The Better-Than-Worst Syria Option
The neocons still dominate Official Washington’s policy debates so it shouldn’t
be a surprise that President Obama’s move toward diplomacy over intervention in
Syria would draw criticism and denunciation. But sometimes the best course is
the simply the one that’s not the worst, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar
explains.
By Paul R. Pillar
Debate about U.S. policy toward Syria has clearly exhibited some of the
downsides of a reality about any discourse on foreign policy: that everyone is
free to criticize anyone else’s position or recommendations, but the incumbent
president is the only one who has to come up with a real policy and try to make
it work.
The Syrian issue is an especially troubling demonstration of some of these
downsides because it is one for which, as I have observedsince early in the
conflict, there are no good solutions. It is far easier to knock down someone
else’s ideas about this issue than it is to defend any ideas of one’s own.
Greg Sargent of the Washington Post has noted how President Barack Obama’s
handling of the Syrian situation has been roundly criticized by many people who
never get around to declaring what they would do instead if they had the
responsibility for making policy. A contribution to debate that is all criticism
and no positive alternatives is unhelpful not only because it does not directly
get us any closer to a workable policy. It does not even get us indirectly
closer to an improved policy; the best policy option is not necessarily the one
that is least often the target of vocal, public criticism.
The discourse on Syria has exhibited other significant defects, some of which
Sargent touches upon. There has been a confusion of process with outcome. This
is what President Obama seemed to be complaining about when he said he wasn’t
trying to win “style points.”
The problem with this particular focus on decision-making style is not only that
it may be unfair to an incumbent trying to deal with an intractable situation.
It is that some of the methods likely to win points with pundits and the public
are less likely than other methods to arrive at sound policy.
We like our leaders to appear decisive and resolute. We do not like them to
appear vacillating and uncertain. Those preferences are understandable; they are
connected to the very nature of leadership. The trouble comes when the yearning
for decisiveness means criticism of the very sort of thoroughness and
deliberation that is necessary to consider options carefully in the interest of
arriving at the best (or least bad) option.
The benchmark at the opposite end of this spectrum is the decision to launch the
Iraq War, made by a president who trusted his gut and had no policy process at
all to consider whether the war was a good idea.
Obama has been charged with short-circuiting his own habitually thorough
decision-making by taking a walk with Denis McDonough around the South Lawn of
the White House and suddenly deciding to throw the question of an attack on
Syria into the lap of Congress. But rather than abridging or cutting corners in
the policy-making process, this was a move to make it more thorough, by
involving in that process the legislative branch, which, by the way, is supposed
to have war-declaring power under the Constitution.
This gets to another unhelpful conflation in debate and criticism about policy
toward Syria, which is a confusion of motives with results. Did Mr. Obama make
his move to Congress not out of some scruples of a former constitutional law
professor but at least as much to spread responsibility to his political
opponents and get buy-in for what would be a costly and risky military move? Of
course he did.
And when he made his other big change on Syria and ran with the Russian proposal
on chemical weapons, was he grasping a lifeline that helped him to get out of
the consequences of his own earlier mistake when he talked about use of chemical
weapons as a game-changing red line? Yes again.
But this is another example of how popular yearnings about leadership style
conflict with what may be necessary to arrive at better-rather-than-worse
policies. We don’t like to see our leaders change their minds because this looks
indecisive, and pundits criticize this as vacillation. But changing one’s mind
and one’s policy course may be necessary to adapt to new circumstances, to take
advantage of new information, or as in the present case, to prevent previous
mistakes from being compounded.
Given that I have criticized some of President Obama’s moves on Syria, I ought
to respond to Sargent’s challenge to put up or shut up and say exactly how I
would have done things differently. I would have followed all along a policy of
non-intervention, for the fundamental reasons that there is no U.S. interest
clearly served by one particular outcome of the Syrian civil war than another
outcome, that it would be difficult or impossible for U.S. action to achieve a
particular outcome of that war anyway, and that U.S. intervention would be more
likely to increase than to decrease the overall violence and destruction
associated with that war.
I would have endeavored to articulate this reasoning, clearly and publicly. I
may have won some style points for consistency, although I also would have been
pilloried on the Washington Post editorial page and elsewhere for not doing more
about the suffering in Syria.
I would have made greater efforts to internationalize consideration of Syria’s
political future, with full participation of both Russia and Iran. I would not
have elevated the significance of chemical weapons far above that of the other
sources of 100,000 deaths and other casualties in this war, and I would not have
portrayed use of these weapons as a game-changer.
I hope that after the chemical incident on Aug. 21 I would have had the
diplomatic agility to work with the Russians on an initiative to get Syria to
surrender its chemical munitions, which should not have required threats of a
U.S. air war. I can’t say I would have been that agile, but if so we may have
gotten to a situation similar in important respects to where we actually are
now. Once again, style is not the same as outcome.
Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be
one of the agency’s top analysts. He is now a visiting professor at Georgetown
University for security studies. (This article first appeared as a blog post at
The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.)
The Iranian Olive Branch
Iran’s new President Hassan Rouhani renounced again any Iranian interest in
building a nuclear weapon and proposed serious negotiations with the West. But
the question remains: Will the Obama administration spurn Rouhani’s offer of an
olive branch? ask Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett.
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
As New York prepares for the annual opening of the United Nations General
Assembly, the volume of Western media speculation about the prospects for a
U.S.-Iranian diplomatic breakthrough has mounted to impressive levels.
Predictably, much of this speculation amounted to little more than wondering how
many concessions the Islamic Republic’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, is
willing and will be able to make, especially on the nuclear issue.
As usual, we prefer looking at facts and authoritative statements of official
positions over the speculation of journalists and pundits. In this spirit, we
want to highlight a few passages from President Rouhani’s much noted Op-Ed in
the Washington Post.
Three passages seem especially relevant for understanding Tehran’s position on
the nuclear issue. The first presents Rouhani’s definition of “constructive
engagement” (emphasis added):
“It is, or should be, counterintuitive to pursue one’s interests without
considering the interests of others. A constructive approach to diplomacy
doesn’t mean relinquishing one’s rights. It means engaging with one’s
counterparts, on the basis of equal footing and mutual respect, to address
shared concerns and achieve shared objectives. In other words, win-win outcomes
are not just favorable but also achievable. A zero-sum, Cold War mentality leads
to everyone’s loss.”
The explicit reference to not relinquishing one’s rights is, of course, very
much of a piece with Rouhani’s statements, during his presidential campaign and
since his election, that he is not about to surrender Iran’s right, as a
sovereign state and as a non-weapons state party to the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT), to enrich uranium under international safeguards.
Unfortunately, there is no concrete indication that the Obama administration is
prepared to acknowledge this right. In fact, one can find multiple statements
from administration officials over the last five years publicly denying that
there is such a right. (This is, among other things, a legally and
intellectually dishonest reading of the NPT.)
