Obama has officially started down a path that inevitably leads to full-scale war. At this point the Obama administration thinks it has already invested too much military, financial, and diplomatic capital into the Syrian conflict to turn back, and each step forward brings the U.S. closer to a direct military intervention.

Much like Obama’s spying program, few Americans knew that the United States was already involved, neck deep, with the mass killings occurring in Syria. For example, Obama has been directly arming the Syrian rebels for well over a year. The New York Times broke the story that the Obama administration has — through the CIA — been illegally trafficking thousands of tons of guns to the rebels from the dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. If not for these Obama-trafficked guns, thousands of deaths would have been prevented and the Syrian conflict over.

But even after the gun trafficking story broke, the mainstream media largely ignored it, and continued “reporting” that the U.S. has only been supplying the Syrian rebels with “non-lethal aid,” a meaningless term in a war setting, since all military aid directly assists in the business of killing.

The U.S. media also buried the truth behind the ridiculous chemical weapons claims by the Obama administration, which, like Bush’s WMDs, are based on absolutely no evidence. Having learned nothing from Iraq, the U.S. media again shamelessly regurgitates the “facts” as spoon-fed to them by the government, no questions asked. In reality, however, a number of independent chemical weapons experts have publicly spoken out against Obama’s accusations.

The U.S. media also refuses to ask: on what authority does the United States have to determine the usage of chemical weapons in other countries? This is the job of the UN. What has the UN said on the matter?

Top UN rights investigator Carla del Ponte said:

“According to the testimonies we have gathered, the [Syrian] rebels have used chemical weapons, making use of sarin gas.”

Again, the “rebels” have used chemical weapons, not the Syrian government, according to the UN representative. Many analysts have pointed out the obvious fact that the Syrian government would have zero military or political motive to use chemical weapons, especially when they have access to much more effective conventional weapons. Obama’s Bush-like lies are too familiar to the American public, who overwhelmingly do not support military intervention in Syria, or giving direct military aide to the Syrian rebels.

What has the UN said on giving military aid to the rebels?

UN chief Ban Ki-moon has called the Obama’s decision “a bad idea” and “not helpful.” This is because pouring arms into any country where there is a conflict only increases the bloodshed and risks turning the conflict into a broader catastrophe.

But like Bush, Obama is ignoring the UN, and there’s a logic to his madness. Obama has invested too much of his foreign policy credibility in Syria. His administration has been the backbone of the Syrian rebels from the beginning, having handpicked a group of rich Syrian exiles and molded them into Obama’s “officially recognized” government of Syria, while pressuring other nations to also recognize these nobodies as the “legitimate Syrian government.” Assad’s iron grip on power is a humiliation to these diplomatic efforts of Obama, and has thus weakened the prestige and power of U.S. foreign policy abroad.

More importantly, Obama’s anti-Syria diplomacy required that diplomatic relations between Syria and its neighbors — like Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey — be destroyed. These nations have peacefully co-existed for decades with Syria, but have now agreed — under immense U.S. pressure — to sever diplomatic relations while helping destroy the Syrian government by funneling guns and foreign fighters into the country, further destabilizing a region not yet recovered from the Iraq war. Obama’s Syria policy has turned an already-fragile region into a smoldering tinderbox.

If Obama were to suddenly tell his anti-Syria coalition that he’s realized his efforts at regime change have failed and that he would instead pursue a peaceful solution, his allies and Middle East lackeys would be less willing in the future to prostitute themselves for the foreign policy of the United States; and the U.S. would thus find it more difficult in the future to pursue “regime change” politics abroad. If Obama doesn’t back up his “Assad must go” demand, the U.S. will be unable to make such threats in the future; and U.S. foreign policy is heavily dependent on this type of political bullying.

Furthermore, Obama’s anti-Syria puppet coalition is taking tremendous political risks when it shamelessly follows in Obama’s footsteps, since the U.S. is terribly unpopular throughout the Arab world. This unpopularity is further proof that the “official” Syrian opposition that is asking for U.S. intervention has zero credibility in Syria, since very few Syrians would like to invite the U.S. military to “liberate” their country, especially after the “successful” liberations of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.

Obama, too, is worried about domestic politics in his own country over Syria. He knows that Americans are sick of Middle East wars, while the American public is also worried that arming the Syrian rebels would mean giving guns to the very same people that America is supposedly fighting a “war on terror” against.

In response to this concern Obama has said that the U.S. will only give arms to “moderate” rebels. A European Union diplomat mockingly responded:

“It would be the first conflict where we pretend we could create peace by delivering arms… If you pretend to know where the weapons will end up, then it would be the first war in history where this is possible. We have seen it in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Weapons don’t disappear; they pop up where they are needed.”

In Syria U.S. weapons will thus end up in the hands of the extremists doing the majority of the fighting. These are the people who will be in power if Syria’s government falls, unless a full U.S. invasion and Iraq-style occupation occurs. It’s difficult to decide which outcome would be worse for the Syrian people.

It’s now obvious that President Obama is escalating the Syrian conflict because his prized rebels have been beaten on the battlefield. Obama has thus chosen the military tactic of brinksmanship, a risky strategy that involves intentionally escalating a conflict in the hopes that either your opponent gives in to your demands (regime change), or your opponent gives you an excuse to invade.

Here’s how former U.S. General Wesley Clark explains Obama’s brinkmanship tactic in a New York Times op-ed, which is worth quoting at length:

“President Obama’s decision to supply small arms and ammunition to the rebels is a step, possibly just the first, toward direct American intervention. It raises risks for all parties, and especially for Mr. Assad, who knows that he cannot prevail, even with Russian and Iranian military aid, if the United States becomes fully engaged. We used a similar strategy against the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in Kosovo in 1999, where I commanded American forces, and showed that NATO had the resolve to escalate.

“The risk of going beyond lethal aid to establishing a no-fly zone to keep Mr. Assad’s planes grounded or safe zones to protect refugees — options under consideration in Washington — is that we would find it hard to pull back if our side began losing. Given the rebels’ major recent setbacks, can we rule out using air power or sending in ground troops?

“Yet the sum total of risks — higher oil prices, a widening war — also provide Syria (and its patrons, Iran and Russia) a motive to negotiate.” [emphasis added]

Clark’s innocent sounding “no-fly zone” is in fact a clever euphemism for all-out war, since no-fly zones require you destroy the enemy’s air force, surface to air missiles, and other infrastructure.

In Libya Obama swiftly turned a no-fly zone into a full-scale invasion and regime change, in violation of international law. A no-fly zone in Syria would also immediately turn into an invasion and “regime change,” with the possibility that the U.S. or Israel would exploit the “fog of war” to attack Iran.

All of this madness could be stopped immediately if Obama publicly announced that the Syrian rebels have lost the war — since they have — and will be cut off politically, financially, and militarily by the U.S. if they do not immediately proceed to negotiations with the Syrian government.  But this peaceful approach will instead be ignored in favor of untold thousands more dead, millions more made refugees, and a broader regional fracturing of Middle East civilization.

The peace talks are dead because the U.S.-backed rebels are boycotting the negotiations, ruining any hope for peace, while threatening to turn an already tragic disaster into a Yugoslavia-style catastrophe…or worse.

The U.S. backed rebels are not participating in the talks because they have nothing to gain from them, and everything to lose.

In war, the purpose of peace negotiations is to copy the situation on the battlefield and paste it to a treaty: the army winning the war enters negotiations from a dominant position, since its position is enforceable on the ground.

