“It is Israel which is behind the war on Syria and which is pressing for further conflict.” The history of the conflict in Syria detailed in the following link goes back further, and up to 2013, and shows it to be but a step in a larger campaign for control of the Middle East, a Greater Middle East strategy. This is the strategy that is dangerous. Whether it is the strategy of the U.S. or not should weigh in our assessment of the potential causes of this potential conflict.

While claiming to be non-ideological, Caitlin solves the problem of who is causing the conflict by positing a, “US-centralized power establishment” or a “US-centralized empire” which she also refers to as, “the Western empire.” The problem with this construct is that it is abstract. There is no address or headquarters for such an empire per se. At best it is allegorical , that NATO and the US act like an empire or are a de facto empire. While that rubric may be helpful in some kind of analyses, it can also be problematic and impractical.

As is discussed in the articles linked above, the problem can also be identified as an Israeli one, and which is the tail and which is the dog is a legitimate question. Is Israel doing America’s bidding when it fires missiles into Syria and arms dissident factions to overthrow sovereign governments? Or is it more helpful to think of the U.S. as a client state of Israel’s? With all the money and influence AIPAC showers on congress, and the outsized influence of donors like Sheldon Adelson, there is an argument to be made that Israel is the patron in the patron-client relationship. Or, is there a third party controlling the governments of both Israel and the U.S.? I think it is both helpful to keep asking these questions — even though we don’t have unqualified answers for them (yet); and, important not to invent an adversary to fuel a polemic.

I find the Israel-centric argument persuasive in many of the particulars. U.S. involvement seems muddled, but a good case for U.S. centered involvement in the case for Syria is made by the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies:

The US has failed in its effort to produce a US-friendly and democratic Northern Middle East, where Sunnis and Shiites power-share and emulate US forms of governance. Turkey has turned to Russia and authoritarianism. Iraq is a Shiite dominated state that needs decades to build reliable institutions that will allow it to turn away from dependence on Iran. Assad’s authority has survived in most of Syria, and Hizbullah is more powerful than ever in Lebanon. For the US to believe that it can turn around this history of political failure and misspent millions by launching a comeback in North Syria is nothing short of goofy.

And a U.S.-centric motivation doesn’t add up there, either; any more than if you see Israel as the central figure driving the conflict, regarding Syrians as potential Palestinians. Whatever the reason, Trump now claims to have his hand on the trigger. If he goes in, it will be a reversal of his campaign posture, his behaviour to date, and his stance on such interventions previous to becoming a presidential candidate. Some have speculated that Trump is being hemmed in by the Democratic Caucus, who have hounded him from day one, and now have enough leverage — they sacked the office of his lawyer (Cohen)— that Trump has to obey them. Others that Trump’s bellicosity is only a feint, and that he will pull back from actual intervention. Perhaps Trump has converted, and really believes such an intervention to be in America’s best interests? Or perhaps Trump is so mercurial and inchoate any rationale would fall short of the mark.

The majority of the media and by extension the democratic (and much of the republican) establishment seem to think invading Syria not only a swell idea, but one motivated by high-mindedness and concern for human life and human rights. The casuistry being employed by those who support intervention in Syria has become astounding; Orwell himself could not imagine doublethink of this order. Today, Eli Lake, writing in an op-ed in Bloomberg, America Learned Wrong Lessons From Iraq, and Syria Suffers: Foreign policy has become inordinately timid because any muscular proposal is instantly derided as Iraq redux draws exactly the wrong conclusions from the Iraq intervention and turns history and all available evidence on its head, arguing for intervention. Michael Graham opines for CBS News in much the same manner a few days earlier, in a column entitled Trump’s Syria quandary, “Punishing a dictator for gassing children is an opportunity for America to both do the right thing and feel great about it.”