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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Egyptians channeling Glenn Beck

The New York Times reports: The sounds made lately by curfew violators here are mostly not shouts or gunshots, but the clacking of dice on wooden backgammon boards, the clicking of dominoes on cafe tables crowded with hookahs and grumbling fueled by years of upheaval.

When the conversation turns to politics, the predominant topic is a surprise to American ears: the conspiracy between the United States and the Muslim Brotherhood to destroy Egypt.

However crackpot that view may sound, it is widespread among supporters of the military, which ousted the Muslim Brotherhood’s elected president, Mohamed Morsi, last month.

For journalists who ventured out Saturday night in violation of the curfew, the biggest danger was not from police officers and soldiers at checkpoints, but from angry men with a chip on their shoulders and a grudge against Al Jazeera, the Western press and America.

The “people’s committees,” which sprung up in Egyptian neighborhoods as a counterweight to the Muslim Brotherhood, in theory were disbanded last week. But that did not stop self-appointed guardians in the Zaki Street market of the Maadi neighborhood from repeatedly demanding identity documents, letters of permission and, especially, proof of not being affiliated with Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab news network, which is reviled because it is owned by Qatar, a strong supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.

As patrons of the Red Apple Cafe ignored the new 9 p.m. curfew, the presence of an American elicited bountiful conspiracy theories, all of them involving America’s plan to destroy Egypt through its paid Brotherhood confederates. Even innocuous questions about the curfew, which on Saturday was shortened two hours, became ideologically fraught. “What are you doing, why are you asking about curfew?” yelled one man. “It is something internal.” A group of other men surrounding an interpreter, their faces only inches from his, introduced themselves by saying, “We are not thugs,” before proceeding to threaten and berate their interlocutors.

Egyptians have always shrugged off curfews. Cairo’s night life continues pretty much as normal in places like Maadi and especially in poor and working-class areas, where street life provides some relief to people who live in hot apartments.

On Zaki Street, the cafes were full of smokers of shisha, the flavored tobacco burned in water pipes, and of backgammon players. Outside, the driver of a horse-drawn cart full of canisters of cooking gas clanged his cans to announce his presence, and Farouq, a middle-aged man making deliveries to supermarkets with a motorcycle-drawn cart, stopped to talk.

“Americans are with the Muslim Brotherhood,” Farouq stated in a tone suggesting that it was common knowledge. “O.K., you did something good when you killed Osama bin Laden, but now you are with Al Qaeda. You support the terrorists.”

A strong anti-American undercurrent has always existed in Egypt, but such views are more normally associated with radicals and Islamists, and in reaction to American support for Israel.

But now anti-American sentiment is being stoked by an outpouring of dubious pronouncements from both state and private news media. Anti-Americanism has even been given the ultimate imprimatur of state tolerance: billboards. One next door to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for instance, shows President Obama with a beard like those worn by the Brotherhood, alongside a more flattering picture of the clean-shaven military leader, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi. [Continue reading…]

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Independent journalists vs. tools of the government

David Carr writes: A disgruntled loner with access to military secrets comes across documents that pull back the veil on government actions in a lost war and decides for a variety of reasons, some noble and some personal, to share them with the world.

That was Daniel Ellsberg in 1969, and for his efforts, which became the publication of the Pentagon Papers, he was investigated and indicted, but eventually he was hailed as a hero and enshrined in the journalistic canon.

Today that role has been taken up by Pfc. Bradley E. Manning (who now wants to be known as Chelsea) and Edward J. Snowden. Their chances of being widely declared heroes aren’t nearly as great: Private Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison last week, and Mr. Snowden, who revealed documents showing the extent of surveillance by the National Security Agency, is still hiding in Russia beyond the reach of the United States government.

Perhaps they got what’s coming to them. They knew, or should have known, the risks of revealing information entrusted to them, and decided to proceed. Like almost all whistle-blowers, they are difficult people with complicated motives.

So, too, are the journalists who aid them. It’s not surprising that Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who brokered the publishing of Private Manning’s documents, and Glenn Greenwald, the columnist for The Guardian who has led the Snowden revelations, have also come under intense criticism.

What is odd is that many pointing the finger are journalists. When Mr. Greenwald was on “Meet the Press” after the first round of N.S.A. articles, the host, David Gregory, seemingly switched the show to “Meet the Prosecutor.” He asked, “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?”

