UKRAINE, COVERAGE AND NON-COVERAGE ARE MAKING ME NUTS

Having retired from the mainstream media, and having, I think I may claim, swum for 50-plus years within it, more or less finding my own currents, I wonder that I have so much agita about some of the recent attacks on it for coverage of Ukraine.  

I was first set off by a series of provocative, to me often provoking, articles by the formidable investigative reporter Robert Parry, who is full of rage at the alleged complicity of the American news media in official Washington’s undeniable falsification of the crisis in Crimea and Ukraine.

The articles include these:

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/02/what-neocons-want-from-ukraine-crisis/

 

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/14/neocons-have-weathered-the-storm/

 

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/15/can-obama-speak-strongly-for-peace/

 

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/16/mainstream-us-media-is-lost-in-ukraine/

 

What first got me riled up was Parry’s repeated labeling of ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych as “democratically elected,” as if he were Allende or Aristide, and his repeated echoing of the Russians' self-interested assertion that the Ukrainian opposition is dominated, even defined by the presence of neo-Nazis.   

His description of "the independent-minded and strong-willed Putin," set off another Rolaids roller-coaster.  Such language is disingenuous at best, willfully ignorant at worst.  Putin is a totalitarian who, in his desperation as the leader of a failing state, -- life expectancy in Russia continues to fall, industrial productivity levels are third-world, unemployment is huge, the economy is barely holding on, with the dropping global price of natural gas an "existential threat,” -- he is busy creating external enemies and manufacturing distracting international crises. Acting as if a new regime in Kiev might attack Mama Rus may boost his rating in short term, both declaring war on Iraq and claiming “success” did for George W. Bush.  In the short-term this hyper-nationalist nonsense, backed by the radical suppression of dissident voices from Russia's intelligencia and mass media, seems to be working right now.  But the Russian stock market is falling, and the threat of economic isolation may, in the long-run, prove to be much more dangerous to Putin's survival, than the now suppressed, shouted down, democratic opposition.  By 2020, Putin may be gone, and Pussy Riot still major celebrities.

Parry is correct that Ukraine’s "interim" government is an important and undercovered story, unfortunately completely buried by coverage of the conflict on the eastern fringe of the country.  But is the loony right influence the hart of that story, as Parry asserts?  I don’t think so, any more than the alleged American neocon influence on the Kiev opposition movement.  Both are, I would say, “White herrings.”  It is true the right has been given (with American approval) some important posts in the temporary government, while only a few "new oppositionists" have been placed in fringe Cabinet seats -- tourism, culture sport, etc etc.  But the real story is whether this hapless and nasty interim group is the future for Ukraine, of just the last gasp of the completely discredited old regime. This is the story I want followed, and the media story that I wish I had a better sense of is what kind of news are Ukrainians getting.  I do know that whole new generation of internet-based news media are active there and support the progressive opposition.  Have they continued their popular ascendancy at the expense of old and old regime dominated media?

Parry's attempts to discredit many of the Ukrainian oppo NGOs because they took American money is exactly how Putin outlawed many of the most valuable NGOs in Russian, attacking them for taking "foreign money," ignoring how they were using it.

And crying neocon this, neocon that is just sticks and stones, as long Parry shirks the hard work of reporting what the NGOs and their American backers have been up to, and how they have been received by their target audiences.

As Simon Orlovsky's brilliant reporting for the internet-based Vice News has showed, Russia has been infiltrating provocateurs and thugs into Ukraine to stir Russophile emotions and bully Ukrainian nationalists (who are for the most part in no way Hyper-nationalists or neo-Nazis).  Orlovsky showed video of how Russia had by the middle of last week, crossed into "mainland" Ukraine, well beyond the provincial borders of Crimea, and had set up not only heavily armed checkpoints but minefields on Ukrainian territory.  I guess Parry doesn't watch Vice News, because Russian military and paramilitary aggression simply don't appear in his copy.

I loathe the neocon politics of the Kagan brothers, and have for years, but so f--ing what?  Their influence in Ukraine, like the National Endowment for Democracy’s Carl Gershman's is small.  This is, I keep repeating, a Ukrainian story, and American kibitzing, whether helpful or obstructive is just kibitizing.  The important decisions and the important upcoming votes will be taken by Ukrainians, not neocons.

One key to Ukraine's future, I believe, is some form of debt forgiveness.  The lenders demanding their money back knew the crooks they were dealing were crooks, so when crooks do what crooks do....no one should bail their willing business partners out.  Anyone heard this idea in either the mainstream or progressive media.  It ain’t in Parry either.

Nobody elected the anti-Semitic temps in the interim government that Parry and Steve Weissman are so worried about, and it is possible, even likely, few will vote for them in the May elections to reconstitute the government.  The story in Ukraine is not whether change there is good for the Jews or the neocons, but for the Ukrainians.  These guys haven't even talked to one between 'em.