The second passage from President Rouhani’s Op-Ed that we want to highlight here
explains with admirable clarity why the Islamic Republic is not about to
compromise its right to safeguarded enrichment (again, emphasis added):
“We must also pay attention to the issue of identity as a key driver of tension
in, and beyond, the Middle East. At their core, the vicious battles in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Syria are over the nature of those countries’ identities and
their consequent roles in our region and the world. The centrality of identity
extends to the case of our peaceful nuclear energy program. To us, mastering the
atomic fuel cycle and generating nuclear power is as much about diversifying our
energy resources as it is about who Iranians are as a nation, our demand for
dignity and respect and our consequent place in the world.”
President Rouhani goes on to note, “Without comprehending the role of identity,
many issues we all face will remain unresolved.” Indeed. Unfortunately, it
remains far from clear that the Obama administration understands how tightly the
matter of Iran’s nuclear rights is linked to fundamental questions of identity
(like independence and control of the country’s energy resources) for Iranians
who supported Imam Khomeini’s revolution and continue to support the political
order it produced.
The third passage from President Rouhani’s Op-Ed that we want to highlight
discusses the requirements for diplomatic progress (yet again, emphasis added):
“To move beyond impasses, whether in relation to Syria, my country’s nuclear
program or its relations with the United States, we need to aim higher. Rather
than focusing on how to prevent things from getting worse, we need to think, and
talk, about how to make things better. To do that, we all need to muster the
courage to start conveying what we want, clearly, concisely and sincerely, and
to back it up with the political will to take necessary action. This is the
essence of my approach to constructive interaction.”
President Rouhani certainly is not the first Iranian leader to want the United
States to clarify its ultimate intentions vis-Ã -vis the Islamic Republic.
Unfortunately, it remains far from clear that the Obama administration is or
will be prepared to lay out a clear and positive end game for nuclear talks with
the Islamic Republic, for this would require the United States to acknowledge
Iran’s aforementioned right to safeguarded enrichment as an essential pillar of
any negotiated solution to the nuclear issue.
So, going into UN General Assembly and looking beyond UNGA to renewed nuclear
negotiations with the Islamic Republic, the relevant question is not how much is
Iran’s leadership prepared to concede on the nuclear issue.
Rather, the relevant question is whether Washington is prepared to abandon a
strategic approach to the Middle East that has done profound damage to America’s
own position in this vital region, in no small part, by rendering productive
diplomacy with the Islamic Republic impossible.
Flynt Leverett served as a Middle East expert on George W. Bush’s National
Security Council staff until the Iraq War and worked previously at the State
Department and at the Central Intelligence Agency. Hillary Mann Leverett was the
NSC expert on Iran and from 2001 to 2003
was one of only a few U.S. diplomats
authorized to negotiate with the Iranians over Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and Iraq.
They are authors of
GoingtoTehran.com.]
Going to Tehran. [This article previously appeared at
Two-State Solution or Illusion?
Secretary of State John Kerry balances his bellicosity on Syria with his
diplomatic appeals for reviving Israeli-Palestinian talks on a “two-state
solution.” But the prospects for two viable states may be long since past and
the negotiations just another excuse to evade hard choices, as Lawrence Davidson
reflects.
By Lawrence Davidson
Peter Beinart is a “liberal Zionist” who has written a piece in the New York
Review of Books (in the Sept. 26 edition) entitled “The American Jewish Cocoon.”
In this essay he laments, “The organized Jewish community [is] a closed
intellectual space.”
By this he means that most American Zionist Jews (it is important to remember
that not all Jews are Zionists) know little or nothing about those who oppose
them, particularly Palestinians. They also seem to have no interest in changing
this situation. For these Zionists the opposition has been reduced to an
irredeemably anti-Semitic “them.”
Beinart goes on to tell us that such is the political clout of the organized
Zionist community that this know-nothing attitude has come to characterize the
“debate about Israel in Washington” and the opinions offered in the mass media
as well.
While Mr. Beinart does not say so, I can tell you that this has been the basic
situation since the early 1920s. Beinart does note, however, that over time this
situation has led Palestinians and those who support them to show less
willingness to dialogue with Zionists, most of whom they consider irredeemably
racist.
Beinart thinks this prevailing ignorance is a disaster. Why so? Because he feels
that Jews betray the lessons of their own past by failing to understand the
meaning of the “dispersion and dispossession” of the Palestinians. They do not
seem to care that these particular people have had their “families torn apart in
war – [continue] to struggle to maintain [their] culture, [their] dignity,
[their] faith in God in the face of forces over which [they] have no control.”
This sort of situation, according to Beinart, is something “the Jews should
instinctively understand.”
Be this as it may, achieving such an understanding is, for Beinart, a means to
an end. That end is realizing a two-state solution to the ongoing Israeli-
Palestinian struggle. For this to happen the Zionists have to essentially feel
the pain of the Palestinians and the Palestinians have to understand their nowin situation so that everyone agrees to a Palestinian mini-state on “22 percent
of British mandatory Palestine” along with “compensation and resettlement [for
the] people whose original villages and homes have long ceased to exist.”
The Two-State Illusion
An important question is whether Mr. Beinart’s two-state solution does not
itself represent a goal whose practicality has “long ceased to exist”? That
certainly is the opinion of Ian Lustick, a professor of political science at the
University of Pennsylvania. In the Sunday Review section of the New York Times
of Sept. 15, he published an op-ed piece entitled “Two-State Illusion.”
According to Professor Lustick, the two-state idea has become something of a
fraud behind which lies opportunistic political motives. For instance, the
Palestinian Authority (PA) keeps this hope alive so that it can “get the
economic aid and diplomatic support that subsidizes the lifestyle of its
leaders, the jobs of tens of thousands of soldiers, spies, police officers and
civil servants.” The Israeli government keeps this hope alive because “it seems
to reflect the sentiments of the Jewish Israeli majority and it shields the
country from international opprobrium, even as it camouflages relentless efforts
to expand Israel’s territory into the West Bank.”
Finally, the U.S. government maintains the hope of a two-state solution to “show
that it is working toward a diplomatic solution, to keep the pro-Israel lobby
from turning against them and to disguise their humiliating inability to allow
any daylight between Washington and the Israeli government.”
Lustick believes the two-state solution is an impossible hope that has produced
periodic negotiations which have always been “phony” and have prevented new
ideas for positive change from being seriously entertained. This long-term
stifling has also set the stage for possible “sudden and jagged” events that can
send the conflict off in catastrophic directions. Oddly enough Lustick finds
this prospect of heightened conflict a necessary one.
