Alliance Armageddon

Obama’s house is in chaos.

Last year, the American president was going to bomb Syria and even got permission from Congress. Syria was supposed to be smashed to pieces in order to overthrow the allegedly terrible Assad regime that purportedly used chemical weapons, and bring to power a diverse circus of Syrian rebels.

At that time, war was avoided thanks to the efforts of Russian diplomats. A year later we see the same exact picture. The United States is bombing Syria, but this time with a different goal in mind: To punish the Islamic State — the most blatant part of the force that Americans wanted to bring to Damascus so badly last year.

Did you order American Tomahawk missiles? Here you are!

Thus, the Assad government has not only been left alone, but has also received significant indirect support from its powerful enemy. So today, the protests from Damascus are most likely a pure formality.

Now, neither Obama nor anyone else in Washington would likely be able to give a clear answer as to why it was necessary to overthrow quiet London ophthalmologist Bashar al-Assad. He did not interfere with the United States or its European allies, not even with Israel.

It probably happened from boredom. The superpower’s hands were itching; democrat-romantics decided to play permanent “Arab Spring” and overplayed it.

The motives of the current air attack look more impressive. The successes of Islamists in Iraq still threaten American friends in Baghdad. An indicative execution of two Americans and one Brit was a blatant slap in the face to which it was hard not to reply if there was something to reply with.

Finally, the Islamic State — between you and me — are just sons of bitches, who do not do anything good for the region, bringing only vandalism, human trafficking, female circumcision and the full Islamic veil. Another thing is that relatively recently they were America’s sons of bitches, who have suddenly become strangers.

The attack on Syria in the Middle East creates a new situation.

First, Tomahawks are being fired on the territory of a sovereign state without permission from the government of this state and without permission from the U.N. So it is unclear what is happening here with regard to international law.

Second, the United States does not go to war alone; they lead a pretty specific coalition, consisting at this time not of NATO allies, but of the Sunni countries of the region — Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE. Note that the junior partners in the cooperative are not limited to moral support or provision of supplies; armed forces of all or at least of the majority of these countries are physically engaged in combat.

To the list of the states at war should be added Syria with its ongoing civil strife; Iraq that is at war with the Islamic State on land, making formal requests for airstrikes; and Iran, thanks to which the Islamic State militants have not yet been able to take Baghdad.

Do not forget another independent party involved in the conflict — Iraqi Kurdistan, which is unlikely to remain a part of Iraq in the future. Kurdish “Peshmerga” (“going to die”) units keep their front against the Islamists, and whenever it comes to the Kurds, Turks are always sensitive.

Finally, Lebanon does not stand aside either, since a part of that nation, along with certain areas of Syria and Iraq, is under the control of the Islamic State.

At this time, only Israel is resting, after another fight with the Palestinians. The rest of the Middle East is on the battlefield, bringing to mind the biblical story of Armageddon.

Not just a big war, but a total regional war is boiling up. A war with possibly the sharpest twists and turns, to match the sharp turn executed by American foreign policy last year. What balls will collide and in which pocket they will fall? Washington analysts, who managed to miss the birth of the Islamic State from the Syrian conflict, are unable to predict.

The United States in this mess starts to resemble a joke — something like an entertainer, an amusement organizer at an Egyptian resort who tirelessly tries to involve tourists in playing absurd outdoor games. Only the result of these games is painfully disappointing: hundreds of thousands of refugees, tens of thousands of corpses, which would not have happened if the superpower could have forgotten about its global mission to promote freedom and democracy for at least for a few years.

At stake in the present game is the status of state borders, among other things. Obama stated: “This is a core principle of my presidency: if you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.” U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel goes further: “Our actions will not be restrained by a border that exists in name only.”

At the same time, Iraq is actually already divided into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish areas. Syria is also divided. Moreover, the idea of an Islamic State — meaning the “state” (caliphate), and not just another army or Muslim Jamaat — suggests an effort to cut the existing boundaries and build something completely new on the ruins of the current states.

And here come the Americans, who state that the notion of borders in the region is ephemeral and unimportant. And if so, then redistribution of these borders would not be a big sin. The region’s leaders would most certainly learn their lesson.

The United States is just an amazing country that wants to be an example to all of humanity, but does not want other countries to behave the same way. American Tomahawks fly around the world, knowing no boundaries, and the Russian-Ukrainian border in the area of Luhansk, that also exists in the name only, must be an insurmountable obstacle to the Russian humanitarian convoys.

The United States is ready for revenge with all its might for the execution of several people on the other side of the world, and Russia must silently endure the murder of Russian people in a neighboring country.

Finally, the United States had already arranged for the redistribution of borders in Europe (Kosovo), and is ready for redistribution in the Levant, while trying to convince Russia that the borders between the former Soviet republics are holy.

Learn from America, you say?

Yes, we would be happy to learn, and we try; only America does not let us.