Monthly Archives: August 2013

U.S. and U.K. under pressure to delay military intervention in Syria

The Guardian reports: Britain and the US are under pressure to delay military intervention in Syria after Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, said more time should be allowed for inspections in Damascus.

Ban said the inspectors, who are investigating the chemical weapons attack last week, would need a total of four days to carry out their site visits and then further time to analyse their findings.

He spoke as a 90-minute meeting of the National Security Council (NSC), devoted to discussing the options for targeted attacks against Syria, broke up in London before a debate and vote in the House of Commons on Thursday on government plans to respond with force to Syria’s use of chemical weapons.

Sources in London and Washington have been suggesting that a limited attack could take place before the end of the week, but Cameron’s desire to show that he is not ignoring the UN could put that timetable in jeopardy. [Continue reading…]

It’s worth remembering that when France and Britain led NATO’s intervention in Libya, they only did so after getting the support of a UN Security Council resolution, and President Obama only agreed to participate if the U.S. could have a back-seat role.

This time, while there have been lots of signals the White House is willing to launch attacks without the authority of a UNSC resolution, it’s less clear whether Britain and France are willing to go that route.

David Cameron is facing growing opposition in parliament as Labour leader Ed Miliband says the government should not be provided with a “blank cheque.” Add to that the fact that Obama has already ruled out unilateral action and the war machine ready to be unleashed “within hours”, may in fact end up in a holding pattern.

And now the UN Secretary General is also stepping his foot on the breaks.

The Associated Press reports: United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says a team of chemical weapons inspectors needs a total of four days to complete its investigation into an alleged chemical weapons attack in Damascus.

Ban said Wednesday the team had completed a second day of investigations at a site in a suburb of the Syrian capital, Damascus.

He says, “Let them conclude … their work for four days and then we will have to analyze scientifically” their findings and send a report to the Security Council.

So that would delay any U.S. action until next week. But on Tuesday, Obama will be leaving the U.S. heading for Russia — I can’t see him launching an attack while overseas, least of all in Russia.

And then come these rather telling comments:

One U.S. official who has been briefed on the options on Syria said he believed the White House would seek a level of intensity “just muscular enough not to get mocked” but not so devastating that it would prompt a response from Syrian allies Iran and Russia.

“They are looking at what is just enough to mean something, just enough to be more than symbolic,” he said.

If or when Obama speaks to the nation, expect the word “calibrated” to feature prominently in his message.

These days Bashar al-Assad probably welcomes support from any quarter including that from ultra-right British National Party leader Nick Griffin who just “dramatically cut short a conference in Brussels to embark on an emergency BNPeace mission to war-torn #Syria.”

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No clear legal basis for an attack on Syria

The Guardian reports: The United States and its allies are unlikely to build a clear case under international law for a military strike against Syria, and may instead make novel arguments about chemical weapons prohibitions, legal experts have said.

Britain is putting forward a resolution to the United Nations security council on Wednesday, condemning the alleged chemical attack in Syria last week and “authorising necessary measures to protect civilians” in the country.

However, Russia, which has a veto on the council, is widely expected to oppose any military action against Syria at the vote in New York. Western powers will therefore need to find another basis – outside of a security council resolution – under which to justify a strike against Syria.

The only other universally agreed basis for military action under international law is self-defence, and it would be hard for the US to argue that the Syrian conflict poses an imminent national security threat.

In Geneva, the UN special envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, said on Wednesday that while inspectors had uncovered some evidence of a chemical attack, “international law says that any US-led military action must be taken after” agreement at the 15-nation security council.

“At this point the weight of international opinion would be that military action would not be legal,” said Ian Johnstone, a professor of international law at Tufts University. “However, I do think that there could be a case where violation of the law would be excused on the grounds of humanitarian necessity.”

Barry Pavel, a former director on the national security council under the Bush and Obama administrations, said that without UN or even Nato support, the US and its allies would seek to justify of a strike on “policy, political, moral and legal grounds”.

Pavel, who spent 18 years at the Pentagon is is now a vice-president at the Atlantic Council, said Obama would be expected to make a speech, answering questions about the legal basis of military action, prior to any strikes.

US, British and French political leaders have so far described the expected assault on Syria as a form of punishment or deterrence over its purported use of chemical weapons in the suburbs of Damascus, which resulted in hundreds of deaths.