Jeffrey Toobin, who works for both CNN and The New Yorker, called Mr. Snowden “a grandiose narcissist who belongs in prison.” This week, he called David Miranda, Mr. Greenwald’s partner who was detained by British authorities for nine hours under antiterror laws, the equivalent of a “drug mule.”

Mr. Assange has also come under withering criticism, including in the pages of The New York Times, which accused him, among other things, of not smelling very nice as we cooperated with WikiLeaks in publishing reams of articles in July 2010 based on the revelations from Private Manning.

This week, Michael Grunwald, a senior national correspondent at Time, wrote on Twitter: “I can’t wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange.” (He later apologized, perhaps reasoning that salivating over the killing of anyone was in poor taste.)

What have Mr. Assange and Mr. Greenwald done to inspire such rancor from other journalists? Because of the leaks and the stories they generated, we have learned that in the name of tracking terrorists, the N.S.A. has been logging phone calls and e-mails for years, recorded the metadata of correspondence between Americans, and in some instances, dived right into the content of e-mails. The WikiLeaks documents revealed that the United States turned a blind eye on the use of torture by our Iraqi allies, and that an airstrike was ordered to cover up the execution of civilians. WikiLeaks also published a video showing a United States Army helicopter opening fire on a group of civilians, including two Reuters journalists.

In the instance of the stories based on the purloined confidential documents in the Manning and Snowden leaks, we learned what our country has been doing in our name, whether it is in war zones or in digital realms.

Mr. Toobin agrees that an important debate has been joined, but says no story, no matter how big, justifies journalists’ abetting illegal acts, saying, “Journalists are not above the law.”

“The Jane Mayers, Sy Hershes and Walter Pincuses have all done superb work for decades without the rampant lawlessness that was behind these stories,” he said, adding later, “I’ve never heard any of those journalists endorsing the wholesale theft of thousands of classified government records.”

The larger sense I get from the criticism directed at Mr. Assange and Mr. Greenwald is one of distaste — that they aren’t what we think of as real journalists. Instead, they represent an emerging Fifth Estate composed of leakers, activists and bloggers who threaten those of us in traditional media. They are, as one says, not like us.

“By no means was I treated as a hero when I first came forward. I was indicted and spent two years in court,” Mr. Ellsberg said in an interview. “But in those days, journalists were not turning on journalists. With Snowden in particular, you have a split between truly independent journalists and those who are tools — and I mean that in every sense of the term — of the government. Toobin and Grunwald are doing the work of the government to maintain relationships and access.” [Continue reading…]

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The detention of David Miranda was an unlawful use of the UK’s Terrorism Act

Charles Falconer, former UK lord chancellor and first secretary of state for justice, writes: The 2000 Terrorism Act, which I helped introduce, was not passed with people like David Miranda in mind. The issue then was how to secure lasting peace in Northern Ireland, and the act was designed to make it difficult for Irish dissident terrorists to come to the mainland. Schedule 7 of the act, which has come to public attention this week following Miranda’s detention at Heathrow, was retained from earlier legislation on the advice of Lord Lloyd of Berwick. Reviewing the evidence, he had found that the ability of officers to randomly stop and search people who were entering or leaving the country had disrupted terrorist operations.

So it was right in 2000 – and it is still right today – that police or immigration authorities should have powers to detain and question people in order to determine whether they are terrorists.

However, it is also right that schedule 7 powers can only be used “for the purpose of determining” whether the detained person is a terrorist. The use of the power to detain and question someone who the examining officer knows is not a terrorist is plainly not for this purpose, so it would neither be within the spirit nor the letter of the law.

There is no suggestion that Miranda is a terrorist, or that his detention and questioning at Heathrow was for any other reason than his involvement in his partner Glenn Greenwald’s reporting of the Edward Snowden story. The state has not even hinted there is a justification beyond that involvement. While there may be relevant facts of which I know nothing, it is reasonable to proceed on the basis that was the reason for the powers being used.

The Terrorism Act defines a terrorist as someone “involved in committing preparing or instigating acts of terrorism”. Miranda is plainly not committing or preparing acts of terrorism. [Continue reading…]

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Nothing says something more clearly than cruise missiles

Once again the “something must be done” brigade has taken charge. The cruise missiles being readied for strikes against targets unspecified in Syria will carry the message of “accountability.”

