Obama’s shift to regime-change in Syria was motivated not by concern for Syrian lives, but by the recognition that the previous strategy of engagement through pressure had failed to mould Assad into a reliable and ‘stable’ dictator.
Simultaneously, far from vindicating Russia and Iran, this investigation exposes their role in escalating Assad’s state-terrorism to protect their own narrow strategic goals.
At 10 am on the 10th of October, two F-16s bombed Aleppo’s power station, cutting the supply of power and of pumped water to the city. As reported by TASS, the F-16s came from Incirlik base in Turkey, and were presumed to belong to the US, but it can be noted that both Turkey and Israel have F-16s and commonly violate Syrian airspace.
There was a time when Washington did have skills of diplomacy and intellectual honesty. One recalls in particular the presidency of John F Kennedy, who sought to go beyond the futile Cold War stereotypes of «us and them». In a groundbreaking speech to the American University in Washington on June 10, 1963, Kennedy made a plea for world peace and for “general and complete disarmament”.
Understanding the premeditated nature of the West’s war on Syria and the fact that this current conflict serves only as a stepping stone toward a well-defined strategy to next destroy Iran explains why “partnering” with the US in any kind of solution regarding Syria is an impossibility. A “political settlement” that results in the division of Syria or the removal of the current government is also entirely unacceptable for this same reason.
So this was Putin’s first message to Washington, and the Pentagon/NATO combo in particular; your fancy ideas of stationing tactical nuclear weapons or expanding missile defense to Eastern Europe, or even Asia-Pacific, are just a mirage. Our cruise missiles are capable of wreaking real effective havoc; and soon, as this piece argues, there will be more hypersonic, high-precision long-range missiles added to the mix.
Where is all the coverage of the utterly useless, dishonest and misguided Western campaign in Syria? If this had a tenth of the coverage given to Russian bombing I think the public and political discussion in Britain would be very different.
Another reason for Western vexation over Russia’s intervention in Syria is that it is exposing the fraudulence and criminality of the Western powers and their regional client regimes. Russia is conducting operations that are lawful under international law with the full consent of the Syrian government – unlike the US-led coalition which is bombing the country illegally. Vladimir Putin has cogently delineated the all-important legal difference. From the Western viewpoint, this exposure of their depredations is intolerable.
The Obama Administration has been training terrorists of Al Qaeda/Al Nusra, allegedly to fight ISIS, much like the disgraced General David Petraeus did in Iraq and Afghanistan along with Obama’s special ISIS coordinator, the just-resigned General John Allen. The US-trained “moderate” terrorists were being readied, it’s now clear to all the world, in reality, to battle Assad and open the way for a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Syria and a real plunge into darkness for the world if that were to succeed.
The dog not barking in the Dutch report on the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is the silence regarding U.S. intelligence information that supposedly had pinned down key details just days after the crash but has been kept secret, writes Robert Parry.
The Russian manufacturer of the Buk missile has proven that if a Buk missile was used, it was an old version that exists only in the Ukraine military. For some years the Russian military has been equipped with a replacement version that has a different signature in its destructive impact. The damage to the Malaysian airliner is inconsistent with the destructive force of the Buk missile in Russian service.
The New Great Game in Eurasia advanced in leaps and bounds last week after Russia fired 26 cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea against 11 ISIS/ISIL/Daesh targets across Syria, destroying all of them. These naval strikes were the first known operational use of state-of-the-art SSN-30A Kalibr cruise missiles.
All it took for the Pentagon was a backward look over the shoulder at the flight path of those Kalibr missiles – capable of striking targets 1,500 km away. Talk about a crisp, clear, succinct message from Moscow to the Pentagon and NATO. Wanna mess with us, boy? With your big, bulging aircraft carriers, maybe?
This initial real-world use of long-range LACMs by Russia has significant strategic importance, because the carriers of such systems (surface vessels and submarines), stationed elsewhere in the ocean, can minimize the potential use of nuclear weapons and offensive antiballistic systems by those states that still consider the Russian Federation to be their “biggest potential enemy,” an “aggressor state,” and an “annexing state.” These high-impact weapons systems could be used for preemptive or retaliatory strikes with both nuclear or non-nuclear warheads.