Senior US officials have repeatedly said that President Assad’s forces “flagrantly violated” international law governing the use of chemical weapons, indicating that may form the basis for a justification of any future attack.

Defence secretary Chuck Hagel recently told reporters that any military action would occur “within the framework of legal justification”, but stopped short of saying it would be sanctioned under international law.

Professor Matthew C Waxman, from Columbia law school, said that even if the US and allies believed an attack on Syria was justified, they would “undoubtedly face some tough questions about the legality” of an intervention.

He said the US might forgo even attempting a technical justification for military action under international law which, in practical terms, would need the support of China and Russia, and instead build a moral case that use of force was “justifiable and legitimate”. [Continue reading…]

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Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani tweets and retweets on Syria and chemical weapons

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Why Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the U.S. have little interest in ending the war in Syria

Christopher Dickey writes: With the United States on the verge, once again, of military action in the Middle East, it’s important to look at the Syrian conflict as what it is: the epicenter of a widening regional conflict. The limited U.S. missile strikes expected to punish the regime of Bashar al-Assad for the use of chemical weapons will sink the United States more deeply than ever into this turbulent quagmire. But there’s no guarantee that inaction would help the Obama administration get out or stay out. The regional players include too many American allies that are too important to U.S. interests, even though many of them are rivals and enemies of each other.

Let’s start with the Saudis, not least because Washington and Riyadh have had such close ties for so long, especially in the dark world of covert operations.

Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan used to be one of the most popular figures in Washington D.C., where he was ambassador, and for that matter in Aspen, Colorado, where he owned an enormous mansion. With a cigar in one hand and a snifter of Cognac in the other, he helped guide successive American administrations through the maze of intrigues in the Middle East, and helped create quite a few of them himself, including the arming of the Afghan mujahedeen and the complicated conspiracy that came to be known as Iran-Contra.

Since Bandar’s 22-year tenure in Washington came to an end in 2005, he has moved deeply into the shadows, and is now the head of his country’s intelligence services.

The Saudis see Iran as the single greatest threat to their security militarily (especially if it gets nuclear weapons), religiously (Shiite versus Sunni), and even territorially (by promoting unrest among the Shiite populations of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province and in neighboring Bahrain). And in many respects the Syrian war is a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but, of course, it’s not as simple as that.

The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez al-Assad, before him have been intimate allies of the Iranian mullahs since the 1980s. Together, Iran and Syria have trained and armed Lebanon’s Hezbollah, one of the most effective guerrilla and terrorist organizations in the world.

In 2006, Prince Bandar actually encouraged Israel to wage what turned out to be a failed effort to obliterate the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. Saudi support for Sunni rebels in Iraq also is meant to undermine a government in Baghdad that has grown ever closer to Tehran. Today, the Saudis have every interest in using the Syrian conflict to weaken Iran by depriving it of its allies in Damascus, or, at a minimum, draining Iran’s resources in a protracted Syrian war.

But there’s a twist. A secondary but significant Saudi concern is the Muslim Brotherhood, an international organization of Sunni Islamists which has deep roots in Syria and a clear ambition to dominate its political future. While the Saudis and the Brotherhood share the goal of deposing Assad, they are bitter enemies. [Continue reading…]

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Arab League refuses to support military strike on Syria

The New York Times reports: The leaders of the Arab world on Tuesday blamed the Syrian government for a chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds of people last week, but declined to back a retaliatory military strike, leaving President Obama without the broad regional support he had for his last military intervention in the Middle East, in Libya in 2011.

While the Obama administration has robust European backing and more muted Arab support for a strike on Syria, the position of the Arab League and the unlikelihood of securing authorization from the United Nations Security Council complicate the legal and diplomatic case for the White House.

The White House said Tuesday that there was “no doubt” that President Bashar al-Assad’s government was responsible for the chemical weapons attack — an assessment shared by Britain, France and other allies — but it has yet to make clear if it has any intelligence directly linking Mr. Assad to the attack. The administration said it planned to provide intelligence on the attack later this week.