CBS News reports:

There was no debate at the Saturday meeting [of President Obama’s national security team] that a military response is necessary. Obama ordered up legal justifications for a military strike, should he order one, outside of the United Nations Security Council. That process is well underway, and particular emphasis is being placed on alleged violations of the Geneva Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention.

And the chances that those legal justifications might not be found? Zero. (It’s worth noting that Syria, like Israel, is not a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention.)

An American intelligence official told Foreign Policy the other day that this was — and presumably remains — the U.S. position on Syria: “As long as they keep body count at a certain level, we won’t do anything.”

That “certain level” presumably meant a relative level. No doubt that level was never going to be specified but from what one can infer from the historical record it meant that if the daily death toll remained in the dozens to low hundreds and Syrians were being killed by conventional weapons, then whatever the absolute body count — be it 100,000 or 200,000 or even 1,000,000 — the United States would do nothing.

With the use of chemical weapons, it appears that Bashar al-Assad has crossed the threshold of an acceptable number of dead and method of killing and so the U.S. and its allies are ready to launch cruise missiles — armed of course with conventional warheads — to impose some form of accountability on the Syrian regime.

The killing can continue, but the further use of chemical weapons is forbidden. Syrians will soon be able to sleep somewhat more comfortably (so long as they don’t get killed by U.S. cruise missiles), reassured that they are less at risk of dying from asphyxiation but still at risk of getting blown up or buried under rubble as their homes are destroyed under artillery fire.

Obama et al can claim they sent a message without having thrust their respective countries directly into another war. Or to be more precise that the West will have only made a cameo appearance in the war in Syria. Widespread public opposition to military intervention will most likely be sufficiently placated by witnessing that direct intervention turned out to be brief.

Indeed, as the cruise missile message is currently being crafted, the focus is on punishment, not intervention.

As the Associated Press reports:

The international community appeared to be considering action that would punish Assad for deploying deadly gases, not sweeping measures aimed at ousting the Syrian leader or strengthening rebel forces. The focus of the internal debate underscores the scant international appetite for a large-scale deployment of forces in Syria and the limited number of other options that could significantly change the trajectory of the conflict.

“We continue to believe that there’s no military solution here that’s good for the people, and that the best path forward is a political solution,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said. “This is about the violation of an international norm against the use of chemical weapons and how we should respond to that.”

Bashar al-Assad, having been forcibly instructed in the international norms that cannot be violated will presumably continue engaging in those actions that were normal before last week’s chemical attacks and have occurred without interruption every day since: 148 people killed today, 80 on Sunday, 114 on Saturday, 86 on Friday, 115 on Thursday — the kinds of death toll that Western governments and the populations they represent can comfortably ignore.

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How the use of chemical weapons ‘becomes very tempting’

Reuters reports: [D]iplomats and rebels interviewed by Reuters said Assad’s generals had been trying for some time to push the rebel units back to the southern ring road that separates Damascus from its more rural environs and neutralise the immediate threat to the heart of the capital.

The suburbs of Zamalka, Jobar and Ain Tarma sit in an expanse of farming country known as the Eastern Ghouta. Along with the town of Mouadmiya in the west, these areas had been pummelled for months by battlefield artillery, warplanes and surface-to-surface missiles before they were hit on the morning of Aug. 21.

In the 72 hours that followed, Assad’s mechanised forces from the Fourth Division and the Republican Guards, the praetorian units entrusted with defending his seat of power, mounted a major push to retake the four areas, but well dug-in rebels held out, sources said.

“The regime has been throwing everything he has at the Ghouta, but it remained a thorn in its side. When you have a large number of well-organised rebel fighters in an urban area with lots of cover, using chemical weapons becomes very tempting,” a Middle East based diplomat said.

When the revolt became militarised almost two year ago, the rebels of Ghouta, mostly from the Sunni majority that opposes Assad and his minority Alawite sect elite, were among the first areas in the country to take up arms.

The rebel groups there include the Saudi-backed Liwa al-Islam Brigade, Saladin Brigade, Jobar Martyrs Brigade, and Tahrir al-Sham, a unit headed by Firas al-Bitar, an officer who defected from Assad’s army and has a reputation as a good military planner.

