{"id":10256,"date":"2015-07-21T06:59:39","date_gmt":"2015-07-21T11:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10256"},"modified":"2015-07-21T06:59:39","modified_gmt":"2015-07-21T11:59:39","slug":"the-us-hand-in-the-syrian-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10256","title":{"rendered":"The US Hand in the Syrian Mess"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2015\/07\/20\/the-us-hand-in-the-syrian-mess\/\" target=\"_blank\">The US Hand in the Syrian Mess<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"entry-meta\"><strong>Exclusive:\u00a0Neocons and the mainstream U.S. media place all the blame for the Syrian civil war on President Bashar al-Assad and Iran, but there is another side of the story in which\u00a0Syria\u2019s olive branches to the U.S. and Israel were spurned and a reckless drive for \u201cregime change\u201d followed, writes Jonathan Marshall.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<hr \/>\n<p>Syria\u2019s current leader, Bashar al-Assad replaced his autocratic father as president and head of the ruling Ba\u2019ath Party in 2000. Only 35 years old and British educated, he aroused widespread hopes at home and abroad of introducing reforms and liberalizing the regime. In his first year he freed hundreds of political prisoners and shut down a notorious prison, though his security forces resumed cracking down on dissenters a year later.<\/p>\n<p>But almost from the start, Assad was marked by the George W. Bush administration for \u201cregime change.\u201d Then, in the early years of Barack Obama\u2019s presidency, there were some attempts at diplomatic engagement, but shortly after a civil conflict broke out in 2011, the legacy of official U.S. hostility toward Syria set in motion Washington\u2019s disastrous confrontation with Assad which continues to this day.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"image-anchor\" href=\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/assads.jpg?55ac53\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9902\" src=\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/assads.jpg?55ac53\" alt=\"Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in front of a poster of his father, Hafez al-Assad.\" width=\"151\" height=\"200\" data-lazy-loaded=\"true\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Thus, the history of the Bush administration\u2019s approach toward Syria is important to understand. Shortly after 9\/11, former NATO Commander Wesley Clark learned from a Pentagon source that Syria was on the same hit list as Iraq. As Clark\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2011\/11\/26\/wes_clark_and_the_neocon_dream\/\"><u>recalled<\/u><\/a>, the Bush administration \u201cwanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sure enough, in a May 2002 speech titled \u201cBeyond the Axis of Evil,\u201d Under Secretary of State John Bolton\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/1971852.stm\"><u>named<\/u><\/a>\u00a0Syria as one of a handful of \u201crogue states\u201d along with Iraq that \u201ccan expect to become our targets.\u201d Assad\u2019s conciliatory and cooperative gestures were brushed aside.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US Hand in the Syrian Mess Exclusive:\u00a0Neocons and the mainstream U.S. media place all the blame for the Syrian civil war on President Bashar al-Assad and Iran, but there is another side of the story in which\u00a0Syria\u2019s olive branches to the U.S. and Israel were spurned and a reckless drive for \u201cregime change\u201d followed, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3218,6963,1049,7430,496,561,1343,776,827,834],"class_list":["post-10256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-bashar-al-assad","tag-consortium-news","tag-israel","tag-jonathan-marshall","tag-mainstream-media","tag-neocons","tag-regime-change","tag-syria","tag-united-states","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10257,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10256\/revisions\/10257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}