In another Parry piece, he proposes parallel "invasions" of Ukraine by the US and Russia. His charge against the US is that Blackwater (now known as Academi) mercenaries are patrolling the streets of Donetsk.

Where did he get this from?  His recommended source "For a thorough account of the uprising” is “’The Ukrainian Pendulum’ by Israeli journalist Israel Shamir."

Shamir's is a brand as authentic and multi-nonymous as Blackwater/Xe/Academi.  He is an ex-Israeli, living in Sweden and publishing under several aliases who, according to his many doubters, specializes in anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.  

The main source for "Shamir" and Parry's American mercenary charge is a pair of anonymous short videos posted on YouTube by someone writing in Russian.  Although "Shamir" talks about hundreds of  Academi mercenaries in eastern Ukraine, the video shows fewer than 10, and aside from saying that people in the Donetsk crowd called them "Blackwater, Blackwater," there seems to be no verification anywhere Googleable that they are indeed from Academi or the US.

The most mainstream source to pick up the story, the right-wing UK newspaper the Daily Mail cites an "expert," Nafeez Ahmed, who is, oddly enough, a writer for The Mail’s despised rival The Guardian, who specializes in environmental issues.

Nevertheless, the Mail went to him and: "Asked whether the soldiers seen in the videos could be from Academi, Dr Nafeez Ahmed, a security expert with the Institute for Policy Research & Development, said: ‘Difficult to say really. It's certainly not beyond the realm of possibility - Academi have been deployed in all sorts of theatres. 

'I think the question is whether the evidence available warrants at least reasonable speculation.

"‘On the face of it, the uniforms of the people in the videos are consistent with US mercs - they don't look like Russian soldiers mercs. On the other hand, why run around in public making a show of it?’

"He added: ‘Of course the other possibility is it's all Russian propaganda.’

This is not a possibility Parry addresses.  And doesn't Parry have an obligation to try to identify and explain his sources?  I think he does, and I think his choice not to when they are so shaky, is telling.

But even if Parry and Shamir have hit the covert jackpot here, a dozen, or even 300 mercenaries are not equal to a combination -- whose existence and actions are well described and widely sourced -- of Russian Army troops and equipment and Russian, Serbian Chetnik, and local Crimean "Cossack" paramilitaries occupying several cities, manning armed checkpoints all over Crimea and crossing the border to set up military posts and minefields inside "mainland" Ukraine.  Parallel "invasions", my ass.

I agree with Parry's assessment of the stupid and malign "diplomacy" of John Kerry, and loathe poor old John McCain's doddering war-mongering.  There are lots of arguments to be made against both, but Parry goes way beyond or beneath that to brand his alleged neocon conspiracy.

And still, has he talked to any Ukrainians?  Not on his own evidence.

Another good example of foolish and intellectually dishonest media-baiting is this recent piece from i24 news and University of Maryland scholar Leon Hadar: Analysis: The Good Guy, Bad Guy media narrative in Ukraine

http://www.i24news.tv/en/mobile#content/24202

Hadar acts like he's uncovering a secret that there are and have been right-wing, hyper-nationalist “bad guys” in the Ukrainian opposition.  But, this has never been a secret, even from "top 3 paragraph" readers of the conventional media.

Actually this has gotten more coverage than the "moderate, centrist, technocrat" old regime remnant “bad guys” who actually run the so-called government in Kiev.  This is because conventional media sources, most of them in government, don't like to talk about the kinds of criminals and boobs they are comfortable seeing in other people's governments. 

Conventional Western politics is to "play the cards you’re dealt” (no matter how bad they may be), rather than risk seeing in power people you do not know, and may not be able to control.

But the key word missing from Hadar's piece (and to me it is a damnable absence) is "interim."  The guys we gave the nod to are just holding the keys till May.  It is true they, and the real neo-fascist rats alongside them -- also tolerated by our "realists -- will have all the advantages of incumbency when elections are held in May, and in a place where "democratically elected" has always been enclosed in the quotation marks of endemic fraud and frequent intimidation and universal corruption, that may be decisive.

So, Ukraine may wind up with another government it is hard to condemn anyone (even the neo-soviet Russians of Crimea) for fleeing.  And the Times, the Post, the Guardian and the TV guys will all say, "democratically elected."

Of course they should say –quote-- "'democratically elected'" and wink or look faux-nauseous, but they won't.  And everyone from Obama and Kerry to Cameron and Hague and Rasmussen and Ashton will solemnly approve.

Or, Ukraine might do better, might use the electoral opportunity to replace the whole rotten lot with people who, if not guaranteed to be better, will at least be new, different, and indebted to voters rather than mafias, oligarchs or party hacks.

This is the big failure of our media, not reporting on what’s happening in the run-up to elections.  Are Ukrainian democrats organizing, or are they fading away, as they did in Egypt (though not in Tunisia)?  Have the parties of the right gathered strength among the people?  Those questions are as unasked and unanswered as the basic one – how much and what kind of governing is the interim government providing, and how is this playing with Ukrainian voters?