He tells us that only when the “neat and palatable” two-state solution
disappears – and with it the PA and its policies of collaboration – will we get
the “mass mobilization, riots, brutality, terror, Jewish and Arab emigration and
rising tides of international condemnation of Israel,” along with the subsequent
withdrawal of unconditional U.S. support for the Zionist State.
At that point, “Israeli leaders may then begin to see, as South Africa’s white
leaders saw in the late 1980s, that their behavior is producing isolation,
emigration and hopelessness.” Then, finally, they will become reasonable, and
something new and acceptable (a one-state solution?) will be possible.
Lustick’s necessary scenario happens to be Peter Beinart’s nightmare and in the
latter’s essay it is called “civil war.” Beinart’s call for greater mutual
understanding is designed to prevent this violence. One can assume that, for
Professor Lustick, things have gone too far for this understanding to suddenly
prevail. “Peacemaking and democratic state building require blood and magic,” he
tells us. Delaying the inevitable with false hopes will only make things worse.
By the way, Lustick is not alone in his view that the two-state formula is a
dead end. One of Israel’s very best historians, Ilan Pappe, who now is the
director of the University of Exeter’s European Centre for Palestinian Studies,
believes that this prospect has been dead for over a decade. What killed it, and
what keeps it dead, are “Zionist greed for territory and the ideological
conviction that much more of Palestine [beyond the 1967 borders] is needed in
order to have a viable Jewish State.”
It is worth noting that it is just this ideological conviction that renders
Peter Beinart’s plea for more understanding of the Palestinian position by
American Zionist Jews a nonstarter. Any ideology that can justify incessant
ethnic cleansing has to make its adherents incapable feeling their victims’
pain.
If Beinart’s hope for mutual understanding is naive, Lustick’s hope that more
“blood” will lead to the “magic” of a positive outcome is not at all assured.
One might ask just how much disaster is necessary before the hard-line Zionists
who have long controlled Israel will compromise their ideological commitment.
Keep in mind that the Israeli political elites, right and left, have always been
expansionist. Even Peter Beinart is not pushing for a return to the 1967 Green
Line and an evacuation of illegal settlements, as far as I can tell.
In the past, the Israeli elites have judged their terror and brutality to be
justified. They will do so in the future as well. Some of them will interpret
any increase in Jewish emigration (a process already ongoing) as a weeding out
of weak elements. Militarily the Israelis can probably maintain superiority over
their neighbors even in the face of reduced American aid, and as far as world
opinion is concerned, most of them care little about it. If this assessment has
any validity, the Israelis could go on ethnically cleansing for a very long
time.
In my view, the only viable weapon against such vicious stubbornness is a
worldwide comprehensive economic boycott on the South Africa model. However,
even this may not be the last page in the drama. Such an economic boycott may
prove strong enough to undermine the will of some Israeli ideologues, but not
all of them. And then, unlike South Africa, you may need an intra-Israeli Jewish
civil war to finally bring the curtain down on the tragedy of Zionism.
Lawrence Davidson is a history professor at West Chester University in
Pennsylvania. He is the author of Foreign Policy Inc.: Privatizing America’s
National Interest; America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from
Balfour to Israeli Statehood; and Islamic Fundamentalism.
Thanks, Readers!
From Editor Robert Parry: We’re still tallying up last-minute donations to our
summer fund drive. It appears we fell a bit short of our $25,000 goal, but we
came a lot closer than it looked like we would a few weeks back. So, again,
thank you, readers!
When I founded Consortiumnews.com nearly two decades ago, my hope was that we
would attract some major funders who would support our plan for helping
independent investigative journalists with money, research, editing and
distribution. That was the reason for the name “consortium.”
As it turned out, however, I was never able to convince major donors that they
should invest in this crucial element of democracy. Many thought that the big
news outlets would somehow start doing their jobs better. Some foundation
executives feared that we might get their “principals” in trouble. Producing
honest journalism in the modern American political climate surely would be
controversial.
The pleasant part of my surprise, however, was that many small donors, our
readers, did understand what we were trying to do and why. You, our readers,
have kept us alive. It turned out that you were the “consortium.”
For those who were able to donate to our summer fund drive, remember that your
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For anyone who still wants to chip in, you can donate by credit card online or
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Or, for only $34, you can get the trilogy that traces the history of the two
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Narrative would normally cost more than $70.
To get the books for less than half price and help us meet our fundraising goal
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You can also take advantage of this special offer by mailing a check for $34 to
The Media Consortium; 2200 Wilson Blvd.; Suite 102-231; Arlington VA 22201. Or
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Again, thanks for your support.
Robert Parry is a longtime investigative reporter who broke many of the IranContra stories for the Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. He founded
Consortiumnews.com in 1995 to create an outlet for well-reported journalism that
was being squeezed out of an increasingly trivialized U.S. news media.
Almost to Consortiumnews’ Goal
From Editor Robert Parry: Thanks to the generosity of our readers we are getting
close to our modest goal of $25,000 for our summer fund drive. Yes, it has taken
a while but we are now only about $5,000 short.
So, if you can, please help get us over our target. Your donation may be taxdeductible since we are an IRS-recognized 501-c-3 tax-exempt non-profit.
You can donate by credit card online or by mailing a check to Consortium for
Independent Journalism (CIJ); 2200 Wilson Blvd., Suite 102-231; Arlington VA
22201. (For readers wanting to use PayPal, you can address contributions to our
account, which is named after our e-mail address: “consortnew @ aol.com”).
Or, you can buy one of my last four books through the Consortiumnews’ Web site
or my latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, through Amazon.com, either in
paper or the e-book version. A portion of each sale will go toward our goal.
Or, for only $34, you can get the trilogy that traces the history of the two
Bush presidencies and their impact on the world. The three books Secrecy &
Privilege, Neck Deep (co-authored with Sam and Nat Parry) and America’s Stolen
Narrative would normally cost more than $70.
To get the books for less than half price and help us meet our fundraising goal
just go to the Web site’s “Donate” button and make a $34 “donation” using Visa,
Mastercard or Discover. We will read a donation of that amount as an order for
the trilogy.
If your mailing address is the same as your credit card billing address, we will
ship the books to that address. If your mailing address is different, just send
us an e-mail at [email protected] and we will make the adjustment. For U.S.
orders, we will pay for the shipping. (For non-U.S. orders, add $20 to defray
the extra cost.)
You can also take advantage of this special offer by mailing a check for $34 to
The Media Consortium; 2200 Wilson Blvd.; Suite 102-231; Arlington VA 22201. Or
you can use our Paypal account, “consortnew @ aol.com.” Just make sure you
include your mailing address in the message.
Again, thanks for your support.
Robert Parry is a longtime investigative reporter who broke many of the IranContra stories for the Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. He founded
Consortiumnews.com in 1995 to create an outlet for well-reported journalism that
was being squeezed out of an increasingly trivialized U.S. news media.
