Published on Friday, March 4, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
The White House Stage Manages the “Get Syria” Move
by Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen
After 9/11, Administration neo-cons offered a "noble lie" to sell the
public on the need to invade and occupy Iraq (The Iraqis will shower
our troops with flowers and kisses). The same group has invented a new
"virtuous prevarication" to build support for an attack on Syria.
Ignoring recent testimony by CIA Director Porter J. Goss that "Islamic
extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S.
jihadists" (Washington Post, February 17, 2005), this group of high US
officials in Defense, State and the Vice President's office have
organized a "get Syria" movement.
Without evidence, US officials accused Damascus of responsibility for
the February 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik
Hariri in Beirut, and of sponsoring terrorism in Iraq as well.
Anti-Syria rhetoric followed from the Iraq precedent. Following the
9/11 attacks, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and then-Defense
Policy Board Chair Richard Perle found they could convince President
Bush to switch from traditionalist (do little) policy to aggressively
asserting naked military power.
Altering Teddy Roosevelt's policy advice by speaking loudly and also
carrying a big stick, these neo-cons replaced truth with
"myth-making." The neo-cons shared a common guru, former University of
Chicago political philosopher Leo Strauss. Under Strauss' neo-platonic
model, a governing elite wields power and utilizes the "noble lie" to
guide imperial ideology. Beyond sharing a common understanding of the
Straussian fundamentals of political rule, the neo-cons also share
enthusiasm for aggressive Israeli policies.
In the early 1990s, they sold ***** Cheney and Donald Rumsfled on this
strategy. After 9/11, Cheney and Rumsfeld used their positions as Vice
President and Defense Secretary to sell Bush on the new approach. From
that time on, official statements utilized the neo-con "noble lie":
Saddam Hussein backed the 9/11 terrorists and possessed WMDs and
planned to share them with terrorists; thus, the US had to stop him.
Repeat it and report it in the press and the public will believe it.
Pro-Israel media acolytes like the NY Times' Judith Miller obliged the
neo-cons in manufacturing "evidence" of an "enemy" that the public
could effortlessly hate.
By late 2004, the White House admitted that Saddam had neither WMDs
nor links to the 9/11 fiends. Logically, Bush should have fired this
gang for involving the country in the Iraqi morass. Instead, their
disastrous Iraqi performance brought the neo-cons even more clout in
the second Bush Administration. Using their spin-mastery to inflame
opinion, the neo-cons invented new "black hats" Iran and Syria.
The neo-cons also stage-managed facts in the aftermath of the February
14 assassination of Hariri, who had demanded that Syrian troops leave
Lebanon, so as to point the accusatory finger at the Bashar al-Assad
government. Even after Assad condemned the murder as a "horrible
crime," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recalled the US Ambassador
to Syria for "consultations," while threats of possible US military
action emanated from neo-con offices in Washington.
Spun properly, Hariri's murder transcended the commonplace
assassinations in the Middle East and became an international cause
célèbre. The neo-cons correctly counted on the media to maintain
"temporal atrophy." The press neither commented on how assassinating
one's "enemies" impacted the rule of law, nor on how routine
extra-judicial assassinations by Israel and the United States had
become. Bush revealed in his 2003 State of the Union address that
"more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many
countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this
way-- they are no longer a problem to the United States and our
friends and allies." What a lesson to teach!
Had the media reported Hariri's assassination as just another probable
state-sponsored execution, it would have stripped both shock value and
the veneer of moral indignation from Bush's reaction.
But it didn't. So, the anti-Syria theme escalated. Bush had already
used his February 2005 State of the Union address to confront "regimes
that continue to harbor terrorists and pursue weapons of mass murder.
Syria still allows its territory, and parts of Lebanon, to be used by
terrorists who seek to destroy every chance of peace in the region."
The next day, Wolfowitz told Senate Armed Services Committee members
that Syria should stop "destabilize[ing] Iraq" as if Syria, not the
United States, invaded Iraq in March 2003 without UN Security Council
authorization.
The Senate panel's curiosity did not extend to asking Wolfowitz about
Israeli destabilization of Lebanon during the 1980s or how
Israeli-backed Phalangist militias massacred thousands of Palestinian
refugees in 1982 at Sabra and Shatila.
Indeed, historical amnesia after Hariri's murder permitted Bush
officials to sanctimoniously demand that Congress warn Syria to end
her "occupation" of Lebanon and support Lebanese "sovereignty." Even
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who commanded Israeli military
operations in Lebanon in 1982, made such a demand.