To smaller points:  Leon, why is it mandatory now to give Marine LePen a pass on the right-wing nationalist nutball, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic party her father raised her to run, even should she actually have a chance at power in France, but a failure not to sound the alarm about analogous rightist/nativist pols in Ukraine, who have every chance to be marginalized and out of their temporary power in May?  Le Pen has Jews in the FN?  Well Svoboda is in bed with a temporary government and an opposition movement which includes several Jews presently more powerful than their guys (or M LeP is in France).  

And the Croatian government has frequently contained people, even leaders like the noxious Fanjo Tudjman, the US' wartime and post-war ally as Prime Minister, with long ties to organized crime, the right-wing and Croatia's notably vicious anti-Semitic organizations. Slovakia, I dunno about, but the former Nazis in Croatian politics I reported on 20 years ago, and others did too and have since.

Hadar's assertions about media coverage of Egypt, that it failed "to recognize the ethnic, religious, and tribal forces driving events in the Arab Middle East," and paid too little "attention to the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the ouster of Hosni Mubarak," is just plain horse-spit.  

In the first place, neither ethnic, nor tribal issues have been important in Egypt (he must be thinking of Syria and Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, in all which those issues have been prominently covered).  In Egypt the Islamist roots and continuing religious identification of the MB was covered frequently, in the months between the revolution and the coup.  

Perhaps the media gave too much credit to the MB narrative that it had become more secular, pragmatic, and political in the democratic sense, but then so did Barack Obama, the leadership of Europe, and a sizable portion of the MB's own, now betrayed, rank and file.

The crucial fact, that the MB was the best organized group in post-Mubarak Egypt, and likely destined for success in elections, and that this might not work out to America’s or Egypt's benefit, was prominent in most mainstream coverage.

Finally, says Hadar, "in Syria" the media portrayed anti-Assad forces “as ‘freedom fighters’ without acknowledging that many of them were reactionary Muslim fundamentalists."  This is much too simple, and mostly flat wrong.  It was as the fighting went on, after mass protests had demonstrated that many, if not most, Syrians wanted their own “Arab Spring,” -- Assad gone and a new government more lawful and democratic, -- after it became obvious that without direct aid from outside which was not forthcoming, the tyrant could not be displaced, that the fundamentalist militias started to rise in power.  This shift from Tahrir Square to Fallujah III was well and frequently reported.  Papers from Europe to the Americas to Asia were reporting on the rising power of the Al-Qaeda affilliated Al Nusra front by 2012.

And this guy calls the media "intellectually lazy."

One final rantish thought...why are Crimea and Kosovo bracketed as if their secessions were matched pieces on some kind of global chessboard?  Who, knowing anything about the last 1000 years, much less the previous dozen, of vicious and unrelenting persecution and brutalization of the 90% majority Kosovars by the 8% Serbs, would not approve of a political liberation?  Pretty much, only the Serbs themselves and their cynical allies in Moscow.

Frankly, given that Crimea has long been a military concession of Russia, granted by Ukraine, and that the Russian military not only dominates the place, but is the heart of its economy and employment, and that Russian (especially military Russia) is the majority culture, it is just posturing to pretend to be surprised at the secession.  Not only does Crimea have its reasons, but as I said above, anyone in his right mind would have doubts about continuing an association with the governments that have always, always, run things from Kiev.  

And, other than a pain in its pride, there nothing about the loss of Crimea which does great existential damage to Ukraine.

Donetsk, Kharkiv, etc –that’s another story.  But let’s hope we, and Putin, can avoid going there.

But this shadow-play of mutually falsified morality and emotion, this blustering and club-waving on both sides over Crimea, amplified on all sides by irresponsible media simply selling papers of clicks, is doing more and more serious damage to the world.

OBAMA ACCORDING TO THE TIMES -- INDECISIVE, RESOLUTE OR JUST POWERLESS?

The New York Times has devoted a few thousand words of description and analysis of what they call President Obama’s “indecision” about what the US should do in Syria.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/23/world/middleeast/obamas-uncertain-path-amid-syria-bloodshed.html?_r=0

Their “close examination… starts with a deeply ambivalent President,” and ends with a once-secret State Department judgment: “We are headed toward our worst case scenario: rebel gains evaporating, the moderate opposition imploding, Assad holding on indefinitely, neighbors endangered, and Iran, Hizbollah, and Iraqi militias taking root.”

Actually, what the Times’ sources, “dozens of current and former members of the administration, foreign diplomats and Congressional officials” describe is a President not so much indecisive as resolute in resisting calls to put what his most warrior-ish advisor, Hillary Clinton called, “American skin in the game.”

