Below is my column for The Sturbridge Times Town & Country Living Magazine for the October issue as submitted to the editor. Time moves on and even this is a little dated though we are still doing some non-genius level stuff in Syria.
Precognition; Déjà vu all over again
By Richard Morchoe
In 2002 Steven Spielberg made the movie Minority Report based on a Philip K. Dick short story of similar name. It was a popular film and Dick’s idea is disturbing. It is that crimes that will be committed in the future can be discerned beforehand.
According to the story, three mutant idiot-savants, or precogs foresee all serious infractions and arrests can be made in advance, thus sparing society any harm.
Philip K. Dick was a science fiction author more popular in death than in life. Of course, his prediction from The Minority Report has not come to pass. We as of yet do not have even one “precog.”
Or do we?
This is not to say necessarily that National Security Advisor John Bolton is an idiot-savant, but he has been threatening to strike Syria in response to something that has not happened.
The U.S. Air Force has bombed Syrian military facilities to teach them a lesson for chemical attacks for which there was spurious evidence but no concrete proof. Now, Bolton figures the regime might try to do something we don’t know they will or will not do, and we shall bomb for that. Confused? You should be.
Bolton has said we are going to take action if Assad uses chemical weapons to bomb the Idlib region, the last refuge of mostly hardcore jihadists.
A few years ago, Assad looked like he could be toppled. Then he received assistance from the Russians and Iranians and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Better than that, he reformulated his army into an effective force that would be difficult to defeat.
On the verge of victory, the last thing he would need to do is use chemical weapons. They are not effective in battle and would be an excuse for US intervention. So, what is going on?
Bashar Assad has just about won his war and will reunite the Syrian nation. To the United States, that is terrible because he is the worst head of state to have ever lived, and why not? He has to be the worst because we got rid of the last two contenders for that title, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar al-Gaddafi. Never mind that we made those two locales places of despair, we would do better in Syria because we say so.
When we kicked over Hussein in Iraq, the Shia, who had been ruled by him were now the majority in government. At that point, the hot shots at State realized that we had empowered the co-religionists of Iran. The Iranian Shia religious leaders were the other meanest people who ever lived. What to do now?
In a prodigious feat of overthinking, we kind of changed sides. Way back in 2007 Seymour Hersh, whose memoir Reporter is reviewed in this issue, published an article in the New Yorker with the title “The Redirection.” Nothing ominous there, but the sub-headline, “Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” should have set alarm bells going off amongst the erudite audience of that highbrow journal.
Up on Long Hill, we were a bit slower on the uptake. It was not until the September, 2013 issue that we noticed there had been a change. Indeed, the mortal enemy who had slain our fellow citizens in two towers was now tacitly our ally.
We noted the new circumstances with the words from George Orwell’s 1984:
“At just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally.
There was of course no admission that any change had taken place. Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once, that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy.”
Our recent history is even more ominous as there was not a statement of who we are in alliance with. There was the mention of the “Free Syrian Army" a tiny, secularist band of heroes that we would train and arm. Post-instruction, their weapons would mysteriously appear in the hands of hard-core Jihadis. That’s okay as long as they were fighting the new bogeyman, Assad.
Does it make any sense?
Less and less to the average American. Back in January, a group called the Committee for a Responsible Foreign Policy ran a poll and the results showed the public was “Overwhelmingly Opposed to Endless US Military Interventions.” There is little groundswell for war, even though the mass media is pushing it. One could be forgiven for thinking that “Chemical Weapons” is Syrian for “Weapons of Mass Destruction” with the same level of evidentiary proof.
The American attitude should not be surprising. The last three presidents have been “peace” candidates until elected. The younger Bush campaigned calling for a modest foreign policy. Obama lampooned Iraq as a “dumb” war. Trump called for getting along with Russia and not making a worse mess in Syria.
The late John McCain never saw a war he didn’t like and ran in that vein. Hilary was far more a war candidate than the Donald. They both lost.
The people have an idea what they want and the winners agree but only until the votes are counted.
If there is a war party, it is not popular with the citizenry. To get them on board, they have to be propagandized, which is why the mainstream press is always telling us that Assad is diabolical.
In the abovementioned Hersh memoir, the author had meetings with the Syrian leader. Hersh never made him out to be Mother Teresa, but reported on him as a rational interlocutor. So why the desire for the man’s blood?
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson thinks he knows. Wilkerson was Colin Powell’s chief of staff at the time of the Yellow Cake disaster and that situation led to disillusionment. Wilkerson, now a professor at William & Mary, warned in an interview on Tuesday, September 11 that “the neoconservative agenda” for an escalated United States war on Syria followed by war on Iran has had a “resurrection” in President Donald Trump’s administration.”
From administration rhetoric, speculation that that is the plan is not unreasonable. Backing al Nusra, an al Qaeda front In Idlib is only the excuse to defeat Iran in Syria. Embedded in that ointment is a fly. That fly is Russia. Bolton seems to think baiting the Russkies is without cost.
Who knows, it may be. Turkey shot down a Russian Plane and US forces killed Russian mercenaries in Syria at Deir al-Zour. The night before this was written, a Russian plane with troops aboard was shot down by Syrian anti-aircraft fire due to an incursion in Syrian air space by Israeli planes.
Russia has to get to it or fold and admit they are not a world power. If they decide enough is enough and stop being long suffering, the reductio ad absurdum will be nuclear war, and we shall get there.
So far, despite media propaganda, Putin has been the adult in the room. On Long Hill, we hope he can pull it off again.
Here’s hoping this is not the last issue of The Sturbridge Times Town & Country Living Magazine.