As Mr. Obama sought to shore up international support for military action, telephoning Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, administration officials said they did not regard the lack of an imprimatur from the Security Council or the Arab League as insurmountable hurdles, given the carnage last week. [Continue reading…]

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Ake Sellstrom — the lead UN weapons inspector in Syria

Foreign Policy reports: On Monday morning, a United Nations chemical weapons inspection team left the Four Seasons Hotel in downtown Damascus, and prepared to head to the site of what is alleged to be the worst chemical weapons attack in decades. They were led by Ake Sellstrom, a Swedish scientist who finds himself transported from his classroom at Umea University into the middle of the worst conflict on the face of the planet.

Sellstrom and his team soon came face-to-face with the dangers of their mission: Snipers opened fire on their convoy as they approached the site, forcing them to turn back briefly. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime blamed the attack on the rebels in the area, while the Syrian opposition blamed militiamen loyal to the regime for opening fire.

Sellstrom, a round-faced Swede in his mid-60s, boasts three decades of experience conducting research into the effects of nerve agents on the human brain, and he previously served in top positions during the U.N. weapons inspection effort in Iraq. He eventually guided his team in Syria to the affected area, and footage filmed by residents showed the inspectors talking with local medical staff and examining those who were stricken by the onslaught. However, the attack meant that the team was unable to inspect a half-dozen key sites and had to condense its planned six-hour trip into 90 minutes. Moreover, the message delivered by the morning ambush was clear: Sellstrom and his team are in the crosshairs — both politically and literally — of powerful forces within Syria.

Sellstrom is the one wild card in what appears to be the march toward another U.S.-led military campaign in the Middle East. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made clear today that he holds the Assad regime responsible for the alleged Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs: Kerry referred to the use of such weapons as a “moral obscenity” and described the regime’s invitation for inspectors to visit the site as “too late to be credible.”

Sellstrom’s findings could legitimize to the world a U.S. intervention in Syria — or they could provide ammunition for Washington’s enemies, who argue that the United States may once again be blundering into an Arab country based on scant information about weapons of mass destruction. It is an odd position for a man who is neither a diplomat nor a general, just a little-known scientist with an unusual — and politically explosive — specialty.

“I know Ake. He’s a great guy, and it’s a horrible position he’s in,” said Charles Duelfer, the former deputy chairman of the U.N. team that inspected Saddam Hussein’s Iraq for weapons of mass destruction after the Gulf War. “He’ll be under enormous pressure. How is he going to characterize what it is he finds? That is extremely difficult.” [Continue reading…]

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The real threat to our way of life? Not terrorists or faraway dictators, but our own politicians and securocrats

Simon Jenkins writes: What is Britain’s national security? At a time when the country once again ponders war, the arguments used should be precise and the language clear. This is seldom the case. The division of the world into good guys and bad guys, democrats and dictators, terrorists and counter-terrorists, not only insults peaceful diplomacy and promotes war. It pollutes the domestic rule of law and civil rights.

The controversial detention of David Miranda at Heathrow earlier this month was explained by the home secretary, Theresa May, and the Commons security committee chief, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, on the grounds that Miranda was carrying material that “could aid terrorism”. This mere possibility would, they said, constitute a “threat to national security”.

Time and again in the course of the Iraq and Afghan wars, the threat of terrorism was used to justify draconian anti-terrorist powers in Britain. Tony Blair said the powers were needed to “defend western values”. Gordon Brown told British troops in Helmand that their role was domestic, “to make Britain’s streets safe from terror“. Should Britain start bombing Syria, some murky agency will use this as justification to step up terrorist attacks on Britain, with a consequent twist in the ratchet of surveillance and detention by the British authorities.

Terrorism and national security are wholly distinct concepts. Terrorism involves a violent incident, a crime with usually facile political intent. It merely kills people and wrecks buildings. It acquires power only by generating an exaggerated response, and is countered by good policing and not overreacting. When the Brighton hotel was bombed in 1984, the police told Margaret Thatcher to cancel her conference and return to London. She rightly replied: “What, and let the terrorists win!”