It must be noted that the closest the former Secretary of State has ever gotten to the front lines of “the game” of war was her imaginary episode of being “under fire” at an airport in Bosnia.  It must also be said, the biggest swatch of “skin” Mrs. Clinton, and it would seem the Times’ other uniformly anonymous, almost uniformly scornful sources wanted to risk was “arming and training” “the rebels” against the Syrian government of Dictator-President Bashar al-Assad.

Indeed, the conflicting positions among Mr. Obama’s advisors who contributed to this conspiracy of caution range no further than

1)     Who – the Pentagon or the CIA? – should run the arm/train program

2)     Whether the US should train a few dozen, or arm a few thousand Syrians

3)     With or without portable anti-aircraft weapons

4)     Which rebel groups to help, and

5)     When we woulda, coulda, shoulda  done any of the above.

There are 2 things almost everyone seems to agree on.  One is that none of the above options are much good, and the other is the journalists’ iconic irony: “You should have been here yesterday.”

To have had the best chance for any form of American intervention to have produced a good effect, everyone, including me, says, it should have come 2 years ago, in the summer of 2011.  That would have been before the aura of the “Arab Spring” had been mugged by mideastern reality, before the rebellion against the brutal Assad family dynasty had fractured into a dozen mutually-antagonistic paramilitary factions, and before the worst of those militias, the ones devoted to Al Qaeda, or its Islamist fundamentalist goals dominated the more moderate, secular, or western-oriented ones.

But the backers of the “lost chance” theory cannot confidently claim that even early intervention would have created a “nouveau regime” more successful than those produced in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen or Libya.  More American “skin” in those places would not have solved their embedded issues of poverty and illiteracy, national disharmony, religious or sectarian sub-division, tribalism or short-sighted self-interest that currently make all 4 of those Arab states political, economic and cultural sinkholes.  It likely would only have meant more American losses of prestige, blood and treasure.    

That the 2 years since (my and) the anonymians’ “moment of maximum opportunity” have seen a steady worsening of the Syrian situation may increase the nostalgic appeal of interventions aborted, but may also indicate the futility of the proposed “do something” solutions, and the comparative wisdom of Obama’s inaction.  The shift in the balance of power in Syria, back to the entrenched regime and its Shi’ite allies, Hizbullah and Iran, the continued slaughter and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians, and the escalations by Assad into worse and worse uses of chemical weapons, have been terrible to witness.  But they would have been terribly hard, possibly impossible, to reverse.

The bumbling White House process, and the humbling reliance on Vladimir Putin’s Russia that brought things to their present situation, Assad shedding his chemical weapons, probably at the price of being allowed to live and rule for many more days and years, does not mean they represent no improvement over the status quo ante. 

It is hard for anyone, and apparently impossible for the Times, not to smirk at the Administration’s claim that today’s Syria represents, “a successful case of coercive diplomacy. Only under the threat of force,” the Administration argument goes, “has Mr. Assad pledged to give up his chemical weapons program. They argue that this might be the best outcome from a stew of bad alternatives.”

The argument the Times prefers, that “decisive action by Washington, [critics] argue, could have bolstered moderate forces battling Mr. Assad’s troops for more than two years, and helped stem the rising toll of civilian dead, blunt the influence of radical Islamist groups among the rebels and perhaps even deter the Syria government from using chemical weapons,” is but an assertion, a theory.

More based on fact, it seems to me, is one of the few attributed assessments in the whole, long Times story: “We need to be realistic about our ability to dictate events in Syria,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser. “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.” 

What may be the scariest aspect to all this is that nowhere in the article, nor in the reported disagreements among such Obama advisors as former and present Secretaries of State Clinton and John  Kerry; former and present CIA directors, Leon Panetta, David Petraeus, Michael Morell and John Brennan, former and present National Security Advisors Tom Donilon and Susan Rice, or UN Ambassador Samantha Power does anyone propose a strategy for Syria or the middle east.

And, other than Ben Rhodes’ quote, the Times makes no mention of this.

But, attached to the article, the Times does have something which speaks volumes.  It is a picture and a caption.  

                Daniel Etter for The New York Times

THE REBEL COMMANDER Gen. Salim Idris, head of the Supreme Military Council of the Syrian opposition.

The head shot of Gen. Salim Idris calls him “The Rebel Commander.”  But the only one who ever made him a General was his former boss, Bashar al-Assad.  And the only ones who made him a “commander” were not fighting in Syria.  Many of them were not even people from the region, but Westerners.  In short, he’s “our commander” more than he’s the rebels’, and the Supreme Military Council he allegedly commands is also hardly inside Syria, but for the most part safely in exile.  Few consider the SMC a particularly important force in the effort to oust the Assad regime.

To suggest that he is a realistic beneficiary of “American skin” is far-fetched.  To state that he is “The” choice is nuts.  Worse, it is false.

To call out Barack Obama for failing to grasp that thin reed, even two years ago is easy to do, but is it worth doing?

