Shocking as it may seem, the New York Times managed to tell the truth about Syria today:
“Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.”
The conclusion to this revelation is not, unfortunately, “stop arming the non-existent secularists.” Rather, it is to intervene even more — and even more quickly.
Steven Heydemann at the Orwellian war-promoting United States Institute of Peace sums up the view, as quoted in the Times story:
“The challenge, he said, is to end the conflict before ‘the opportunity to create a system of governance not based on militant Islamic law is lost.’”
In other words, the United States Institute of Peace, in its appropriately post-apocalyptic mega-church looking $183 million dollar new building, urges the US to change the regime in Syria as quickly as possible!
Elizabeth O’Bagy, of the Institute for the Study of War, a Kagan family franchise that studies war in the context of “how can we get more of it” is quoted in the piece saying, “[m]y sense is that there are no seculars.”
This is odd, as her boss, Kimberly Kagan, has written a policy recommendation paper which, wait for it, concludes that:
“The United States should fully support the secular opposition to Bashar al-Assad through the provision of funds, weapons, equipment, and training.”
In other words, the Institute for the Study of (more) War knows that there are no secular fighters but urges the US to arm the secular fighters anyway. It is another Straussian “noble lie” that the neo-conservatives view to be a fundamental canon in their Church of War.
Browsing the list of the organization’s major donors will likely provide a clue as to why the ISW would like to solve the problem created by its interventionist positions in the first place with yet more war and violence: Kagan’s warmongering is generously underwritten by General Dynamics, CACI, DynCorp, Palantir, and Northrup Grumman. Of course the money these merchants of death donate to Kagan to promote more war is stolen from us in the first place under the lie that handing it to the military industrial complex will help protect us. We pay the war machine to propagandize us for more war, which requires us to pay more money to the war machine…and round it goes.
The US and its allies have created the problem of Islamist radicals running the insurgency in Syria by providing support to Islamist radicals running the insurgency in Syria — all the while repeating the lie that it was simply supporting a domestic democratic uprising that reluctantly turned violent only after the regime turned to force.
The neo-cons like Kimberly Kagan are unfazed by such revelations and say with a straight face that the only solution to the problem caused by US interventionism on behalf the Syrian insurgency is more, harder, stronger US interventionism in the Syrian insurgency.
To high priest in the church of neo-conservatism John McCain, the problem caused by US interventionism on behalf of the Islamist insurgents in Syria is all the fault of the non-interventionsists:
“Everything that the non-interventionists said would happen in Syria if we intervened has happened. The jihadists are on the ascendency, there are chemical weapons being used and the massacres continue.”
Of course what he fails to mention is that the non-interventionists were right! The US did intervene and all these things did indeed happen as the non-interventionists warned. He admits it. Although the jihadists are on the ascendency because the US has provided them with weapons, chemical weapons are being used by the US-allied insurgency, and the massacres are being committed by the US allies.
But like Kagan and the rest of the neo-cons, McCain trades in lies and distortions to push his one conclusion to all the problems created by his warmongering: more war.
The New York Times reveals the truth in Syria: the insurgents are al-Qaeda. But its conclusion is, predictably, that we need more intervention in Syria on behalf of the insurgents. Neo-cons smile and plot.
On Twitter @DanielLMcAdams
10:57 pm on April 27, 2013