The U.S.-backed rebels would be entering peace talks broken and beaten, having been debilitated on the battlefield. The Syrian army has had a string of victories, pushing the rebels back to the border areas where they are protected by U.S. allies Turkey, Jordan, and northern Lebanon. Peace talks would merely expose this reality and end the war on terms dictated by the Syrian government.

A rebel leader was quoted in The New York Times revealing this motive for the rebel’s abandonment of peace talks:

“What can we [rebels] ask for when we go very weak to Geneva [for peace talks]?… The Russians and the Iranians and the representatives of the [Syrian] regime will say: ‘You don’t have any power. We are controlling everything. What you are coming to ask for?’”

This is the reality as it exists in Syria, and realistic peace talks would recognize the situation in Syria and end the conflict immediately.

But first the rebel’s supporters — the United States and its lackeys Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar — must acknowledge this reality and demand that the rebels forge ahead with peace talks, on threat of being cut off politically, financially, and militarily.

If this happens, war is over.

But if the war ended tomorrow, Syrian President Bashar Assad, would still be in power, and President Obama has said repeatedly, “Assad must go.” Obama would be further humiliated by his Syria policy if he had to again recognize Assad as president after spending a year recognizing a group of rich Syrian exiles as “the legitimate government of Syria” and after his administration repeatedly announced that the Assad regime had ended over a year ago.

More importantly, if Assad stayed in power, U.S. foreign policy would appear weak internationally, which is one main reason that the U.S. political establishment wants to go “all in” for regime change in Syria: super powers must back up their threats, since otherwise other nations might choose to challenge the United States.

This is the real reason peace talks will not be held. The U.S. and its European allies want regime change in Syria, and they are prepared to allow many more people to die to make it so. This was made clear by the Obama administration. The New York Times reports:

“[Syrian] President Bashar al-Assad’s gains on the battlefield have called the United States’ strategy on Syria into question, prompting the Obama administration to again consider military options, including arming the rebels and conducting airstrikes to protect civilians and the Syrian opposition, administration officials said on Monday.”

The above quote mentions “conducting airstrikes to protect civilians.” This is the infamous language of the UN resolution that allowed U.S.-NATO to intervene in Libya; but Obama immediately overstepped “protecting civilians” and quickly jumped into “regime change,” a gross violation of international law and a Bush-like war crime.

The UN — though especially China and Russia — have learned from the Libya example and will doubtfully ever again approve of a “protect civilian” UN resolution. If the U.S. intervenes in Syria, it will do so with a Bush-style “coalition of the willing,” i.e. U.S. allies.

Obama’s dream of having a post-Assad Syria is further complicated by the fact that Assad is apparently more popular than he has ever been.

Many Syrians that didn’t previously support Assad now do, having concluded that Assad in power is better than their country being obliterated in an Iraq-style invasion, or being dominated by Islamic extremists, as the majority of the Syrian rebel groups are.

Further helping Assad’s popularity is that Israel has bombed Syria recently on multiple occasions, while Syrians watch the unpopular United States funnel weapons to the rebels. As a result, Assad can now successfully portray himself as a defender of Syria’s sovereignty against foreign aggression.

But, Obama will not be deterred. After it became clear that the rebels were losing the war, the U.S. and its European allies removed the remaining legal barriers to further arming the rebels, while the religious leaders of Saudi Arabia and Qatar — both U.S. allies — assisted in the war effort by calling for Jihad against the Syrian government (the same week the leader of al-Qaeda did).

Behind this frenzy of rebel support lies the sick logic that, in order for successful peace negotiations to take place, the rebels need to be in a stronger battlefield position. Arm the rebels to the teeth for peace!

In response to this twisted logic, Oxfam International — a disaster relief coalition — responded by saying:

“Sending arms to the Syrian opposition won’t create a level playing field. Instead, it risks further fueling an arms free-for-all where the victims are the civilians of Syria. Our experience from other conflict zones tells us that this crisis will only drag on for far longer if more and more arms are poured into the country.”

Ultimately, the Syrian rebels would have already been defeated — and thousands of lives spared — if they had not been receiving support from the U.S. and other countries. The U.S.-backed rebels have said that a pre-condition for peace is “Assad must go;” but this demand does not coincide with the reality on the ground: the rebels are in no position to demand this, and the U.S. is using this unrealistic demand to artificially lengthen an already-bloody war.

Obama can either use his immense influence to end this bloody conflict by withdrawing support to the rebels, or he can extend the conflict and further tear to shreds the social fabric of the Middle East, while risking a multi-nation war that history will denounce as an easily-preventable holocaust.

Such a war would be completely artificial, and is being manufactured for geo-political reasons. When the most influential Sunni figures in Saudi Arabia and Qatar — both U.S. allies — recently called for Jihad against the Syrian government and Hezbollah, their obvious intensions were to boost the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia and its closest ally, the United States, by destroying Iran’s key ally in the region.

Will Sunni Muslims in Syria — who are the majority — suddenly begin attacking their Shia countrymen and the Syrian government? Unlikely. A compilation of data from humanitarian workers in and around Syria compiled by NATO suggests that:

…70 percent of Syrians support the Assad regime. Another 20 percent were deemed neutral and the remaining 10 percent expressed support for the rebels.”

The pro-Assad 70 percent is mostly Sunni. This data flies in the face of the constant barrage of western media distortion about what’s happening in Syria. Previous polling compiled last year by Qatar had similar results, and was likewise ignored by the western media.

The above article quoted a source familiar with the data:

The Sunnis have no love for Assad, but the great majority of the community is withdrawing from the revolt… what is left is the foreign fighters who are sponsored by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. They are seen by the Sunnis as far worse than Assad.

Syrian Sunnis are likely disgusted by the behavior of the foreign extremists, which include a laundry list of war crimes, ethnic cleansing, as well as the terrorist bombing of a Sunni Mosque that killed the top Sunni cleric in Syria — along with 41 worshipers and 84 others injured. The Sunni cleric was killed because he was pro-Assad.

The recent calls for Jihad by the Saudi and Qatari Sunni leaders are likely in response to the Syrian government scoring major victories against the rebels. The rebels are now badly losing the war, in large part because they’ve completely lost their base of community support.

There are other key rebel supporters now taking urgent action to bolster the flagging rebel war effort. The leader of al-Qaeda, for example, made a recent plea for Sunnis to support the rebels against the Syrian government, while U.S. politician John McCain journeyed into Syria to meet with rebels — later identified as terrorists — to further commit the U.S. to the rebel side.

Meanwhile, The New York Times confirmed that the CIA had increased its already-massive arms trafficking program into Syria, while the European union agreed to drop the Syrian arms embargo, so that even more arms could be funneled to the rebels.

And to top it off, France now says it has proof that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against the rebels — a UN representative has suggested that just the opposite is the case — while the rebels are desperately trying to incite war between Syria and Israel by attacking the Syrian government on the border of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Also relevant is that the pro-Jihad religious leaders of Qatar and Saudi Arabia are taking a giant gamble in their recent anti-Hezbollah proclamations, and risk triggering political instability to these already-shaky regimes, which are hugely dependent on the religious leaders for support.

Hezbollah is still revered throughout the Muslim world for its military defeat of Israel in 2006; and most Muslims will likely be uninterested in waging Jihad in Muslim majority Syria. Also, attacking the Syrian government and Hezbollah would mean allying with Israel and the United States, not an ideal situation for most jihadists.

It’s very possible that the Syrian tinderbox could drag the surrounding Middle Eastern countries into a massive regional war, with Russia and the United States easily within the gravitational pull.

The Syrian conflict could end very quickly if President Obama rejected U.S. support for the rebels and demanded his U.S. allies in the region do the same. Obama should acknowledge the situation in Syria as it exists, and respect the wishes of the Syrian people, who do not want their country destroyed.