“If the rebel units were not so well organised, Assad would have captured Ghouta long time ago,” said Moaz al-Shami, a prominent activist who witnessed fighting in Ghouta.

“The regime needed to kill 1,000 people in one go in Ghouta, or whatever the final tally of the chemical attack proves to be, because it was in need of a morale boost,” he added.

In the last few weeks, rebel brigades based in Jobar, which is only three kilometres from the central Abbassiyeen Square, managed to open a supply corridor to the besieged Damascus neighbourhoods of Barzeh and Qaboun in the northern sector of the capital, opposition sources said.

The link brought the military threat from Ghouta closer to the heart of Damascus and helped the two districts withstand intensifying loyalist attacks, the sources said.

“Rebel operations in the countryside have been merging with Damascus, and the regime could not take that. Assad would have loved to gas Barzeh and Qaboun as well, but they are too interconnected with loyalist areas,” said Khaled Omar, a member of the opposition Local Council of Ain Tarma.

“By hitting Ghouta, Assad thinks he is preserving Damascus and destroying a popular incubator of the revolution,” he added.

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More questions than answers as attack on Syria looms

Zvi Bar’el writes: “When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk,” says Eli Wallach’s character in “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” But he also says, “If you miss, you had better miss very well.” It seems that the fear of missing is the dilemma now facing the United States and Europe over Syria.

The countries are still talking. Even the signs of preparations for military action, bringing warships armed with missiles nearer to the Syrian border, urgent consultations at the White House and coordination of positions with European countries, do not take the safety catch off just yet. That’s because it’s not tactically missing the target that is the concern, since the location of the Syrian army’s chemical weapons sites are known. The concern is over diplomatically missing it.

The decision makers have before them a few versions, each pointing a finger in different directions following last week’s reported use of chemical weapons east of Damascus.

One version is that of the Free Syrian Army and the political opposition, whose spokesmen explaine at a news conference Saturday that the chemical missiles were fired by the Syrian army’s Brigade 115 from its Mount Kalamun missile base and that, during the attack, the head of the Syrian missile directorate, Taher Hamed Khalil, was present at the base.

Another version is that of Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq, relying on a source in the Free Syrian Army who claims that soldiers of the Fourth Elite Unit, commanded by Maher Assad – the Syrian president’s brother – raided the Scientific Studies and Research Center and captured quantities of the chemical weapons after killing a Syrian officer who refused to let them in.

A third version comes from the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Seyassah, through an Iraqi source close to the separatist Muktada al-Sadr, who says that fighters from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, in charge of some of the chemical weapons stores, fired the chemical weapons at the town of al-Ghouta, despite opposition by the Syrian army brass.

Yet another version, published on the Syrian opposition website al-Hakika, reported that the chemicals were smuggled from Turkey by activists of the Turkmen uprising and that these activists were the ones who fired the missiles to spark an international provocation.

The website, which published reports on the smuggling of the chemicals about a week before the attack – as well as after it – raises questions about the way the dead were found, plus the fact that the weather conditions on the day of the attack could not ensure that Syrian soldiers would not also be killed.

The Syrian regime has its own version, in which five Syrian soldiers were killed and others rushed to the hospital after they were injured by the chemicals.

In this abundance of versions, it seems that, at least in one matter, the fog has been lifted.

Chemical weapons, whose makeup is still not known for sure, were indeed used. Even Iranian President Hassan Rohani said on Saturday that Syrian citizens had been killed by chemical weapons – without, of course, saying who fired them. [Continue reading…]

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The dehumanizing effect of opposing war

Yes, you read that right: The dehumanizing effect of opposing war. Say what?

A vast amount has been written on the dehumanizing effects of war — essays, commentary, treatises and works of literature many of which deserve to be required reading in every school and college around the world.

Yet the dehumanizing effect of opposing war is a subject on which I haven’t I’ve read a single word.

But how could opposing war be dehumanizing? Isn’t opposition to war one of the most humanitarian of expressions?

Certainly it should be, yet here is where such opposition frequently deviates away from its humanitarian roots: opposition to war morphs into opposition to war makers.

Once the focus becomes the war makers — the governments, the corporate interests, the political lobbies, the opinion makers and so forth — then it becomes possible to view something like the chemical attacks in Damascus as some kind of manufactured event.

