Syria Becomes the 7th Predominantly Muslim Country Bombed by 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate
NOBEL LAUREATES, 29 Sep 2014
Glenn Greenwald - The Intercept
President Barack Obama makes a speech during the Nobel Peace Prize Concert at Oslo Spektrum on December 11, 2009 in Oslo, Norway.
Photo: Sandy Young/Getty Images
23 Sep 2014 – The U.S. today began bombing targets inside Syria, in concert with its lovely and inspiring group of five allied regimes: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Jordan.
That means that Syria becomes the 7th predominantly Muslim country bombed by 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama—after Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Iraq.
The utter lack of interest in what possible legal authority Obama has to bomb Syria is telling indeed: Empires bomb who they want, when they want, for whatever reason (indeed, recall that Obama bombed Libya even after Congress explicitly voted against authorization to use force, and very few people seemed to mind that abject act of lawlessness; constitutional constraints are not for warriors and emperors).
It was just over a year ago that Obama officials were insisting that bombing and attacking Assad was a moral and strategic imperative. Instead, Obama is now bombing Assad’s enemies while politely informing his regime of its targets in advance. It seems irrelevant on whom the U.S. wages war; what matters it that it will be at war, always and forever.
Six weeks of bombing hasn’t budged ISIS in Iraq, but it has caused ISIS recruitment to soar. That’s all predictable: the U.S. has known for years that what fuels and strengthens anti-American sentiment (and thus anti-American extremism) is exactly what they keep doing: aggression in that region. If you know that, then they know that. At this point, it’s more rational to say they do all of this not despite triggering those outcomes, but because of it. Continuously creating and strengthening enemies is a feature, not a bug. It is what justifies the ongoing greasing of the profitable and power-vesting machine of Endless War.
If there is anyone who actually believes that the point of all of this is a moral crusade to vanquish the evil-doers of ISIS (as the U.S. fights alongside its close Saudi friends), please read Professor As’ad AbuKhalil’s explanation today of how Syria is a multi-tiered proxy war. As the disastrous Libya “intervention” should conclusively and permanently demonstrate, the U.S. does not bomb countries for humanitarian objectives. Humanitarianism is the pretense, not the purpose.
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Email the author: glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com
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It is not a question of Empire. The problem is, Obama does not want to be assassinated. This means he has to produce business for the hundreds of military manufacturers who keep his party alive (with donations) and who helped him reach power. Like all Presidents or Prime Ministers, he is a puppet, with dozens, hundreds of people telling him what to do and what to say.
Of course he does what he can to export weapons, tanks, bombs, rockets, air fighters, etc, but he must also provide work for the Armed Forces. He really has no option, no matter how much he he opposed Bush’s actions in the Middle East and Afghanistan when he was in the Opposition.
The ONLY, I repeat, ONLY way Obama could act differently is to be the President of the US in a DEMILITARIZED WORLD.
And I am 100% sure we could achieve it.
Criticizing politicians leads nowhere. We should criticize Militarism and Churches, the other creators of conflict.