Make bombs, not refugees

Bombed out Aleppo
(Image by (From Wikimedia) Voice of America News: Scott Bobb reports from Aleppo, Syria / https://youtube.com/watch?v=_yikVv_YAvE&feature=plcp, Author: See Source)   Details   Source   DMCA

The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! Well, the Russians are always coming. The Russians never stopped coming since those heady Cold War days. The Russians are "invading" Ukraine. Every day. For over a year now. Now the Russians are "invading" Syria.

History now repeats itself under the eternal recurrence of farce. About the best illustration of the propaganda modus operandi underlying the current exceptionalist hysteria over Russia's alleged "military incursion" in Syria was penned way back in 2011 on Counterpunch by the late, great Alex Cockburn. Enjoy:

"Suppose the CIA leaks a national security review concluding that the moon is actually made of cheese, and the Chinese are planning to send up a pair of gigantic bio-engineered rats to breed in numbers sufficient to eat the cheese and thus sabotage US plans for Missile Defense radar deployment on the moon's dark side.

"The headlines will initially proclaim, 'Doubts on Chinese Rat Threat Widespread. Many scoff.' The lead paragraph in news stories in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal will quote the scoffers, but then 'balance' will mandate respectful quotation from 'intelligence sources', faculty professors, think tank 'experts' and the like, all eager to dance to the government's tune: Many say rat scenario 'plausible', etc.

"Lo and behold, by the end of a couple of days of such news stories, the Chinese rat plot is firmly ensconced as a credible proposition. News reports then turn to respectful discussion of the US government's options in confronting and routing the Chinese rat threat: Vice President says 'all options are on the table,' etc."

There you go. China -- as well as Russia -- are of course major threats, according to the Pentagon's military doctrine; as bad if not worse than ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. So Russia must have a rat threat of its own. Which brings us to the "The Russians are Coming" Syria plot, which has submerged think tanks such as the CIA front Stratfor in profoundly thoughtful speculation, everything of course based on prime, second-hand, ideologically-corrupted, lousy -- and fake - intel.

That power-sharing dilemma

Virtually all key aspects of the nonsense of a Russian military intervention in Syria have been thoroughly debunked by The Saker in this piece.

Moscow simply won't involve itself in a new Afghanistan. Besides, 66 percent of Russians are even against a military intervention in nearby Donbass; oh yes, that "invasion" NATO and Western corporate media alarmingly announce with utmost certainty virtually every week.

The problem for what we may describe as the NATO-GCC Warmonger Party is that Moscow is actually trying to coordinate a real, anti-regime change, peace plan that simultaneously tackles the two key problems of the Syrian tragedy: power-sharing in Damascus and the ascension of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh.

As President Putin confirmed on the record, Bashar al-Assad has already agreed to new elections and power-sharing with the non-Salafi-jihadi opposition. This was already discussed in detail with Washington, Ankara, Riyadh and Cairo. Even a paranoid Riyadh -- which, by the way, continues to conduct the illegal bombing and now invasion of Yemen -- had been at least open to discussion.

The first step of the plan would be to form a real coalition to fight the fake "Caliphate" -- including Russia, Iran, the Syrian government in Damascus, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, as well as Washington.

There's the rub. The Obama administration's plan A remains regime change. A plan B with co-Russian leadership and with Assad on board remains anathema. After all Obama himself has never abandoned his "Assad must go" mantra.

Watch the M5

The M5 highway is the absolutely strategic artery connecting Damascus with the north and west of Syria. Those were the days -- during Hafez Assad and then Bashar, up to 2011 - when everyone could be back and forth on the M5 like it was a safe autobahn.

A month ago, though, ISIS/ISIL/Daesh captured the strategic, mostly Christian town of al-Qaryatain, northeast of Damascus. The overstretched Syrian Arab Army, so far, has been hopeless in trying to recapture it.

This is particularly worrying because the fake "Caliphate" is now a mere 30km away from the M5 highway. OK, the highway had been under threat in the past, on and off, by a few snipers holed up in the wasteland of north Damascus. But if ISIS/ISIL/Daesh ever manages to cut it in half, then this would signify nightmare territory for Damascus.