Tunisian Nobel Peace Prize US Intervention

by Dan Sanchez, October 17, 2015

A group of peace negotiators has won the Nobel Peace Prize for its role in preserving the Tunisian Revolution. That 2011 event kicked off the wave of uprisings known as the Arab Spring. The Tunisian Revolution is widely seen as the one bright spot of the Arab Spring, which has otherwise brought war, tyranny, and chaos to every country it has touched.

But that should not be considered a mark against popular sovereignty itself. It was outside interference from the U.S. empire that poisoned the Arab Spring and turned it into a catastrophe.

Tunisia was the one Arab Spring country to escape this fate simply because it went first. Caught by surprise, Washington was not able to ruin things until the revolution had already run its course.

In every other country, the United States heavily intervened in one of two ways.

When the Arab Spring threatened or overthrew U.S.-backed dictators or royal despots, Washington sponsored counter-revolutions.

On the other hand, when the Arab Spring reached independent “rogue” regimes, the U.S. and its allies co-opted the uprisings. They radicalized the opposition by pouring money, training, and weapons into it and sponsoring radical jihadists who came to dominate the insurgency.

Egypt’s Arab Spring developed too early and quickly for the U.S. to be able to save then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “family friend ” General Hosni Mubarak from losing power. And so an election was held which was won by a mildly Islamist administration under Mohamed Morsi.

But this was short-lived, as a counter-revolution sanctioned by the United States and bankrolled by U.S. ally Saudi Arabia then overthrew the elected government, installing a new military dictator.

The revolution was completely reversed, with Mubarak to be released from prison and Morsi taking his place there. He and hundreds of his supporters have been sentenced to death.

John Kerry, Hillary’s successor at State, hailed the coup d’etat as “restoring democracy.”

The restored dictatorship is now back to business as usual: brutal repression and human rights violations, helping Israel keep the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip trapped and miserable, and receiving $1.5 billion a year in U.S. foreign aid.

By the time the Arab Spring reached Yemen, the United States was ready enough to engineer an election in which there was only one candidate on the ballot. And so one sock puppet dictator?—?Ali Abdullah Saleh?—?was merely replaced by another: Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Secretary Clinton praised the rigged election and inauguration as “promising steps on the path toward a new, democratic chapter in Yemen’s history.”

And after this replacement dictator of Yemen was overthrown by the local “Houthirebel” movement, the U.S. backed a savage war by Saudi Arabia on that impoverished country that still rages today.

Adding to the vast collateral damage wrought by America’s drone war on Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Saudis have been bombing the Houthis, who are AQAP’s chief enemies, resulting in ever greater conquests for the terrorist group.

Among innumerable other attacks on civilians, the Saudis bombed two weddings in ten days. And its total blockade has brought Yemen, already the poorest country in the Middle East (it imports over 90% of its food), to the brink of starvation.

As for Bahrain, as Amanda Ufheil-Somers wrote :

“Back in 2011, for instance, just days after Bahraini security forces fired live ammunition at protesters in Manama?—?an attack that killed four and wounded many others?—?President Barack Obama praised King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa’s commitment to reform. Neither did the White House object when it was notified in advance that 1,200 troops from Saudi Arabia would enter Bahrain to clear the protests in March of 2011.”

But when the Arab Spring reached Libya, under the relatively independent Arab nationalist dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi, the United States took the side of the insurgents, arming jihadists and waging an air war that overthrew the government. This has sent the country spiraling into chaos.

And when the Arab Spring reached Syria, under the Baathist regime of Bashar al-Assad, the United States again took the side of the insurgents and again sponsored jihadists, along with regional allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf monarchies.

As a released U.S. intelligence report revealed, Washington did so fully realizing that the insurgency was dominated by Islamic extremists and that supporting it would likely result in the rise of a “Salafist principality.” As it turned out, this Salafist principality was ISIS. And it is rivaled for leadership of the insurgencyonly by Syrian Al Qaeda. Both have ended up with a large amount of American weapons.