Instead, the U.S. is considering arming the rebels even more.

U.S. Senator John McCain revealed the unofficial U.S. government policy for Syria when he said that he would tolerate an extremist takeover of Syria if it weakened Iran.

At this point an extremist takeover of Syria will cost tens of thousands of more lives, millions more refugees, while exploding the region into a multi-country orgy of violence.

The media will blame such genocide on Islamic sectarian violence, and ignore the obvious political motives.

Hopefully, the social movement in Turkey will force the Turkish government out of the western-controlled anti-Syrian alliance, while empowering other Middle Eastern countries to do the same.

_______________

Photo note:  The images in the title show the Shrine of Hujr ibn Adi Al Kindi (died 660 CE) companion of Muhammad, before and after the May 2, 2013 destruction of the shrine and disinterment of his body, allegedly by Wahhabi Sunni militants.

Equally odd is that Obama’s strongest military ally on the ground in Syria — the best equipped and effective fighting force against the Syrian Government — is Jabhat al-Nusra, a group that has affiliated itself with al-Qaeda, and aims to turn Syria into an extremist Islamic state that enforces a fundamentalist version of Sharia law.

It’s difficult to know exactly how al-Nursa received its guns, but one can make an educated guess. For example, The New York Times explained in detail how the CIA has been in a massive arms trafficking operation that has already funneled thousands of tons of guns from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to Syria:

The C.I.A. role in facilitating the [weapons] shipments… gave the United States a degree of influence over the process [of weapon distribution]…American officials have confirmed that senior White House officials were regularly briefed on the [weapons] shipments.

Where are the guns winding up in this massive arms trafficking operation? An important question to ask is: which rebels in Syria have guns and which ones don’t.

The Guardian reports:

The [secular] Free Syrian Army’s shortage of weapons and other resources compared with [jihadist] Jabhat al-Nusra is a recurrent theme… ‘If you join al-Nusra, there is always a gun for you but many of the FSA brigades can’t even provide bullets for their fighters,’…3,000 FSA [Free Syrian Army] men have joined al-Nusra in the last few months, mainly because of a lack of weapons and ammunition…Al-Nusra fighters rarely withdraw for shortage of ammunition…

While it’s difficult to know if CIA trafficked guns are going directly or indirectly to al-Nursa, it’s extremely likely that these guns are going directly into the hands of ideological cousins of al-Nursa, since the Syrian rebels are completely dominated by Islamic extremists.

For example, when the Economist magazine was outlining the most important fighting groups in Syria, “Who’s Who in the Syrian Battlefield,” they noted with regret that the only important non-Islamist group was in the Kurdish areas, which is virtually an autonomous zone. As far as the secular U.S.-backed fighting group, The Supreme Military Command, the Economist conceded it “has little control on the ground.” Keep in mind that the Economist is very much in favor of a U.S.-NATO military intervention in Syria.

The New York Times also confirmed the complete dominance of extremists on the rebel side:

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.

Thus, the minority of secular rebel fighters are not leading the civil war and will not be in power if Assad falls. Instead, honest Syrian revolutionaries will instantly fall victim to the extremists, who will immediately proceed to a mopping-up mission of their former allies.

It’s now clear that Obama’s foreign policy in Syria is actively encouraging terrorism. Many rebel-controlled areas in Syria are now new safe havens for terrorists, and there have been hundreds of terrorist bombing attacks against the Syrian government, many of which have targeted civilian areas.

While the U.S. is pouring arms into the jihadist-controlled areas, they have also downplayed the atrocities committed by these rebels, which are well documented on Youtube and include a multitude of war crimes that include beheadings, group execution of prisoners, ethnic cleansing, and the recent episode where a famous rebel commander was videotaped mutilating a dead Syrian solider and eating his heart.

By minimizing this barbarism the Obama administration ensures that it will continue, since the extremists are empowered by U.S. support and are shielded in the U.S. media and protected from international political pressures.

One question the U.S. media never thinks of asking is: Where did all these Islamic extremists come from and why? The Sunni Islamic opposition inside Syria has long been religiously moderate, implying that many of the extremists are foreigners.

The ideological source of this extremism came from Saudi Arabian religious figures and their allies, who use Islam as a political tool to target nations “unfriendly” to Saudi Arabia and the United States. The most glaring example of this in regard to Syria was the Fatwa (official interpretation/statement) issued by 107 Islamic scholars that denounced the Syrian government and encouraged Muslims to fight against it. The statement essentially encouraged jihad, though the word wasn’t mentioned explicitly.

The statement includes:

It is a duty for all Muslims to support the revolutionaries in Syria [against the government] “so that they can successfully complete their revolution and attain their rights and their freedom.

The hypocrisy of such a statement is almost too glaring: the many Saudi figures who signed the document that want “freedom” in Syria are not demanding freedom in Saudi Arabia, by far the country with the least amount of freedoms in the world.

With Saudi Arabia and Qatar providing guns to the Syrian rebels — with help from the CIA — the Saudi religious figures attached to the regime give religious/political support by misleading devout Muslims to flock to Syria to attack a country of Muslims, thus creating the giant sectarian divisions we now see throughout the Islamic world.

The vast majority of this Islamic sectarian warfare is exported by Saudi Arabia, which funds radical Islamic schools all over the Middle East that attract the downtrodden of these countries by providing basic social services that the host country is too poor — or unwilling — to provide. There is an informative chapter on this dynamic in Vijay Prashad’s excellent book, A People’s History of the Third World.

Now the debate among U.S.-NATO countries is whether to give more sophisticated weaponry to the extremist-dominated rebels in Syria. The Obama Administration is pressuring the European Union to drop its arms embargo on Syria so that a new torrent of weapons can flood the country (apparently the CIA operations haven’t yet completely drenched Syria with guns).

In response to the “drop the embargo” discussion, Oxfam intelligently responded by saying:

Sending arms to the Syrian opposition won’t create a level playing field. Instead, it risks further fueling an arms free-for-all where the victims are the civilians of Syria. Our experience from other conflict zones tells us that this crisis will only drag on for far longer if more and more arms are poured into the country.

One EU diplomat gave a scathing rebuke to the Obama Administration’s claim that it could ensure that new weapons wouldn’t wind up in “the wrong hands” in Syria:

It would be the first conflict where we pretend we could create peace by delivering arms,” the diplomat said. “If you pretend to know where the weapons will end up, then it would be the first war in history where this is possible. We have seen it in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Weapons don’t disappear; they pop up where they are needed.

In Syria the weapons are needed by those doing the brunt of the fighting. Again, the al-Nursa jihad group is widely acknowledged to be the most effective fighting force against the Syrian government–the guns thus flow to them.

Obama has taken the saying, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” to irrational heights, and in so doing is helping to produce a new generation of Islamic extremists that will help fuel the U.S.-led never-ending “war on terror.” The real intention of the War on Terror is not to stop terrorists, but to target nation states that are opposed to U.S. foreign policy: Iraq and Libya — like Syria — were both secular countries at the time of their being invaded; Afghanistan was invaded even though the vast majority of those involved in the 9-11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia. There was no terrorist problem in Iraq before the U.S. invaded, just like there was no terrorist problem in Syria before the U.S.-backed rebels came onto the scene, other than the typical terrorism inflicted by these regimes on their own people. But the U.S. government is hardly innocent of inflicting terrorism on its own citizens either.

It’s blatantly obvious to most Americans that Syria and Iran are at the top of Obama’s war list, a much higher priority than any terrorist group. This is why Obama is tolerating the terrorist groups inside Syira; they are being used as tools against his real target, Syria and then Iran.

