[News] Syria - Operation Tomahawk with cheese

[Anti-Imperialist News]

*Operation Tomahawk with cheese*
By Pepe Escobar

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-04-290813.html

This deafeningly hysterical show of Syria as Iraq 2.0 is only happening 
because a president of the United States (POTUS) created a 
''credibility'' problem when, recklessly, he pronounced the use of 
chemical weapons in Syria a ''red line''.

Thus the US government urgently needs to punish the transgressor - to 
hell with evidence - to maintain its ''credibility''. But this time it 
will be ''limited''. ''Tailored''. Only ''a few days''. A ''shot across 
the bow'' - as POTUS qualified it. Still, some - but not all - 
''high-value targets'', including command and control facilities and 
delivery systems, in Syria will have to welcome a barrage of Tomahawk 
cruise missiles (384 are already positioned in the eastern Mediterranean).

We all know how the Pentagon loves to christen its assorted humanitarian 
liberations across the globe with names like Desert Fox, Invincible 
Vulture or some other product of brainstorming idiocy. So now it's time 
to call Operation Tomahawk With Cheese.

It's like ordering a pizza delivery. ''Hello, I'd like a Tomahawk with 
cheese.'' ''Of course, it will be ready in 20 minutes.'' ''Hold on, 
wait! I need to fool the UN first. Can I pick it up next week? With 
extra cheese?''

In 1988, Operation Desert Fox - launched by Bill ''I did not have sex 
with that woman'' Clinton - was designed to ''degrade'', but not 
destroy, Saddam Hussein's capacity to manufacture non-existent weapons 
of mass destruction. Now, the deployment of those deeply moral Tomahawks 
is also designed to ''degrade'' the Bashar al-Assad's government 
capacity to unleash unproven chemical weapons attacks.

Yet there's always that pesky problem of perennially ungrateful Arabs 
who, according to the New York Times, ''are emotionally opposed to any 
Western military action in the region no matter how humanitarian the 
cause''.

The deeply humanitarian Operation Tomahawk With Cheese is running into 
all sorts of problems with the calendar. POTUS leaves next Tuesday to 
Sweden - and from there he will go to St Petersburg for the Group of 20 
summit, on Thursday and Friday next week. The proverbial horde of 
''unnamed White House officials'' has been spinning like mad 
centrifuges, emphasizing that POTUS must wrap up Tomahawk With Cheese 
before he musters the courage to face Russian President Vladimir Putin 
and other leaders of emerging powers.

Surveying his impossibilities - with one eye to the calendar and another 
to the resistance to enlarge his mini-coalition of the willing - now 
POTUS seems to be looking for an exit strategy that in fact would all 
but abandon Operation Tomahawk With Cheese.

Others are way more resilient. A predictable bunch of 66 former 
''government officials'' and ''foreign policy experts'' - all of them 
Ziocons under the umbrella of the Foreign Policy Initiative - has 
published a letter urging POTUS to go way beyond Operation Tomahawk With 
Cheese, arguing for a pizza sparing no lethal ingredients. This would be 
a true humanitarian mission, able to support ''moderate'' Syrian 
''rebels'' and on top of it ''dissuade Iran from developing nuclear 
weapons''.

*A rebel, but not a jerk *
Let's see what a ''moderate'' Syrian ''rebel'' thinks about all this. 
Haytahm Manna, in exile for 35 years, is a key member of the non-armed 
Syrian opposition (yes, they do exist). But he's not following the 
script; he's resolutely against Operation Tomahawk, with cheese or with 
extra cheese. (See here 
<http://www.levif.be/info/actualite/international/syrie-les-attaques-chimiques-sont-un-coup-monte/article-4000384171801.htm> 
(in French).

Worse; he debunks the US government's ''evidence'' of a chemical weapons 
attack as ''propaganda'' and ''psychological war''. He stresses the 
chemicals were launched with ''artisanal weapons''; that ties up with 
Russian intelligence, which is sure gas that it was delivered by a 
homemade missile fired from a base under opposition control (extensive 
details compiled here 
<http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Talk:Alleged_Chemical_Attack,_August_21,_2013#Qaboun_rocket_lauches>; 
scroll down to ''Qaboun rocket launches'').

Manna also points to ''videos and photos on the Internet before the 
attacks''; to al-Qaeda's previous use of chemical weapons; and to the 
Russians as ''seriously working for the Geneva II negotiations'', unlike 
the Americans.

Ooops. This is not exactly what the designers of Operation Tomahawk With 
Cheese were expecting. If a Syrian exile draws these conclusions, the 
same applies to Syria civilians who are about to be greeted by those 
deeply moral Tomahawks.

The Pentagon could always go for Plan B. A single Tomahawk costs at 
least US$1.5 million. Multiply that for 384. That's not a great bang for 
your buck - because even if they all go humanitarian, the Bashar 
al-Assad government would still remain in place.

So why not drop planeloads of sexy, Pininfarina-designed Ferrari 
Californias? They retail for around $200.000. Imagine the frenzy among 
Assad elite forces struggling to seize the Big Prize, one among 2,000 
Californias. With their eyes off the ball, the ''rebels'' could easily 
sneak in everywhere and take over Damascus. And perhaps even stage the 
victory parade on a fleet of photogenic Ferraris. Call that an 
improvement over Libya.

Operation Tomahawk With Cheese may still happen; even with the calendar 
pressing; even bypassing the UN; even with a mini-coalition of the 
willing; even making a total mockery of international law. The White 
House has made it clear that ''diplomatic paralysis'' cannot infringe on 
its ''credibility''.

As for what is happening 10 years after the invasion and occupation of 
Iraq, it's about the US government, parts of the North Atlantic Treaty 
Organization (Britain and France) and parts of the Gulf Cooperation 
Council (Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) burying the 
previous, much-lauded Euro-Arab ''dialogue'' and turning into a shady 
Atlanticist-Islamist cabal bent on smashing yet another secular Arab 
republic. Talk about rotten cheese.

/*Pepe Escobar* is the author of /Globalistan: How the Globalized World 
is Dissolving into Liquid War 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0978813820/simpleproduction/ref=nosim> 
/(Nimble Books, 2007), /Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the 
surge 
<http://www.amazon.com/Red-Zone-Blues-snapshot-Baghdad/dp/0978813898> 
/(Nimble Books, 2007), and /Obama does Globalistan 
<http://www.amazon.com/Obama-Does-Globalistan-Pepe-Escobar/dp/1934840831> /(Nimble 
Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia at yahoo.com. /
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