- MENU
- HOME
- SEARCH
- WORLD
- MAIN
- AFRICA
- ASIA
- BALKANS
- EUROPE
- LATIN AMERICA
- MIDDLE EAST
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Argentina
- Australia
- Austria
- Benelux
- Brazil
- Canada
- China
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- Hungary
- India
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Japan
- Korea
- Mexico
- New Zealand
- Pakistan
- Philippines
- Poland
- Russia
- South Africa
- Spain
- Taiwan
- Turkey
- USA
- BUSINESS
- WEALTH
- STOCKS
- TECH
- HEALTH
- LIFESTYLE
- ENTERTAINMENT
- SPORTS
- RSS
- iHaveNet.com: Middle East
by William Pfaff
Since the beginning of December, military gas (sarin, a nerve agent) has claimed a major place in discussion of the civil war in Syria. The Syrian government has admitted to holding major stocks of (unidentified military) gas in or near the areas of fighting the insurrectionary movement.
According to Natalie Nougayrede of the sober French newspaper Le Monde, a dinner last week in Brussels united representatives of the major
Does
In the past, the accusation of WMD possession has been the usual formulation when threatening foreign intervention or an attack. We heard the same thing after 9/11 concerning a U.S. invasion of Iraq, at the U.N. no less, from Gen. Colin Powell, then the American secretary of state. He subsequently confessed his lasting shame. There were no nuclear weapons in Iraq.
Is this Syrian story another hoax? In the Iraq case, it was well known that an important group inside the George W. Bush administration wanted invasion of Iraq, some of them to please Israel, which wanted Iraq destroyed as a major Arab military actor, and whose formidable propaganda operation in the U.S. worked hard to promote the invasion. There also were American nationalist and acquisitive resource motives: searching for control of Iraq's oil resources and of Baghdad as a U.S. strategic military base (both goals eventual failures).
The American position on the Syrian rebellion usually heard is that Barack Obama has no appetite for still another Middle Eastern military intervention, even if the American role were to be "leadership from behind," with minimal risk to American troops.
It is not clear in my mind how you arrange minimal risk for anyone dealing with sarin gas, trying to sequester the munitions and evacuate them, while neutralizing the risk that the Syrian forces guarding them could not make preemptory use of them (or trigger their use elsewhere).
Sarin gas is an agent that attacks the nervous system and paralyzes the heart muscles, thereby killing by suffocation. It has been used operationally in the 1980-'88 Iran-Iraq war, in 1988 by Iraq against its own Kurdish city of Halabja (5,000 Kurds said to have been killed), and in a 1995 terrorist attack in a Tokyo subway.
Various military and intelligence sources assert that Syria possesses this weapon today, but there is apparently no conclusive evidence, nor is there a convincing military argument for its use, if only because to do so would produce massive retaliation by major states, acting with U.N. endorsement
There have been reports floated on the Internet accusing the U.S. and Israel, together with
It has gone along reasonably peacefully with Israel since the 1967 war. Its major interventions in Lebanon have been suspended for some time now. It is not intervening elsewhere in the region, and the sectarian tensions in the country seemed reasonably quiet before the insurrection. It has no reasonable interest in injecting itself into Iran's quarrels with the U.S and Israel. The standards of living, education and health are relatively high for the region, and Syria possesses a sophisticated professional and middle class.
The most convincing reason I can see for the insurrection is popular contagion from the "Arab Springtime": intolerance for corruption and increasing hostility to hereditary family dictatorship enforced by the usual Arab dictatorship's security apparatus.
Why then is
According to Le Monde, the German and Dutch foreign ministers, Guido Westerwelle and Frans Timmermans, were "furious" and seemed to think
The French also asked what collaboration
What would trigger
Clinton's silence is interesting. Barack Obama and his administration have also been very quiet about all this. Is a Christmas surprise being prepared for us? Hasn't the U.S. had enough of undebated presidential wars? It seems to have become the new American style. I am sure that neither
© Tribune Media Services, Inc.
WORLD | AFRICA | ASIA | EUROPE | LATIN AMERICA | MIDDLE EAST | UNITED STATES | ECONOMICS | EDUCATION | ENVIRONMENT | FOREIGN POLICY | POLITICS
Syrian Chemical Weapons Threat Eerily Familiar? | News of the Middle East