The Syrian people must be left to themselves to decide their future. The United States is utterly incapable of “helping” countries by using military means, as the fractured nations of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya painfully prove. The global anti-war movement must demand Hands Off Syria!

With Obama’s blessing Israel fighter jets recently attacked Syria on three separate occasions; in one massive air strike on a military installation in Damascus 42 Syrian soldiers were killed. Soon after Obama finally agreed to a peace conference with Russia, which had been asking for such talks for months.

Obama is entering these talks from a weakened position. The Syrian government is winning the war against the U.S.-backed rebels, and success on the ground is the trump card of any peace talks. Obama and the rebels are in zero position to be demanding anything in Syria at the moment.

It’s possible that Obama wants to avoid further humiliation in his Syria meddling by a last minute face-saving “peace” deal. It’s equally likely, however, that these peace talks are a clever diplomatic ruse, with war being the real intention. It’s not uncommon for peace talks to break down and be used as a justification for an intensification of war, since “peace was attempted but failed.”

And Obama has plenty of reasons to pursue more war. He would look incredibly weak and foolish if Syria’s president were to stay in power after Obama’s administration had already announced that Assad’s regime was over and hand picked an alternative government of Syrian exiles that the U.S. — and other U.S. allies — were treating as the “legitimate government of Syria.”

Here’s how the BBC referred to Obama’s Syrian puppet government:

… the Syrian opposition’s political leadership — which wanders around international capitals attending conferences and making grand speeches — is not leading anyone. It barely has control of the delegates in the room with it, let alone the fighters in the field.

If an unlikely peace deal is reached, these Syrian exiles — who only a tiny minority of the rebel fighters actually listen to — will be the ones to sign off on the deal.

Many politicians in the U.S. are still clamoring for war in Syria, based on the unproven accusation that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against the rebels. But the UN so far has only indicated that the exact opposite is true: there is significant evidence the U.S.-backed rebels used chemical weapons against the Syrian government. (See UN accuses Syrian rebels of chemical weapons use)

Of course this fact only made the back pages of the U.S. mainstream media, if it appeared at all. Similarly bad news about the U.S.-backed rebels committing large scale ethnic/religious cleansing and numerous human rights violations didn’t manage to make it on the front pages either. And the numerous terrorist bombings by the U.S.-backed rebels that have indiscriminately killed civilians have likewise been largely ignored by U.S. politicians and the media.

(See New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Guardian)

The U.S. position is weakened further by the fact that the majority of the rebel fighters are Islamic extremists, who are fighting for jihad and sharia law, not democracy. The Guardian reported recently:

Syria’s main armed opposition group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), is losing fighters and capabilities to Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist organization with links to al-Qaida that is emerging as the best-equipped, financed and motivated force fighting Bashar al-Assad’s [Syrian] regime.

The New York Times adds:

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.

But even with all these barriers to the U.S. dictating its terms on the Syrian government, Obama has a trump card of his own: the U.S. and the Israeli military.

It’s possible that the Israeli airstrikes on Syria were used as a bargaining chip with the proposed peace conference in Russia. If Obama threatened to bomb Syria into the Stone Age, there is plenty of evidence —Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya — to back up this threat.

Following through with this kind of threat is actually considered intelligent foreign policy to many politicians in the U.S., since a country not aligned with the U.S. will have been weakened and fragmented as an opposing force, lowering the final barrier to war with Iran.

U.S. foreign policy is now completely dependent on using the threat of annihilation. As U.S. economic power has declined in relation to China and other countries, the economic carrot has been tossed aside in favor of the military stick. Plenty of U.S. foreign policy “experts” are demanding that Obama unsheathe the stick again, less this foundation of U.S. foreign policy be proven to be just talk and no action.

This is the essence of U.S. involvement in Syria, which is risking regional war that may include Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Israel, Iran, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia with the potential to drag in the bigger powers connected to these nations, the U.S. and Europe on one hand and Russia and China on the other.

The fate of the already-suffering Middle East is hanging in the balance.

Recently The Onion began publishing articles that framed the Syrian conflict according to the very biased views of U.S. politicians and mainstream media. Suddenly The Onion’s objectivity and satire was reduced to regurgitating the war mongering that the website had previously mocked.

For example, a recent satirical Onion article was entitled: “‘Help Has To Be On The Way Now,’ Thinks Syrian Man Currently Being Gassed.”

The article quotes a fictitious Syrian named “Amir” who is a victim of a chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government. Amir begs for foreign intervention to help save him from the Syrian government.

The article begins:

As Syrian military aircraft rained chlorine gas on his community Tuesday, local man Amir Najjar, 36, reportedly assured himself that military and humanitarian aid from foreign governments must certainly be racing toward the country at this very moment to protect him and other helpless civilians.

Given the current international debate about the use of chemical weapons in Syria — and the potential for this debate to result in a military invasion — the Onion’s article is profoundly irresponsible. The article assumes that the U.S. intelligence agency (CIA) is correct when it stated that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against the U.S.-backed rebels. And it incorrectly insinuates that the U.S. government is reluctant to intervene in Syria. Just the opposite is the case. The U.S. government is searching for the most flimsy, completely uncorroborated conjectures to justify an invasion.

But the same CIA also said that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction,” which was a fabricated lie. Millions of lives are at stake in Syria, and the situation is uncertain. Blindly echoing these statements of the U.S. government against Syria only serves to re-enforce these yet-proven accusations, the consequence of which could be the loss of millions of lives.

This isn’t to say that The Onion doesn’t have a right to satirize the Syrian conflict. But the current situation in Syria is critical, and a U.S.-backed invasion a very real possibility. The Onion hasn’t shown appropriate caution as to how its assertions may affect impressionable readers on a subject that is still very much in flux. One need only imagine if the Onion published articles before the Iraq War calling for U.S. intervention against Saddam’s alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Syria situation is no different.

To be clear, there has been zero evidence presented that supports accusations that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the U.S.-backed rebels, let alone civilians. Middle Eastern journalist Robert Fisk wrote an excellent article about this, while President Obama was forced to acknowledge as much the same day The Onion article was published.

With its Syria articles The Onion has thrown its influence firmly into the pro-war camp. This is significant because The Onion remains — like Jon Stewart’s Daily Show — a very real source of political influence; the website has written articles with a sharp political perspective to intentionally cultivate this image.

For example, when President Obama recently visited Israel, The Onion wrote a number of excellent articles about the trip that exposed Obama’s unabashed support of Israel while offering zero realistic solutions to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The Onion has likewise written a number of great articles about the U.S. economy that millions of people can relate to — articles that again expose the lies that U.S. politicians are telling people about the economy. (This writer has posted several Onion articles on Facebook with the intention of raising political awareness.)

The point is that The Onion’s readers enjoy the articles, in part, because they trust the writers to base their satire on a foundation of accurate political analysis. Many readers would be less enthusiastic about The Onion if they concluded that some of their articles were mimicking U.S. war propaganda.

Worse still, The Onion’s article suggests that U.S. military intervention would be a “good” thing, presumably based on the previous “successful” U.S. invasions that destroyed and fragmented the nations of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.

The article again quotes the fictional ‘Amir’:

The United States and many other nations publicly stated that the use of chemical weapons was a line that [Syrian] President [Bashar] al-Assad could not cross and would draw a swift and overwhelming response, so I have 100 percent confidence they [U.S.-NATO] are on their way to save us right now.

After the examples of Iraq and Libya, few Middle Eastern people — even opponents of Syrian’s government — would have any reason to believe that a U.S. military invasion would “save” them.

