Meanwhile, the Assad regime was striving mightily to reduce its international isolation by reaching a peace settlement with Israel. It began secret talks with Israel in 2004 in Turkey and by the following year “had reached a very advanced form and covered territorial, water, border and political questions,” according to historian Gabriel Kolko."The US Hand in the Syrian Mess." By Jonathan Marshall, Consortium News, 7/20/15.A host of senior Israelis, including former heads of the IDF, Shin Beit, and Foreign Ministry, backed the talks. But the Bush administration nixed them, as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek confirmed in January 2007.
As Kolko noted, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz then “published a series of extremely detailed accounts, including the draft accord, confirming that Syria ‘offered a far reaching and equitable peace treaty that would provide for Israel’s security and is comprehensive’ — and divorce Syria from Iran and even create a crucial distance between it and Hezbollah and Hamas.
“The Bush Administration’s role in scuttling any peace accord was decisive. . . . The press has been full of details on how the American role was decisive, because it has war, not peace, at the top of its agenda.”
Isolating Assad
In March 2007, McClatchy broke a story that the Bush administration had “launched a campaign to isolate and embarrass Syrian President Bashar Assad. . . . [sic] The campaign, which some officials fear is aimed at destabilizing Syria, has been in the works for months. It involves escalating attacks on Syria’s human rights record. . . . [sic] The [destabilization] campaign [officials say] bears the imprint of Elliott Abrams, a conservative White House aide in charge of pushing Bush’s global democracy agenda.”Not surprisingly, Vice President Cheney was also an implacable opponent of engagement with Syria.
Attempting once again to break the impasse, Syria’s ambassador to the United States called for talks to achieve a full peace agreement with Israel in late July 2008. “We desire to recognize each other and end the state of war,” Imad Mustafa said in remarks broadcast on Israeli army radio. “Here is then a grand thing on offer. Let us sit together, let us make peace, let us end once and for all the state of war.”
Three days later, Israel responded by sending a team of commandos into Syria to assassinate a Syrian general as he held a dinner party at his home on the coast.A top-secret summary by the National Security Agency called it the “first known instance of Israel targeting a legitimate government official.”
Just two months later, U.S. military forces launched a raid into Syria, ostensibly to kill an al-Qaeda operative, which resulted in the death of eight unarmed civilians. The Beirut Daily Star wrote, “The suspected involvement of some of the most vociferous anti-Syria hawks at the highest levels of the Bush administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney, have combined with US silence on the matter to fuel a guessing game as to just exactly who ordered or approved Sunday’s cross-border raid.”
Photo credit: Free Stock Photos (hand)
8 comments:
I read the linked story. I realize international diplomacy is complex, and that one must always question sources, but I'm inclined to accept the description events outlined in the story.
I didn't realize I was quite this naive and uninformed. I've very disappointed with the Bush administration's actions.
Tim Turner
It's a good article and I too think it is credible. Eliot Abrams and Dick Cheney need to explain what they were thinking, as Bush as well. Clearly there was an opportunity to do with Syria what was accomplished with Egypt under Sadat. The idiot decision was made to go after Assad. All without a declaration of war mind you. The Constitution is hardly more than a speed bump for these swine.
Assad made a mistake assassinating that politician in Lebanon, which I believe at this point he did. I was pretty disgusted by that but had no knowledge about Syria or what the state of play was in the Middle East. Behind the scenes anyway.
Our stupid meddling there is great tragedy. Bush's nation building objectives in Iraq were just madness. It's so despicable that I actually cheer the involvement of the Russians in Syria. If it goes under it will be decades before any kind of sanity can return there.
I really wonder how Bush was talked into such a stance. What I _thought_ I understood about his character doesn't jibe with his actions in this instance. Does that mean I was wrong about his character, or was he misinformed by Cheney and others into refusing to even attempt to reach an accord with Assad?
I realize Bush's Eastern Establishment and CFR upbringing was - in part - responsible for his fealty to the Saudi royal family, but our government has _always_ dealt with rogues (such as Nazis assisted in moving to America and avoiding the consequences of their actions because they had something our government wanted), so I would have thought that dealing with Assad should not have been so difficult.
This is part of the idea of "I just heard this." Or hear-say.
In the first few months of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, I read a blog from a 19 or 20 year-old woman in Iraq. I even traded posts with her a few times.
She recognized that Saddam was NOT a good guy, but she believed he was responsible for bringing "peace" amongst a lot of bad influences. He made the country work and got it so that anyone could walk along the streets in peace. (She didn't talk about any death chambers, etc.)