Not even IRA terror, more systematic than anything spawned by al-Qaida, threatened national security – that is, the integrity of the British state or its institutions. To confuse terrorism with such security is to play the terrorist’s game. Those who do so lack faith in the robustness of the British constitution. They are what Lenin would have called terror’s “useful idiots“. [Continue reading…]

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Let’s make the NSA’s data available for public use

Evgeny Morozov writes: Search without Google is like social networking without Facebook: unimaginable. But superb proprietary algorithms and extremely talented employees only partially explain why both fields are dominated by just one firm. The real reason is that both Google and Facebook got into their fields early on, accumulated troves of data about their users, and are now aggressively exploiting that data to offer unique services that their data-poor contenders simply cannot match, no matter how innovative their business models.

Take Google’s personalized search or Facebook’s Graph Search feature. Both features are trivial to replicate; it’s the user data that makes them stand out. Thus, Google will indicate which links have been endorsed by our “friends” right in the search results; Facebook, via Graph Search, allows us to tap the wisdom of our friends and their friends.

Both companies have successfully approximated and then monetized our “social graph”—the once-trendy term to describe our many overlapping connections to other people. It’s small things like the social graph that explain why even a better, more innovative search engine or a social network with more respect for user privacy would have a hard time competing with Google and Facebook: As long as the dominance of these firms is powered by vast troves of user data, competitors are doomed.

Were we to rebuild our information infrastructure from scratch, we would surely notice that the current system is awful for competition. How could we run things differently? One option might be to run the social graph as a public institution of sorts, with state regulators making sure that all companies get equal access to such crucial information. Many of our social connections predate—and might even outlive—both Google and Facebook. These companies have mapped them well, but this shouldn’t prevent us from thinking of alternative ways of mapping them and making them available. Thus, instead of pouring public money into building better search engines—a mission attempted and quickly aborted by some European politicians—governments can focus on ensuring that the data playing field remains as level as possible. Better search engines and social networking sites might then emerge on their own, without any need for extra public backing.

The scheme could have many other benefits. For example, the regulators would be able to exercise far greater control over how user data is collected and accessed by third parties. It should be possible to anonymize this data so that better personalized services can be built without compromising user privacy. The fears of “the filter bubble” are greatly exaggerated; personalization is not evil per se—it’s the data trails that it leaves in its wake that should trouble us.

A few months ago, this might have seemed a reasonable but ultimately quixotic proposal. For a start, there seems dangerously little interest or desire in rebuilding—or even reimagining—our global information infrastructure. Just imagine the kind of effort that would be needed to gather all this information and organize it in an easy-to-use manner. Who would possibly fund such an endeavor?

Now that Edward Snowden has blown the whistle on the extensive spying operations of the National Security Agency, this question seems obsolete. Take the NSA’s much-discussed collection of metadata—the seemingly benign (or so they claim) information about who calls whom and when. It’s precisely this kind of metadata that is needed to build a better publicly run social graph. In fact, the NSA has probably already built it—and not just for America but probably for users in many other countries as well—often with tacit cooperation from intelligence services and telecommunication providers of those countries.

We can debate the ethics and legality of such initiatives until we all turn blue—and I suggest that we do, for, based on Snowden’s revelations, the NSA’s system is mired in secrecy, lacks proper congressional oversight, and enjoys unlimited rhetorical and lobbying support from the military-industrial complex. So, yes: The NSA’s data-collection practices must be reformed with accountability in mind.

These, however, are all questions about the future. But there’s a far more pragmatic question about the present: The NSA has all this data, and it’s not going away. (If anything, the much-discussed data storage center that the NSA is building in Utah suggests otherwise.) It would be a colossal mistake not to come up with a global institutional arrangement that would make at least chunks of that data available for public use. [Continue reading…]

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Intercepted phone calls raise questions about who authorized Damascus chemical attack

Foreign Policy reports: Last Monday, in the hours after a horrific chemical attack east of Damascus, an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanged panicked phone calls with leader of a chemical weapons unit, demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people. Those conversations were overheard by U.S. intelligence services, The Cable has learned. And that is the major reason why American officials now say they’re certain that the attacks were the work of the Bashar al-Assad regime — and why the U.S. military is likely to attack that regime in a matter of days.

But the intercept raises questions about culpability for the chemical massacre, even as it answers others: Was the attack on August 21 the work of a Syrian officer overstepping his bounds? Or was the strike explicitly directed by senior members of the Assad regime? “It’s unclear where control lies,” one U.S. intelligence official told The Cable. “Is there just some sort of general blessing to use these things? Or are there explicit orders for each attack?”