Ultimately, The Onion has zero responsibility to practice responsible journalism, but it does have a duty to its readers — who trust the website’s liberal political perspective — not to re-enforce war propaganda that could result in yet another U.S. military adventure.

Hopefully, The Onion corrects its mistakes about Syria before it acquires the sad honor of being the first fake news website with blood on its hands.

The New York Times reports:

The White House said on Thursday that American intelligence agencies now believed, with “varying degrees of confidence,” that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons…

Immediately afterwards, Obama’s Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, gave a blunt rebuke: “Suspicions are one thing; evidence is another.”

This disunity mirrored the recent disagreement that Chuck Hagel had with Obama’s Secretary of State, John Kerry, when both testified in front of Congress with nearly opposite versions of what was happening in Syria and how the U.S. should respond. Kerry was a cheerleader for intervention while Hagel — the military’s mouthpiece — advised caution.

The U.S. government’s internal squabbling over whether the Syrian government used chemical weapons is really an argument on whether the U.S. should invade Syria, since Obama claimed that any use of chemical weapons was a “red line” that, if crossed, would invoke an American military response. Never mind that Obama’s “red line” rhetoric was stolen from the mouth of Bush Jr., who enjoyed saying all kinds of similarly stupid things to sound tough.

But now Obama’s Bushism must be enforced, say the politicians, less the U.S. look weak by inaction. This seemingly childish argument is in fact very compelling among the U.S. political establishment, who view foreign policy only in terms of military power. If Syria is not frightened into submission by U.S. military threats, then Iran and other countries might follow suit and do as they please and U.S. “influence” would wane. Only a “firm response” can stop this domino effect from starting.

This type of logic is the basis for the recent Syria chemical weapons accusations, which was conjured up by the U.S. “Intelligence” service (CIA) and its British and Israeli counterparts (the same people who “proved” that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction, which later proved to be a fabricated lie). All three of these countries’ intelligence agencies simply announced that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons, provided zero evidence, and then let their respective nations’ media run with the story, which referred to the baseless accusations as “mounting evidence.”

In the real world it appears that the U.S.-backed Syrian rebels are the ones responsible for having used chemical weapons against the Syrian government. It was the Syrian government who initially accused the U.S.-backed rebels of using chemical weapons, and asked the UN to investigate the attack. This triggered the Syrian rebels and later the Obama administration to accuse the Syrian government of the attack.

A very revealing New York Times article quoted U.S.-backed Syrian rebels admitting that the chemical weapons attack took place in a Syrian government controlled territory and that 16 Syrian government soldiers died as a result of the attack, along with 10 civilians plus a hundred more injured. But the rebels later made the absurd claim that the Syrian government accidentally bombed its own military with the chemical weapons.

Interestingly, the Russian government later accused the United States of trying to stall the UN investigation requested by the Syrian government, by insisting that the parameters of the investigation be expanded to such a degree that a never-ending discussion over jurisdiction and rules would eventually abort the investigation.

Complicating the U.S.’ stumbling march to war against Syria is the fact that the only effective U.S.-backed rebel forces are Islamist extremists, the best fighters of which have sworn allegiance to Al-Qaeda. The same week that the U.S. media was screaming about chemical weapons, The New York Times actually published a realistic picture of the U.S.-backed Syrian rebels, which warrants extended quotes:

Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government.

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.

The Islamist character of the [rebel] opposition reflects the main constituency of the rebellion…The religious agenda of the combatants sets them apart from many civilian activists, protesters and aid workers who had hoped the uprising would create a civil, democratic Syria.

Thus, yet another secular Middle Eastern government — after Iraq and Libya — is being pushed into the abyss of Islamist extremism, and the shoving is being done by the United States, which The New York Times discovered was funneling thousands of tons of weapons into Syria through U.S. allies in the region, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. We now know that these weapons were given to the Islamist extremists; directly or indirectly, it doesn’t matter.

Even after this U.S.-organized weapons trafficking was uncovered, the Obama administration still has the nerve to say that the U.S. is only supplying “non lethal” aid to the Syrian rebels. Never mind that many of the guns that the U.S. is transporting into Syria from its allies were sold to the allies by the United States, where the weapons were manufactured.<

Now, many politicians are demanding that Obama institute a “no fly zone” in Syria, a euphemism for military invasion — one country cannot enforce a no fly zone inside another country without first destroying the enemy Air Force, not to mention its surface to air missiles, etc. We saw in Libya that a no fly zone quickly evolved into a full scale invasion, which would happen again in Syria, with the difference being that Syria has a more powerful army with more sophisticated weaponry, not to mention powerful allies — Iran and Russia.

This is the real reason that the U.S. military is not aligned with the Obama administration over Syria. Such a war would be incredibly risky, and inevitably lead to a wider conflict that would engulf an already war-drenched region, creating yet more “terrorists” who would like to attack the United States.

The U.S. public has learned the lessons of Iraq’s WMD’s, and that lesson is not lost on U.S. soldiers, few of whom want to fight another war for oil against a country which is a zero-threat to the United States.

President Obama will have no talk of peace. He has chosen war since the very start and he’s sticking to it. A recent New York Times article revealed that President Obama has been lying through his teeth about the level of U.S. involvement in the Syrian conflict since the beginning.

The President recently said that the U.S. government continues to give only “non-lethal” military aid to the rebels, but The New York Times revealed that the CIA has been actively funneling and distributing massive shipments of weapons to the rebels over the borders of Jordan and Turkey.

This “arms pipeline” of illegal gun trafficking has been overseen by the U.S. government since January 2012. It has literally been the lifeblood of the Syrian “rebels,” and thus the cause of the immense bloodshed in Syria.

The New York Times reports:

The C.I.A. role in facilitating the [weapons] shipments… gave the United States a degree of influence over the process [of weapon distribution]…American officials have confirmed that senior White House officials were regularly briefed on the [weapons] shipments.

The article also explains that a “conservative estimate” of the weapons shipment to date is “3,500 tons.”

So while Obama has repeatedly lied about “non-lethal” military aid, he has been personally involved in overseeing a multi-country flood of weapons into Syria, many of which are given to terrorist organizations. The only effective fighting force for the Syrian rebels has been the terrorist grouping the Al Nusra Front, and now we know exactly where they got their guns.

If not for this U.S.-sponsored flood of guns, the Syrian rebels — many of them from Saudi Arabia and other countries — would have been militarily defeated long ago. Tens of thousands of lives would thus have been spared and a million refugees could have remained in their homes in Syria. The large scale ethnic cleansing initiated by the rebels would have been preventable.

But Obama is so intent on war that he will not even discuss peace with the Syrian government. He has repeatedly stated that there are “preconditions” for peace negotiations, the most important one being the downfall of the Syrian government, i.e., regime change. If a toppling of a nation’s government is Obama’s precondition for peace, then Obama is by definition choosing war.

Never mind that Syria is a sovereign nation that should not have to worry about a foreign country making demands as to who is in power. Obama doesn’t seem to think this relevant. In fact, his administration has been very busy determining who the “legitimate” government of Syria is, by hand picking the “National Coalition of Syrian Revolution,” the prime minister of which is a U.S. citizen.

One of the preconditions for being on Obama’s National Coalition of Syrian Revolution is that there be no peace negotiations with the Syrian government. Of course most Syrians want to immediately end the conflict in Syria, since it threatens an Iraq-like destruction of the country.

The most popular leader of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution, Moaz al-Khatib, recently quit in protest because he was prohibited from pursuing peace negotiations by the U.S.-appointed opposition Prime Minister, Ghassan Hitto, a U.S. citizen who had lived in the U.S. for the previous 30 years.

