Wednesday, December 23, 2015

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: SEYMOUR HERSH REVELATION OF PENTAGON GENERAL ASSISTING ASSAD WITH INTELLIGENCE SECRETLY AGAINST AMERICAN GOVERNMENT POLICY - ROLE OF ISRAEL LOBBY IN AMERICAN POLICY


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA TODAY


This is a remarkable story, if accurate.

But then Seymour Hersh is one of the world's great investigative journalists and has a long record of uncovering hidden truths.

American politicians' blind loyalty to Israel is at work here.

The American democracy is an extremely corrupt one, corrupted by massive amounts of money as campaign donations from special interest groups.

Since America's Supreme Court insanely ruled that "money is free speech," there are virtually no limits.

And those who pay the politicians' costs generally get what they want in return.

The Israel Lobby in the U.S. is one of the best organized and financed of special interest lobbies, and no American politician dares show indifference to it. One measure of this is the bizarre regular ritual in which newly-elected Congressmen are invited for expense-paid junkets to Israel, during which they wined and dined, propagandized and observed closely by Israeli officials, likely having their remarks and levels of enthusiasm all recorded as on a report card. There truly is nothing quite so strange between two countries anywhere else on the planet.

This is almost certainly what Obama is reflecting in his "Assad must go" mantra.

The more intelligent of the Pentagon's leaders would not look at things the same way.

They know that some of Israel’s pursuits and interests actually represent a dead-weight, long-term loss for American strategic interests, and that is simply a non-emotional calculation. This is certainly so in the case of Syria.

Israel alienates almost the entire Mideast, and its leaders simply refuse to offer peace with the Palestinians, all the while stealing more homes and land.

In the eyes of most Arabs – if not always in the eyes of their leaders who do not rule democracies and secretly share some goals with Israel - this is a humiliating and frustrating situation.

It makes the United States look bad to hundreds of millions in the region and puts it on the wrong side of history.

It is an Israeli objective to get rid of Assad, but I am sure the smartest generals know Assad represents a far more stable and peaceful government for Syria than any other option, and especially the gangs of thugs now trying to overthrow him. Never mind, the “moderate opposition” because there is no such thing. Assad runs a secular government which protects all religious groups, something not common at all in the region, and not even in supposedly western-oriented Israel.

But it is always interesting and provocative when senior military men do things at odds with the government they are sworn to protect.

This kind of thing has happened before, as in the days of Allen Dulles at the CIA.