by Eric ZUESSE
Trump’s invasion of Syria — first with troops, and then with missiles, and all the while with threats to do more and worse, against a country that has never threatened nor attacked the United States — is entirely illegal under international law after World War II, as even a relatively apologist pro-invasion legal scholar such as Anthony Clark Arend, in his 2003 «International Law and the Preemptive Use of Military Force», would have to admit. Unlike George W. Bush in his 2003 invasion of Iraq, Trump made no effort to obtain a U.N. Security Council authorization and (once that failed) to get at least foreign allies in the invasion (mainly Tony Blair). Trump didn’t even request from his own neoconservative, rabidly anti-Syrian-government, U.S. Congress, anything like George W. Bush’s limited Congressional authorization (from Hillary Clinton and other neoconservatives) to invade; he just did it, damn the Constitution and damn international law. In that sense, Trump isn’t at all like Obama, who always proclaimed respect for both the U.S. Constitution and international law. But, beyond that fig leaf of adherence to law, Obama wasn’t substantially different from Trump regarding Syria.The only other way that Obama was different was that, when Britain’s MI6 found that Obama’s assertion that Bashar al-Assad’s forces were behind the 21 August 2013 Ghouta Syrian sarin gas attack was false, Prime Minister David Cameron, who had already been denied by Parliament approval for joining Obama’s invasion, refused to repeat Tony Blair’s infamous act, and he simply said no to the U.S. President. Trump didn’t even care about whether or not any foreign leader would join in his invasion, so he invaded where Obama instead had demurred. (A private U.S. investigation also had concluded that, «The US Government’s Interpretation of the Technical Intelligence It Gathered Prior to and After the August 21 Attack CANNOT POSSIBLY BE CORRECT».)
Besides these rather superficial and mostly rhetorical differences between Trump and Obama, there appears now to be, in actual policy-making fact, profound agreement between the two American Presidents, regarding specifically two Big Lies they both put forth to ‘justify’ their invasions.
Not only do both Trump and Obama (and all of Establishment Washington, including Hillary Clinton) agree that, as Obama had so often expressed it, «the United States is and remains the one indispensable nation» — meaning that only the U.S., and no other country, is not »dispensable», and that the U.S. (and no other nation) is thereby alone privileged to serve as the lawmaker, policeman, judge, jury, and (where it deems appropriate) executioner, over all other nations — and so U.S. President Trump can rightfully with impunity invade Syria for what he decides was an infraction by the Syrian government. The rhetoric is different, but the policy is essentially the same.
Yet another Big Lie is also behind this invasion, and it’s one that’s more particular to Syria, and to the entire Middle East; and it could lead directly to World War III:
This more particular Big Lie that’s shared by both Barack Obama and Donald Trump is that jihadism — or what Trump calls «radical Islamic terrorism», and Obama calls only «terrorism» — is sourced mainly (if not totally) from the governments of the two Shiite-led Islamic-majority nations, Iran and Syria (both of which they both want America ultimately to conquer — «regime change»). This terrorism is actually sourced instead almost entirely from the governments of the Sunni-led nations, and especially of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, and Egypt — but also from others, such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. Terrorism such as 9/11, Charlie Hebdo, and other jihadist attacks against the U.S., Russia, and other Christian-majority countries, comes virtually only from fundamentalist Sunni governments, which are the very same countries that America’s Presidents, both Republican and Democratic, call ‘America’s allies’, while calling Iran and Syria (which have nothing to do with such terrorism) ’America’s enemies’.
Within the Islamic world, the U.S. government allies only with the governments (especially the Sauds) that financed the 9/11 attacks, not at all with the ones which opposed and had nothing to do with those attacks. The truth is that America has a bipartisan traitor-government, and even some of its most neoconservative leaders, such as Hillary Clinton, have privately acknowledged, with regret, that this is so. (George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, by contrast, kept their secrets, because there was no Julian Assange and wikileaks to reveal them to the public.) One of her State Department cables, a cable dated 30 December 2009, said of the Saudi government (owned by the Saud family):
It has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority. …
Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide. …
Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, LeT, and other terrorist groups, which probably raise millions of dollars annually from Saudi sources…
An «ongoing challenge», still eight years after the owners of Saudi Arabia had paid so much money to Al Qaeda up to the 9/11 attacks so that Osama bin Laden’s bookkeeper subsequently said «Without the money of the — of the Saudi — you will have nothing» of Al Qaeda — and yet they were still doing it. That cable also said of the Qatar Government (owned by the Thani family):
Qatar’s overall level of CT [Counter Terrorist] cooperation with the U.S. is considered the worst in the region. Al-Qaida, the Taliban, UN-1267 listed LeT, and other terrorist groups exploit Qatar as a fundraising locale. Although Qatar’s security services have the capability to deal with direct threats and occasionally have put that capability to use, they have been hesitant to act against known terrorists. …
Even as late as 17 August 2014, Ms. Clinton wrote, with exasperation, that «the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia… are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region». That’s not just Al Qaeda; it is ISIS — and now, even 13 years after 9/11. But yet she had served as an agent of both of those regimes (as well as of the Israeli regime, which is allied with the Sunni regimes) while she was in public office.