Having made that shift, it then becomes that much easier to become emotionally disengaged.

Here’s a small boy struggling for his life:

Do you wonder whether this has been ‘faked’? Are you afraid that the propagation of videos of this type is happening purely for the purposes of political manipulation? Do you think that this kind of suffering reveals something about the barbaric nature of the Middle East? Do you feel that Americans are being coerced into giving attention to an issue that should not involve Americans?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you might want to consider whether you are suffering from the dehumanizing effect of opposing war.

The other day in response to an op-ed on the chemical attack in Damascus, someone wrote a comment on this site which included this:

I do not think any Western government has any moral standing to say anything about the killing of citizens given its own view on killing its own citizens. I’m appalled by the whole mess and the West’s economic and ideological entanglement and the simpering nonsense feed [sic] to the public by the elite media outlets. I just want to stick my head in the ground and not think or know anything about the snafu that is our Western vision, just now, of international affairs.

There is a disarming level of honesty and sense of frustration in anyone admitting that they would prefer to remain ignorant. But to object to the hypocrisy of Western governments does not require that we prevent ourselves from having a human reaction to the deaths of thousands of innocent people. Just because Barack Obama and David Cameron make sanctimonious statements about the use of chemical weapons being intolerable doesn’t mean that we should do the reverse.

If we do that — if we come to regard the slaughter of thousands as somehow inconsequential — it’s time to ask whether our opposition to war is truly that or whether it’s merely a desire that war not intrude on our lives, eat up our tax dollars, and fill our TV screens.

Has opposition to war been reduced to nothing more than a desire that it would go away?

(The videos in this post came from Joanna Paraszczuk’s latest post at EA WorldView.)

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France says would be hard to bypass U.N. in action against Syria

Reuters reports: France’s foreign minister said on Monday no decision had been made yet on whether to take military action against Syria, but doing so outside the auspices of the U.N. Security Council would be problematic.

“It is a problem that will be difficult,” Laurent Fabius told Europe 1 radio.

“International law is defined by the United Nations, but at same time there are countries (on the council) that are blocking (military action)- China and Russia have blocked and would probably block again so it would be a problem…

“In certain circumstances we can bypass it, but international law does exist,” he said without elaborating.

All options on how to respond to the poison gas attack in the Damascus suburbs were still open. “The only one that is not on the table is to not do anything,” he added.

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Britain says Syria response possible without unanimous U.N. backing

Reuters reports: British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Monday it would be possible to respond to chemical weapons use in Syria without the unanimous backing of the United Nations Security Council.

U.N. inspectors will visit on Monday the site of an alleged chemical weapon attack which killed hundreds last week, but Britain and the United States have made clear they believe the access was granted too late and that the Syrian government was behind the attack.

“Is it possible to respond to chemical weapons without complete unity on the U.N. Security Council? I would argue yes it is, otherwise it might be impossible to respond to such outrages, such crimes, and I don’t think that’s an acceptable situation,” Hague said on BBC radio.

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Syria attack may force search for peace

Jim Muir writes: As happened in Iraq, intervention by the West risks fragmenting the country further, creating an uncontrollable situation and handing large parts of it to forces it regards as its enemies.

To that extent, there may be more common ground between Washington and Moscow than meets the eye.

The Russians, traumatised by Chechnya, are also mesmerised by the prospect of a radical Islamist takeover in Syria.

That is why some observers believe there is still a measure of understanding between the Russians and Americans, whose foreign ministers decided in May to work together to bring about the political settlement that everybody agrees is the only solution, but which is proving devilishly difficult to get under way.

So it is not out of the question that the huge pressures exerted on all parties by the chemical weapons attacks might just be enough to pop the cork and force movement towards negotiations, with the latest speculation focusing on Geneva in October.

Any such prospect, distant though it may seem, would clearly be set back by Western military action.

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Syrian Kurds trek to Iraq over parched hills

Reuters reports: Mariam Bozan Khalil spent days avoiding Syrian rebel militiamen on the road to Iraq, only to be forced to finish her journey on foot through sun-scorched hills.

She is one of more than 40,000 Syrians who have escaped to Iraq’s autonomous northern Kurdish region in the past 10 days. The exodus is one of the biggest cross-border migrations since what is now a civil war between the forces of President Bashar al-Assad and the rebels trying to overthrow him started more than two years ago.