I've thought about that a lot. And the idea that the perfect is the enemy of the good - or something like that. Jesus, Saddam sucked. But if he got Kurds, Shia and Sunnis living in peace and kept Hamas, Hezbollah and Iraq out, wasn't that - on balance - a good thing?
Now we have ISIS, and all the Obama silliness. After reading about the Bush administration's undermining Syria, I'm even more inclined to think we screwed up with Iran.
I was as gung-ho as anyone after 9-11 to do something to somebody. But if we weren't gonna nuke Mecca, or just GET THE FUCK OUT then how did we think we could make anything better? There's enough hatred and history there to easily encompass our silly politicians.
Now look at it all. "Islam is the religion of peace." Of course it isn't.
Europe needs to accept Syrian refugees when no Arab or Muslim nation will.
There are two enemies: Muslims, and our cowardly, diversification-loving, politically-correct leaders.
Tim Turner
By the way, it wasn't there when I posted my last, but I find that quote from Karl Rove disturbing on a couple of levels.
("Disturbing" is an understatement.)
Tim Turner
Reg T, I've always thought that Bush is a fundamentally decent fellow who loves this country. Too, any time after 9/11 has to have been a blizzard of information and having to deal with a very out-of-kilter world revealed by the 9/11 attack. He was the man in the hot seat and I liked it a lot that he was willing to take it to the Taliban. It started to deteriorate rapidly after that as the reason for going after Saddam, while supported by intelligence, was rather odd in that it didn't have any direct connection to the attack on us. A problem down the road, perhaps, but connected to 9/11? Not so much. A fortiori, Bush's stupid decision to get entangled in "nation building," a fatuous concept to begin with assuming. Clueless Americans change Iraqi society, centuries in the making, from the top down? It's enough to make one weep.
Bush '41 had the sense to leave Saddam in place but every fool afterwards who's occupied the WH has assumed that turning everything upside down in foreign countries will alway lead to an improvement. Communist revolutionaries (progressives in today's parlance) proceed on the same assumption.
Bush '43, in my current view, is a man who did a lot of damage because he embarked us on a "ready, fire, aim" strategy. He utterly failed to think conceptually or strategically, even to the extent of assuming away the enemy nature of our very enemy -- Islam. On the day after 9/11 he rushed to the Islamic Center of Washington to reassure those pricks that they weren't in danger, all the while failing to notice that we are in mortal danger because there are more than 100 Muslims in the U.S.
Curtis, I struggle to make sense of the neo-con policy of "invade the world, invite the world." It's all a fur ball of insanity and that is so in EVERY fisking area of Western life now. Madness is the new normal and that is not hyperbole on my part. Immigration, feminism, fiscal policy, monetary policy, "climate," military policy, foreign policy, culture, Constitutional law, und so weiter. It's all a wave of greasy lies. We're 40 feet under an ocean of lies, corruption, and treason but vast numbers of Americans, all highly educated twerps, think that a centimeter rise in the level of the oceans every ten years (numbers fanciful) is the real cause for alarm.
The New World Order types are busy now as they have been since the days that Alger Hiss was secretary-general of the San Francisco United Nations Conference on International Organization. Let's call those people the moron contingent that thinks that human life will be improved by sluicing political power upwards into the hands of Nigerians, Fiji Islanders, Argentinians, Chinese, Russians, French, and Swedes. All well positioned to give us pure wisdom on how people in New Mexico should handle their affairs.
The other contingent in the U.S. power structure and the CFR appear to pursue a policy that is designed to ensure that the US remains the unchallengeable top dog in the world and that all other challengers need to be kept on a short leash, punished, or humiliated.
Maybe your idea that it's all about resources is the policy of a third group but I think they're likely just a subset of group two. Nevertheless, they would want to keep on supplying ISIS (and not destroying it) to eliminate possible sources of stability and opposition to US control over the Middle East and its resources (and Afghan mineral wealth).
Bottom line is that the US is playing a very dirty game regarding Syria. It's all about enabling and supporting ISIS.
Mr. Turner, the conservative principle of don't disturb things without a very good reason and not before you've thought about it for 10 years is a good one. However, we swept Saddam out like pulling the table cloth out from under the settings for the banquet without a care in the world. That putz who ran things in Iraq post second invasion just disbanded the Iraqi army thereby removing a major stabilizing force.
I think what distresses me the most in the modern West is to be surrounded by millions of reckless, stupid people who think they know best, that THEIR little plan for utopia will work like a charm, and that anyone who questions them is a racist, heteronormative, bigoted Nazi.
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