And the same could be said for assembling anonymous dissenting voices whose real “game” ain’t in Syria, but in Washington, burning or burnishing present or future Presidencies -- easy to do, but well short of what responsible newspapers do to inform their readers.

QUESTIONS FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA

This is so nice, you should read it twice....(pageview count is everything, y'know).

Published today at www.cjr.org, the website of the distinguished Columbia Journalism review:
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/questions_for_president_obama.php

merely copied here (help convince cjr that I am worth publishing!)

1)    Mr. President, what is your strategic goal in Syria? Taking chemical weapons off the board?  Punishing Bashar al-Assad for using them?  Weakening Assad? Regime change?

2)    In the event the balance of power in Syria’s civil war changes, or Assad is defeated, what is the US plan to stabilize Syria without ceding power to Al Qaeda-linked and other radical Islamist militias? 

3)    Is the Russian proposal to place Syrian chemical weapons under international control and destroy them an acceptable outcome for the US?  Or it only good enough as a step towards regime change?

4)    When Russian President Putin put his chemical disarmament idea before you last week at the G-20 meetings, did you take it seriously?  Did you instruct Secretary of State John Kerry to pursue the idea with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in their ministerial-level talks?  Kerry’s first public mention of the Russian proposal seemed to denigrate the plan as unlikely to work.  Were those his instructions?  Was his “one week” deadline part of a White House strategy?

5)    Now, you have asked for a pause in House and Senate votes to authorize military action in Syria.  How long do envision the pause should last?  What outcome could convince you to call off the votes entirely and abandon plans for military action? If the Russian plan can be completed and implemented what effect will this have on future US policy in Syria?  What effect would this have on Russian-American relations?

6)    How important has the threat of American use of force been in moving towards even a temporary solution in Syria? How do you assess the cost of the apparent global disapproval of the US threat to use military force?  Have the rejection of collaboration by the British Parliament, the refusal of the Arab League to endorse a military strike, and poll results in Western Europe and elsewhere opposing US action weakened the United States? 

7)    This has been a crisis heightened by global video communication, from the original “amateur” videos that revealed the horrific results of the chemical attacks to the round-the-world, round-the-clock coverage of your threat and the political reactions to it.  How should US policy be adjusted for this new “wired world” reality?

8)    You said in your speech to the American people that we “know” of actions and discussions among the Syrian military command to prepare chemical weapons for use, and to distribute gas masks to troops to protect them against chemical weapons, German newspapers have quoted German intelligence intercepts that appear in part to contradict your scenario, and point the finger at some Syrian rebels for initiating the chemical attack. What makes you sure your sources are right and the German sources are wrong, and why have you not presented more facts that support your conclusions directly to the American people? .

9)    Secretary of State Kerry has gotten a lot of bad reviews recently for his rhetoric on Syria.  His gratuitous presentation to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of hypothetical reasons for the possible dispatch of American “boots on the ground” created a huge backlash among those who saw this as an invitation to  quagmire, and his negative characterization of the Russian proposal seems to have been swiftly discarded.  Does he still have your confidence?

10)  In your televised speech, you pledged to the American people that there would be no American “boots on the ground” in Syria, but the language of a draft Senate resolution put a limit forbidding only the use of US Armed Forces in Syria.  Do that limitation and your pledge extend beyond the involvement of Armed Forces to forbid the use of CIA personnel or civilian contractors inside Syria? 

11)  Polls show the US public, by a 3-1 majority want you to be bound by the results of any future Congressional votes?  Will you be so bound, or do you feel, as Constitutional Commander-in-Chief you maintain independence to act, even in the face of popular and legislative disapproval?

12)  The former US Mideast diplomatic representative Dennis Ross said recently, if the US doesn’t act on Syria’s chemical weapons, this will convince Israel (and Iran) that we will not act if Iran does achieve the ability to make nuclear weapons, and therefore will heighten the possibility of a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran.  Do you accept Ross’ arguments?  Would unilateral Israeli action against Iran serve American interests?  If Israel attacked Iran, would you support such action? Would you join it?  Or would you try to prevent it, and if so, how?

 

SYRIA: BITS, PIECES, MORE

Some random thoughts on Syria and related topics. 

Did you see Der Spiegel's report of the Trifecta -- a German listening ship off Syria reportedly picked up a conversation between a top Hizbullah guy, and someone at an Iranian Embassy, talking about how Bashar done it? Perfect or too perfect?

Meanwhile, these could be perilous times for Hizbullah. I wonder if, under cover of our attacks in Syria, we or somebody else will take a few swipes at the Big H. Without outside interference they will continue to dominate and distort life in Lebanon, while pressing an essentially sectarian, completely anti-American agenda (three things not to like). Somebody's money (us, Israel, Qatar, Saudi???) could surely buy a Sunni fighting force to do the dirty work. Of course, that would mean/has already meant "our side" arming Al Qaeda.