The American-fed Arab Spring war in Syria has claimed the lives of a quarter of a million and has displaced millions.

Tunisia has been a success — although not an unqualified or a necessarily permanent one — because it had the one Arab Spring that Washington did not get its bloody mitts on. The Nobel Peace Prize granted in its honor should also be seen as an indictment of the empire that stood in the way of millions of other Arabs from achieving the same success — and that turned their dreams of freedom into nightmares of tyranny and war.

Will Israel Drag Us Into Yet Another War?

by Justin Raimondo

We are living in dangerous times – and this moment, when the Geneva talks with Iran over their nuclear program have reached the tipping point, is potentially a decisive turn for the worst.

Two factors are simultaneously moving us toward a general cataclysm, and both have to do with the state of Israel: 1) The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pulling out all the stops to sabotage the ongoing peace talks between Tehran and the “P5 + 1”, and 2) Netanyahu is abandoning the Palestinian peace process and moving rapidly toward his goal of a “Greater Israel.”

The conjunction of these two aggressive moves by the Israelis is taking the world to the brink of the unthinkable.

Let’s be clear about what the stakes are: war with Iran would mean complete economic devastation, with the price oil skyrocketing into the stratosphere. The effects would be catastrophic: the world economy, already teetering on the brink of implosion, would rapidly deteriorate into a general crisis of confidence that would make the great depression of the 1930s look like a mere blip on the screen. To say nothing of the horrific human costs: Tehran in ruins, many thousands dead and wounded, and a general war of all against all in the Middle East. The conflict would drag in all regional actors: not only the US but also Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and quite possibly even the Russians. It would, in effect, be the beginning of World War III.

Let’s also be clear about who wants this war, and is plotting and scheming behind the scenes – as well as calling quite openly – for it to begin a.s.a.p.

For what seems like the past decade or so, the Israeli government has been loudly agitating for a US attack on Iran: Netanyahu isn’t shy about his intentions. Nor is he hesitant about calling on pro-Israel groups around the world to mobilize their supporters in his campaign for war, and they are responding with the requisiteenthusiasm. The Israel lobby in Washington is pulling out all the stops in an effort to induce Congress to impose even more sanctions on Iran – a move that would put a quick end to the negotiations.

The Israel Firsters aren’t beating the war drums exclusively in Washington: Paris apparently has its contingent of drum-beaters as well. Everyone is wondering whatsuddenly got into the French foreign minister at the Geneva peace talks, one Fabius Laurent, who suddenly accused the other Western negotiators of being too soft on Iran and raising what are clearly dubious objections to what was, after all, an interim draft agreement.

This nonsense about the Arak facility – which is not even constructed yet – and the longstanding Iranian claim to the right of enrichment is just a smokescreen. All the representatives at Geneva – including the French – had agreed to put Arak on the back burner, since the issue didn’t require immediate resolution. The Arak facility is being regularly monitored by IAEA inspectors, and would need to be significantly modified before it could produce weapons-grade nuclear materials. As for the enrichment issue, this is nothing new: the Iranians have the right to enrich under the terms of the Nonproliferation Treaty, to which they are signatories. Any move on their part to enrich beyond permitted limits would soon be detected.

The real story behind the French turnaround is that Netanyahu’s main man in Paris,Meyer Habib, called Laurent and told him that if the agreement went forward Netanyahu would strike Iran. The Times of Israel, citing Israel’s Channel 2 News, puts the conversation this way:

“’I know [Netanyahu],” the French MP, Meyer Habib, reportedly told Fabius, and predicted that the Israeli prime minister would resort to the use of force if the deal was approved in its form at the time. ‘If you don’t toughen your positions, Netanyahu will attack Iran,’ the report quoted Habib as saying. ‘I know this. I know him. You have to toughen your positions in order to prevent war.’”

Nice touch there: you have to stop talking peace “in order to prevent war.”

