On Saturday, after just three days of talks with Russian officials, the United States agreed on a plan that will rid Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of his chemical weapons, effectively eliminating his capability to carry out chemical attacks.

That wasn’t so hard, now was it?

President Obama was forced to pursue diplomatic means and ditch his plans for military action against Assad only after it became apparent that Congress would not authorize it.

Chalk it up as a big win for public opinion and our representative government. We won’t be bombing Syria and getting involved in another military conflict – at least for now.

Though the Obama administration has made legitimate progress toward preventing further chemical attacks without firing a single missile, it continues to remind the world it is prepared to do so.

The president is refusing to renounce the use of force, saying it is still an option.

But if preventing another chemical attack was the administration’s ultimate goal, as it has stated previously, then why does it still appear eager to strike?

Why, for that matter, did the administration accuse Assad immediately after the Aug. 21 attack – despite an utter lack of evidence –, and claim that attacking him was the only option?

In reality, the ultimate goal has always been to dispose of Assad.

The Obama administration is simply continuing the strategy of the administration before it: eliminate Assad, along with various other Middle Eastern regimes, in order to consolidate U.S. power in the region and increase global influence.

Back in 2007, four years before the Syrian conflict erupted, The New York Times reported that the Bush administration was hard at work funding and strategizing with the same groups now battling Assad for power.

The article, “To Check Syria, U.S. Explores Bond With Muslim Brothers,” explains how the administration plotted with the Muslim Brotherhood, the fundamentalist Islamic group that gave birth to al-Qaida, to topple the Assad regime.

As explained by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in 2007, this practice – of using extremist organizations to overthrow regimes – was not an isolated incident.

In the article, “The Redirection,” Hersh described the Bush administration’s strategy of supporting Sunni Islamic extremists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and al- Qaida, to conduct clandestine operations against the Shiite regimes of both Syria and its ally Iran.

In recent weeks, Americans have grown angered at the prospect of a military intervention that would aid al-Qaida.

But is Obama simply following the doctrine of his predecessor?

Officially, the Obama administration has acknowledged the presence of al-Qaida amongst the Syrian rebels and only recently began arming them.
However, the CIA has covertly supplied the rebels with arms and equipment from Saudi Arabia and Qatar since the early days of the conflict.
The New York Times reported in 2012 that most of these weapons were going straight to “hard-line Islamic jihadists.”

The Sunni Islamic regimes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar are known to be the biggest sponsors of al-Qaida and other Sunni Islamic terrorist groups in the world.

As reported by The New York Times in 2012, Obama gave his “blessing” to Qatar, in secret, to arm rebels in Libya in 2011.

According to The Telegraph, when the president intervened there, our efforts were actually aiding the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an al-Qaida affiliate, to topple the Libyan government.

And this is only what we do know.

It’s enough to realize that we continue to use terrorists to overthrow regimes that present no real threat to us, leaving these countries in chaos and creating a very real security threat in the process.

As you watch the situation in the Middle East unfold, and you’re told about national security, human suffering and moral imperatives, just realize that it’s not about any of that.

It hasn’t been for a very long time.

Nick Smith is a senior broadcast and digital journalism major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at nxsmith@syr.edu and followed on Twitter at @Nick_X_Smith.

Published on September 16, 2013 at 1:09 am