Obviously, these are also perilous times for Israel, but salutary, if the threat wakens Israelis to their reality -- they are isolated and surrounded. They gotta make peace, if it's not too late already, and they gotta stop screwing the Palestinians to get it.  President Shimon Peres knows this.  He told me as much 17 years ago.  It’s still true.  But things are getting worse, not better, for Israel.

I hope, pray and believe the American attack on Assad will not unleash some kind of Hizbullah/Syrian/Iranian/Al Qaeda attack on Israel.  But it could.  And among Israel’s many enemies there are both chemical and biological weapons, and munitions to carry them, not to mention tons of conventional missiles, rockets and bombs.  I think, right now, those enemies lack the co-ordination or the will to launch significant attacks on Israel.  But they get closer on both fronts every day, month and year.  Only peace can pre-empt these trend lines from reaching a disastrous conclusion.

I've always thought that Syria was supposed to be a more modern, urban and urbane culture than Iraq, with more of a national concept and a favorable balance between modernist/secular moderation and Islamist fanaticism. Recently, several reporters say, the Sunni nuts – Al Qaeda’s al-Nusra front and others, have the edge. This matters a lot. We can't achieve anything more than destruction without substantial inside support of the sort Iraq was never gonna provide.

If, over the past 2 years of warfare, our intelligence agencies have not identified that Syrian support and solidified it, our mission to turn the tide against Assad, while keeping the rest of the region stable, will fail.  The means, either that Assad will survive at great cost to our national dignity, or that Syria will wind up in the hands of our most fanatic enemies, or -- best case -- simply dominated by a different, hopefully less toxic version of the incumbent Nationalist dictator.

Or we can link to a sufficient fighting force and political leaders who will put Syria on a more civilized path, and our push at the tipping point will have been a masterstroke.  It’s a lot to hope for, and makes one wish we coulda (but never that we shoulda, or woulda) given this whole mess a pass. But, if Der Spiegel’s sources are right, a petulant, murderous rage by Bashar al-Assad has pushed us, and his region, to a very dangerous place.

In Afghanistan, (to finish an earlier thought) we have, despite mighty, costly, and sincere efforts, not accomplished much we believe will last. We have found and developed some steady allies who subscribe to the ideals behind our presence – a free economy, a functioning democracy, and a national concept based on religious and ethnic and tribal tolerance.  This, in spite of our many mistakes, including the reckless killing of civilians and recurrent signs of personal ignorance or disrespect for Afghan people and culture.   

But., the most those supporters can achieve, I fear, is a paralyzing, unchanging, balance of power between sometimes corrupt, sometimes progressive, modernizing urbanites, and radically retrograde, fundamentalist tribalists in the considerable countryside.

And what are in Putin's "plans" for after the Syria attack?

Yesterday's House Foreign Affairs Committee hearings offered yet another awkward airing of John Kerry's indiscreet, mindless babblings.  This from

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/09/04/five_takeaways_syria_intervention_hearings

"'With respect to Arab countries offering to bear costs and to assess, the answer is profoundly yes," Kerry said. "They have. That offer is on the table.  Some of them have said that if the United States is prepared to go do the whole thing the way we've done it previously in other places, they'll carry that cost," Kerry said. "That's how dedicated they are at this. That's not in the cards, and nobody's talking about it, but they're talking in serious ways about getting this done.'

"Kerry also gamely insisted that so many U.S. allies wanted to take part in a potential strike on Syria that the Pentagon couldn't find a role for all of them. That seems unlikely, since Turkey and France are to date the only major powers to publicly express a willingness to use military force against Assad. But Kerry may have an elastic definition of "participation." Albania, he said later in the hearing, was willing to provide political support for a strike. He didn't say anything about Albania being willing to do much else."
 
Not since the "glory days" of Leon Panetta's probably unintentionally hilarious "I'm now the Defense Secretary," tour have so many hi-ranking words ranked so low for logic and mental discipline.  Panetta was 75.  What's Kerry's excuse?

So much to worry about.

 

SYRIA MISSION: GETTING CLOSER

LISTEN CAREFULLY

It was a parody of parry and thrust today as the President pledged directly that his plan for Syria did include “boots on the ground. This is not Iraq, and this is not Afghanistan,” he added.

Then, the White House sent its top 3 executors of the threatened American military action in Syria to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  Although both Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey also spoke, it was Secretary of State John Kerry who parried and thrusted solo, disagreeing with himself on that delicate “boots on the ground” issue.

In explaining why he and President Obama would prefer a Congressional that did not take the [BOTG] option “off the table,” Kerry volunteered some hypothetical situations in which military necessity might require the use of US ground forces -- to keep Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile from falling into the wrong hands, or to keep the Al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra brigade from capitalizing in the aftermath of the US attack.

One might guess that President Obama offered similar “hypotheticals” to suggest what potential dangers he would not ignore in his closed door meeting with top Republicans like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, John Boehner and Eric Cantor, during which he won their support.

