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.