Iran’s Rouhani Confounds Neocons
Official Washington’s still-influential neocons are still hoping they can
sabotage progress toward a U.S.-Iranian rapprochement and thus keep open the
option of war but the reasonable tone of Iran’s new president Hassan Rouhani is
making the neocons’ job trickier, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.
By Paul R. Pillar
The op ed from Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani in the Washington Post should be
read carefully on at least four levels.
The first is as one measure of the overall earnestness and seriousness with
which the current leadership of Iran is approaching relations with the United
States and with the rest of the outside world. Can you find an unreasonable
phrase anywhere in the piece? I can’t.
The second is as a contrast with what we had become accustomed to hearing under
the eight-year tenure of Rouhani’s predecessor. The contrast is so sharp one
would never guess, if we did not already know it was so, that such
pronouncements were coming from successive presidents of the same country,
separated not by a coup or revolution but instead by a peaceful election.
Rouhani’s piece in the Post adds to the numerous other indications over the past
several weeks that his election marks a profound change in attitude and approach
in Tehran.
Third, Rouhani’s statements about what Iran wishes to do on issues of high
concern to both it and the United States is consistent with what any
dispassionate and well-reasoned analysis would arrive at as necessary to
facilitate resolution of these issues. On the nuclear question, any resolution
will have to recognize, and provide assurances to the West of being limited to,
a “peaceful nuclear energy program.”
On the more pressing issue of the Syrian war, Rouhani’s statement of his
government’s “readiness to help facilitate dialogue between the Syrian
government and the opposition” should be acted upon, both because Iran already
is a player, for better or for worse, in the Syrian situation and because
working together in addressing the Syrian situation can have beneficial
spillover effects in dealing with the nuclear question and other issues.
Fourth, the article contains sage advice about other aspects of the American
approach to foreign policy, including on matters that do not directly involve
Iran. As with Vladimir Putin’s recent missive, Americans ought not to need
foreign presidents to point out truths about their own policies and approach
toward the world, but they are truths nonetheless.
Among Rouhani’s observations that are too often forgotten, or never appreciated
in the first place, in American discourse is that the world is for the most part
not a zero-sum place and that dealing with other nations involves simultaneous
competition and cooperation. He correctly observes that a unilateral approach
that “glorifies brute force and breeds violence” does not solve shared problems
such as terrorism and extremism.
He notes that too often “security is pursued at the expense of the insecurity of
others, with disastrous consequences.” A glaring example of this in the Middle
East that does not directly involve Iran but is condoned by the United States
comes readily to mind. Perhaps the most trenchant of Rouhani’s observations is:
“We and our international counterparts have spent a lot of time, perhaps too
much time, discussing what we don’t want rather than what we do want. This is
not unique to Iran’s international relations. In a climate where much of foreign
policy is a direct function of domestic politics, focusing on what one doesn’t
want is an easy way out of difficult conundrums for many world leaders.
Expressing what one does want requires more courage.”
This aptly describes how some foreign policy issues, certainly including the
Iranian nuclear issue, get addressed in the United States. One of the biggest
deficiencies in American discourse about that issue is that it goes little
beyond declarations of how badly we don’t want an Iranian bomb, with almost no
sense of what we do want other than to hurt Iran and no vision for the future
other than, by implication, perpetual hostility.
The new Iranian administration has opened a door to a better relationship, and
one better for the United States, about as widely as such doors ever are opened.
The United States would be foolish not to walk through it.
Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be
one of the agency’s top analysts. He is now a visiting professor at Georgetown
University for security studies. (This article first appeared as a blog post at
The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.)
How Fake 2nd Amendment History Kills
Exclusive: Another mass shooting has stunned America, although the sentiment is
now more numbness and hopelessness than outrage and resolve. The gun carnage
will probably never end unless the Right’s bogus history of the Second Amendment
is exploded and the real intent of the Framers is explained, writes Robert
Parry.
By Robert Parry
False history can kill, as the American people have seen again in the slaughter
of 12 people working at the Navy Yard in Washington D.C. on Monday, when an
emotionally disturbed gunman gained access to the military facility and opened
fire, adding the site to a long list of mass-murder scenes across the United
States.
Though the focus after the latest rampage has been on the need for better mental
health detection and for better security at bases, the underlying story is again
how easy it is for people in the United States, like the troubled Aaron Alexis,
to obtain lethal weaponry and how hard it is to keep guns away from dangerous
individuals.
In that sense, the Navy Yard narrative is just one more bloody patch in the grim
tapestry that stretches from Virginia Tech to Aurora to Newtown to hundreds of
other locations where thousands upon thousands of innocent lives have been taken
by gun violence in America.
But a key reason why the nation is frozen in a shocking paralysis, unable to
protect even little children, is that the American Right has sold much of the
country on a false history regarding the Second Amendment. Right-wingers and
other gun-rights advocates insist that the carnage can’t be stopped because it
is part of what the Framers designed.
Yet that is not and never was the actual history. When the First Congress passed
the Second Amendment in 1789, the goal was to promote state militias for the
maintenance of order in a time of political violence, potential slave revolts
and simmering hostilities with both European powers and Native Americans on the
frontiers.
The amendment was never intended as a blank check for some unstable person to
massacre fellow Americans. Indeed, it defined its purpose as achieving
“security” against disruptions to the country’s new republican form of
government. The Second Amendment read:
“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the
right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” In other
words, if read in context, you would see that the Second Amendment was enacted
so each state would have the specific right to form “a well-regulated militia”
to maintain “security,” i.e. to put down armed disorder.
In the late Eighteenth Century, the meaning of “bearing” arms also referred to a
citizen being part of a militia or army. It didn’t mean that an individual had
the right to possess whatever number of high-capacity killing machines that he
or she might want. Indeed, the most lethal weapon that early Americans owned was
a slow-loading, single-fired musket or rifle.
No Anarchists
And, the Framers of the Constitution were not some anarchists who wanted an
armed population so people could overthrow the government if they weren’t happy
with something. Indeed, one of the crises that led to the Constitution was the
inability of the old system under the Articles of Confederation to put down the
Shays’s Rebellion in western Massachusetts in 1786-87.
The Framers people like George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton
and Gouverneur Morris were the Establishment of the day. They also recognized
how fragile the nation’s independence was and how novel was the idea of a
constitutional republic with democratic elections. They were seeking a system
that took political action that reflected the will of the people, yet within a
framework that constrained the passions of democracy.
The whole idea of the Constitution with its mix of voting, elected
representatives and checks and balances was to create a political structure that
made violence unnecessary. As the Preamble states, two key goals were to
“promote the general Welfare” and to “insure domestic Tranquility.”