Nor are U.S. analysts sure of the Syrian military’s rationale for launching the strike — if it had a rationale at all. Perhaps it was a lone general putting a long-standing battle plan in motion; perhaps it was a miscalculation by the Assad government. Whatever the reason, the attack has triggered worldwide outrage, and put the Obama administration on the brink of launching a strike of its own in Syria. “We don’t know exactly why it happened,” the intelligence official added. “We just know it was pretty fucking stupid.” [Continue reading…]

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White House sends conflicting messages on ‘regime change’ in Syria

Reuters reports: The White House ruled out any military effort to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power on Tuesday as President Barack Obama ponders options in response to last week’s chemical weapons attack in Syria.

“The options that we are considering are not about regime change,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney. “They are about responding to a clear violation of an international standard that prohibits the use of chemical weapons.”

Obama is considering cruise missile strikes against Syrian targets in response to the August 21 chemical weapons attack that U.S. officials are increasingly confident was launched by the Syrian government.

Carney said the United States expects to release in coming days a public version of a formal report by the U.S. intelligence community on the use of chemical weapons. The report is expected to conclude the Syrian government was responsible for the attack.

Any attempt at “regime change” by the United States would draw the United States deeply into a conflict that Obama has been determined to avoid. The president has already ruled out putting U.S. troops on the ground in Syria.

No attempt to bring about regime change — but that’s not quite what sources in the Syrian National Coalition in Istanbul claim they have been told:

“The Americans are tying any military action to the chemical weapons issue. But the message is clear; they expect the strike to be strong enough to force Assad to go to Geneva and accept a transitional government with full authority,” a Syrian opposition figure said.

“The message to the opposition was to get a team ready for Geneva, and be prepared for the possibility of a transition. But we must also be ready for the possibility of the collapse of the regime. If the strike ends up to be crippling, and if they hit the symbols of the regime’s military power in Damascus it could collapse,” the source said.

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Obama chose the wrong red line on Syria

Anthony Cordesman writes: No one has accurate estimates, but the key challenge in Syria is scarcely to end the use of chemical weapons. The real challenge is some 120,000 dead, another 200,000-plus wounded, and as many as 20% of its 22.5 million people have been displaced inside the country or are living outside it as refugees. The nation has lost some three years of economic development, become a country of polarized factions, and seen many – if not most – of its children lose much of their schooling and learn to live in fear and anger in a country where more than a third of the population is 14 years of age or younger.

Chemical weapons alone are not a reason to use force. Even the most successful cruise missile strikes would not destroy Syria’s holdings. There is no credible chance the U.S. can locate or destroy Syria’s entire holding without a massive air campaign and some kind of presence on the ground. Even if the Assad regime has not done the obvious, and used the last few months to covertly disperse a large portion of its weapons, cruise missiles simply don’t have that kind of destructive power.

Even if the U.S. can somehow stop all future use of chemical weapons, the military impact will be marginal at best. Moreover, anyone who has actually seen wounds from conventional artillery — or badly treated body wounds from small arms — realizes that chemical weapons do not cause more horrible wounds. If anything, an agent like Sarin tends to either kill quickly or result in relative recovery. The case for intervening cannot be based on chemical weapons. It has to be based on two factors: Whether it serves American strategic interest and whether it meets the broader humanitarian needs of the Syrian people. [Continue reading…]

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Architect of plan for cruise missile strikes against Syria opposes carrying it out

The Cable reports: The United States appears to be closer than ever to deploying a series of surgical strikes on Syrian targets. But a key architect of that strategy is seriously and publicly questioning the wisdom of carrying it out.

In the last 48 hours, U.S. officials leaked plans to several media outlets to fire cruise missiles at Syrian military installations as a warning to the Syrian government not to use its chemical weapons stockpiles again. On Sunday, Sen. Bob Corker, who was briefed by administration officials twice over the weekend, said a U.S. “response is imminent” in Syria. “I think we will respond in a surgical way,” he said. On Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared to set the groundwork for a U.S. military incursion.

Now, a former U.S. Navy planner responsible for outlining an influential and highly-detailed proposal for surgical strikes tells The Cable he has serious misgivings about the plan. He says too much faith is being put into the effectiveness of surgical strikes on Assad’s forces with little discussion of what wider goals such attacks are supposed to achieve.

