{"id":139214,"date":"2014-09-12T17:23:40","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T17:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=139214"},"modified":"2014-09-12T17:23:40","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T17:23:40","slug":"neocons-revive-syria-regime-change-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/neocons-revive-syria-regime-change-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Neocons Revive Syria \u2018Regime Change\u2019 Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Obama plans\u00a0to violate international law by launching airstrikes inside Syria without that government\u2019s consent, even though Syria might well\u00a0give it. Is Obama playing into neocon hands by providing\u00a0a new\u00a0argument for \u201cregime change\u201d in Damascus?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Official Washington\u2019s ever-influential neoconservatives and their \u201cliberal interventionist\u201d allies see President Barack Obama\u2019s decision to extend U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State terrorists into Syria as a new chance to achieve the long-treasured neocon goal of \u201cregime change\u201d in Damascus.<\/p>\n

On the surface, Obama\u2019s extraordinary plan to ignore Syrian sovereignty and attack across the border has been viewed\u00a0as a unilateral U.S. action to strike at\u00a0the terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but it could easily evolve into a renewed effort to overthrow Bashar al-Assad\u2019s government, ironically one of ISIS\u2019s principal goals.<\/p>\n

ISIS\u00a0began as part of the Sunni resistance to George W. Bush\u2019s invasion of Iraq\u00a0which had elevated Iraq\u2019s Shiite majority to power. Then known as \u201cal-Qaeda in Iraq,\u201d the terrorist group stoked a sectarian war by slaughtering\u00a0Shiites and bombing their\u00a0mosques.<\/p>\n

Changing its name to ISIS, the group\u00a0shifted to Syria where it joined with U.S.-backed rebels seeking to overthrow Assad\u2019s regime which was dominated by Alawites, a branch of Shiite Islam. Then, this summer, ISIS\u00a0returned to Iraq where it routed Iraqi government forces in a series of battles and conducted public executions, including beheading two U.S. journalists.<\/p>\n

In his national address Wednesday, Obama said he will order U.S. air attacks across Syria\u2019s border without any coordination with the Syrian government, a proposition that Damascus has denounced as a violation of its sovereignty. Thus, the\u00a0argument will surely soon be heard in Washington that Assad\u2019s government must be removed as a military prerequisite so the attacks on ISIS can proceed. Otherwise, there could be a threat to U.S. aircraft from Syria\u2019s air defenses.<\/p>\n

That would get the neocons back on their original track of forcing \u201cregime change\u201d in countries seen as hostile to Israel. The first target was Iraq\u00a0with Syria and Iran to follow. The goal was\u00a0to deprive\u00a0Israel\u2019s close-in enemies, Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah and Palestine\u2019s Hamas, of crucial support. The neocon vision got knocked off track when Bush\u2019s Iraq War derailed and the American people balked at the idea of extending the conflict to Syria and Iran.<\/p>\n

But the neocons never gave up on their vision. They simply kept at it, clinging\u00a0to key positions inside Official Washington\u00a0and recruiting \u201cliberal interventionists\u201d to the \u201cregime change\u201d cause. The neocons remained focused\u00a0on Syria and Iran with hopes of getting U.S. bombing campaigns going against both countries. [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cThe Dangerous Neocon-R2P Alliance<\/a>.\u201d]<\/p>\n

The neocons\u2019\u00a0new\u00a0hope has now arrived with the public outrage over ISIS\u2019s atrocities. Yet, while pushing\u00a0to get this new war going, the neocons have downplayed their \u201cregime change\u201d agenda,\u00a0getting Obama to agree only to extend his anti-ISIS bombing campaign from Iraq into Syria. But \u201cregime change\u201d in Damascus has remained a top\u00a0neocon priority.<\/p>\n

In a New York Times op-ed<\/a> on Aug. 29, neocon Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham avoided the \u201cr-c\u201d phrase couching their words\u00a0about Syria\u2019s civil war in the vague language of resolving the conflict, but clearly meaning that Assad must go.<\/p>\n

The hawkish pair wrote that thwarting ISIS \u201crequires an end to the [civil] conflict in Syria, and a political transition there, because the regime of President Bashar al-Assad will never be a reliable partner against ISIS; in fact, it has abetted the rise of ISIS, just as it facilitated the terrorism of ISIS\u2019 predecessor, Al Qaeda in Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the McCain-Graham depiction of Assad\u2019s relationship to ISIS and al-Qaeda is a distortion at best \u2014 in fact, Assad\u2019s army has been the most effective force in pushing back against the Sunni terrorist groups that have come to dominate the Western-backed rebel movement \u2014 the op-ed\u2019s underlying point is obvious: an initial step in the U.S. military operation against ISIS must be \u201cregime change\u201d in Damascus.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Obama plans\u00a0to violate international law by launching airstrikes inside Syria without that government\u2019s consent, even though Syria might well\u00a0give it. Is Obama playing into neocon hands by providing\u00a0a new\u00a0argument for \u201cregime change\u201d in Damascus? Official Washington\u2019s ever-influential neoconservatives and their \u201cliberal interventionist\u201d allies see President Barack Obama\u2019s decision to extend U.S. airstrikes against Islamic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":139215,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-139214","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-war-terrorism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}