Russia Observer
The US Missile Strike on Syria: a Theatrical Production for the Simple-Minded?
On April 12, 2017 April 12, 2017 By Patrick ArmstrongIn ACCUSATIONS, PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, SYRIA, THE WORLD IS CHANGING, WAR ON RUSSIA, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS
(I advanced this theory on Andrew Korybko's show on Sputnik this morning.)
When I first heard that the US had attacked the airfield in Syria, my heart sank. I had hoped that US President Trump would avoid the endless wars that are bringing us all to Armageddon. This action made me fear that either he had been lying to us all along or that the war party had seized control.
But, as I read further and thought more, another possibility occurred to me. The first thing I wondered was why 59 cruise missiles? There simply aren't 59 thousand-pound warhead targets at that or any other Syrian airfield. Examination of videos and photos showed little damage (and clearly no fear of sarin or other nerve agents either, as people wandered around without any protection). Had I wanted to stage a loud and exciting ("beautiful" missile launches at night) show with minimum results I would have done something like this. Was it a show, theatre. Art of the deal?
Then I asked myself: if this were a show, for whom was it a show and to what purpose? That led me to consider Trump's biggest problem. It is that a significant portion of US "elite opinion" regards him – or pretends to regard him – as an illegitimate president. To bring him down, they tried recounts, appeals to "faithless electors", the 25th Amendment; all failed.
All they were left with was the Russia story and that was being pumped out at full blast. Pumped out for months, since July in fact. Never mind the absence of evidence; it was pumped out ever louder and ever louder; pumped out to such an extent that it was hampering Trump's program; his foreign program in particular but also his domestic program. It was amorphous and self-replicating at the same time. Did Putin secure Trump's victory by hacking voting machines… by revealing DNC skulduggery… by some mysterious but never explained influence… by thousands of Putinbots spreading "fake news"… by broadcasts by RT and Sputnik which produce emanations that "undermine democracy"… were the Russians blackmailing him?
What exactly? Nothing that could be pinned down. Like trying to nail Jello to the wall. The allegations were vague, elusive, yet all-embracing. Nothing you could actually test. Shining the light of reason and fact on a particular detail was useless: the accusation skittered away into the shadows like a cockroach: voting machines, propaganda, influence, putinbots, association, something, nothing. But the sum effect, day after day, week after week, month after month, was that no one should take Trump seriously, no one needed to take him seriously, for he was Putin's stooge and, sooner or later, would be forced from office. Soon gone. Not my president. It's now April 2017 and this stuff has been festering away since the DNC cheating was revealed in July 2016. Nine months. It is not going to go away by itself. Neither is it going to go away for lack of evidence. It's deeply embedded in the fantasy world (in this site's universe, Clinton won) and too much has been invested in it.
In the real world, there is no rational way to stop the accusations.
59 cruise missiles later, all that has evaporated, Trump's former critics are fawning and slobbering: "America is back, and you're not allowed to do whatever you want" and "I think Donald Trump became president of the United States" simpered two former critics. Generally popular – if only rather shallowly – too. No more Putin puppet. And so on – here is a compendium of drool. So, if the strike were a piece of theatre designed for domestic consumption, it hit the target. A "precision strike" indeed. (By the way, Scott Adams, who has read the Trumpian tea leaves very accurately, agrees that it was theatre.)
But the strike was of questionable morality and legality, to be sure; it was potentially dangerous and many argue that now that Trump has given in once to the War Party, he will find it harder to resist the next time. While it is true that supping with the Devil requires a long spoon, I think Trump has neutered his enemies. The next time there's another (faked-up – and this attack was obviously not Damascus' doing) event, he can call fake and what will they do then? Retract their fawning praise? Say he "became" President in April but "ceased" to be in July or August? Or (and I admit the probability of this is vanishingly small) when the truth does comes out, could Washington even apologise and pay compensation to the victims? If that were to happen – and I agree it would be a first – it would be a stunning blow to the War Party. In short, I don't think the game is over and I don't think the curtain has come down on the theatrical production.
What will Moscow's reaction be? Well, if the theatre theory is correct, very little because Moscow was in on the deception to some extent. So, the test will be whether the incident is passed off with some minor harrumphing all round (the story of the Russian-Iranian "red line" is not true). We'll have a better idea when the results of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's Moscow visit emerge. Does Putin also believe it was theatre? Perhaps he does; this is what he said yesterday:
many European countries adopted an anti-Trump position during the election campaign. Syria and Russia, as a common enemy, provide a wonderful platform for consolidation.
Every decent theory must be falsifiable. I will agree that this theory – the theory that the US strike was really domestic theatre – would be falsified if the story, reactions, statements and so on keep building. We should know either way in a month.
But, so far so good: the G7 Foreign Ministers' meeting yesterday passed off with minor harrumphing and none of the sanctions UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson wanted. In fact the final 30-page communique managed to set a new record of logical incoherency by both blaming Damascus and calling for an inquiry to find out who was to blame:
We are shocked and horrified by the reports of use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in the Khan Shaykhun area of southern Idlib on 4 April… The subsequent US military action against Shayrat Airfield was a carefully calibrated, limited in scope response to this warcrime and was directed against Syrian military targets directly connected… We express full support to the OPCW Fact Finding Mission investigation and stress that if the Fact Finding Mission concludes that chemical weapons have or have likely been used, the OPCW – UN Joint Investigative Mechanism should immediately carry out its investigation in accordance with its mandate to identify the perpetrators.
As to Washington's touching concern about "crimes against innocents", it is appropriate to note that one of the West's favourite goto sites, the UK-based Syrian Network for Human Rights and a much-quoted source for accusations that Damascus routinely uses CW, declared that the USA and its allies "killed 260 civilians, including 70 children and 34 women" in Syria last month. More than ISIS did, it says.
As to whether the attack will have much effect on Pyongyang (some think it was the real audience), I am inclined to doubt it. The national mythos in North Korea is resistance – resistance to the Japanese in the first half of the Twentieth Century and defiance of the USA and its allies in the second half; all firmly based on the memory of the ultimately successful resistance to Hideyoshi's invasion in the 1500s. It seems unlikely that the leadership will be much impressed by anything Washington does this century. And, as this report suggests, it isn't.
As to its effect on Beijing, again I suspect not very much: the Chinese leadership is neither as gullible nor as easily impressed as US media personalities. Beijing might decide that that trying to influence Pyongyang would be more cost effective than another Korean War; on the other hand, it might decide that a USA bogged down in an unwinnable war (just what would "victory" look like anyway?) would be to its advantage. We shall see.
But its effect on the talking heads and media never-Trumpers at home was profound.
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