The Guardian reports:

 Immediately after his nomination as interim [Prime Minister], Ghassan Hitto [U.S. citizen], had distanced himself from Al-Khatib’s willingness to negotiate with elements of the Assad regime in a bid to bring an end to the civil war.

By appointing Hitto as the leader of the opposition, Obama has splintered the already-splintered opposition while making “no peace negotiations” the official policy of the U.S.-backed opposition, the so-called “legitimate” government of Syria.

Obama also recently pressured the Arab League — composed of regimes loyal to the United States — to install as a member the hand-picked National Coalition of Syrian Revolution as the official government of Syria. The appointment didn’t give as much credibility to the opposition as much as it degraded the Arab League’s legitimacy.

The rebel’s seat in the Arab league implies, again, that the U.S. and its allies are fully intent on “regime change,” no matter how many people die, no matter the existing political alternatives. They will not reverse course.

The Russian government called the Arab League membership decision “… an open encouragement of the [rebel] forces which, unfortunately, continue to bet on a military solution in Syria, not looking at multiplying day by day the pain and suffering of the Syrians…. Moscow is convinced that only a political settlement and not encouraging destructive military scenarios, can stop the bloodshed and bring peace and security to all Syrians in their country.”

Obama has rejected both Russian and Syrian calls for peace negotiations in recent months, as he has greatly increased the frequency of the weapons trafficking plan. Reuters reports on the Obama Administration’s reaction to peace proposals from Russia and Syria:

…[Syria's Foreign Minister's] offer of [peace] talks drew a dismissive response from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was starting a nine-nation tour of European and Arab capitals in London [to help organize support for the Syrian rebels].

Obama rejects peace because he cannot dictate its outcomes. When it comes to war the more powerful party decides what the peace looks like, and Obama’s rebels are — after two years — still in a poor position to bargain a favorable peace to the United States, no matter how many tons of guns the U.S. has dumped into Syria. This is because the Syrian government still enjoys a large social base of support, something you’ll seldom read about in the U.S. media.

Another sign of war lust from the Obama administration came after the Syrian government accused the rebels of a chemical weapons attack. The U.S. government initially dismissed the accusation, until the rebels later accused the Syrian government of the attack.

But even Syria’s rebels have admitted that the chemical weapons attack took place in a government controlled territory, and that 16 Syrian government solders died in the attack along with 10 civilians plus a hundred more injured. But the rebels make the absurd claim that the government accidentally bombed themselves with the chemical weapons.

No matter who is responsible, the Obama administration plans to hold the Syrian Government responsible for crossing the “red line” of a chemical weapons attack (Obama’s version of Bush’s infamous “weapons of mass destruction”). The red line refers to a direct military invasion, versus the prolonged blood-letting that has been U.S. policy so far.

Obama’s envoy for the United Nations, Susan Rice, issued a statement about the chemical weapons attack that, according to The New York Times, “… repeated previous American warnings that there would be “consequences” if the Assad government used or failed to secure chemical weapons.”

So, if the Syrian rebels get hold of chemical weapons and use them on the Syrian government — as seems to be the case — the Syrian government should be held responsible, according to the Obama Administration, “for not securing chemical weapons.”

There is zero room for truth with logic like this. But the perverse logic serves to protect Obama’s prized rebels, who’ve committed a slew of atrocities against the Syrian population, and who gain key political and media protection from the U.S.

Ultimately, the entire Syrian war was born amid the big lie that the battle began — and continues — as a popular armed struggle. But the real revolutionaries in Syria like the National Coordination Committee, have long ago declared that they want a peaceful end to this conflict.

Obama’s Bush-like determination to overthrow the Syrian government has led him down the same path as his predecessor, though Obama is fighting a “smarter” war, i.e., he’s employing more deceptive means to achieve the same ends, at the exact same cost of incredible human suffering.

Not so. The destruction of Syrian society will continue, indeed, increase. Although there are plenty of non-military options the Obama administration could pursue, he’s instead choosing the bloodiest course possible. Millions of Syrians have had their lives destroyed, and now millions more can look forward to a similar fate.

U.S. media outlets have reported that all of the hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. aid to Syria’s rebels has been “non-lethal,” but the New York Times admitted recently:

American [government] officials declined to discuss an ongoing covert program to train rebel fighters or the extent to which it has made a difference on the battlefield.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Obama is helping to orchestrate the largest state-sponsored terror campaign since the still-simmering genocides of the Congo and Yugoslav wars. This fact has been completely hidden from the view of the U.S. public, but it’s a fact nonetheless.

For example, the only effective fighting force of the Syrian rebels, the Al Nusra Front, has been labeled a terrorist organization even by the United States. Its frequent terrorist bombings have helped shred the fabric of Syrian society; its most recent massive car bombings killed 100 mostly-innocent people in central Damascus, including dozens of children and wounding hundreds more.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi denounced the latest terrorist attack as a “war crime.” But such labels do not get attached to allies of the United States. Obama is ignoring the countless similar attacks by Syria’s terrorist rebels, ensuring that such attacks will increase.

In fact, U.S. officials blocked a Russian-sponsored resolution at the United Nations Security Council condemning the recent terror bombings. Actions like these both minimize and encourage indiscriminate terrorist bombings.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s most recent announcement of U.S. aid to Syrian rebels made sure to mention that the aid will not go to “terrorists” — an absurd statement considering that the terrorists in Syria are the ones in power on the ground for the opposition. Of course, most of the crucial aid will be funneled to them, no matter who initially receives it.

The Obama administration has been on a relentless search for a non-terrorist dominated Syrian opposition, only to fail and then re-start his quest. Initially the Syrian National Council play-acted as the non-terrorist “revolutionary” opposition.

But Hillary Clinton later confronted reality and dumped the group, correctly labeling them as ”… a bunch of out-of-touch exiles who should be replaced with a group more representative of the fighters on the ground.”

The same article referred to the Syrian National Council as “too accommodating to terrorists.”

Obama then sent Clinton on an international tour to discover and organize a brand new non-terrorist “legitimate” Syrian opposition. On her journey Clinton unearthed yet another group of handpicked rich Syrian exiles who hadn’t been in the country in decades, with no connections on the ground and, more importantly, zero military presence of any significance. Clinton re-named the group the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution. Clinton unveiled her new offspring to glowing U.S. media acclaim, but Hillary’s latest baby was again born from smoke and mirrors. The New York Times reported:

…the coalition has struggled to agree on a slate of governing leaders that would unite what is still a loosely allied organization, trying to weave together local councils, splinter organizations, disparate opposition groups and the loyalties of the armed units fighting the forces of President Bashar al-Assad.

Obama now intends to buy the legitimacy of his new Syrian opposition, as part of the newly announced aid package. The New York Times shamelessly reports:

one aim of the $60 million in [new] assistance is to help the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces build up its credibility within the country…

Obama’s new “friends of Syria” would like the United States to destroy Syria. Many within the rag tag grouping are demanding a direct U.S. military intervention to topple the existing government.

Anyone who has paid attention to the Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libyan wars understands that U.S.-style regime change equals the destruction of a nation. The above three countries were all once independently functioning civilizations, but are now socially and economically destroyed and regionally fragmented, ruled by whomever in the region happens to have the most guns.

As millions of Syrians become internally and externally displaced refugees and the country obliterated, the Obama administration is purposely choosing not to settle the situation with diplomacy. Both Russia and Syria have made recent offers for negotiations. By rebuking these offers and aiding the rebels instead, Obama is choosing more mass slaughter.

Reuters reports:

Syria is ready for talks with its armed opponents, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said on Monday, in the clearest offer yet to negotiate with rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad.

