Attack Already Decided, Obama Is Seeking To Cut Off an Intervention by UN Members

It’s a shame that the U.N. weapons inspectors’ cars, headed in the direction of Damascus where they should find evidence of the use of nerve gas that killed more than 1,300 civilians, came under fire.

They could have spared themselves that fear because the decisions that have already been made in this very moment have little to do with what the inspectors will find: Sarin gas disappears after five days. In any case, British Foreign Secretary William Hague has plainly said that the decision was made because “we don’t want the various dictators thinking they are able to use chemical weapons.”* U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said that the weapons inspectors must act soon. But if the U.N. wanted to make important decisions, the Security Council has been available to do so for two years, and it has, as always, been completely immobilized by the rift between the U.S. and Russia. This time, too, it will be like this. Obama is now in full swing, pushed by the majority of Europe. He is currently creating a coalition that within a couple of days will attack Assad, regardless of what the inspectors say, save for a dramatic turn of events. The Obama-Cameron-Hollande axis will be at the center of this coalition, while Germany will remain indifferent. In recent hours, Obama has had intense telephone conversations with his possible allies, as has his secretary of state, John Kerry. Turkey is game for it. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey is currently in Jordan as a liaison for all the relevant and significant anti-Assad factions of the Middle East.

The grounds for any American attack, which are certainly problematic due to the fact that the rebels are a true promise of extremist Islam, are far from giving a guarantee of moderation. Hague has explained the reasons well: It is impossible to imagine that in the 21st century you can, with impunity, use chemical weapons, and even worse, against your own population, without a reaction that demonstrates that this is prohibited by the rest of the world.

Yuval Steinitz, minister of international and strategic relations in Israel, illustrated this point yesterday in Jerusalem, thereby breaking the privacy of Israel that does not want to be drawn into the fighting of its neighbors: “There can be nothing worse than the use of weapons of mass destruction. In the end, if you give the green light, then we must also think that Iran, which has soldiers and strategic advisers in Syria, is also involved in this affair. What could the Ayatollahs, who are constructing atomic weapons, the worst of all weapons of mass destruction, be planning, if no one does anything to stop the use of sarin gas?”

The secret services are taking it for granted Assad is responsible for the attack. Only Russia declared itself against any intervention, and this implies a dangerous deterioration of relations between Washington D.C. and Moscow. Of course the coalition will keep far away from the images of the invasion of Iraq, employing no “boots on the ground,” but more likely using U.S. aircraft and ships already in the Mediterranean. Also likely to be excluded are the kind of wild scenes seen in Libya. Obama and the Europeans are examining a more limited enterprise, perhaps without aiming for the removal of Assad. Their objectives are the chemical weapons stores and the centers of power that have to do with their use. This strategy is the justification for the choice to bypass the U.N. and the search for support from NATO, similar to Clinton’s intervention in Kosovo. Assad is reacting with an anodyne tone, responding to the questions posed by the very popular Russian newspaper Izvestya: It is unreasonable, he says, to think that he has used weapons of mass destruction because they would have also hit his own people. And Assad is warning the U.S. that it is at risk of falling into another trap, like it did in Vietnam. One of his ministers has explained that Israel will be considered responsible for everything. And who doubted that Assad would threaten a gas launch on Israel, too? Israel is in fact distributing gas masks and freshening up its shelters, while showing little surprise.

*Editor’s Note: The original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.