Tag: United States

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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Making Love to Satan

Numbers written on the bodies and on white cards told regime bureaucrats the identities of the deceased, when they died and which branch of Syrian authorities had held them, according to a Syrian military-police photographer now outside of Syria. Faces have been obscured at photo source's request.
Numbers written on the bodies and on white cards told regime bureaucrats the identities of the deceased, when they died and which branch of Syrian authorities had held them, according to a Syrian military-police photographer now outside of Syria. Faces have been obscured at photo source’s request.

10,000 Bodies: Inside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Crackdown – WSJ.

Caesar’s revelations referred in the WSJ article might seem old by now to those following developments in Syria at it has been reported months ago, but now, it is the U.S. official investigators who have examined the evidence supplied by Caesar and who are corroborating his story. Indeed, an Industrial-scale campaign of mass slaughter is being conducted by the Assad regime against his opponent, a campaign that was unleashed soon after the beginning of the Syrian Revolution, even in its year-long nonviolent phase.

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Down in Ukraine

The debris of a jet engine from Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is seen near the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk. (IMAGE: REUTERS/MAXIM ZMEYEV)
The debris of a jet engine from Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is seen near the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk. (IMAGE: REUTERS/MAXIM ZMEYEV)

It was not only an airliner that was shut down in Ukraine, but the last vestige of the post-Cold War global order, and the popular myth regarding the containability of “local” conflicts. In today’s hyper-connected world, conflict anywhere is a conflict everywhere, for spillovers are unavoidable and containability a myth.

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