So, the Framers weren’t encouraging violent uprisings against the republic that
they were founding. To the contrary, they characterized violence against the
constitutional system as “treason” in Article III, Section 3. They also
committed the federal government to protect each state from “domestic
Violence,” in Article IV, Section 4.
And one of the first uses of the new state militias formed under the Second
Amendment and the Militia Acts was for President Washington to lead a
federalized force of militiamen against the Whiskey Rebellion, a tax revolt, in
western Pennsylvania in 1794.
Though it’s true that many Americans owned a musket or rifle in those early
years especially on the frontier, regulations on munitions were still common in
cities where storing of gunpowder, for instance, represented a threat to the
public safety. As the nation spread westward, so did common-sense restrictions
on gun violence. Sheriffs in some of the wildest of Wild West towns enforced gun
bans that today would prompt a recall election financed by the National Rifle
Association.
This history was well understood both by citizens and courts. For generations,
the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the Second Amendment as a collective right,
allowing Americans to participate in a “well-regulated Militia,” not as an
individual right to buy the latest weaponry at a gun show or stockpile a
military-style arsenal in the basement.
False Narrative
However, in recent decades understanding the power of narrative on the human
imagination a resurgent American Right rewrote the history of the Founding era,
dispatching “researchers” to cherry-pick or fabricate quotes from Revolutionary
War leaders to create politically convenient illusions. [See, for instance,
Steven Krulik’s compilation of apocryphal gun quotes.]
Among the false narratives was the one about the Second Amendment, which the
Right (and some on the Left) transformed into a supposed device by which the
Framers authorized armed rebellion against the constitutional Republic. Rather
than people who believed in the rule of law and social order, the Framers were
contorted into mad radicals who wanted citizens to be empowered to shoot police,
soldiers, elected representatives and government officials.
These “scholars” love to cite provocative comments by Thomas Jefferson, who was
not even a participant in drafting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights
because he was the U.S. representative in France at the time. But these
revisionists still will quote Jefferson in a 1787 letter criticizing the
Constitution for its commander-in-chief provisions. Jefferson argued that
violence, like the Shays’s Rebellion, was to be welcomed. He declared that “The
tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots
and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”
It is ironic, however, that Jefferson was never willing to risk his own blood as
that “natural manure.” During the Revolutionary War when traitor Benedict Arnold
led a force of Loyalists against Richmond, Jefferson, who was then Virginia’s
governor, declined to rally the state militia in defense of the capital but
rather fled for his life. Later, when British cavalry approached Charlottesville
and his home of Monticello, Gov. Jefferson again took flight.
Despite his personal cowardice, Jefferson had a lust when it came to others
shedding blood. He also was eager for Virginia to have a state militia of armed
whites to crush possible black slave rebellions, another prospect that terrified
him.
As a slaveholder and a pseudo-scientific racist, Jefferson surely did not
envision blacks as having any individual right to own guns themselves or to
fight for their own liberty. Reflecting on blacks who fought bravely in the
Revolution, Jefferson concluded that their courage was an illusion resulting
from their intellectual inability to recognize danger.
Yet, whatever one thinks of Jefferson’s racism and cowardice, it’s a historical
error to cite Jefferson in any way as speaking definitively about what the
Framers intended with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He was not
directly involved in either.
Still, this false history was advanced by the American Right in the last half of
the Twentieth Century as a kind of neo-Confederate call to arms, with the goal
of rallying whites into a near-insurrectionary fury particularly in the South
but also in rural areas of the North and West. Many fancied themselves an armed
resistance against the tyrannical federal government.
Southern whites brandished guns and engaged in violence to resist the civil
rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, when the federal government finally
stepped in to end Jim Crow laws and racial segregation. In the 1990s, “citizens
militias” began to pop up in reaction to the election of Democrat Bill Clinton,
culminating in the Oklahoma City bombing of 1994.
Winning the Court
While designed primarily for the weak-minded, the Right’s faux Founding history
also had an impact on right-wing “intellectuals” including Republican lawyers
who worked their way up through the federal judiciary under Ronald Reagan,
George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
By 2008, these right-wing jurists held a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court and
could thus overturn generations of legal precedents and declare that the Second
Amendment established an individual right for Americans to own guns. Though even
these five right-wing justices accepted society’s right to protect the general
welfare of the population through some gun control, the Supreme Court’s ruling
effectively “validated” the Right’s made-up history.
The ruling created a political dynamic in which even liberals in national
politics, the likes of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, had to genuflect to the
supposed Second Amendment right of Americans to parade around in public with
guns on their hips and high-powered semi-automatic rifles slung over their
shoulders.
As guns-right activists struck down gun regulations in Congress and in
statehouses across the nation, their dominant argument was that the Second
Amendment offered no leeway for restrictions on gun ownership; it’s what the
Framers wanted.
So, pretty much any unstable person could load up with a vast killing capacity
and slouch off to a bar, a work place, a church or a school even an elementary
school and treat fellow Americans as targets in a violent video game. Somehow,
the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was overtaken by the
“right” to own an AR-15 with a 30-or-100-bullet magazine.
When right-wing politicians talk about the Second Amendment now, they don’t even
bother to include the preamble that explains the point of the amendment. The
entire amendment is only 26 words. But the likes of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas,
apparently find the preamble inconvenient because it would undercut the false
storyline that they foist on uneducated Americans. So they just lop off the
first 12 words.
Nor do Cruz and his fellow Tea Partiers explain to their followers what the
Framers meant by “bear arms.” The phrase reflected the reasoning in the preamble
that the whole point was to create “well-regulated” state militias to maintain
“security,” not to free up anybody with a beef to kill government
representatives.
This bogus narrative of the Framers seeking to encourage violence to subvert the
peaceful and orderly process that they had painstakingly created in Philadelphia
in 1787 also has been pushed by prominent right-wingers, such as radio host Rush
Limbaugh and Fox News personality Andrew Napolitano
After last December’s massacre of 20 children and six educators in Newtown,
Connecticut, Napolitano declared: “The historical reality of the Second
Amendment’s protection of the right to keep and bear arms is not that it
protects the right to shoot deer. It protects the right to shoot tyrants, and it
protects the right to shoot at them effectively, with the same instruments they
would use upon us.”
The clear message from the Right has been that armed Americans must confront the
“tyrannical” Barack Obama the twice-elected President of the United States (and
the first African-American to hold that office) especially if he presses ahead
seeking commonsense gun restrictions.
Which brings us back to the Navy Yard massacre in Washington D.C. It has quickly
and quietly taken its place among the other mass slaughters that can’t be
stopped because the Right’s powerful propaganda apparatus has sold millions of
Americans on the dangerous and false notion that the Framers of the U.S.
Constitution wanted it this way.