The operation to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and replace him with jihadists that the U.S. arms, is led by the Sauds who own Saudi Arabia, and by the Thanis who own Qatar, and with the significant participation also of the royals who own UAE. Her cable on 30 December 2009 said of the UAE royals, «UAE-based donors have provided financial support to a variety of terrorist groups, including al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups, including Hamas.» The cable made no mention of either Syria or Iran, because both governments are headed by Shiites and the only terrorist group that has been supported by those two countries is the Shiite group Hezbollah, which specifically targets Israel (and countries which are actively aiding Israel’s wars against Palestinians) — not the U.S. or Europe.
The only instances where there has been from Shiites anything like that terrorism — the terror-attacks in Europe and America — was when Hezbollah in Lebanon, in the 1980s and ’90s, bombed the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, and the Israeli Embassy in London, especially so as to punish the U.S. for donating $3 billion each year to enable Israel to continue being an apartheid state oppressing Muslims (called «Palestinians»). Whereas Israel (so long as it continues being an anti-Muslim apartheid state) has sound reason for opposing Hezbollah (which is opposed to such apartheid), no Western country has reason to consider Shiite nations to be a threat at all — yet the U.S. does, and so do America’s European satellites, treat Israel and the fundamentalist-Sunni nations to be ‘allies’, and Iran and Syria (both led by Shiites) as ‘enemies’. America’s real enemies are the apartheid nation, and also (and even more) the fundamentalist-Sunni nations, no Shia nation (such as Iran), and no secular nation (such as Syria, or Russia) — but the U.S. government knows this and yet propagandizes its suckers to the opposite view.
It’s a hidden fact not publishable in the United States, so a bipartisan Big Lie is necessary in order to make virtually the entire public suckers who will believe the contrary. The fraud — which mis-defines America’s ‘allies’ and ‘enemies’ — can thereby continue unchallenged: Israel and Saudi Arabia are ‘America’s friends’, and Syria and Iran are ‘America’s enemies’. America has wronged Iran deeply, and has wronged Syria deeply, and has wronged numerous countries (including Iraq and Libya and Honduras, and so many others) deeply — and never apologizes, ever, for its international crimes (including 9/11 and other crimes against Americans), but instead asserts the ‘right’ to be ‘policeman for the world’ slaughtering millions in many countries that have not attacked the United States — Iraq, Syria, Libya, El Salvador, etc.
Maybe the denial of that ugly reality is the biggest of all of America’s Big Lies; it’s yet another bipartisan one (just like «the United States is and remains the one indispensable nation»), spouted by both Democrats and Republicans, the two sides (Republican and Democratic) of the American aristocracy that controls the American government and makes fools of the American public, with this actually fascistic nationalism (in each of the two Parties).
Barack Obama blamed the 9/11 attacks on both the fundamentalist Sunni Al Qaeda organization (which Obama never noted, however, is Sunni), and also blamed it on the fundamentalist Shiite government of Iran. (His argument was the same as that of the Democratic judge who fined Iran $10.5 billion for 9/11 — it was the fact that some Al Qaeda members had passed through Iran — but some Al Qaeda members had passed through the U.S. too, and so only an idiot would take seriously Obama’s blaming Iran for 9/11 and Iran being fined over $10 billion for it while Obama vetoed a bill allowing the Sauds who actually financed 9/11 to be sued for that.)
Iran’s ally, the non-fundamentalist and non-sectarian government of Syria, has been a target for overthrow by the CIA for even longer than Iran, whose democratic government was overthrown by a CIA coup in 1953. The first CIA coup-attempt to overthrow Syria’s government was in 1949.
But by far the main source of 9/11 was the royal Saud family, whose role was revealed in the long-delayed ‘missing 28 pages’ and also in the lone court testimony by Osama bin Laden’s former bag-man who picked up each of the million-dollar-plus cash donations to Al Qaeda and brought them back to Osama. That bag-man said «without the money of the — of the Saudi — you will have nothing» of Al Qaeda. But Iran got billed $10.5 billion for it, and all Presidents since the 9/11 attacks have done everything they could to prevent the Sauds from even being investigated for it. That’s American ‘justice’, today
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