RUTHFULLY YOURS

PRAVDA ON THE HUDSON: PETER HUESSEY

Posted By Ruth King on September 19th, 2013

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/pravda-on-the-hudson

For over 30 years, Iran and its allies have been at war with the United States and its allies, especially those in the Middle East. Iran is today and has been the world’s premier sponsor of the use of terror for political ends says our US Department of State. And one of its key accomplices since its founding has been the Syrian regime now headed by President Bashar al-Assad. Syria is to Iran what Cuba was to the Soviets.

Let us look at the record. Syria is complicit in the following.

First it was the bombing of our Lebanon embassy in April 1983 and then our Marine barracks in October 1983 when America was on a UN and Congressionally supported peace-keeping mission.

Second, they plotted with Iran to be the trigger country for the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am flight 103. Only when the plot was discovered by US intelligence services did Iran shift the task to Libya.

Third, Syria’s jointly worked with Iran and Hezbollah to murder the former Prime Minister of Lebanon, Rafic Hariri.

Fourth, as detailed in Congressional testimony by American officials General David Petraeus and Ambassador Chester Crocker, among many others, Syria put together the rat lines from Damascus into Iraq where foreign jihadis “invaded” Iraq to kill American and coalition forces, as well as Iraqi civilians by the thousands. Ironically, a key source of such terrorists was the Libyan province of Benghazi. This was mirrored by Iranian financed and armed rat lines to Iraq’s west and south as well.

Fifth, Iran’s “Terror ‘R Us” coalition including Syria has not limited its attacks to targets “just” in the Middle East as is sometimes alleged, as if such attacks if simply limited to the Middle East should be tolerated. They have plotted to kill those perceived as enemies of the Islamic Republic of Iran throughout the world and at last count they have killed or assassinated people in over twenty countries.

Sixth, the 9-11 Commission report also found Iran complicit in training the airplane hijackers. Add to that Iranian direct complicity in the attacks on the Khobar Towers, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and their plot to kill both the ambassadors from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Israel here in America and the full extent of Iran’s war on America clearly emerges of which Syria is a key player.

However, even when faced with these facts, many Americans have understandably concluded that Iran is a tar baby they wish would just go away. They want to “come home” and “let them” fight among themselves “over there.” But remember, our legitimate diplomatic personnel were kidnapped by the Iranians in 1979 and held hostage for over 400 days. Just on the eve of the 1980 election Presidential election, the failure of President James Carter to secure the release of the Americans in Iranian captivity pushed the American voters massively toward the challenger Ronald Reagan.

In 1986, the on-going attempt to get American and other hostages out of Beirut seriously harmed the last two years of the Reagan Presidency.

In 1990, Saddam Hussein seized Kuwait. His reasoning was bizarre but simple. He had attacked Iran in 1979, doing a favor for his Sunni brethren, so he thought, and yet felt betrayed because they demanded reimbursement for the $40 billion they paid Iraq for the staggering costs of the war.

In 1992, then HASC chairman Les Aspin and then Governor of Arkansas William Clinton campaigned in part on the weakness of the Bush administration in not taking down Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Desert Storm.

During the Clinton administration, especially the second term, the threat from Iran from its terrorism and missile deployments further embroiled America in the Middle East, even as the American response to the Iran bombings of the Khobar Towers and the embassies in Africa was nothing but tepid.

And during the past 12 years since 9/11, we have all but refused to honestly assess the seriousness of the threat from Iran and its accomplices, engaging in now what is the sixth iteration of Congressional legislation on the subject putting sanctions on Iran that are more Swiss cheese in appearance than anything else. Divestment efforts while in small part successful remain woefully inadequate to the task, as does any serious prospect of cutting off both banking and energy trade with Iran which could be done but which is not now even being contemplated. And any support for the Iranian opposition is not even on the table for discussion apparently.

It is true in March 1987 the US reflagged Kuwaiti oil tankers to stop Iranian attacks on Persian Gulf shipping.  We also deployed Task Force 52 to clean out their mining efforts and in the spring of 1988 engaged in Operation Earnest Will where we blew away a good deal of the Iranian Navy. But beyond that very limited military action, the US has done little to take effective action against the Islamic Republic in the past 34 years.