These modern “revolutionaries” have been persuaded that they are channeling the
intent of the Framers who supposedly saw armed uprisings against the legally
constituted U.S. government as an important element of “liberty.” But that
belief is not the historical reality. Indeed, the reality is almost the
opposite.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book,
America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon
and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s
trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives
for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on
this offer, click here.
Mystery of a Highway Safety Device
Though drivers hope they’ll never find out, those yellow-and-black devices
on the end of guardrails are supposed to cushion the impact of a vehicle that
veers off the road. But a legal dispute has erupted over whether a design change
was properly evaluated, reports Daniel J. Goldstein.
By Daniel J. Goldstein
On a warm and humid morning of May 27, 2005, the Texas Transportation Institute
tested a new guardrail end unit at a sprawling proving facility about eight
miles north of Texas A&M University in Bryan, Texas. TTI, as it is known, tested
the highway guardrail design for Dallas-based manufacturer Trinity Industries,
which typically sells more than $300 million a year in guardrail safety systems
nationwide and around the world.
The purpose of those ubiquitous yellow-and-black-painted rectangular end units
is to reduce the risk to drivers and passengers whose vehicles veer off a
highway and slam into the ends of guardrails. The safety device is supposed to
diffuse the energy from the crash while preventing vehicles from being impaled
on a free-standing guardrail, thus its effectiveness can be a matter of life or
death.
Critics of the redesigned guardrail unit that was to be tested on that sultry
day in 2005 have alleged that after being installed along highways around the
world it has sometimes performed poorly in head-on crashes, even
catastrophically turning the guardrail into a spear that slices through cars and
people in them. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Guardrail Design Raises Concerns.”]
So, the safety of the car-traveling public was at issue when a 1998 Chevy Metro
was hooked up to cables that accelerated the test vehicle to just over 60 mph
before it slammed into what was billed as a new design of Trinity’s guardrail
end unit, called the 4-inch ET-Plus. The modified device being tested was
slightly different from and less expensive than a previous design, known as the
5-inch ET Plus, which had worked well the previous four years.
While the new device also had a rectangular steel end unit, the neck of the
design was smaller, four inches wide at what is known as the feeder channel, the
part that mounts on the W-shaped guardrail, instead of the previous five inches
wide. The internal dimensions of the feeder channel end unit were reduced as
well, from 37 inches long to 36.25 inches.
For the test, the head of the unit was placed on the end of a standard W-beam
steel guardrail, anchored by metal posts, each a little more than six feet
apart. The test results were evaluated using federal standards known as
NCHRP-350 and sent to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) for approval, a
process that allowed states to get reimbursed from the FHWA when they installed
Trinity’s units on highways and roads.
But there may have been a problem with the otherwise routine test. That
particular design, the 4-inch wide ET-Plus guardrail end unit, may not have been
the one tested that day and the 4-inch ET-Plus is currently at the center of
several wrongful death lawsuits around the country.
Besides the potential liability if the unit is found to be faulty or if the
validity of the safety test is put into question there are other financial and
safety concerns, since more than 500,000 units were produced between 2005 and
2009 and installed in all 50 states and 60 countries.
A Whistleblower Case
At the heart of the lawsuits is whether the altered dimensions diminished the
effectiveness of the end units in protecting crash victims and whether the
revised unit was properly evaluated.
Industry whistleblower Joshua Harman of Bristol, Virginia, wants the Trinitymade 4-inch ET-Plus guardrails removed from the national highway system,
potentially a staggering expense. Harman said he first discovered the concerns
about 4-inch ET-Plus in 2011 when his own guardrail manufacturing company SPIG
Industries was involved in a patent suit with Trinity.
Harman and several trial lawyers contend that the seemingly minor changes in the
dimensions of Trinity’s 4-inch ET-Plus end unit cause it to malfunction in a
head-on crash by “throat-locking” and folding the guardrail onto itself, thus
forming a lethal spear that penetrates the passenger compartment of the
colliding vehicle.
Harman, a former construction executive, said he’s documented more than 200
cases of the 4-inch ET-Plus failing catastrophically and posted examples on his
Web site, http://failingheads.com/. Trinity Industries however has vigorously
defended the 4-inch ET-Plus and claimed Harman is lying about the performance of
the safety device to drum up guardrail business for his rival company.
In addition to filing suit against Harman, Trinity also has blamed driver error
and mistakes by states in installing the 4-inch ET-Plus as the reasons for some
of the horrific crashes that caused vehicle occupants limbs to be severed as
well as several deaths from impalement by the guardrail.
But Harman, who recently was victorious in a defamation suit in Texas brought
against him by Trinity, with the judge ordering the Dallas-based company to pay
Harman’s legal fees, also claims that the device that was tested on May 27,
2005, might not be the end units seen on highways around the world because some
changes may have post-dated the tests.
“Nobody really knows for sure,” Harman said, “not even Trinity or TTI.” Harman
contends the dimension changes were critical to what he calls the
catastrophically poor performance of the device when it’s subject to a head-on
collision.
So, beyond the safety of drivers and their passengers, much is at stake in the
legal wrangling over the 4-inch ET-Plus. As such, the legal challenges against
Trinity have attracted prominent lawyers, including Microsoft giant-slayer David
Boies of New York-based Boies, Schiller & Flexner.
The Mysterious Test
The 2005 test in question was conducted at an old U.S. Air Force base which had
been converted into TTI’s nearly 2,000-acre proving ground. The base’s flat and
level concrete runways and wide aprons were ideal for the safety tests. [To see
test report, click here.]
According to court documents, what is known is that sometime between January
2005 and May 2005, Steve Brown, the then-president of Trinity Highway Products,
asked Wade Malizia, the manager of the Trinity plant, known as Plant 31 in
Girard, Ohio, just west of Youngstown, to make an ET-Plus terminal with 4-inchwide feeder channels.
Malizia then delegated the work to the plant’s welding shop. A draftsman by the
name of Jack Marley was assigned to create the drawings for the 4-inch ET Plus.
Marley however said that he “could not remember” making any changes to the
previous model, according to a federal court document. Moreover, no engineers
were involved in the change, and the welders didn’t make any drawing or save any
of their work, the document claims.
The supposedly new prototype was then shipped from Ohio to Texas to be tested by
TTI. According to the court filing, the prototype was disposed of after the May
27, 2005 test. “There are no records of what was actually tested,” Harman said.
Moreover, the court filing claimed that after the May 27, 2005 test, between May
31 and Aug. 31 of that year, no fewer than “seven” changes were made to the ETPlus design.
Marley was able to show draft drawings created on May 31, 2005, that shrank the
height of the feeder chute by 3/8s of an inch. The court filing also showed that
on July 6, 2005, a second change was made post-test shortening the length of the
feeder chute by three quarters of an inch.
