Long before the Arab spring and the armed uprising in Syria, the Israelis had been urging Washington to undermine the Baath regime in Damascus and take it down one way or another, just as they had done years before with the Baath regime in Baghdad. The Israelis Ambassador in recent weeks has even taken credit for doing so in public.
Western intervention in Syria and throughout today’s Middle East of course goes back nearly a hundred years now to the days of Lawrence of Arabia, the Sykes-Picot agreement, and the intervention of French troops in Syria and British troops in Palestine. After WWII the Americans have played an escalating role; and with the dominant Israeli/Jewish Lobby influence in Washington on top of 9/11 a new era has begun.
The Americans have been intervening from behind for some time in what is now called Syria’s civil war. CIA involvement has been considerable in arming and training the “rebels”, veting of future political leaders has been going on via the State Department and the oh-so-misnomered U.S. Institute of Peace. The Israelis have been doing their thing quite covertly, along with the Saudis and Qataris less covertly, each for their own reason, all because of the big target, Iran.
At each step of the way the U.S. has worked to block any political settlement, a la what was actually agreed to in Geneva earlier this year. Now with more missiles and arms flowing into Turkey, more troops likely to follow once the anti-missile shield is in place, the Russians are warning of a cataclysmic regional war, the Iranians are warning about a world war.
When it comes to the U.N., it is not the Russians and Chinese who are blocking a settlement of the conflict. Rather they are preventing another overt and formalized U.N.-sanctioned U.S.-led Western intervention. It is actually the Americans who are blocking a settlement insisting on by-passing the U.N. via the “Friends of Syria” mechanism and pushing the Saudis and Qataris to provide further arms, monies, and encouragement to the “rebels” even as these rebels are known to be heavily infiltrated with jihadis and Muslim “holy-warriors”.
Be sure more major regional convulsions are ahead now for 2013 not just for Syria but for Lebanon, Iran, Bahrain, Kuwait and the region. And that’s all on top of developments in Egypt and Israel/Palestine.
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Mark Bruzonsky 