This threat by Netanyahu, delivered by his French messenger, is a bluff: the Israelis will fight to the last American, but when it comes to risking Israeli lives on the battlefield against a formidable opponent like Iran – not so much. This is just another transparent blackmail attempt, but the French have been sidling up to the Israelis for some time now and were eager to do their part.

Blackmail isn’t how treasured “allies” treat each other, but then again Israel isn’t really a friendly nation anymore: the “special relationship” has been souring for a long time, and it’s now reached the point of an acrimonious divorce. The Israeli-Palestinian negotiations John Kerry is trying to revive are collapsing in the face of Israeli intransigence: the New York Times reports that a recent session turned into a “shouting match.” As hardly a day goes by without an Israeli announcement of more “settlements” in Palestine – there are to be 20,000 new units constructed in the West Bank – even the normally pro-Israel Kerry went off on Netanyahu:

“If you say you’re working for peace and you want peace and a Palestine that is a whole Palestine that belongs to the people who live there, how can you say we’re planning to build in the place that will eventually be Palestine? It sends a message that somehow, perhaps you’re not really serious.”

“I mean,” he added, “do you want a third Intifada?”

This provoked a furious response from the Israel lobby in this country, with Abe Foxman denouncing Kerry’s “chutzpah” and declaring that the world sees the US as “weak and retreating.” It’s okay, you see, to be seen as “weak and retreating” in the face of Bibi’s tantrums – and if anyone’s a chutzpah expert, it most surely is Foxman.

What panics Foxman is that internal political developments in both Israel and the US are driving the two nations apart: in the former, an ultra-nationalist wave is engulfingthe Jewish state, destroying any chances of a solution to the Palestine question. Bibi is playing to– and whipping up – this dangerous trend.

In America, on the other hand, a growing popular rebellion against our Middle East meddling – which culminated in the administration backing down on their plan to bomb Syria – is forcing the President to seemingly abandon our traditionally Israel-centric policy and at least give the impression he is actually looking out for American interests.

The Israel lobby went all out on the Syria issue – and was handed a rare defeat. This time, however, they are determined to win, and they are mobilizing their considerable resources, both here and internationally, in order to throw a monkey wrench into the works. Given this, and the lack of any countervailing forces, I’d be willing to bet the Geneva talks will end in failure. We can count on Congress to follow Netanyahu’s marching orders and impose new sanctions, just as we certainly can’t count on the Obama administration to stand firm against this kind of pressure.

The failure of the Geneva talks will imperil newly-elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s position, and give hardliners in his country a powerful bludgeon to beat him over the head with. It will give the Israelis a chance to gin up a provocation that will drag us into their holy war against Iran, and in the US it will reinforce the erroneous idea that the Iranians are at fault – which is the story the administration is circulating. They’re too cowed to blame the French – or, standing behind them, the Israelis.

Nothing is inevitable, not least of all war with Iran: common sense could prevail. When push comes to shove, the American people could rise up, as they did on the eve of our planned bombing of Syria, and cast their veto. That, in my view, is the only way we’ll avoid World War III.

 

Does the Middle East really matter anymore?

By Aaron David Miller

Does the Middle Matter anymore?

I’m just kidding. Of course the Middle East matters. Just look at the headlines: Not a day goes by without a new crisis in Syria, Iraq, or Egypt or a statement by an Israeli politician or Iranian mullah predicting that we’re headed either to war or peace. This week, world leaders met in Geneva to discuss Iran’s nuclear capability. Last month, President Barack Obama gave a speech to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) devoted entirely to the Middle East. Then there are the petroleum reserves, the iconic Suez Canal, and the all too narrow Strait of Hormuz. There’s also the never-ending saga of the Arab-Israeli conflict and, of course, September 11. That terrible event — the second bloodiest day in U.S. history, exceeded only by a day during the Battle of Antietam — came from the angry, grievance-producing, broken Middle East.