But the Senate Hearing Room was out in the open, covered live on TV, and there, Secretary Kerry’s perhaps too-detailed defense of his Commander-in-Chief’s prerogatives had put his boots, hip-deep into, um, trouble.  He had just, the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza said  “opened the door” to the very quagmire many Senators rushed to say they were determined to prevent: ground warfare, fighters injured, killed or captured, rescue missions, and finally, the need to hold and build from whatever successes the military mission to Syria might have won.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/3-big-takeaways-from-todays-syria-briefings/2013/09/03/f5e98616-14df-11e3-b182-1b3bb2eb474c_video.html?hpid=z2

No, no, no, you’ve got me all wrong, the backtracking diplomat pleaded. And then he made his summary statement, “There will be no American boots on the ground, with respect to the civil war.”  Cillizza said Kerry had flip-flopped, had been for boots, ”before he was against them,” and that this reversal would drive the coming news cycle.

Cillizza seems to have been incorrect on both counts.  First, Kerry’s final words do keep the door open, since they pledge only, no ground forces “with respect to the civil war.”  And second, the news cycle immediately picked up on the likely Resolution text itself.

So, yes, fighting in the civil war is out, but what about ground troops with respect to “the objectives of the United States” in Syria, which the actual Resolution text printed by the New York Times, http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/782949/senate-resoultion-on-syria-military-force.pdf says are to “(1) respond to the use of weapons of mass destruction by the Syrian government… (2) deter Syria’s use of such weapons…and (3) degrade Syria’s capacity to use such weapons in the future.”

None of that mentions “civil war.” 

Here’s how the Resolution draft put the boots question: LIMITATION. The authority granted in section 2 does not authorize the use of the United States Armed Forces on the ground in Syria for the purpose of combat operations."

"Combat operations?" Would Special Forces ground troops inserted into Syria as Forward Air Observers, considered pretty necessary if our munitions are to hit the right targets to fulfill our “objectives,” be considered part of “combat operations?  What about other Special Forces who might be needed on the ground to properly place explosives to achieve maximum deterrence and degradation of Syrian chemical weapons systems at minimal risk of some kind of civilian-killing disaster?  Are they combat forces?  And what about the troops sent in to protect and support them?  They might meet “resistance,” as they go about their mission.  Does that make it combat, and thus forbidden?

According to the Washington Post’s Anne Gearan and Ed O’Keefe, aides who were writing the resolutions said it was understood that it would “permit the deployment of a small rescue mission in the event of an emergency.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-says-he-is-confident-of-congressional-backing-for-strike-on-syria/2013/09/03/aeee7e60-149e-11e3-a100-66fa8fd9a50c_story_1.html

Or perhaps those tasks are already spoken for, not by ground troops, but by folks already inserted by the CIA, as "helpers" for the 50 or so "trained" guerillas the White House told the NY Times had already been sent into Syria? Or maybe, our "trainees" will do it themselves without "on the ground" supervision?  Wanna bet?  Either way, they fulfill the letter of the Resolution.

But, how much does all this verbal analysis matter.  Once the Congress ‘opens the door” for military action in Syria, how much control can (and should) it have over the President’s ability to deal with “changing circumstances?”

Many readers on the Constitution say, the Commander in Chief runs warfare, and even though the President and all his men insist they are not going to war, whatever it is, once it’s underway, it’s the President’s doing, beyond Legislative interference.

My guess is, the Senate has “forced on the President,” a “LIMITATION” that may not limit anything, should things go either dangerously wrong, or opportunely right in Syria.  And my guess is, they are pretty pleased about it.

It’s only what the sports announcers would call “a partial score,” but notwithstanding the day’s “unforced turnovers,” The President is on his way to “victory.”

 

WAR-LITE?

What is war for?  Perhaps this brief interregnum before the missiles fly would be a good time to consider that question.

The principal, inevitable consequence of war is destruction, of human life and property.  All the other abstract products of warfare are several quantum leaps behind destruction in impact and resonance.  But let’s look at them.

War can produce (1) conquered territory (2) weakened or eliminated enemies (3) strengthened or strained alliances (4) fear and (5) respect.

Conquered territory, to remain conquered must be held, and territory can be held only with boots on the ground.  President Obama’s proposed Syrian punishment begins and ends with the First Principle, no boots on the ground, so this war (or war-lite) will not enlarge any secured real estate.

Will a few “demonstration” attacks weaken our enemies in the Mideast and, increasingly, all over the Muslim world?   Not seriously, nor, according to Administration hawks like Secretary of State John Kerry, are they intended to.  The missiles, bombs and rockets will not eliminate many enemies they do not directly kill.  In fact, on the conventionally accepted formula of counter-insurgency, "kill one guerilla, create 10 more," they will actually grow the number of people so disaffected from the United States that they are willing to take up arms against us.  Converts from this exercise?  Do you expect many?  I don't.

