Fighters of al-Nusra front driving through Aleppo 26 May (AFP)
“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation”
— candidate Barack Obama, December, 2007
The United States has decided to allow airstrikes to defend Syrian rebels trained by the U.S. military from any attackers, even if the enemies hail from forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. officials said on Sunday.
— "U.S.to defend Syrian rebels with airpower, including from Assad," Reuters, August 3, 2015
The United
States just went to war with Syria. With the confirmation today that American
planes will shoot down Syrian planes attacking USDA-approved
"rebels," the United States is now overtly engaged in another
criminal attack on a sovereign country that poses no conceivable, let alone actual
or imminent, threat to the nation. This is an act of war.
Please don’t
try any not-really-war “no-fly zone” or “safe zone” bullshit. As the Commander
of NATO says,
a no-fly zone is “quite frankly an act of war and it is not a trivial
matter….[I]t’s basically to start a war with that country because you are going
to have to go in and kinetically take out their air defense capability.” Or as
Shamus Cooke puts
it: “In a war zone an area is
made ‘safe’ by destroying anything in it or around that appears threatening.” Inevitably, “U.S. and Turkish fighter jets
will engage with Syrian aircraft, broadening and deepening the war until the
intended aim of regime change has been accomplished."1
Does anybody doubt that this is exactly what’s intended? Perhaps Obama will soothe the discomfort of his purportedly peace-loving progressive fans with some assurance like: “broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.” He’ll be lying, as he was four years ago when he said that about Libya.
Does anybody doubt that this is exactly what’s intended? Perhaps Obama will soothe the discomfort of his purportedly peace-loving progressive fans with some assurance like: “broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.” He’ll be lying, as he was four years ago when he said that about Libya.
As an
aggressive, unprovoked war, this is totally illegal under international law,
and all the political and military authorities undertaking it are war
criminals, who would be prosecuted as such, if there were an international
legal regime that had not already been undermined by the United States.