The Eve of Destruction

August 31, 2013

English: Bashar al-Assad under pressure (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Once again, a President of the American Empire and its military/industrial complex stand on the cusp of war in the Middle East – this time with even less support from the American people and the international community than was drummed up for its previous wars.
Of course, the American poll numbers in support of a Syrian strike go up when you add the words, “chemical weapons” to the questions, though no one has explained how that is any worse than the obscene slaughter that has gone on in Syria for the last two years by both sides with conventional weapons.
Don’t bother pointing me to the videos and pictures showing rows of blue-faced Syrian little ones killed by the gas attacks. I can’t distinguish them from the videos and pictures showing rows of blue-faced Syrian little ones killed in conventional weapons attacks that we and the rest of the world have ignored for those two years.
And don’t tell me about upholding international conventions against the use of CWs when our own chemical industry sold many of the chemicals and our own CIA provided the intelligence that allowed Saddam Hussein to use CWs against the Iranians during that war and his own Kurdish people, knowing he was using/would use them. And, when the damage from our use of white phosphorus (which we called a chemical weapon when Saddam Hussein used it) in Iraq and the use of depleted uranium in all our wars since and including Kosovo is ever more damningly documented.
Don’t lie to me about national interests. There are no compelling national interests in bombing Syria now; there are only imperial interests. And the Empire does what it wants, when it wants, to whom it wants – with or without the approval of this or any other nation – justifying it with whatever lies and legal niceties it needs to concoct. This time appears to be no different. The Empire blames Bashar al-Assad for the chemical atrocities; Assad blames the rebels. Po-tay-to; po-tah- to. Each is equally plausible and those who know the truth of the matter are not talking to you and me about it. As to those whom the Empire wishes to get rid of, it will grab or create whatever it must to get the job done.
In the end, the British Parliament may turn out to be the smartest guys in the room. In these days of continued economic instability, a peak and plateau in worldwide energy barely made up for by our expensive newfound oil and the increasing frequency and costs of climate related disasters here and around the world, perhaps they’ve acceded to a reality the Empire refuses to acknowledge.
Whatever happens over the next week, I’ll spend it gleaning every ounce of food I can from my barely producing garden, finishing up the seed planting for my indoor winter garden and laying in a new round of supplies for the larder. If even a few of the many things that could go wrong in an attack on Syria do go wrong, we may all look back at this time as the eve of destruction.