Dr. William Stamps Howard, a design engineer in Buford, Georgia who has spent
nearly 25 years designing mechanical equipment for manufacturing, said that
while it’s not usual for prototypes to be discarded, it is unusual for designs
for safety equipment to be changed without the benefit of engineers or changes
to be made after the test is completed, as Harman alleges Trinity to have done.
“It’s one thing to paint it a different color or put the company’s logo sticker
in a different place, but if you make changes in the dimensions, the overall
design, or the materials after the initial test, then the initial test is pretty
much invalid,” said Howard, who has consulted for Fortune 500 companies such as
ExxonMobil, PepsiCo and Gillette, according to his Web site.
Harman claims the changes were approved at the highest levels at Trinity and TTI
“to save costs by reducing scrap.” Trinity, according to e-mail traffic between
company officials, was able to save money two ways. [See court filing.]
“Trinity reduced its raw material costs and the change allowed Trinity to insert
the feeder channels into the extruder throat, thereby requiring less labor to
weld the two assemblies together,” Harman said.
Company Profits
The changes indeed may have saved the company money. Trinity in its 2006 annual
report to shareholders noted that operating profit in its Construction Products
Group rose to $61.5 million in 2006, the first full year the 4-inch ET Plus was
sold, up from $55.3 million in 2005.
The company noted in its SEC filings that year that its “selling, engineering
and administrative expenses” as a percentage of revenue fell to 6.5 percent in
2006, down from 6.7 percent in 2005. Those expenses declined further in 2007 to
6 percent, as the company made an operating profit in the Construction Products
Group of $58.2 million.
Trinity Industries did not respond to my requests to explain why the changes in
the guardrail end unit were made. A statement by Lisa Singleton in the Dallas
office of the Brunswick Group, a corporate communications firm, declined to
address specific questions raised about the mysteries of the 4-inch head.
Singleton said, “Trinity stands by the ET-Plus System, which we are proud to
manufacture and sell. The false and misleading allegations were reviewed by the
Federal Highway Administration, which re-affirmed its acceptance of the ET-Plus
System in October 2012.”
The Federal Highway Administration also declined to comment for this story,
referring to its statement in February 2013 saying that the ET-Plus guardrail
“was tested in 2005 (and) the end terminal with the four-inch feeder channels
met all crash test standards.”
However, in February 2012, more than six years after first getting approval from
the FHWA for the 4-inch ET-Plus, Trinity acknowledged that it had modified the
internal dimensions, calling the reduction in the width of the guide
channels
“a design detail omitted” from its documentation to the
government. [See e-mail exchange.]
Also in February 2012, TTI director Roger Bligh submitted to FHWA’s chief
highway safety engineer Nick Artimovich an “analysis of photographs” in which he
claimed the dimensions of the prototype that was tested on May 27, 2005, matched
that of what was submitted to the FHWA for approval. But the “photo analysis”
turned out to be a simple algebraic equation written on a Post-It note stuck on
the photo. [See deposition with photo on page 4.]
“TTI had fed bogus measurements into the algebraic equation in an effort to
produce a predetermined result,” Harman claims.
Hollywood Twist
And, in a bizarre Hollywood-style twist, the earlier patent trial contained an
explosive allegation by Howard, the mechanical engineer. He claimed that Trinity
manipulated photographs from the tests. In a sworn affidavit, Howard said the
photograph of the 4-inch ET-Plus that was sent to the FHWA by Trinity as part of
its approval documentation was not that of a 4-inch unit.
Howard said one photograph that Trinity and TTI sent to the FHWA purporting to
be that of 4-inch head being tested for a head-on crash on May 27, 2005, was
actually a photograph of a 5-inch head taken several weeks earlier on May 5,
when TTI conducted a test on the end unit simulating an impact from the side.
“It’s a different photograph,” said Howard who runs the manufacturing consulting
firm Stability Technology near Atlanta. Howard said it’s easy to tell that the
photograph TTI submitted was from the May 5 test because the photograph has
equipment in the background that was used to direct a truck into a side impact
with the guardrail, not a head-on collision as what TTI purports to show.
“The photograph they claim was from the May 27 test was actually from the May 5
test,” Howard said in an interview. The FHWA declined to comment on Howard’s
allegation.
Even if the design changes implemented after the test worked properly, Trinity
may have violated FHWA’s policy that requires manufacturers to sell exactly the
same product to the states that was disclosed to the regulators.
“You will be expected to certify to potential users that the hardware furnished
has the same chemistry, mechanical properties and geometry as that submitted for
acceptance,”
according to FHWA regulations. Those same regulations require
companies to notify FHWA of any dimensional changes. Many states, including
Virginia require the same disclosure. Harman claims this was never done by
Trinity.
“As a result, every ET-Plus sold from the fourth quarter of 2005 until today was
and is ineligible for installation in every state in the Union,” Harman said.
The FHWA’s acceptance of the ET-Plus System means that states can install the
ET-Plus on roads and highway projects and get the costs reimbursed from the
federal government.
Besides the safety of the driving public, a great deal of money is at stake from
Trinity’s profitability to the individuals responsible for the safety tests.
TTI’s Bligh, according to a federal court filing, has personally made more than
$1 million in licensing fees paid to him by Trinity for the right to produce the
ET-Plus.
Guardrail manufacturing for Trinity, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange
under the symbol “TRN,” has been extremely profitable over the past few years,
especially as states have used federal stimulus funds to build new roads and
highways.
According to Trinity’s annual report, Trinity Construction Products Group, which
includes guardrail production, had a profit of $45 million, on sales of $484
million in 2012, including $376 million from highway products. The company’s net
income in 2012 was $254 million, on revenue of $3.8 billion, up from $146
million on $2.9 billion in revenue in 2011.
The company’s stock has doubled since May 2005 and has recently been selling for
more than $46 a share, giving Trinity a market capitalization of $3.6 billion.
Trinity insiders, according to SEC filings, have also sold $28 million worth of
company stock in the past 12 months, including more than $4 million by the
company’s CEO, Timothy Wallace, reported in March.
Daniel J. Goldstein is a veteran financial and investigative reporter and
producer whose work has been featured on Bloomberg Television, ABC, NBC and FOX
affiliates as well as the Center for Investigative Reporting’s media partners.
His Web site is www.dangoldsteinreporting.com. He resides in Frederick,
Maryland.
Summer Ends, So Does Fund Drive
From Editor Robert Parry: As the last days of summer officially wind down this
week, we will be ending our fund drive. If you haven’t yet, please consider a
donation. We are now less than $10,000 from our modest goal of $25,000.
You can donate by credit card online or by mailing a check to Consortium for
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account, which is named after our e-mail address: “consortnew @ aol.com”).
