In an Op-Ed piece in the Lexington Herald-Leader of 30 October, Robert Olson, characterized as a Middle East analyst, discussed the importance of Syria to many nations, including the U.S. It was an informative piece that also included Syria’s importance to Russia, Iran, and China, the gist being that these nations resent “unilateral approaches” of the U.S., to Olson an obvious villain, though the actual villains are the colonialists such as Britain and France, which drew the lines in the sand.
The element that makes all the Middle East important to other countries is oil, something to fight over if push comes to shove. Without that commodity being in the picture, other nations would be content to let the Muslims fight each other constantly, mostly over religion, something they’ve done for centuries. Other nations’ only interest would be in competing for the jihadists’ weapons trade.
Olson made this statement near the end of the piece: “Since many of these calamities are due to the U.S. decision to pursue a war of choice in Iraq, Americans are responsible for a goodly portion of these sad events.” All wars are wars of choice, i.e, fight or not fight, regardless of the reasons or non-reasons.
In the matter of Iraq, Olson didn’t mention that the top intelligence services of many countries, including Britain and Russia, insisted that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, but this was not a unilateral U.S. action anyway. Many other nations, especially Britain, formed the anti-Saddam coalition. The mistake was in attempting nation-building, a mistake now being seen in Afghanistan, where American GIs are routinely “back-shot” by their “friends.”
Saddam finally consented to allow inspectors back in Iraq in September 2002, after they had been denied access for some four years, while Saddam did who knows what. They returned in November 2002. From September until their return (and even after that until March 2003), Saddam could have done anything (and probably did) with his weapons, which were not found. The betting here is that they went to Syria, despite the Sunni-Shiite contention, another reason for the U.S. not to get involved in Syria.
Olson is the typical liberal analyst. By referencing “war of choice,” he actually meant “just” and “unjust” wars, as determined by any individual. But giving Olson credit for not meaning that (who knows?), it has to be remarked that the ONLY war of choice for which there is absolutely no explanation in which the U.S. has engaged since 1991 (the Kuwait thing, by any definition a “just war” sanctioned by the UN), was carried out in March-October 2011 by President Barack Hussein Obama, when he ordered the U.S. military to rain bombs and missiles on Libya.
Olson ignored Libya as if it doesn’t exist (even with its oil, sold mostly to Europe) even though the “Benghazi massacre,” which would never have happened absent Obama’s idiotic order to attack Libya in the first place, has dominated the news for seven weeks and been a primary subject in the recent debates. Instead, Olson whined about the carnage in Syria, though didn’t mention that Barack Hussein Obama raised Syrian insurrectionist hopes with his pronouncement that Syrian President Assad just had to go, and then, of course, didn’t deliver.
Even though Libya was not only not a threat to this country but had relinquished much if not all of its WMD (at least the nuclear elements) to this country, Obama wanted to bomb Qaddafi and sent his three “lady-Amazons” (Clinton, Rice, Powers) to the UN Security Council to “get permission,” completely bypassing Congress and in direct violation of both the Constitution and the War Powers Act as well as in direct contradiction to the advice of his top military officials.
The cover for this was that Qaddafi was killing his people just like Assad and all the other Muslim rulers do routinely. Somehow, Obama hasn’t noticed his responsibility regarding Syria, about the size of North Dakota. With Russia, Iran, Lebanon and China on his side, Assad pays no attention to Obama, who has disgraced the office and should have been impeached over his Libyan massacre. Now, the “Benghazi massacre” has come back to haunt him, and the only response the administration has made has consisted of one egregious lie after another.
One wonders about Obama’s motivation concerning Libya. Since he acted so erratically, it may be that he’s a hopeless narcissist, working out some sort of fantasy regarding his Commander-in-Chief position. How better to feed it than to take on a nation with a military force less than one-twentieth of one percent the size of the U.S military? He’s such a narcissist that he actually thinks he had something to do with the wasting of Osama. The book on that event will be written some day.
But Olson the liberal didn’t bother with Libya. After all, hasn’t Obama said terrorism was being defeated? Admitting Obama’s unspeakable errors regarding Libya, not the least being his administration’s intolerable lack of security for U.S. government workers there, would be unthinkable to any liberal. Yeah…Obama’s disastrous "war of choice"!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
No comments:
Post a Comment