<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div id="container" class="container font-size5">
<div dir="ltr" style="display: block;" id="reader-header"
class="header"> <b><small><small><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/23/the-obama-two-step-on-syria/"
id="reader-domain" class="domain"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/23/the-obama-two-step-on-syria/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/23/the-obama-two-step-on-syria/</a></a></small></small></b>
<h1 id="reader-title">The Obama Two-Step on Syria</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">by <em><strong>Ajamu
Baraka</strong></em></div>
</div>
<div class="content">
<div style="display: block;" dir="ltr" id="moz-reader-content">
<div
xml:base="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/23/the-obama-two-step-on-syria/"
id="readability-page-1" class="page">
<div itemprop="articleBody" class="post_content">
<p>It was a pathetic spectacle, another black face in a
high place in the person of General Lloyd J. Austin III,
head of the United States Central Command, came before
the Senate’s Armed Services Committee <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/world/middleeast/isis-isil-syrians-senate-armed-services-committee.html?_r=1">to
report </a> to incredulous members that the 500
million dollar program to train 5000 so-called moderate
rebels in Syria had only resulted in the training of a
few dozen.</p>
<p>He went on to report that of that number, half had
already been either captured, or some say “integrated,”
into the al-Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate, the
al-Nusra Front, leaving just four or five individuals in
what must be a record for the most expensive training
process in human history.</p>
<p>With howls of criticism coming from right-wing
democrats and republicans, the impression developing in
congress and the general public is that similar to the
debacle that Iraq and Afghanistan became for George
Bush, Syria is Obama’s foreign policy disaster.</p>
<p>Strangely however, while General Austin was falling on
his sword on front of the Senate committee,
spokespersons for Barack Obama were busy telling anyone
who would listen that President Obama could not be
blamed for the calamity unfolding in Syria.</p>
<p>The White House claimed that <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/18/world/finger-pointing-but-few-answers-after-a-syria-solution-fails.html?_r=1">it
is not to blame</a> on the training issue. In what
some are calling his “<a
href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/devil-made-obamas-foreign-policy-141602608.html">the
devil made me do it</a>” defense, Josh Earnest, the
White House press secretary argued that the finger
should be pointed at those who convinced President Obama
to get directly involved in training Syrian rebels,
including by implication the former Secretary of State <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/hillary_rodham_clinton/index.html">Hillary
Rodham Clinton</a>.</p>
<p>And on the general Syrian issue, the Administration
appears to be trying to put distance between itself and
its own policies.</p>
<p>But facts can be stubborn things, even when the
interpretative framework for assessing facts is
different. For many of us, the historical record is
clear – this war was/is Mr. Obama’s. And what we are
witnessing in Syria today is the human and political
consequences of his administration’s decision to embrace
a policy of regime change in Syria.</p>
<p><strong>Plan A: Regime Change; Plan B: the Destruction
and Dismembering of the Syria State and Society</strong></p>
<p>This notion that Obama was a reluctant warrior who only
got involved in Syria recently is a fiction.</p>
<p>From the very beginning of the phony Arab spring
actions in Syria, it was not even necessary for former
general Wesley Clark <a
href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-countries-in-5-years-iraq-syria-lebanon-libya-somalia-sudan-iran/5166">to
reveal</a> that Syria was on a hit-list of governments
slated for subversion to see the reactionary presence of
U.S. intelligence agencies in the “rebellion” in Syria.</p>
<p>Former French Foreign Minister, Roland Dumas <a
href="http://nsnbc.me/2013/07/03/former-french-foreign-minister-dumas-blows-the-whistle-on-western-war/">blew
the whistle</a> on<br>
Western war plans against Syria, long before the first
“spontaneous” protests erupted in 2011. While Dumas told
a story of British and French intrigue, it was always
clear that those two sub-imperialist nations would not
have been engaged in anything of that magnitude and
sensitivity without a green light from the U.S. hegemon.</p>
<p>WikiLeaks confirmed those plans when it released over
7000 secret diplomatic cables that documented that from
2006 to 2010, the US spent 12 million dollars in order
to support and instigate demonstrations and propaganda <a
href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/decoding-the-current-war-in-syria-the-wikileaks-files/5473909">against
the Syrian government</a>.</p>
<p>Millions were spent to support dissident groups and for
disinformation campaigns targeting the corporate media
in the U.S. and Western Europe.</p>
<p>Once the destabilization plan was launched reports in
the alternative press immediately emerged of CIA
involvement with illicit arms being funneled to Syria
opposition fighters, including tons of equipment from
Libya that had been destroyed by NATO forces.</p>
<p>Seymour Hersh the Pulitzer Prize winning investigative
reporter <a
href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/04/real-benghazi-story.html">revealed</a>
that President Obama and the Turkish PM, Erdogan
concluded a secret deal in the beginning of 2012 in
which the CIA and the British M16 would move heavy
weapons out of Libya to supply the Free Syrian Army.
