While the presidential election campaign is focused on the economy and Barack Obama’s transparent desire for class war in the United States, Americans ought to take a quick look at the outside world to examine the approaching wave of interventionist-wrought disaster, a wave for which both parties are equally culpable.
Secretary of State Clinton’s drive to destroy the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad appears to be moving closer to a conclusion. The democracy-thirsty folks Mrs. Clinton champions have moved into parts of Damascus and Aleppo and last week conducted a suicide car-bomb attack that killed al-Assad’s minister of defense and other top security officials. This may not be the death knell of the Syrian regime but its deteriorating condition seems clear.
There is, of course, no appreciable number of pro-democracy advocates in the Syrian resistance; such people — as in Syria, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and elsewhere — exist only in the minds of Clinton, Obama, McCain, Graham, and Lieberman. Indeed, the correct spelling of the name of those fighting against al-Assad’s regime is “mujahideen.”
These fighters come from the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which has been patiently waiting to exact revenge for al-Assad’s father’s early 1980s destruction of the city of Hama, and with it the death of 20,000 Brotherhood members, their families, and innocent civilians. In addition, al-Qaeda and its allies are heavily involved in attacking the regime and clearly have brought with them their admirable skill in conducting suicide operations and organizing the logistics needed to keep the resistance supplied and in the field.
Also fighting in Syria are Islamist fighters who transited the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-built highway through Iraq that now connects Syria with Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Finally, some of the other democrats Mrs. Clinton and Senator McCain supported in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya are fighting in Syria and brought with them many of the weapons they looted from the regimes they overthrew while bipartisan Washington mindlessly applauded and prated about the birth of “Arab democracies.”
If and when the al-Assad regime falls, Americans can watch the delights that will emanate from the Mrs. Clinton-led bipartisan effort to destroy it: (a) the slaughter of some portion of Syria’s Alawite and Shia communities; (b) the triumph of Islamist forces, although they may deign to temporarily disguise themselves in more innocent garb as has Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood; (c) the opening of Syria’s prisons and the release of thousands of veteran and hardened Sunni Islamist insurgents; and (d) the looting of the Syrian military’s fully stocked arsenals of conventional arms and chemical weapons; the latter is the largest in the Middle East and perhaps in the world.
And if this is not enough, there also is a little problem brewing in Bulgaria where an Islamist fighter — apparently carrying a U.S. passport — blew up an Israeli tour bus last week, leaving 7 dead, including 5 Israelis. Israel has blamed Iran and/or Lebanese Hezbollah — and that may turn out to be true — and Senator Graham and his stern, bipartisan gang of AIPAC-owned colleagues in the Congress and administration likely will jump on the band-wagon and screech for Israeli retaliation —even if it leads to a U.S. war with Iran and the implosion of the already crippled U.S. economy.
Now, it is too bad that some Israelis and other people got killed in Bulgaria, but Israel is at war with the Palestinians, other Sunni militants, and Iran; has been for a long time; and routinely kills Palestinians, Iranian scientists, and other Sunni fighters when the opportunity arises. Such is the nature of war. But only an idiot — or an Ivy-League-educated U.S. politician — could imagine that a bigger power can unrelentingly fight a war with a smaller one without eliciting a well-merited lethal response. And it is only the same crowd that could believe that civilian targets are illegitimate targets when the smaller enemy kills them, but perfectly legitimate when the bigger power kills them. For instance, how many thousands of such innocent Muslim civilians do you think have been or will be killed by the Islamists who Mrs. Clinton, et al have cheered on to victory in Libya and Egypt, and to near-victory in Syria?
In the midst of this mess perhaps U.S. voters ought to take a minute to think these situations through, and then ask what has all of this got to do with America? Here at home we have a wrecked economy, an important pending election, and a president intent on giving us Kenya-like government and class warfare — that ought to be enough for us unless Syria or the endless Israel-Muslim war has a direct impact on U.S. national interests.
Maddeningly, both Syria and the damnable Israel-Muslim war are having a direct impact on U.S. national security interests, but only because both parties have unrelentingly intervened in affairs in the Islamic world that have no impact on, and pose no threat to U.S. national interests. Given Syria’s possession of an enormous arsenal of chemical weapons, Washington’s obvious policy goal should have been to make sure al-Assad’s regime did not fall — or at least that it did not facilitate the fall — and thereby make that arsenal available to states and groups who mean to harm the United States.
Instead, in the name of a non-existent Syrian democratic movement, Mrs. Clinton has made sure that fading U.S. power has been lined up four-square behind Islamist forces eager to overthrow al-Assad and then damage U.S. interests and kill Americans with Syria’s enormous stocks of conventional and chemical weapons.
And the suicide-bombing in Bulgaria ought to call to mind a too-little-remembered event of July 1914: namely, the assassination of an Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo which set off a train of events leading to World War One. At base, the bombing in Bulgaria is the business of Israel, the bomber and his sponsor(s), and the Bulgarian government. The attack is just another small episode in the Israel-Muslim war that has been going on since the founding of Israel, and even before. Had the Founders common sense non-interventionism been adhered to by both U.S. parties, this small — and, to America, unimportant — episode in the Israel-Muslim war would not have merited more than squib in the media. Instead, we find AIPAC-corrupted media outlets and U.S. politicians in both parties ready to support Israel in retributive acts that may well lead to a U.S. war with Iran, one that will kill more of our soldier-children to protect Israel and drive the U.S. economy deep into depression.
Israel, of course, must be completely free to respond to the attack in Bulgaria in any way it deems necessary to protect its people and interests. But it is nothing short of criminal and demented that our interventionist politicians have created a scenario where war and depression may well be the lot of Americans because Israel — a nation in which we have no genuine national interest — decides to exercise its legitimate right to self-defense.
Maybe Americans will have time to think through this absurdity while they wait for al-Qaeda and/or its allies to gas their families with some of the Syrian chemical weapons Mrs. Clinton lusts to arm them with.
