Obama Follows British Lead
Toward Igniting World War
by Jeffrey Steinberg
Dec. 16—British Prime Minister David Cameron continued to play the role of leading provocateur for World War III this week, pressing for the European Union heads of state to end the arms embargo of Syria in order to provide full military support for the Western-backed rebels seeking to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad government. Cameron pressed for EU military aid, and has already declared that Britain is prepared to provide naval and air support to the rebels, which is tantamount to a declaration of war.
At the Dec. 10 EU meeting, Cameron met with strong resistance from a number of heads of state, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Yet, on Dec. 14 the German Bundestag approved the deployment of Patriot missile batteries to southern Turkey.
But on this side of the Atlantic, Her Majesty's Prime Minister had no problems. Cameron's strongest ally continues to be President Barack Obama, who had Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announce Dec. 14 that the U.S. will also deploy Patriot missile batteries to Turkey. Unlike Germany and the Netherlands, where parliamentary approval was obtained, President Obama has once again effectively torn up the U.S. Constitution by deploying American troops (expected to number 400) into combat without getting permission from Congress, as mandated by Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which gives Congress the exclusive authority to declare war.
For Obama, Syria is a replay of his flagrant refusal to go to Congress for war authorization during the Libya no-fly zone and air war, which led to the overthrow and assassination of Muammar Qaddafi and the virtual takeover of the country by al-Qaeda terrorist networks bankrolled and supported from Britain and Saudi Arabia.
Black Propaganda
No one in his right mind can buy the line that the deployment of the Patriot batteries to southern Turkey is a purely defensive move to "protect a NATO ally." For the past month, the Western media has been conducting a wartime-style black-propaganda campaign against the Assad government, accusing it of plotting the use of chemical weapons against its own people, and then charging Assad with firing Scud missiles into rebel-held areas near the Turkish border. After a week, even Panetta admitted that there was "evidence" that movements of Syrian chemical-weapons stockpiles had stopped, but the Blair-like lie about the threat of weapons of mass destruction continues.
Claims that the Syrian government had fired Scud missiles was another attempt to provoke intervention. The claims were officially denied by the Assad government, and well-known military analyst Col. Patrick Lang (USA-ret.), former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency's Middle East section, who ran all DIA human intelligence operations, pointed out that photos of the alleged Scud missiles, published in the Murdoch press were not Scuds, but American-made multiple-launch rockets—which Syria does not even possess.
The escalation of wartime propaganda is, in part, aimed at diverting attention from the fact that the armed Syrian opposition, backed by Washington, London, Paris, and Ankara, is dominated by al-Qaeda fighters. Last week, the U.S. State Department placed the Syrian-based al-Qaeda group, the al-Nusra Front, on its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, in what was seen widely as an effort to distance Washington from al-Qaeda elements in the Syrian rebel force. The effort backfired when the Western-backed head of the opposition coalition that has been recognized by Washington, London, and Paris as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, publicly attacked the Obama Administration for classifying al-Nusra as terrorist.
Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, the new head of the anti-Assad coalition, who met with the EU heads of state at a special meeting over the weekend, and is due to visit Washington in the coming days, vowed to continue to work closely with al-Nusra, and announced he would lobby the Obama Administration to reverse the decision.
Al-Nusra has been identified by the State Department as a direct offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq. It is made up predominantly of Syrian and Iraqi jihadists who fought against the American occupation of Iraq for years, and more recently crossed into Syria to fight against Assad. The group is widely admitted to be the only effective fighting force against the Syrian Army, carrying out suicide bombings that have killed top regime officials, and conducting massacres of civilians. In a direct blow to the Obama Administration, demonstrations took place all across Syria Dec. 14, in support of al-Nusra and denouncing the American President.
Determined Opposition
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov strongly denounced the support for the jihadists by NATO countries, and accused the United States and others of violating the very Geneva agreement that they all signed in June 2012, vowing to seek a ceasefire and a political settlement to the Syrian crisis. As Lyndon LaRouche has repeatedly warned for the past year, the real target of the Libya and Syria regime-change invasions has been Russia and China. In a Dec. 8 interview with Russia Today, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, similarly warned that a direct U.S. or NATO intervention into Syria would lead to a conflict with Russia and China, which could lead to general world war. LaRouche has said that any conflict involving the United States, Russia, and China would lead to the use of thermonuclear weapons and possible extinction of the human race in a matter of hours of war.
Wilkerson also warned that the Syrian war is also part of a larger regional showdown against Iran. He noted that some Members of Congress are furious at the fact that Obama brought the nation to war in Libya without Congressional approval, and is now moving toward doing the same thing in Syria, that they are openly discussing impeachment.
University of Illinois Law School professor Francis Boyle, speaking Dec. 9 at a human rights conference in Puerto Rico, also presented a bill of impeachment against Obama, citing his illegal Libya war, his assassinations of at least three American citizens without due process, and the drone killings as violations of the Constitution, and war crimes under the Nuremberg principles and the UN Charter.
The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff remain adamantly opposed to any military action in Syria by American forces. So far, this has impeded President Obama from taking direct military action against the Assad government to install the al-Qaeda-tainted rebels in power in Damascus. But war-avoidance efforts can only go so far. The only durable war prevention option is the removal of President Obama from office by impeachment.