That is the central issue that envelopes our Syrian policy like a confusing fog. What is it that we should be pursuing as a policy, and even if we can agree on what appears to be an effective policy, do we have the political will and diplomatic and military capability to carry it out? Unfortunately, the means-an “unbelievable small strike” as it was described by our Secretary of State in contrast to the decade long effort in Afghanistan–appears to have little understandable connection to our objectives-getting rid of the Assad regime by diplomatic means and the cessation of chemical weapons attacks by Syria.

That is the conundrum now facing Congress. The means do not match the ends. Even worse, the excitement over the idea of putting together a “deal” to put under supervision by the UN of the chemical weapons stocks of the Syrians takes everything of importance off the table.

First, the practicality of such a proposal runs into the facts that it took the better part of a decade to get rid of Saddam’s Iraqi stocks through military action and subsequent UNSCON inspectors who were thwarted at every turn by regime officials. And even then, inspectors were kicked out of the country in 1998 while subsequently most of the world’s intelligence services could not verify such stocks of weapons had been eliminated.

Second, the Iraqi  and the Libyan chemical stocks were eliminated without a simultaneous civil war taking place in either country. If a cease fire is required, Assad benefits and puts off any American or allied military action indefinitely. The idea put forward by one administration official that a deal had been or could be reached with the rebel groups in Syria to turn over chemical weapons stocks if one of them gained power in Damascus defies common sense.

Third, the weapons stocks are largely the creation of the Russians who would know where they were and would challenge UN actions that might “get out of hand” or reveal too much. Is this a good place where we “Trust and hope to verify?” The negotiations to “disarm” Syria of its chemical stocks are going on simultaneously as plane loads of weapons from Iran and Russia are making daily deliveries to Syria, even as Mr. Putin lectures us–in the New York Times, no less–about the folly of using force to solve geostrategic dilemmas.

Fourth, a vote on the use of force against Syria–any force for that matter–is now probably off the table in the Senate and probably the House especially now that such force “might” be required or might not according to the US Department of State. The Senate majority leader has already postponed the vote originally scheduled for Wednesday, September 11.

Fifth, the UN, Putin and Syria can string out efforts to implement or even build an international inspections regime and any fixed agreement to place the chemical weapons in the hands of neutral or UN inspectors. Left unsaid, however, is that transferring control of the chemical stocks is one thing, but the weapons need to be destroyed and that is an effort not exactly likely in the midst of a civil war.

Sixth, forcible regime change appears now to be off the table. The administration has been clear that any contemplated US military action is NOT to change conditions on the battlefield but to persuade Assad, apparently, that future such US military action might be forthcoming so he should negotiate now for a timely exit as head of Syria. Nothing like this is in the cards and Assad knows this.

Seventh, the administration view runs head on into the views of McCain and Graham in the US Senate who want military action to change the direction of the current battlefield, precisely to made Assad believe like the Taliban and Saddam, “He’s next.” But such a prospect will lose votes among those against almost any military action whatsoever meaning whatever action the administration might take may very well have to be without Congressional authorization.

Eighth, the “Putin” proposal definitely serves the purposes of Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and Syria. And it is sickening to know that an American public relations firm in all probability wrote Mr. Putin’s speech, full of insults to America as it was. What we have now is Pravda on the Hudson.

Ninth, only if such chemical weapons stocks could be removed from Syria and then destroyed and done so quickly would key US interests be achieved. But as the Secretary of State said this is not going to happen because it simply logistically and diplomatically cannot be done in such a timeframe. Do then no fly zones come into the picture or endless wrangling over the makeup of inspection teams? As Yogi Berra said, “It’s déjà vu all over again,” Iraq during the 1990’s and now Syria.

Tenth, it appears Iran’s mullahs may have decided to call the bluff of the US and “international community” just to see about what redlines we were really serious. They may have calculated correctly or maybe incorrectly that the upshot of all this is Assad remains in power as Iran’s accomplice in the terror war against the West and the Axis of Jihad remains intact. But they obviously gambled on the former.

In any case, what goes on in Syria is not just about who rules in Damascus. It has to do with the very terrorist fight in which we have been engaged, and the strategic objectives of the Iranian mullahs, and their allies Russia, Hezbollah–and Syria.

Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/pravda-on-the-hudson#ixzz2fKvK6i00
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