The Obama Administration responds to the peace negotiations:

…[Syria's Foreign Minister's] offer of talks drew a dismissive response from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was starting a nine-nation tour of European and Arab capitals in London [to help organize the Syrian rebels yet again].

Why does Obama choose war instead of peace? Because presently Obama cannot dictate his terms; the majority of Syria is still controlled by the Syrian government, which remains in a much more powerful bargaining position, a painfully stubborn fact.

Obama will thus sponsor large-scale mass murder and ethnic-religious cleansing until his handpicked rebels gain enough power on the ground to negotiate a peace favorable to U.S. interests.

The Obama administration’s hands are awash with the blood of countless innocent Syrians, blood that promises to spill into Lebanon and other neighboring states as the region becomes destabilized along ethnic-religious lines. The “popular revolution” in Syria has long ago been replaced by foreign mercenary terrorists financed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The Obama administration has overseen this entire process, while actively trying to organize a respectable “public face” for the rebels.

Obama’s recent strides in Syria end with a logical conclusion: U.S. direct military intervention. The stage is still being set, waiting until optimal conditions are met for a Libyan style U.S./NATO mass-bombing mission to finish off the Syrian government. In the eyes of Obama the resulting disaster will be worth the mess, since a non-compliant regime to the U.S. will have been toppled, thus clearing the path for the long term plan of crushing Iran.

______________________

Sources cited:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/world/middleeast/us-pledges-60-million-to-syrian-opposition.html?hp&_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/world/middleeast/syrian-air-raids-increase-as-battle-for-strategic-areas-intensifies-rebels-say.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/world/middleeast/clinton-expresses-support-for-new-syrian-opposition-coalition.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/world/middleeast/us-pledges-60-million-to-syrian-opposition.html?hp&_r=0

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21572198-sectarian-divisions-deepen-war-changing-country-beyond-recognition-country

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/25/us-syria-crisis-dialogue-idUSBRE91O0BD20130225

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/world/middleeast/syrian-flood-into-lebanon-stirs-fear-of-looming-disaster.html?hp&_r=0

Mark Vorpahl is an American social justice activist, union steward and anti-war writer. He mostly writes for the Workers Compass but his writings have also appeared on a number of international journals and news websites such as Common Dreams, Global Research, CounterPunch and Counter Currents. He is opposed to U.S. military expeditions around the world and believes that the United States is not in a position to tell Iran to abandon its nuclear program.

With regards to the emergence of the Occupy Wall Street movement he opines, “The Occupy Wall Street Movement was a damning critique of the policies of President Obama. It would not have come into existence if it weren’t for his continuation of the same policies that led to the crisis and his choice to further bail out the banks while letting working people suffer high unemployment, the loss of their homes and healthcare, and so on.”

Vorpahl took part in an exclusive interview with me and responded to a number of questions regarding the breakout of financial crisis in the United States, the emergence of Occupy Wall Street movement, the anti-Iranian policies of the United States government and standoff over Iran’s nuclear program.

Q: What are the major causes of the current economic recession in the United States? It’s said that poverty and unemployment are rising in the United States. Is that true? What factors mostly contributed to the emergence of 2007-2012 global financial crisis which encompassed the United States and Europe?

A: While there are many complex answers to what caused the current economic recession in my country, the answer boils down to a simple point. Workers, that is the vast majority of people in the US, were being paid far too little for their labor to continue to buy the goods that were being sold. Their wages, when indexed to the cost of living, had not increased in thirty years, and in fact were declining. That is a long time to go without a real raise.

During the housing boom, many were able to refinance their houses on terms that enabled them to have a little more cash to spend. However, in the months before the crash, their level of savings had dropped to record lows.

Tellingly, more wealth became concentrated into fewer hands. Inequality reached record levels. This is what happened before the “Great Depression” in the 1930s. The pattern was repeated in the build up to the “Great Recession.”

The wealthy buy luxury goods, which account for a small percentage of what is sold. Most poor and working class people buy the things they need to survive and, in good times, a little extra. It is these kinds of goods that account for the majority of what is sold. Since 70 percent of our economy is fueled by domestic consumption, when wealth becomes so concentrated in a few hands at the expense of the vast majority, it’s going to have a disastrous effect.

If people can’t afford to buy, demand drops. If demand drops, production stalls and layoffs result.

Magnifying this problem, the Wall Street high rollers attempted to get around the problem of declining demand through financial speculation, using such instruments as what came to be known as toxic assets. The effect of these schemes, involving trillions of dollars, was to extend the “boom” economy past its natural breaking point. However, it also created a series of giant bubbles that were destined to pop with catastrophic consequences.

In regards to unemployment, it is important to understand that the way the official statistics are calculated in the US greatly underestimate its actual level. They do not include “discouraged workers” or those who are no longer collecting employment compensation or those who are working part-time but want full-time jobs. More objective figures estimate that there are 24 million unemployed and underemployed workers in the US. This puts more pressure on those who have full-time work, leaving them stuck in jobs that demand more labor for less wages and benefits than before the “Great Recession”.

While every month we hear a figure about the number of jobs that have been created. Unless that number surpasses 125,000, we are falling behind. This is because there are 125,000 new people that enter into the labor market each month. Most often, the figure of newly created jobs per month falls well below this number.

Of course all this increases the level of poverty. According to the US Census Bureau, the poverty rate rose to 15.1 percent (46.2 million) in 2010. I am confident that the number has risen since then.

In terms of what factors contributed to the 2007 – 2012 global financial crisis, they are, broadly speaking, the same factors that I have discussed for the US economy. That is a growing concentration of wealth in fewer hands, leaving the vast majority unable to purchase the goods their collective labor has created, combined with financial speculation on the part of the banks and corporations that greatly magnified the problem. It is clear from events in Europe and the continuing effects of the Great Recession on workers in the US that we are still in the throes of this crisis. There is no light at the end of the tunnel.

Q: How did the Occupy Wall Street movement take shape? In one of your articles, you had talked of the role the unions played in giving rise to the movement. How do you analyze this movement and the role unions played in it? Was it the economic policies of President Obama that led to the formation of OWS?

A: The Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWS) was a damning critique of the policies of President Obama. It would not have come into existence if it weren’t for his continuation of the same policies that led to the crisis and his choice to further bail out the banks while letting working people suffer high unemployment, the loss of their homes and healthcare, and so on. Rather than raising taxes on the corporations and wealthy to create a jobs program, he maintained that it is the business of the private sector to create jobs.

Where has this left us? With continuing high unemployment, growing poverty, an unstable economy, and the corporations hoarding trillions rather than creating jobs. This is a highly combustible combination – thus, the development of OWS out of what appeared to be nowhere.

The unions did not give rise to the OWS. However, when they began to organize in support of OWS, it brought out tens of thousands on numerous occasions across the nation. This helped to transform OWS from a fringe action to a Main Street movement. The political dialog was forced to shift from talking about deficits to at least acknowledging the great inequality in this country and that the 1 percent are not being held accountable for the economic crisis they created. Most importantly, the political discussions between workers on the job began to change as they recognized themselves as part of the 99 percent.

Q: Let’s turn to foreign policy. During his campaign leading to the 2008 presidential elections, President Obama had promised that he would be following a path of reconciliation and détente with Iran and other Muslim countries. But what we saw in practice was the continuation of animosities with Iran, intensification of drone attacks on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. What’s your idea? Why did Mr. Obama retreat from his promises?

A: The vast majority of the Democratic and Republican Party’s’ funding comes from big business. Our foreign policy is determined according to the interests of US big business. Regardless of what candidate Obama had to say, once he became president it was inevitable he would fall into line with what his party’s big contributors wanted.