This was the activity that Chris Stevens, the U.S.
Ambassador to Libya, was providing political cover for
in Benghazi when the CIA annex and diplomatic compound
was attacked by one of the disaffected armed groups that
the U.S. was dealing with.</p>
<p>Those reports became so wide-spread in media outlets
globally that finally even the New York Times could no
longer avoid the reports and ran <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html?_r=0">a
story</a> that essentially corroborated reports of CIA
involvement in support of Syrian opposition forces.</p>
<p>But clearly the most damaging information that revealed
the extent of the Obama’s administration moral
complicity with the carnage that it unleased in Syria
was the <a
href="http://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/pgs-287-293-291-jw-v-dod-and-state-14-812-2/">report</a>
from the Defense Intelligence Agency ( DIA) written in
2012 that clearly documented that “the Salafist, the
Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [Al- Qaeda in Iraq] are the
major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” being
supported by “the West, Gulf countries and Turkey.” And
like the report that exposed that white terrorist
organizations represented a major threat to domestic
security in the U.S., this report was also ignored by
the administration.</p>
<p>When retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, former
head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG3j8OYKgn4&feature=youtu.be&t=8m49s">was
asked</a> why the Obama administration didn’t act on
his agency’s concerns, his response was that the
administration apparently decided to ignore the
findings, “I think it was a <em>willful decision.”</em></p>
<p>The DIA report was ignored because the Obama
Administration had already decided on its course of
action. The strategy that the administration was
implementing was detailed in another piece of <a
href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/05/the-redirection">reporting
by Seymour Hersh</a>. Hersh revealed that the strategy
first formulated in the latter years of the Bush
administration and carried over into the Obama
Administration, was that radical jihadists would be used
in a manner similar to how they were used in Afghanistan
in the 80s, as the “boots on the ground” for the U.S. in
Syria.</p>
<p>Embracing this strategy was not a very difficult one
for the Administration, especially since Obama and many
others in his administration believed that the creation
of a “moderate” force of what Obama divisively referred
to as former doctors, farmers and pharmacists capable of
dislodging <a
href="http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/opinion/president-obama-thomas-l-friedman-iraq-and-world-affairs.html?_r=3&referrer=">Assad
was a fantasy</a>.</p>
<p>The geo-strategic objective for the Obama
Administration was regime change, therefore, the plan
implemented for that objective had nothing to do with
wanting to liberate Syrians. In their cynical
calculations, eliminating al-Assad outweighed any
considerations for the longer term interests of the
Syrian people. For the cold-hearted strategists of the
Obama Administration, the talk of a people’s revolution
was only a ploy to obscure their real intentions and
confuse liberals and even some leftists.</p>
<p>The Administration peddled the outrageous fiction that
there was a viable force of so-called moderates in Syria
that they were supporting at the same time that they
knew that the al-Nusra Front, and the Islamic State in
Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) had emerged as the central
forces in the anti-Assad insurgency.</p>
<p>And by early 2013 when it became clear that the
al-Assad government would not surrender, the destruction
and <a
href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2012/al-monitor/the-lebanonization-of-syria.html">dismemberment
of the Syria State</a> became the goal of U.S. policy.
The impact that this decision would have on the people
of Syria was of no concern for U.S. planners.</p>
<p>It would not be an exaggeration to argue that despite
whatever contradictions existed in Syria, and there were
many, without the subversion by the U.S./EU/NATO axis of
domination and its allies, it is highly unlikely that
any social upheaval that might have developed in the
country as part of a pro-democracy movement would have
reached the scale of suffering experience by the people
of Syria today.</p>
<p>No, the devil did not make Obama engage in the
incredible cynicism that sacrificed an ancient culture
and the lives of so many. It was the imperatives of
empire and the ethical position that Westerners have the
right to determine the leadership of states and what
lives have value.</p>
<p>Being the self-centered narcissist and operating from a
colonialist, Eurocentric mindset, Obama is now taking a
familiar position that European imperialists have taken
for years after committing unspeakable crimes against
humanity – they feign innocence.</p>
<p>But this is Obama’s war and while he may escape
prosecution as the war criminal that he is, the
consequences and moral condemnation that it has
generated is inescapable. It is his legacy, a legacy
written in blood that no amount of slick public
relations will be able to erase from the pages of
history.<em> </em></p>
</div>
<p class="author_description"> <em><strong>Ajamu Baraka</strong>
is a human rights activist, organizer and geo-political
analyst. Baraka is an Associate Fellow at the Institute
for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C. and editor
and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report.
He is a contributor to “<a
href="http://store.counterpunch.org/product/killing-trayvons/">Killing
Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence</a>”
(CounterPunch Books, 2014). He can be reached at <a
href="http://www.ajamubaraka.com/"><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.AjamuBaraka.com">www.AjamuBaraka.com</a></a></em>
</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>