“Tactical actions in the absence of strategic objectives is usually pointless and often counterproductive,” Chris Harmer, a senior naval analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, said. “I never intended my analysis of a cruise missile strike option to be advocacy even though some people took it as that.”

“I made it clear that this is a low cost option, but the broader issue is that low cost options don’t do any good unless they are tied to strategic priorities and objectives,” he added. “Any ship officer can launch 30 or 40 Tomahawks. It’s not difficult. The difficulty is explaining to strategic planners how this advances U.S. interests.”

In July, Harmer authored a widely-circulated study showing how the U.S. could degrade key Syrian military installations on the cheap with virtually no risk to U.S. personnel. “It could be done quickly, easily, with no risk whatsoever to American personnel, and a relatively minor cost,” said Harmer. One of the study’s proposals was cruise missile strikes from what are known as TLAMs (Tomahawk land attack missiles) fired from naval vessels in the Mediterranean.

The study immediately struck a chord with hawkish lawmakers on the Hill who were frustrated with the options outlined by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey that required a major commitment by U.S. military forces with a pricetag in the billions. [Continue reading…]

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Breaking international law in order to defend it

Remember the popular uprising that began in Iraq in 2001? Remember the peaceful protests and the ruthlessness with which Saddam crushed his opponents? Remember the Free Iraq Army fighting against the Republican Guard and the many cities that were turned to ruble during the two years that preceded the U.S. intervention into what had by then become a civil war? Remember the chemical weapons attack in which hundreds died and the shocking videos that Colin Powell showed at the UN Security Council? Remember how there was atrocity after atrocity and George Bush’s only response was to say he was gravely concerned?

Remember all of that?

Me neither.

So let’s see Syria for what it is and not like broken record players insist that 2013 is a rerun of 2003.

After all, the search for parallels tends to be an exercise in magical thinking. We say this is like that, as though on the basis of a tenuous symmetry we will then be able to predict the future.

The most significant parallel between 2003 and 2013 is one that applies to virtually all armed conflicts: it’s very difficult to predict how they will end.

So, when President Obama and other U.S. officials begin their earnest sales campaign on the necessity and value of launching some kind of attack on Syria, the thing to view with greatest skepticism is any kind of prediction about the outcome of this intervention.

This operation will send a strong signal to President Assad that he cannot use chemical weapons with impunity.

The implication being that he will be deterred from using CW again. But will that be the outcome? We don’t know. Maybe he’ll use them more often but on a much more limited scale. Maybe there will become an even greater incentive for others to seize and use CW in the hope that the U.S. can be dragged even deeper into the conflict.

This operation will send a signal to tyrants around the world that the international community is willing to take any necessary action in the defense of international law.

The problem is, international law — as far as I’m aware — doesn’t include provisions for punitive military strikes without the authorization of the UNSC. All the U.S. will be demonstrating is that it retains its long-standing view of itself as the world’s policeman. That won’t defend international law — it will merely show that America’s imperialistic tendencies have yet to diminish.

But perhaps even more disturbing than any prediction, Obama may attempt to sell his chosen course of action on the basis of necessity — that even if no one has any idea where this might lead, the President of the United States found himself with no choice but to launch an attack.

We had no choice is always a lie and a cop out. It represents an effort on the part of decision-makers to conceal the manner in which they make their choices. And it represents a refusal to accept responsibility for the consequences of those choices.

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Iran warns West against military intervention in Syria

The Guardian reports: Iran has warned that foreign military intervention in Syria will result in a conflict that would engulf the region.

The threatening rhetoric from Tehran came in response to a statement by the secretary of state, John Kerry, on Monday that the US would respond to the “undeniable” use of chemical weapons in Syria.

In the strongest signal yet that the US intends to take military action against the Assad regime, Kerry said President Bashar al-Assad’s forces had committed a “moral obscenity” against his own people.

“Make no mistake,” Kerry said. “President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapon against the world’s most vulnerable people. Nothing today is more serious, and nothing is receiving more serious scrutiny”.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, Abbas Araqchi, indicated it was equally resolved to defend Assad.

“We want to strongly warn against any military attack in Syria. There will definitely be perilous consequences for the region,” Araqchi told a news conference. “These complications and consequences will not be restricted to Syria. It will engulf the whole region.”