Behind the continuing animosities with Iran, the drone attacks, as well as US military involvement in Libya and likely Syria, are cold-blooded geo-political considerations in how to secure the maximum control and the most profitable arrangements for US corporations. Humanitarian ideals or respect for democracy have nothing to do with our foreign policy – except for fooling US citizens.

Q: Many critics of the U.S. foreign policy contest that they are the poor taxpayers who should pay the price for America’s waging wars and igniting the flames of military expeditions around the world. What’s your take on that? What’s the justification for the United States’ wars of aggression? In what ways are the American citizens affected by the wars the U.S. wages?

A: Since the end of World War II, US taxpayers have been forced to pay more for the military than for all the roads, bridges, hospitals, and schools combined. Especially in a time when we need jobs, need to repair our decaying infrastructure, desperately need to fundamentally transform our health care system, and education is being cut back, the continuing cost of maintaining our massive military budget is untenable. It is an attack against working people’s interests in the US as well as a weapon used against the interests of working people worldwide.

The vast majority of our veterans joined the military because of a lack of opportunities for good jobs and a good education. They were promised pie in the sky by the military recruiters. Few ever see these promises fulfilled. In a 2011 Veterans’ Administration study it was reported that a veteran commits suicide every 80 minutes. That number has likely gone up since then. This is the tip of the iceberg for the mental and physical difficulties they are facing as well as their families. They need health care, education, and good jobs. Yet they are being denied this by the economic priorities of a political system that puts corporate profits over people.

Q: Do you see any differences between the foreign policy of President Obama and that of his predecessor? In my view, both of them have pursued a hawkish foreign policy, predicated on murdering, killing and assassinating. The only subtle difference lies in Obama’s eloquence; something which Bush lacked and was scoffed at for. Do you agree?

A: I agree that Obama is a hawk. The aims of his foreign policy are guided by the same goals that I have discussed above, as Bush. There are some minor differences in their tactical approach. In my opinion, Bush’s foreign policies were more influenced by a wing of our economic oligarchy that were more flush with confidence and willing to take bigger chances such as committing huge resources to invading Iraq and believing that they would be able to accomplish their mission in a relatively brief time. That did not work out as hoped.

Consequently, those in the more cautious wing of our ruling class have Obama’s ear. They would, for instance, rather use drones than commit ground troops to accomplish their aims, at least for now. It is easier for them to contain the reaction within the US and across the globe. Therefore, they will be better prepared to take on more aggressive military missions when the time comes.

This does not make the Obama Administration less hawkish than Bush’s, just more strategic.

Q: What do the American people, academicians and journalists think about the possibility of a war against Iran? There are many Israeli-affiliated journalists who are trumpeting for a military strike on Iran. But I want to know that what the general perception of the American people is about their country waging a new war in the region. Can you elaborate on this for us?

A: My impression is that a potential war against Iran is not on most US citizens’ radar at this time. Their heads are still spinning from the blow the Great Recession hit them with and that is what is most immediately affecting them. The corporate media takes advantage of every opportunity to vilify Iran as a mad power intent on developing nuclear weapons. However, there is no clear crescendo towards war that most US workers are hearing. No event has occurred that the hawks can use to co-opt public opinion.

This will be a very difficult task to pull off if the US policy makers decide they want a full-scale military attack against Iran using US soldiers. If the drum beats towards war with Iran do become louder, I am confident that many, if not most, will not be marching in line.

Before a single shot was fired in the build up to the Iraq invasion, millions hit the streets in opposition, even though it was in the dead of winter. This is something unprecedented in US history. The war makers have always taken it for granted that they could get the populace behind them to start a war. That is no longer a given.

One of the main demands against the Iraq invasion was “Money for jobs, not war.” This was during the economic boom. During the present time of high unemployment and cuts against our social safety net, the power of such a demand is exponentially increased in terms of those who would respond to it in the build up of a war against Iran.

If the US chooses another tactic such as supporting an Israeli attack against Iran, I suspect that it will be more difficult to rally US citizens in such large numbers against it initially. This is because most are pre-occupied with just getting by and they do not yet understand how such actions affect them and, most importantly, do not believe that they can do anything about it. Yet the effects of such a military attack, using Israel as a proxy army, are not likely to be easily contained. Therefore, it is possible that the results could produce massive uniting actions of US workers against our government’s war making policies.

Q: What efforts can be done in order to prevent the U.S. or Israel from coming to war with Iran? It seems that there are hawkish leaders in both countries which see no resolve to Iran’s nuclear crisis other than a military option. Should Iran abandon its nuclear program in order to preclude a war?

A: First off, I want to be absolutely clear, the US has no business whatsoever telling Iran to abandon its nuclear program. Such a demand coming from one of the world’s largest nuclear powers, and the only nation to use these weapons against civilian populations is monstrous. The word “hypocrisy” does not even begin to cover the scale of what is wrong with this line.

In addition, the US is Israel’s biggest supporter. Everyone knows that Israel has nuclear weapons and that they are quick to viciously attack their neighbors. Based on their actions, they are a much bigger threat to peace in the region than Iran. Why hasn’t the US demanded that Israel get rid of its nuclear weapons? The reason is that Iran isn’t to falling into line with US interests. On the other hand, Israel is our partner. The vilifying of Iran’s nuclear power program is convenient propaganda tool to distract US citizens from the real reasons for our government’s hostility towards Iran.

US workers need to be educated about why they should actively fight against any military actions against Iran. The best way to educate them is through the process of building a massive social movement that addresses their immediate needs and creates a space for such discussions as US relations with Iran.

Q: And finally, may you give me an overview of the operations and activities of anti-war and pro-peace organizations in the United States? Does the government pay attention to their calls for ending military expeditions around the world? Can these groups influence the decision-makings and policies of the government, Senate or the Congress?

A: Currently the anti-war movement is in remission. There is still a strong nucleus of this movement but they are unable to find the mass active support they once had. This is partly because most of the soldiers have been pulled out of Iraq. More importantly, however, it is because US workers’ attention is more focused on the effects of the Great Recession which continue to have a devastating impact.

The government likes to look as if it does not pay much attention to the anti-war movement but they are wary of its potential to suddenly explode. During the 1960s and 1970s the US Anti-war movement played a role in ending the US war in Vietnam.

Aside from huge mass demonstrations, the government also responds to the power of wealth. It is this power that big business has in abundance and it is in their interests that US foreign policy is made.

The only way to counter this is with the power of unity among massive numbers of workers and unemployed, demonstrating this with huge actions in the streets and work places. To build such an independent social movement it is necessary to organize around the issues that are of the most immediate importance to the vast majority. Today, in the US, that would be calling for a jobs program and the expansion of our social safety net, rather than cuts, as well as taxing the rich to pay for this.

Workers learn rapidly through mass experience. By joining in such a social movement, based on their own needs, they would learn of their own political power. This would encourage them to take on organizing around other issues such as opposing US war policy.

Occupy Wall Street was a harbinger of such a movement. As I participated in some of the mass OWS actions, I could not help but think that I was witnessing the birth of one of the greatest most powerful anti-war movements this nation has ever seen. It wasn’t that anyone was carrying anti-war banners. Rather it was the inspirational power that rose from the unity of these actions and how they directly confronted the economic elite who profit from war.

The youth in my country have grown up in a time where they have known nothing else but war and economic crisis. That is why so many became active in OWS and are continuing their efforts and their education today. It is only a matter of time before the promise of OWS, no matter what it is called, matures and realizes its potential. When that happens it will result in the beginning of a fundamental political shift in this country that will create an immense obstacle for the economic elite’s war plans.