Tag: Iraq

Stop lying my liberal friends!

Syrian activists dedicated the Friday of October 28, 2011 for their demand of a no-fly zone. For all the violence perpetrated by the pro-Assad militias and security forces, the protest movement was still a largely nonviolent phenomenon at the time. These people , speaking in the name of millions of Syrians, were not simply ignored, they were betrayed.
Syrian activists dedicated the Friday of October 28, 2011 for their demand of a no-fly zone. For all the violence perpetrated by the pro-Assad militias and security forces, the protest movement was still a largely nonviolent phenomenon at the time. These people , speaking in the name of millions of Syrians, were not simply ignored, they were betrayed.

Will the Ends, Will the Means – NYTimes.com.

You know why all these arguments are indeed the very essence of horseshit? Because our original demand was not about arming the rebels, but about the establishment of a no-fly zone and a credible internationally-sponsored political process that can allow all sides to chart a path towards a post-Assad period. No, this would not have been easy, but with a no-fly zone in place and a political process, it would have worked. We would not have seen this mass-slaughter, of that we can all be certain. And the expense of maintaining a no-fly zone would have been far less than the cost of the current strikes in Iraq.

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Full-scale Israeli invasion of Gaza is good…for Iran.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamneie (R) hugs leader of the Islamic group Hamas Khaled Meshaal before their meeting in Tehran, Iran on February 1, 2009. (UPI Photo/ HO/Iran's Supreme Leader's official website)
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamneie (R) hugs leader of the Islamic group Hamas Khaled Meshaal before their meeting in Tehran, Iran on February 1, 2009. (UPI Photo/ HO/Iran’s Supreme Leader’s official website)

American and Israeli hubris over the last decade has allowed Iran to dictate the rules on engagement in the Levant and the Middle East. The crises in Syria, Iraq and now Gaza are cases in point.  

So Hamas has broken a ceasefire to kidnap an Israeli soldier. It happens in wars: ceasefires are often broken and soldiers captured. The best response Israel can do at this stage, as counterintuitive this will seem to its current leaders and their myriad supporters in Israel and across the world, is to immediately accept a new ceasefire. Then, Israeli officials should explain to their people what everybody seem to know at this stage but few dare talk about, that the real battle in Gaza is actually part of a larger regional proxy war with Iran. For this reason, Israeli officials should tell their people that rather than rush into undertaking actions designed to satisfy a certain popular need for revenge, Israel needs to take the time and think in strategic terms, lest it keeps playing into Iran’s hands.

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Who Are We? We Are Many!

A scene from Deir Ezzor City, Syria, now under ISIS control. AFP PHOTO / AHMAD ABOUD
A scene from Deir Ezzor City, Syria, now under ISIS control. AFP PHOTO / AHMAD ABOUD

Some people have enough moral sense to criticize Israel, but not to criticize anything that Assad and his supporters have done and are still doing. They see ISIS stoning women and chasing away Christians, but they ignore all evidence and testimony of torture, mass rape and mass murder in Assad’s concentration camps. They ignore evidence of collaboration between ISIS and Assad. They ignore Iran’s role in the current mayhem in Syria, Iraq and Gaza, and advocate engagement with her. They defend Russia and ignore her duplicity in war crimes in Syria and Ukraine. Clearly these people cannot truly be concerned with human rights. Their stand by the Palestinians at this stage seems motivated more by ideology than any sense of moral solidarity – an ideology that put Israel and America, and sometimes the West as a whole, at the center of all evil designs in the world; an ideology that, in essence, covets the power that these countries have and longs to appropriate it, rather than be truly dedicated to holding all equally accountable for their misdeeds.

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