The United States military is ready to invade Syria at any moment from the coast where the USS Eisenhower arrived yesterday. The massive ship holds eight fighter bomber squadrons and 8,000 troops - plenty of power for a ground invasion of the country. It is joined by the USS Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group, which has 2,500 marines, bringing the area's troop total to over 10,000.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made it clear that there is a "red line" which the Syrian government cannot cross without U.S. intervention. The red line is using chemical weapons against its own people. Clinton said, "There is a line between the horrors that they've inflicted on their own people and what would be an internationally condemned step of utilizing their weapons." President Assad has loaded deadly nerve gas sarin onto aerial bombs but has not loaded them onto planes to actually drop them on people. There is no evidence that he will use these weapons on his people. But he is facing a deadly opposition which is trying to topple his regime and now faces the prospect of U.S. ground forces.
The Obama administration has been supporting the opposition ever since Barack Obama signed a secret treaty that permitted him to use the CIA to help to overthrow Assad's government. Yet the rebels are nothing more than Islamic jihadists who kill civilians without moral conscience. Obama is now using a chemical weapons "threat" to justify more direct U.S. support of the murderous terrorists who are trying to overthrow the government. Of course, Obama likes to refer to the Islamic terrorists he supports as EVOs (Extremist Violence Organizations) to sanitize their activities. Obama will likely start a ground invasion on the premise that Assad has chemical weapons of mass destruction.
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Comments: 2
Actual use of chemical weapons would be suicidal for both government and military officials, who would simply find themselves in world or post-change Syrian government courts charged with war-crimes. Conversely, negotiations to allow the removal of these weapons from Syrian territory before the regime collapses could have some diplomatic mileage for government and military officials who would like to be able to jump ship before the inevitable train-wreck.
The risk is that waiting too long to make a deal will leave the Syrian regime with only its most die-hard loyalists as negotiators. The only way for the US to respond is to accordingly ramp-up the rhetoric (and the potential for force) as time passes.
Bashar al-Assad may be a brutal dictator, but he is the equivalent of neither the egomaniacal Muammar Gaddafi, nor the Byzantine Saddam Hussein. Venezuela, Ecuador and Cuba remain potential sources of asylum, even without any kind of tacit approval from the West. And according to a State Department spokesman, "We do understand that some countries both in the region and elsewhere have offered to host Assad and his family should they choose to leave Syria."
As for the Obama is an Islamic Jihadist silliness, I'm not sure that even deserves a response. Up until now, it hasn't been in American interests to take sides regarding rebel factions in what is essentially an intra-tribal civil war. However, the US government is likely to very soon declare rebel groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra as "terrorist organizations," which will preclude their having any support from the US after the Syrian regime collapses.