What Chutzpah! Sharon demands Syrian withdrawal while Israel continues
its 38-year occupation of Palestinian territories, in defiance of UN
Security Council resolutions 242 and 338. Indeed, Israel still
occupies Syria's Golan Heights in violation of UN Security Council
resolution 497.
Another part of the "noble lie" relates to the threat Syria's 14,000
troops poses to Lebanese "sovereignty." In fact, the bilateral
agreement between Lebanon and Syria to station troops resulted
directly from the prior destabilization of Lebanon by Israel, the
United States, France and to a lesser extent Syria whose interests
are directly affected by Lebanese instability.
But who benefits? Without a context, official US language makes it
seem as if Lebanon and the United States would gain from hostility
toward evil Syria. On February 8, Secretary of State Rice called Syria
"unhelpful in a number ways." Did she mean to include Syria's post
9/11 assistance in providing US intelligence with information that
saved American lives by preventing an Al Qaeda attack on the US Fleet
in Bahrain?
Did she refer to Syria's help in arresting Mohammed Haydar Zammar, a
Syrian-born German citizen accused of recruiting some 9/11 hijackers
in Hamburg? Indeed, did Rice also suffer terminal forgetfulness?
The State Department affirmed on April 30, 2003: "The Government of
Syria has cooperated significantly with the United States and other
foreign governments against al- Qaida, the Taliban, and other
terrorist organizations and individuals." More recently, Damascus
cooperated by closing holes in the porous Iraqi-Syrian border.
Syria learned: no good deed goes unpunished. Syria still remains on
the State Department's list of countries sponsoring terrorism. In
November 2003, Congress passed without debate the Syria Accountability
Act. No Member publicly referred to Syria's anti-terrorist efforts.
Yet, the bill charged Syria without citing evidence -- with
"harboring terrorists," "developing weapons of mass destruction" and
"occupying Lebanon." On May 12, 2004, Bush banned US exports to Syria
and Syrian aircraft from US territory.
Following Hariri's murder, anti-Syria rhetoric escalated. Senator
George Allen (R-VA) and Representative Eliot Engel (D-NY) called for
sending "a message" by imposing "tough" new measures banning US
business in Syria -- on Damascus.
The verbal attacks coincided with demands to install "democracy."
Indeed, "democracy" had already served to cover previous US
aggression. A month after the 9/11 events, Bush bombed Afghanistan
"they hate us because we're free"--despite the fact that most of the
9/11 hijackers came from oily Saudi Arabia, the US ally. Similarly,
Bush "liberated Iraq" by making war the most profound violation of
human rights -- against the human rights abusing Hussein.
The democracy beat continues because the major media doesn't question
it. David Frum and Richard Perle (January 7, 2004 Wall St. Journal)
contended in reference to Syria that, "When the door [to democracy] is
locked shut by a totalitarian deadbolt, American power may be the only
way to open it up." In their 2003 book An End to Evil, Frum and Perle
advocated regime change in Syria, Cuba, North Korea and Iran. In 1996,
Perle and fellow neo-con Douglas Feith had projected a policy to
facilitate Israel's shaping of "its strategic environment...by
weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria." In their report,
"A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," Perle and
Feith argued for the removal of "Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, an
important Israeli strategic objective as a means of foiling Syria's
regional ambitions."
If rogue elements in Syrian did the Beirut murder, it was what Israeli
journalist Uri Avnery's called "an act of supreme folly, since it was
obvious that it would help the Americans build up the Lebanese
opposition and arouse a storm of anti-Syrian sentiment."
Regardless of who assassinated Hariri, the deed focused world
attention on a problematic Lebanese-Syrian relationship. Hariri's
death may indeed serve to catalyze a new round of US and even some
European intervention in Arab affairs. The very threat of such a move
has pushed Syria to talk of withdrawing its forces from Lebanon.
But as Bush descended upon Europe last week to forgive France and
Germany for being right about Iraq, Europeans indicated they would
proceed "cautiously in blood," as Edmund Burke once advised.
The neo-cons awaited Bush's return to Washington so as to proceed with
their foreign policy script, oozing with "sound and fury"
(Shakespeare's "Macbeth"), which calls for burying judicious voices
and replacing them with "noble lies."
Farrah Hassen recently spent 2 months working for the United Nations
Development Programme in Syria. She can be reached at:
FHuisClos1944@aol.com. Saul Landau directs Digital Media at Cal Poly
Pomona University. He and Farrah Hassen made the 2004 film: Syria:
Between Iraq and a Hard Place.
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