Your donation may be tax-deductible since we are an IRS-recognized 501-c-3 taxexempt non-profit.
Or, you can buy one of my last four books through the Consortiumnews’ Web site
or my latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, through Amazon.com, either in
paper or the e-book version. A portion of each sale will go toward our goal.
Or, for only $34, you can get the trilogy that traces the history of the two
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To get the books for less than half price and help us meet our fundraising goal
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If your mailing address is the same as your credit card billing address, we will
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Again, thanks for your support.
Robert Parry is a longtime investigative reporter who broke many of the IranContra stories for the Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. He founded
Consortiumnews.com in 1995 to create an outlet for well-reported journalism that
was being squeezed out of an increasingly trivialized U.S. news media.
Israel Sides with Syrian Jihadists
Exclusive: Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, has confirmed
suspicions that Israel has taken the side of Syrian rebels in their bloody civil
war and wants President Assad to fall even if that turns Syria over to al-Qaedaconnected jihadists, a disclosure that may change how recent events are viewed,
reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Israel’s pronouncement that it wants Syrian President Bashar al-Assad toppled
even if al-Qaeda-aligned rebels replace him puts into sharper focus the
intensifying lobbying and P.R. campaigns underway in the United States to get
President Obama to engage militarily against Syria and ultimately against Iran.
Until the declaration by Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren
on Tuesday, Israel’s precise position on the Syrian civil war was ambiguous, but
now it is clear that Israel again is lining up with its new de facto ally, Saudi
Arabia, in a regional conflict to undermine Iranian influence.
“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran,
to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,”
Oren told the Jerusalem Post in an interview scheduled for publication on Friday
but excerpted by Reuters on Tuesday.
Saudi Arabia, which is spearheading the military and intelligence assistance for
the Syrian rebels, is concerned itself about what is called the “Shiite
crescent” extending from Iran through Iraq and Syria to the Hezbollah enclaves
of Lebanon. The Saudis, who follow an ultraconservative form of Sunni Islam, are
now viewed in the region as the geopolitical bulwark against the Iran-led Shiite
coalition.
Ambassador Oren, who is considered very close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, is cited in the Reuters article as saying that while Israel favors
the more moderate elements among the Syrian rebels, it still wants Assad’s
ouster even if it results in radical Sunni Islamists coming to power in
Damascus.
“We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who
weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran,” Oren said,
adding that this was the case even if the other “bad guys” were affiliated with
al-Qaeda.
Reuters said, “Oren, a Netanyahu confidant, did not say in the interview whether
or how Israel was promoting Assad’s fall.”
However, Oren’s decision to lift the veil on Israel’s behind-the-scenes role in
seeking Assad’s removal is certain to fuel suspicions that some of the recent
events in Syria may have been manipulated by the sophisticated intelligence
agencies in Riyadh and Tel Aviv. Saudi intelligence is now headed by Prince
Bandar bin Sultan, the smooth-talking former ambassador to the United States.
Though Saudi Arabia and Israel have historically been enemies, the two countries
in recent years have seen their interests align, especially in their hostility
toward Iran as well as in their preference for an authoritarian regime in Egypt
over the populist Muslim Brotherhood. Now, it appears they also have been on the
same page regarding Syria.
In complementary ways, Israel and Saudi Arabia are masters of soft-power
geopolitics, both with world-class intelligence services and with the ability to
influence the actions of other global players, Israel through its unparalleled
propaganda and political skills and Saudi Arabia with its grip on oil supplies
and financial markets.
To the degree that the two countries can cooperate, they present a fearsome
coalition, rivaling the hard-power nations like the United States and Russia.
President Barack Obama would have to worry about the influential Israel Lobby
causing him political trouble in Washington while the Saudis could disrupt oil
supplies and stock prices.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin could see pro-Israeli propagandists
step up the media attacks on him while Saudi intelligence could increase support
to Islamist terrorists in Chechnya and elsewhere in the Russian Federation,
including against next year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “The Israeli-Saudi Superpower.”]
Masters of the Dark Arts
Israel and Saudi Arabia are masters of the dark arts of intelligence. Israel’s
intelligence services are legendary in their cleverness and ruthlessness, while
Saudi intelligence has had deep experience in financing major covert operations,
including the Afghan war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, an effort that
gave rise to the scion of a Saudi fortune, Osama bin Laden, and al-Qaeda.
The Saudis also have a history of financing violent jihadists whose actions are
directed against the United States and the West. According to the 9/11
Commission report, 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi nationals and the
one part of the report blacked out addressed the issue of Saudi financing for
al-Qaeda.
The de facto alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia also should be factored in
when evaluating evidence of the Syrian chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21, just
after United Nations inspectors had arrived to examine other CW attacks that the
Syrian government was blaming on the rebels.
While the major U.S. newspapers and non-governmental organizations are now
nearly unanimous in blaming President Assad’s regime for the attack which killed
hundreds of civilians, some of those assumptions especially regarding rebel
military capabilities may not hold if the rebels had access to materiel from
Saudi Arabia or Israel. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Murky Clues from UN’s Syria
Report.”]
Israel is one of a handful of nations that has balked at ratifying the
Convention Against Chemical Weapons, a short list of rogue states that Syria has
agreed to leave by accepting international prohibitions and destroying its
supplies of CW. Israel is widely believed to have a stockpile of high-quality
chemical weapons as well as an undeclared nuclear weapons arsenal.
Saudi Arabia, with its near-bottomless pit of money, also could have arranged
for the rebels to get Sarin or other chemical weapons along with rockets to
deliver them, if that’s what its intelligence agency decided.
Now, with the emerging U.S. consensus that Assad’s forces were to blame for the
Aug. 21 attack and Oren’s pronouncement that Israel would rather have al-Qaeda
extremists governing in Damascus than the pro-Iranian Assad, the pressure is
likely to build on Obama to take ever stronger action against Syria.
The other option that Obama may have is to opt for further collaboration with
Putin, seeking progress in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program
(as the new Iranian government signals an eagerness to compromise) and pressing
to get the Syrian rebels to join peace talks in Geneva (so that the killing and
disorder finally can be stopped).
Assad’s regime has agreed to participate in the talks but the fractious rebels
have refused, first demanding more sophisticated U.S. weapons to give them the
upper hand and insisting that Assad step down as a precondition to negotiations.
[See Consortiumnews.com’s “Who Blocked Syrian Peace Talks?”]
Realizing they now have the backing of Israel as well as Saudi Arabia, the
Syrian rebels are likely to resist any U.S. pressure for a cease-fire or peace
talks. It’s less clear whether Obama can withstand the political and propaganda
pressure that Israel and Saudi Arabia can be expected to direct against him.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book,
America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon
and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s
trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives
for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on
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