How about our diplomatic alliances?  Again, it appears the counter-production will far outweigh the positive effects of our (restrained) assault on Syria.  Any damage done to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and his largely anti-Zionist populace may be welcomed by many in Israel and accepted in France (at least at the top-of-government level), but the rejection of joining the hunt by the British Parliament has already strained relations between Washington and London, and, polls suggest, the widespread disapproval across Europe, and although there are no analogous polls there that I’ve seen, likely even stronger opposition across Asia and the Middle East signal, the US is neither winning friends nor positively influencing people with its conception of “punishing” the Syrian regime for its almost certain, and certainly awful crimes.

Henry Kissinger the soi-disant descendant, I would say diminishment, of Metternich, used to propose his “madman theory:” that we could get great results from the fear people and states would have of an America capable of insane levels of violence and destruction.  Perhaps, that might once have been true, at least in the “olden times,” of Thomas Hobbes, when life was “nasty, brutish and short,” (a little like Kissinger himself.)  But today, life is globally connected, and people who were once willing to dine happily on the sausages of conquest, now can't avoid seeing with their own eyes war’s sausage-making process.  They get to hear, first hand, through instant or almost-instantaneous words and pictures what war really means.  It speaks well for mankind that this tends to reduce their respect, if not their fear, of the promulgators of ultra-violence. 

Thus, unless a nation is willing to commit to all the responsibilities of post-war, occupation of conquered territory, paying for as well as supervising the rebuilding of states, and the re-establishment of rule of law against the scattered, highly motivated forces of “insurgents,” always present in the transition period after war “officially” ends, the bottom line for wars since 1963 (i.e. since Vietnam) has been consistently written in blood-red economic ink.

Again, take it step by step: war is supposed to increase or secure territory, weaken enemies, strengthen alliances, and induce fear and respect (of as we once long ago put it, the Cheney-Rumsfeld dream of “shock and awe.”)  Raise your hand if you believe this formulation works.

The extreme skepticism, even among nations regarded as our best friends, towards America's claimed intelligence and evidence that allegedly prove that President Assad or his commanders ordered the chemical mass murder in the Damascus suburbs should alert us to how little respect the US presently commands.

In Washington the Obama Administration is claiming that they are proposing something quite different from all-out war, a kind of war-lite. We will attack only a few places for only a short time, aspire to no territory, no regime change, not even a re-balancing of power among the contending forces on the soon-to-be-bouncing Syrian ground.

Again, this seems to me a quaint notion, because “lite” or not, this is going to be war “LIVE.”  Already Israeli radio has announced its plan for real-time coverage, and Israeli TV will also be watching.  And so will the American networks and newschannels, already salivating over their expected jump in audience ratings, and the global newschannels which represent the eyes and living rooms, desktops and mobile phones of China, Japan, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, Australia, Iran, Turkey, Germany, France, Russia, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, and, oh yes, Syria.  They will all be tuned it, real-time or damn close to it.

And what they will be watching will not look like war-lite, it will look like war, and unmistakably war of choice, war of the strongest against the weaker, bullying.  Few will be rooting for the big guys.

Let me propose a video analogy.

Everyone, especially anyone who witnessed or lived through it, agreed: Hurricane Andrew was a Storm of the Century, the biggest, baddest hurricane in the weather service record books.  The problem was how to communicate that on video.

All the conventional images for a “hurricane,” palm trees bending, street signs shuddering, traffic lights swinging like pendulums in the wind, even windows shattered, while shutters dangled from their hinges, or roofs torn off homes, flying like corrugated razor blades, were already “used up,” offered countless times on TV as images of lesser storms.  The only way to show the scale that put Andrew off the conventional charts would have been a long, sustained aerial shot of house after house, block after block after block of roofless homes, and no one in conventional TV news (and what is more conventional than TV news?) had the patience, or the confidence in the audience’s patience or attention span to show that.

So audiences had to “take our word for it,” that Andrew was like no hurricane we’d ever seen for size and violence.  Many may have acceded, but few felt it in their guts.

Communicating scale is video’s greatest weakness.

And this weakness cuts both ways.  So, for President Obama’s apparent plan for something less than war on Syria, -- once the video pictures of the first, second or third cruise missile landing, the first or second house imploding, neighborhood cowering, hospital receiving room spilling over with blood and terrified humanity hit the cellphone, tablet, computer and TV screens of the world  -- it is not going to look “restrained.”  It will not feel to billions of viewers like “war lite;” it will look like war. It will look like the US inflicting “punishing” violence on some other country, both because it can and because the America wants to show that it can.

If the President thinks this will win over hearts and minds through its "restraint," I fear he is kidding us, and worst of all, kidding himself.

The deadly “secret” of war is out, everywhere: the principal consequence of war far is destruction.  Period.

Blood red ink all around.