But, with all that said, the Middle East is not nearly as important as it used to be. The traditional reasons for U.S. involvement are changing. Once upon a time, it was all about containing the Russians, our dangerous dependence on Arab oil, and a very vulnerable Israel. Then it was all about the threat of Islamic extremism and terrorism, and the desire to nation-build in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Much of that is now gone. Some of what remains has gotten more complex and limited the role the United States can and should play in the Middle East. On other matters, the fact that some situations have gotten simpler may actually be further limiting what America wants and needs to accomplish there.

Could it be that, in coming years, we’re going draw back even more from the place? Perhaps. And here’s why.

(1) There’s no new cold war or bogeyman.

It was the famous trio of Russians, oil, and Israel against the backdrop of a declining British empire that brought the United States to the Middle East in the first place, and some would like to believe there’s still a cold war on. After all, Putin loves to stick it to America every chance he gets, and he’s seen the United States remove Russian clients one by one (Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi) and even threaten unilateral action against Bashar al-Assad, Moscow’s last man standing in the Middle East.

But Putin is not interested in an expanded proxy war with Washington in a region he knows is rife with Islamic extremism and a messy trap for Russia to boot. He would like to preserve the influence and assets he has, some of which involve billions in unpaid Syrian debt and contracts with Assad’s name on them, as well as the naval base at Tartus. Putin also opposes a Pax America. However, as the recent U.S.-Russian framework agreement on Syrian chemical weapons reveals, Putin’s aims can involve cooperation as much as competition. With Russia a part of the P5 +1, I also suspect Putin would sign on to a deal on the Iranian nuclear issue, rather than risk Israeli or U.S. military action.

In other words, the Russians and the Americans are hardly allies in the Middle East — but they’re not quite enemies either.

So, if the Russians aren’t the principal threat to draw the United States into the region anymore, who or what is? In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, a lot of smart people had questions about what new organizing paradigm for U.S. foreign policy would replace the Cold War. After a decade, the answer came literally out of the blue on a beautiful but deadly fall day in September 2001.

The attacks on the Pentagon and the Twin Towers generated a frenzy of activity, much of it focused on the Middle East. This would come to include two of the longest and among the most profitless wars in U.S. history, a global war on terrorism, an industrial-size homeland security complex, and a continuing struggle to find the right balance between America’s security and the rights, privacy, and civil liberties of its citizenry.

But, another decade later, the signs of retrenchment and withdrawal from the hot wars that replaced the cold one are pretty clear. We’re out of Iraq, and, by 2014, we’ll be heading for the exits in Afghanistan, too. As for the so-called war on terrorism, we are getting smarter and more economical. The United States has been quite effective in dismantling al Qaeda’s central operations and keeping the homeland safe from another sensational attack. We’ve been lucky for sure, but effective, too. The danger now appears to be more from extremist-inspired, lone wolf episodes like we saw at Fort Hood and in Boston. In any event, Americans dying in terrorist attacks remains an unlikely situation: Last year, only 10 Americans died in terrorist attacks. You’re more likely to die in a car accident.

Meanwhile, drones are hardly an ideal counter-terrorism strategy from a legal, moral, or political point of view, but, along with the use of U.S. Special Forces, they do reflect a much lower-profile approach to dealing with terrorists than invading nations and trying to rebuild them. Ideal or not, these kinds of tactics reflect the sort of retail approach to terrorism that the United States is likely to continue pursuing in the future.

To be sure, the threat from Islamic extremism has not gone away. But the notion that the Islamists and their Sunni or Shiite arcs are poised to take over the Middle East and require some new grand interventionist strategy is another example of threat inflation. Osama bin Laden is dead. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is a shadow of its former self. Hamas is contained in its tiny Gaza enclave. Nasrallah and Hezbollah have been weakened by Assad’s travails. And the prospect that a small al Qaeda offshoot is going to take over and govern large parts of Syria is fanciful at best.

Indeed, the problem for many of the lands visited by the Arab Spring isn’t that some new ayatollah or mullah is going to create a modern day Caliphate, but that there will continue to be weak and ineffective governance in the region, with those in charge incapable of coming up with truly national visions for their countries or leading in a way that addresses the basic political and economic needs of their people.