Just checked to see if there’s any “threatening rhetoric from Washington” — Google News says not. That’s a relief.

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Syria and the International Criminal Court

Mark Kersten writes: Despite two years of an incessant civil war that has claimed at least 80,000 people, the United Nations Security Council has been mired in deadlock on how to respond to the violence in Syria. Yet the images and videos of civilians attacked with chemical weapons in the outskirts of Damascus has rocked the Syrian status quo. As Jon Western suggests, the chemical weapons attack may constitute “Syria’s Srebrenica,” galvanizing the international community into taking action in a war they can no longer afford to ignore.

The massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995 became a crucial moment not only in the Bosnian war but for international justice. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia declared that the massacre at Srebrenica constituted genocide; generals and political officials have been tried and convicted for their role in the carnage.

In the case of Syria, however, there have been no calls from the Security Council for chemical weapons attacks to be investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Even as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared that the use of chemical weapons in Syria constituted an “outrageous crime” that could not be met with impunity, there were no calls for the Council to refer Syria to the ICC. This begs the question: if the use of chemical weapons against thousands of civilians is a crime, why the silence on Syria and the ICC? [Continue reading…]

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Egypt’s deep state might not be as deep as we think

Mark Perry writes: In March 1986, a new and more potent form of hashish began to show up on the streets of Cairo. Called “Bye Bye Rushdie” by the drug lords who peddled it, the hashish was named for recently deposed Interior Minister Ahmed Rushdie, a reformer who had launched a nationwide anti-drug crackdown the previous year. Rushdie had not only declared a war on drugs, he had also sacked ministry officials implicated in the trade, including high-level commanders of Egypt’s Central Security Forces (CSF) — the baton- and shotgun-wielding police who are tasked with keeping public order. And he failed.

On the morning of Feb. 26, thousands of CSF police had stormed the Haram police station and two nearby tourist hotels. The recruits were egged on by their commanders, who had spread a rumor that Rushdie planned to reduce their pay and extend their service. The rebellion spread. Within 24 hours the mutineers had captured most of Giza and loosed a campaign of lawlessness in parts of Cairo. When the CSF captured key installations at Assiut, on the Nile River, police Maj. Gen. Zaki Badr reportedly opened the Assiut channel locks — drowning nearly 3,000 CSF recruits and their leaders.

Stunned by these events, President Hosni Mubarak ordered the military to intervene to restore public order. Tank units took on the mutineers in street battles in Cairo, while Egyptian soldiers stormed three CSF camps — at Shubra, Tora, and Hike-Step. While no one knows for sure, it is estimated that between 4,000 and 6,000 CSF personnel were slaughtered, after which Rushdie was unceremoniously fired by Mubarak and replaced with Badr, renowned for his friendship with the president as well as his vicious anti-Islamist views.

Badr ruthlessly culled the CSF of its mutineers, while taking great care to leave in place the CSF’s most corrupt officials — and the drug trade they controlled. So the appearance of “Bye Bye Rushdie,” was a kind of celebration — a way of telling the Cairo drug culture that things had returned to normal.

Understanding the 1986 mutiny is particularly important now, because of what Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s newly installed interim government describes as a lawless campaign in the Sinai launched by a mix of Bedouin tribesman, criminal families, “jihadist terrorists,” and “al Qaeda-linked fighters.” Western reporters have attempted to get a grip on just who these criminal gangs and jihadists are, but without much luck. “It’s anyone’s guess because no one can get there,” a reporter for a major news daily told me via email last week.

But while American journalists may be confused about what’s happening in the Sinai, a handful of senior officers in the U.S. military have been monitoring the trouble closely. One of them, who serves as an intelligence officer in the Pentagon, told me last week that Sinai troubles are fueled not only by disaffected “Bedouin tribes” but also by “Sinai CSF commanders” intent on guarding the drug and smuggling routes that they continue to control nearly 30 years after Rushdie’s attempted crackdown. “What’s happening in Sinai is serious, and it’s convenient to call it terrorism,” this senior officer says. “But the reality is that’s there’s a little bit more to it. What Sinai shows is that the so-called deep state might not be as deep as we think.” [Continue reading…]

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