Clinton referred to Bashar al-Assad as a "reformer" at the very moment his snipers were killing peaceful protesters. I wrote about this in an article titled "Why Obama did not make War on Syria" that Counterpunch published despite it going against the "line" of the anti-imperialist left. Here's a quote: http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/06/why-obama-did-not-make-war-on-syria/ Unlike the semi-hysterical Western left, the Putin-controlled media had a sharper take on what was happening. USA disavows all Syrian rebels. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey said that the Syrian rebels could not promote U.S. interests at this stage. The “Hawk” who recently proposed five options of Syrian intervention has surrendered. The statement marked the position of the military that do not recommend a direct U.S. involvement in the conflict in Syria. So the Russians thought the U.S. had “surrendered” even before Obama began to talk tough. Of course, for some whatever Dempsey might say could be turned into its opposite. The World Socialist Website that has been ardently Baathist from the start of the Arab Spring wrote: In a letter written to Congress in June in June, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, proposed a scenario involving “stand-off strikes” which would target “high-value air defense, air, ground, missile and naval forces, as well as the supporting military facilities and command nodes… Stand-off air and missile systems could be used to strike hundreds of targets at a tempo of our choosing. As is so often the case with these people, they only print what bolsters their argument—sometimes referred to as cherry-picking. Dempsey’s letter simply offered the politicians possible military measures but warned at the same time that should “the regime’s institutions collapse in the absence of a viable opposition, we could inadvertently empower extremists.” Considering the fact that the “anti-imperialist” left considers everybody and anybody picking up a gun against Bashar al-Assad to be an extremist with beards down to their toes, including the women, you have to wonder why they ever worried about “regime change” to begin with. In trying to figure out what made Obama “surrender”, you are better off reading the N.Y. Times than a sectarian like Shamus Cooke. In a revealing article titled “Obama’s Uncertain Path Amid Syria Bloodshed” that appeared in the October 22nd N.Y. Times, we learn that Obama was “deeply ambivalent” about Syria from the start. Benjamin J. Rhodes, his deputy national security adviser told the N.Y. Times: “In the absence of any good options, people have lifted up military support for the opposition as a silver bullet, but it has to be seen as a tactic — not a strategy.” And if it was a tactic, it was only one to be weighed carefully and not adopted pell-mell like Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. Even at the start of the revolt, when Bashar al-Assad was on the ropes, “Mr. Obama made it clear to his aides that he did not envision an American military intervention, even as public calls mounted that year for a no-fly zone to protect Syrian civilians from bombings.” Well, no matter. Even if this was obviously his intention, there were those who remain convinced that “another Iraq” was in the offing. Not a month went by without a warning that “regime change” was about to happen. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
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