(2) Nobody wants America to play Mr. Fix-It.

One thing is clear: We’ve likely seen the last of the big transformative-interventionist schemes to change the Middle East from the outside in the name of U.S. security, a freedom agenda, or anything else. I say this knowing that there’s little historical memory here, that the military gives a willful president all kinds of options, and that the world is an unpredictable place. But watching the public, congressional, and even expert reaction to the prospects of a limited U.S. strike against Syria, there’s clearly zero support for intervening militarily in somebody else’s civil war.

The alliance of the liberal interventionists and neocons who bemoan the Obama administration’s lack of will, vision, and leadership and its abject spinelessness in the face of 100,000 dead (a full half of whom are combatants belonging to one side or the other) is simply no match for a frustrated public promised a reasonable return on two wars who instead got more than 6,000 American dead, thousands more with devastating wounds, trillions of dollars expended, a loss of American prestige and credibility, and outcomes more about leaving than winning.

To believe anyone in the United States is ready to invest additional resources in tilting at windmills in the Middle East is utterly fantastical. Who can blame them? Last week in Libya, the one successful example of U.S. intervention in the Arab Spring, militias kidnapped the prime minister. Car bombs kill scores weekly in Iraq. And, in Afghanistan, one can only despair about the gap between the price we have paid there and what we can expect in terms of security and good governance in the years ahead.

(3) An energy revolution is coming.

Energy independence isn’t around the corner. But there’s a revolution brewing in North America that will over time reduce U.S. dependence on Arab oil. U.S. oil production is increasing sharply for the first time in almost a quarter-century. And natural gas output is rising, too. Some people even predict that, within a decade, America will become the world’s largest producer of oil and gas. Indeed, Saudi Arabia currently produces 10 million barrels a day, while the United States churns out six million. If you add another two million in natural gas liquids, you can — without straining the bounds of credulity — see the potential. According to Council on Foreign Relations oil guru Michael Levi, even the cautious U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that, by 2020, U.S. production could get close to 10 million barrels a day.

The point is not that the United States is becoming the new Saudi Arabia. As Levi points out, we’re not in a position to manipulate and play politics with our oil production to affect supply and price. But we are going to become less reliant on Middle East energy. In 2011, we imported 45 percent of our energy needs, down from 60 percent six years earlier, and the share of our imports from Western Hemisphere sources is increasing. Between new oil in Brazil, oil sands production in Canada, and shale gas technology at home, by 2020, we could cut our dependence on non-Western Hemisphere oil by half. Combine that with the rise in national oil production and greater focus on fuel efficiency and conservation, and the trend lines are at least running in the right direction.

As long as oil trades in a single market, we’re still vulnerable to disruptions, and the security of the Middle East’s vast oil reserves will continue to be a key U.S. interest. But our own independence and thus freedom of action as it relates to the Saudis and other Arab producers will only increase. Given the fact that this month is the fortieth anniversary of the 1973 oil embargo, that’s a good thing to contemplate.

(4) Arab Allies are estranged.

Part of the reason the United States is losing interest and influence in the Middle East is that we’re sort of running out of friends — or, perhaps more to the point and to quote Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s reported description of a Nicaraguan president, our own SOBs. America is watching a region in profound transformation. The old authoritarians with whom we fought (Saddam, Qaddafi, Assad the elder) and those on whom we relied (Yasser Arafat, Hosni Mubarak, Ben Ali, Abdullah Saleh) are all gone. It’s true the kings remain. But the most important ones — the Saudis — have serious problems with our policies. They can’t abide the fact that, as a result of our doing, a Shiite prime minister rules in Baghdad; they loathe our policy on acquiescing to Mubarak’s ouster; they resent our interest in reform in Bahrain; and they can’t stand our refusal to get tough with Israel on the Palestinians.

