The Syria end game; one possible scenario

The Syrian "uprising" was well into its second year when Prince Bandar bin Sultan, aka Bandar Bush, was promoted to the top post in the Saudi intelligence apparatus.

Days later unconfirmed reports briefly circulated claiming that Bandar bin Sultan had been assassinated. Though that story was roundly denied by various Saudi spokesmen, the fact remains that we haven't seen him since.

Not that there haven't been plenty of claims that he is alive and well. The Saudi house organ Al Arabiya speaks as though he is very much alive and masterminding the "game-changing" strategy that will have us rid of Assad "in months." (Al Arabiya, 13 April 2013)  Israeli website Debkafile routinely asserts that Bandar is still in charge. 

Perhaps what the case of Bandar Bush underlines is the fact that spokespersons on all sides have been busy as can be shovelling disinformation into the public realm to bolster their particular points of view. The Saudis have considerable prestige invested in the success of the anti-Assad struggle. Likewise, Turkey and Qatar.

The Americans have maintained the position that they are a hands-off bystander, although no serious person imagines that the Turkey-Saud-Qatar triumvirate embarked on their Syrian adventure without the blessing of the White House. In terms of the public perception of Obama's domestic audience, the Americans maintain deniability.

Nowhere is tension between public pronouncements and the national interest as extreme as in Israel. At the time of the recent Israeli attacks on Syria, we were told that the actions were intended to prevent the shipment of "advanced Syrian weapons" to Hezbollah in Lebanon. That's a good story, but one suspects that for the moment Assad has greater need for those missiles himself.

It is more than plausible that the intent of the Israeli action was to keep those weapons out of the hands of some faction or another of the Free Syrian Army. There have emerged two distinct "Syrian Free Armies" since the Syrian uprising began. On the one hand, you have the US-friendly officially-endorsed "good guys."

These are the FSA  types who are seen regularly on TV screens in the West. They talk a good revolution but command little or nothing on the ground in Syria.

On the other hand are the Al Nusra Front and their assorted fellow travellers, a collection of Wahabi radicals who do virtually all of the fighting. When Washington politicians voice their fears of having weapons fall into the "wrong hands," these are the people whose hands they are talking about. While they are more than happy to fight Assad today, they will be even happier to take their battle to the Israelis or the Americans tomorrow.

This is obviously of great concern in Tel Aviv. Since Israel's last foray into Lebanon in 2006 there's been no enthusiasm for the next round. Plenty of talk, yes, but a keen interest in ensuring that talk is all it is.

When IDF intel boss Aviv Kochavi claimed in February last year that 200,000 missiles were pointed at Israel, he was inadvertently making an acknowledgement that perhaps needn't have been made. While his statement was at least in part intended to pressure the Americans to fund more Iron Dome units, those additional Iron Domes are going to expand the envelope of immunity by mere minutes in the event of an all out war. Telling the Israeli people that they now have protection from the first two hundred incoming instead of the first one hundred isn't all that reassuring after you've told them 200,000 are on the way.

Which is why in spite of all the warlike rhetoric, Israel has no interest in a war with Hezbollah or anyone else, including Syria or any elements of the so-called Syrian opposition. 

That leaves both Israel and Hezbollah with a common interest in ensuring that Assad remains. And while it would be impossible for any American politician to say so, this is also were America's best interests lie, at least for the foreseeable future. Owing to their usual toxic combination of hubris and over-reach, the Americans had convinced themselves that their Syrian proxy opposition would make short work of the Assad regime. 

The past two-plus years have disabused them of that delusion.

That leaves the Americans in the position of having to make a climb-down without it appearing as such. While there are plenty of voices on the American political scene encouraging a more robust US involvement in Syria (see for example John McCain's visit to Syria today) there are many more cautioning against it.

Look for Assad to run Syria for years to come.

Erdogan being hung out to dry by Western allies

A year ago Turkey's Prime Minister was gung ho for doing the dirty work for his masters in Washington and London and Brussels. He generously made his country available as the staging ground for the jihadi hordes streaming towards Damascus to take down the infidel Assad.

The fall of the Assad regime was imminent, both he and we were assured on a daily  basis.

A year later, Assad shows no sign of weakening, the daily predictions of the imminent collapse of his regime have vanished, the cheerleading from Western media has been replaced by caution over just who those rebels might be, and Turks are taking to the streets by the tens of thousands to protest their government's strategy toward their southern neighbor.

What an irony if Assad were to outlast Erdogan!

Meanwhile, the Kurdish separatist factions have seized their moment of opportunity and are more active  than they have been for years. That puts Erdogan in the unenviable position of braying about Assad "slaughtering his own people" while he slaughters his own Kurds.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been making reassuring noises about standing with Erdogan in the event of a war with Syria. While we should all hope that this promise will never be tested, when the stark choice becomes backing the Turks and having a regional war, or waving goodbye to Erdogan and sending our regrets, it will be bye-bye Erdogan.

Turkish family slaughtered in Syrian mortar attack

If you follow the news at all you're familiar with that story and the various follow-ups about Turkey striking back and Erdogan's bellicose comments about how the Syrians are risking all-out war etc.

You're familiar with it because Turkey is a fellow NATO nation and therefore by definition the "good guy" in anything that transpires between the two counties. Our media love a simplistic good-guys bad-guys scenario because it makes few demands on the reader, or more generally the "news consumer."

In the reportage on this incident in the Western media you will be spared any unnecessary background that might confuse your thinking about who is who in the good-bad matrix. You won't be challenged to ask questions about Turkey's arming and training of the armed rebels now in control of the Syrian insurrection, or their willful complicity in infiltrating these rebels into the country and also providing them safe haven in Turkey, all of which are strictly illegal under international law.

All you need to know is NATO good, Syria bad.

But even if you do follow the news quite closely, you may have missed the story about the report put out by a research team from Stanford and NYU called "Living under drones" which came out a few days before that unlucky Turkish family was annihilated.

That's because the people operating those drones are from the Nations of Virtue and the people living under them are in Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, and various other benighted lands not quite safe for democracy yet.

And a family of five blown to bits is nothing! Small potatoes! A mere blip! Our drone program does it up right! Nevermind this nonsense about a family of five over 18 months. We do that at least once a week!

Sometimes twice a day!

We've even come up with a new twist wherein we send in a Hellfire missile, and then while the rest of the village is busy trying to dig the victims out of the rubble, we pop 'em with a second and even sometimes a third Hellfire!

You do have to admire the creativity of our war-makers, don't you?

Now technically, all these victims are terrorists unless they can prove otherwise. That's official Obama drone protocol.

According to the researches at Stanford/NYU, less than two percent of drone attack victims are legitimate targets. That's a lot of collateral damage.

That's a lot of grieving friends and family and neighbors and relatives who, if they loved us, don't any more, and if they were indifferent, now hate us, and if they already hated us, now hate us even more.

But remember, we are the good guys, and they hate us for our freedoms.