Quite an alliance! Was it not the Three Musketeers who shouted “All
for one and one for all” each time they sought combat? This really
should be the new battle cry if – or when – the statesmen of the Western
world go to war against Bashar al-Assad.
The men who destroyed so
many thousands on 9/11 will then be fighting alongside the very nation
whose innocents they so cruelly murdered almost exactly 12 years ago.
Quite an achievement for Obama, Cameron, Hollande and the rest of the
miniature warlords.
This, of course, will not be trumpeted by the Pentagon or the White House – nor, I suppose, by al-Qa’ida
– though they are both trying to destroy Bashar. So are the Nusra
front, one of al-Qa’ida’s affiliates. But it does raise some interesting
possibilities.
Maybe the Americans should ask al-Qa’ida for
intelligence help – after all, this is the group with “boots on the
ground”, something the Americans have no interest in doing. And maybe
al-Qa’ida could offer some target information facilities to the country
which usually claims that the supporters of al-Qa’ida, rather than the
Syrians, are the most wanted men in the world.
There will be some
ironies, of course. While the Americans drone al-Qa’ida to death in
Yemen and Pakistan – along, of course, with the usual flock of civilians
– they will be giving them, with the help of Messrs Cameron, Hollande
and the other Little General-politicians, material assistance in Syria
by hitting al-Qa’ida’s enemies. Indeed, you can bet your bottom dollar
that the one target the Americans will not strike in Syria will be
al-Qa’ida or the Nusra front.
And our own Prime Minister will
applaud whatever the Americans do, thus allying himself with al-Qa’ida,
whose London bombings may have slipped his mind. Perhaps – since there
is no institutional memory left among modern governments – Cameron has
forgotten how similar are the sentiments being uttered by Obama and
himself to those uttered by Bush and Blair a decade ago, the same bland
assurances, uttered with such self-confidence but without quite enough
evidence to make it stick.
In Iraq, we went to war on the basis
of lies originally uttered by fakers and conmen. Now it’s war by
YouTube. This doesn’t mean that the terrible images of the gassed and
dying Syrian civilians
are false. It does mean that any evidence to the contrary is going to
have to be suppressed. For example, no-one is going to be interested in
persistent reports in Beirut that three Hezbollah members – fighting
alongside government troops in Damascus – were apparently struck down by
the same gas on the same day, supposedly in tunnels. They are now said
to be undergoing treatment in a Beirut hospital. So if Syrian government
forces used gas, how come Hezbollah men might have been stricken too?
Blowback?
And while we’re talking about institutional memory,
hands up which of our jolly statesmen know what happened last time the
Americans took on the Syrian government army? I bet they can’t remember.
Well it happened in Lebanon when the US Air Force decided to bomb
Syrian missiles in the Bekaa Valley on 4 December 1983. I recall this
very well because I was here in Lebanon. An American A-6 fighter bomber
was hit by a Syrian Strela missile – Russian made, naturally – and
crash-landed in the Bekaa; its pilot, Mark Lange, was killed, its
co-pilot, Robert Goodman, taken prisoner and freighted off to jail in
Damascus. Jesse Jackson had to travel to Syria to get him back after
almost a month amid many clichés about “ending the cycle of violence”.
Another American plane – this time an A-7 – was also hit by Syrian fire
but the pilot managed to eject over the Mediterranean where he was
plucked from the water by a Lebanese fishing boat. His plane was also
destroyed.
Sure, we are told that it will be a short strike on Syria,
in and out, a couple of days. That’s what Obama likes to think. But
think Iran. Think Hezbollah. I rather suspect – if Obama does go ahead –
that this one will run and run.
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