We’ve just suspended a chunk of military aid to Egypt, another of our other Arab friends, and managed to alienate just about every part of the Egyptian political spectrum, from the military to the Islamists to the liberals to the business community. The Jordanians still want to be our friend largely because King Abdullah’s vulnerabilities require it. Likewise for Mahmoud Abbas, who has no chance of getting a Palestinian state without U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace process lifeline.

The fact is, for the first time in half a century, Washington lacks a truly consequential Arab partner with whom to cooperate on matters relating to peace or war. Part of the reason is surely because our own street cred is much diminished. But most of our predicament derives from regional deficits — the weakness of the Arab leaders and states themselves, and the turbulent changes loosed in the region in the past several years.

You might even go so far as to suggest that, today, the three most consequential powers in the region are the non-Arabs: Iran, Turkey, and Israel. All are serious, stable countries, with strong economies and militaries. Too bad we can’t forge a partnership among that triad. The Middle East might become a serious and functional place.

(5) Israel is stronger and more independent than ever.

As matters have gotten worse for America in the Arab world, the U.S.-Israeli relationship has only grown stronger. Israel’s own situation has also improved dramatically. Indeed, three factors — Israel’s formidable capacity; steadfast support from the United States; and stunning Arab incapacity — have created a situation where Israel is stronger and more secure than it’s ever been.

Iran’s nuclear pretentions remain an acute challenge, and an unresolved Palestinian problem holds longer-term worries, too. But the notion that the Jewish state is a hapless victim, the Middle East’s sitting duck, has been an illusion for some time now. Indeed, that image infantilizes the Israelis and creates a sense that they don’t have freedom of action vis-a-vis their friends and enemies — which they do. (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself projects this image sometimes: His use of Holocaust imagery when describing the Iranian nuclear challenge seems to accord the mullahs great power. I’ve seen the picture of Churchill that Netanyahu has in his office, and I know he admires him. But Churchill would never, even in the darkest days of the blitz, have ever suggested that Hitler had the power to destroy Britain.)

Israel is a dynamic, resilient, and sovereign nation, and the United States needs to realize that, even while the Israelis take our interests into account, their own matter more — particularly when it comes to their security and weapons of mass destruction. Where you stand in life is partly a result of where you sit, and as the small power with little margin for error, Israel is going to make its own decisions on the threats it faces and act unilaterally if necessary to deal with them.

Israel was never America’s client. On the contrary, we helped enable and empower its independence of action. If Israel acts militarily against Iran because diplomacy can’t address its concerns on the nuclear issue, it will be another indication that, as much as we would like to shape what goes on in the Middle East, we really can’t. We don’t live there, and we are clearly unable or unwilling to dictate to those who do.

(6) Diplomatic agreements could be on the horizon.

The speech Obama gave at the UNGA last month doesn’t sound like a guy who’s getting ready to disengage from the Middle East. After all, he committed to making resolutions of both the Iranian nuclear issue and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the key foreign policy priorities of his second term. Given his risk-aversion, America’s diminished credibility, and the sheer difficulty of the substance, it’s by no means clear that the administration has the resolve and skill to succeed.

Even if he is serious, it’s not as if Obama can just will solutions. These two problems are the most intractable ones in the region. Not to mention the fact that the Israelis, Palestinians, and Iranians will have a few things to say about these matters. Moreover, unlike the Syrian chemical weapons affair, it’s very unlikely there’s a Vladimir Putin who’s going to make either of these issues easier for the United States. (Although, admittedly, we should withhold judgment. Had you told me at the end of August that the United States and Russia would be cooperating on Syria and U.N. inspectors would be busy eliminating Assad’s chemical weapons stocks, I wouldn’t have believed a word.)

Still, should Obama overcome these hurdles and deliver on these two issues — and when I say deliver, I mean limited agreements, not conflict-ending ones — not only will he have earned his Nobel Peace Prize, but he will have freed the United States from two awful burdens, made the Middle East a much friendlier and more secure place, and validated the basic premise of this column. Sure, we’d be involved in monitoring and helping to implement new agreements, particularly on the two-state solution. But, on balance and over time, agreements might free us from getting stuck and enmeshed any deeper in the middle of the mess we’ll likely be facing in the Middle East if solutions to both issues can’t be found.