The mainly Kurdish refugees are fleeing groups of fighters that have been seizing control of villages over the border, Khalil said, at a reception camp in the Iraqi frontier village of Suhilla, around 400km (250 miles) northwest of Baghdad.

“We don’t know them. They just come, take power and give themselves a name,” she said, as her 18-month-old son slept spread-eagled on a cloth in front of her. “We don’t know who we are supposed to support. The people, we are just left to be trampled underfoot,” the 28-year-old Kurd said.

The sudden influx of Syrian refugees has brought Iraq’s prosperous and well-armed northern region closer to the conflict which has already killed more than 100,000 people and displaced millions. The leader of the autonomous region has promised to protect Kurds over the border from attacks.

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CIA files prove America helped Saddam as he gassed Iran

Shane Harris and Matthew M. Aid write: The U.S. government may be considering military action in response to chemical strikes near Damascus. But a generation ago, America’s military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks far more devastating than anything Syria has seen, Foreign Policy has learned.

In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq’s war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein’s military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.

The intelligence included imagery and maps about Iranian troop movements, as well as the locations of Iranian logistics facilities and details about Iranian air defenses. The Iraqis used mustard gas and sarin prior to four major offensives in early 1988 that relied on U.S. satellite imagery, maps, and other intelligence. These attacks helped to tilt the war in Iraq’s favor and bring Iran to the negotiating table, and they ensured that the Reagan administration’s long-standing policy of securing an Iraqi victory would succeed. But they were also the last in a series of chemical strikes stretching back several years that the Reagan administration knew about and didn’t disclose.

U.S. officials have long denied acquiescing to Iraqi chemical attacks, insisting that Hussein’s government never announced he was going to use the weapons. But retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona, who was a military attaché in Baghdad during the 1988 strikes, paints a different picture.

“The Iraqis never told us that they intended to use nerve gas. They didn’t have to. We already knew,” he told Foreign Policy.

According to recently declassified CIA documents and interviews with former intelligence officials like Francona, the U.S. had firm evidence of Iraqi chemical attacks beginning in 1983. At the time, Iran was publicly alleging that illegal chemical attacks were carried out on its forces, and was building a case to present to the United Nations. But it lacked the evidence implicating Iraq, much of which was contained in top secret reports and memoranda sent to the most senior intelligence officials in the U.S. government. The CIA declined to comment for this story.

In contrast to today’s wrenching debate over whether the United States should intervene to stop alleged chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government, the United States applied a cold calculus three decades ago to Hussein’s widespread use of chemical weapons against his enemies and his own people. The Reagan administration decided that it was better to let the attacks continue if they might turn the tide of the war. And even if they were discovered, the CIA wagered that international outrage and condemnation would be muted. [Continue reading…]

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Chemical attack spurs finger-pointing inside Assad regime

The National reports: United Nations weapons inspectors will today examine the site of a chemical weapons attack in Damascus that killed hundreds, as the first signs of finger-pointing inside the Assad regime began to emerge.

The Syrian government agreed yesterday to cease hostilities in the area while the team goes in and the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said inspectors were “preparing to conduct on-site fact-finding activities” on the outskirts of the capital.

The attack on Wednesday has galvanised international calls for action against the government of President Bashar Al Assad. Rebels say as many as 1,300 people were killed. One aid agency says thousands were affected and 355 died.

Amid universal acceptance that a chemical nerve agent has been used but disagreement over who used it, there were indications from Damascus that some of the army officers involved had tried to distance themselves from what happened, and insisted they were not told the rockets they were firing were loaded with toxins.

“We have heard from people close to the regime that the chemical missiles were handed out a few hours before the attacks,” said a source from a well-connected family, who has contacts with both the opposition and regime loyalists.

“They didn’t come from the ministry of defence but from air force intelligence, under orders from Hafez Maklouf . The army officers are saying they did not know there were chemical weapons. Even some of the people transporting them are saying they had no idea what was in the rockets – they thought they were conventional explosives.”

Hafez Maklouf, Mr Al Assad’s cousin, commands Syria’s air force intelligence, the most feared of all its secret police branches. [Continue reading…]

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