Ayoon Wa Azan (Strike or no strike)

President Barack Obama can say what he wants now, but his personal stance on involving his country in the Syrian civil war was best expressed on June 31 when he decided to send light weapons to the rebels. Indeed, his goal was to deflect blame rather than influence the course of the fighting. Now, the president has asked Congress to decide whether the United States should carry out a military strike that is limited in time and scope against the military regime, or forget all about it. If both houses of Congress back the president’s request then the responsibility will be joint among them, but if they refuse to authorize military action, then the president can say that he wanted to conduct a strike but that Congress stopped him. The Senate is dominated by the Democrats, while the House of Representatives is controlled by the Republicans. The members of the two parties in both houses of Congress have not agreed on anything for years. Now, Congress is divided between those who support the strike and those who oppose it. The latter are in turn divided into those who oppose it because they fear possible reactions and do not want another American military involvement after George W. Bush’s disastrous wars, and those who oppose it because it is limited and insufficient. In addition, there is a small faction that opposes all foreign wars. This faction is still important, because Congress’s division might mean that a few votes will decide the outcome. Beyond what the reader or I may want, several U.S. military sources have declared their objection to a strike on Syria. The reasons were different from one general to another, as one well-documented article explained in the Washington Post. I had also read in the British press that former military chiefs almost unanimously agreed that Britain does not have the ability to go to war alongside the United States. The Pope and several Christian churches also opposed the strike, along with human rights groups and Doctors without Borders. Now I read in major American newspapers, from the Washington Post in the east coast to the Los Angeles Times in the west coast, that Congressional approval of the strike is not guaranteed, and even that a majority could be against it. Does this mean that Barack Obama will face on Monday the same thing that happened with David Cameron in the British House of Commons last month? I do not know the answer. What I do know is that all the warmongers are neocons or American Likudniks whose sole allegiance is to Israel, where the prevailing view is that a delay in striking Syria would be interpreted as weakness in the U.S. position. The immigrant Naftali Bennett, a minister of American origin who heads a fascist party, said that the delay in the strike proves that Israel can only depend on itself when it comes to self-defense. Israeli is a harlot-like occupation state that is not unlike the harlots of the Torah, and its government, which includes war criminals in its ranks, wants the United States to destroy what is left of Syria. More importantly, Israel wants the U.S. to attack Iran and destroy its nuclear program, so that Israel can be the only nuclear power in the region, threatening nearby and faraway countries. What has encouraged Israel to hijack U.S. foreign policy are the likes of Daniel Pipes, who was one of the members of the Iraq war gang. His record betrays his Israeli allegiance, and I recently read that he objected to a ‘limited’ war on Syria. Of course, he fails to see the crimes of Israel’s government and the occupation. Similarly, Charles Krauthammer believes that Obama was shamed into a war he does not desire, and suggests for him the targets he is required to attack (required by Israel). Krauthammer then acknowledges that there is a risk of “blowback terror from Syria and its terrorist allies,” meaning Hezbollah and Iran. I say that the shoe of any Hezbollah fighter is more honorable than him and the government of Israel and its occupation army, while noting, today as before, that the presence of Hezbollah fighters in Syria is a big mistake. So I call again on Hezbollah to pull out from the civil war in Syria to remain strong against Israel. And while I might have a thousand objections against Iran’s policies, Iran in the end did not occupy an entire country, killing its natives. In the International Herald Tribune, the international edition of the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof wrote an objective article about Syria that conveyed the reality of the situation on the ground, rather than Israel’s wishes and desires. But the opposite page carried an article by Roger Cohen, a pro-Israel writer, whose title summarizes its content: “Make Assad Pay.” In the article, the author claimed that the world is led and protected by America. Personally, I refuse to be in a world where the Israeli tail wags the American dog. To be sure, the whole world outside the Israel gang refuses to be subservient to a country whose legislators sold their souls to the Israeli devil. In the end, only what is right will endure, whether Barack Obama agrees or disagrees with Congress. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arab Today.