The Middle East hasn’t been kind to America. Nor we to it. The sooner we can reduce our profile in these unhappy lands, the better. Nothing would make me happier.

U.S has no moral standing to condemn Assad

By Sheldon Richman

Whether or not Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons, President Obama has no legitimate grounds to intervene.

U.S. airstrikes, intended to punish and deter Assad and degrade his military but not overthrow his regime, would deepen the U.S. investment in the Syrian civil war and increase the chances of further intervention. Obama’s previous intervention is what has brought us to this point. Instead of steering clear of this regional conflict, he declared that Assad must go; designated the use of chemical weapons as a “red line” the crossing of which would bring a U.S. response; and armed and otherwise aided Assad’s opposition, which is dominated by al-Qaeda-style jihadists who have no good feelings toward America. Once an American president does these things, further steps are almost inevitable if for no other reason than that “American credibility” will be said to be at stake.

One can already hear the war hawks berating Obama for his “merely symbolic” punitive airstrike that had no real effect on the civil war. Once he’s taken that step, will Obama be able to resist the pressure for imposing a no-fly zone or for more bombing? He and the military seem unenthusiastic about getting in deeper, but political pressure can be formidable. Will the American people maintain their opposition to fuller involvement when the news media turn up the volume of the war drums? How long before the pictures from the war zone create public approval for “humanitarian intervention,” which the hawks will then point to in support of their cause?

Make no mistake: the United States would be committing an act of war against Syria — and judging by the 2011 Libyan intervention, it would be doing so unconstitutionally, without congressional authorization. If history teaches us anything, it is that war is unpredictable. Even limited “surgical” strikes can have unintended consequences (civilian deaths and American losses) and could elicit unanticipated responses, including from Syria’s allies Iran and Hezbollah.

Exploiting unsubstantiated allegations about chemical weapons also runs the risk of repeating the blunder of a decade ago, when dubious intelligence was used to justify an unlawful war of aggression against Iraq. Are there grounds for confidence in the claims that Assad’s forces used chemical weapons? Maybe they did, but something does not add up. Assad has much to lose by their use, while the rebels have much to gain: Western intervention on their behalf. (In May a member of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria concluded that the rebels may have used chemical weapons at that time.) As Peter Hitchens writes,

What could possibly have possessed [Assad] to do something so completely crazy? He was, until this event, actually doing quite well in his war against the Sunni rebels. Any conceivable gains from using chemical weapons would be cancelled out a million times by the diplomatic risk. It does not make sense.

Hitchens urges caution:

It seems to me that there are several reasons to be careful. The first is that we seek to believe evil of those we have already decided to be enemies, especially in democracies where voters must be persuaded to sign the vast blank cheque of war.

Finally, it is grotesque to see officials of the U.S. government, such as Secretary of State John Kerry, condemning anyone’s war tactics as something “morally obscene” that should “shock the conscience of the world.” Since 1945, the U.S. government has launched aggressive wars in violation of international law. It has tortured prisoners detained without charge. It has dropped atomic bombs on civilian centers, and used napalm, Agent Orange, depleted-uranium shells, and white phosphorus incendiary weapons. It has carpet bombed and firebombed cities. America’s unexploded landmines and cluster bombs still threaten the people of Vietnam and Cambodia. (Tens of thousands have been killed or injured since the war ended in 1975.)

Today the U.S. government cruelly inflicts suffering on Iranian men, women, and childrenthrough virtually comprehensive economic sanctions — just as it did to the Iraqi people from 1990 to 2003. It also threatens aggressive war against Iran.

And while it selectively laments the humanitarian crisis in Syria, the Obama administration bankrolls Egypt’s military government, which massacred over a thousand street demonstrators, and Israel’s repression of the Palestinians.

The U.S. government should get its own house in order and quit lecturing others.