THE ROVING
EYE Jihadi democrats ready for their
close-up By Pepe Escobar
Such a pity that US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton didn't make the 2012 Oscars. La
Clinton would stand a good chance of upstaging
even tweet-exploding Angelina Jolie's right leg -
that force of nature now all over the net, landing
on the moon and even invading Leonardo da Vinci's
Last Supper. [1]
The Empress of Libya ("We
came, we saw, he died") did try hard, including a
photo op for the BBC, where she finally admitted
that the US is fighting side by side with al-Qaeda
to unleash regime change in Syria. [2]
Well, old Cold War fox and former Russian
prime minister (under vodka junkie Boris Yeltsin)
Yevgeny Primakov actually beat her to the punch on
Russia's Rossiya channel - adding that no one
could seriously believe
that regime change in Syria could lead to
democracy.
Yet when Clinton mentions "a
very dangerous set of actors in the region" who
"are on our terrorist list" she is just, once
again, plugging the notoriously profitable
Pentagon/Central Intelligence Agency /State
Department franchise of Resident Evil -
whose instalments, among others, include
mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s, mujahideen
in Bosnia in the 1990s and, recently, Libya
Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) stalwarts.
Global war on terror (GWOT)? This is sooo
George W Bush Dumb and Dumber era. As
certified blockbusters go, The Invasion of the
Regime Change al-Qaeda Democrats is the real
deal.
The Muppet show The
Empress of Libya sometimes displays a Meg
Ryan-esque inability of staying close to the
script. In her BBC promo, she insisted on the
official narrative; the "people of Syria" are
under "relentless attack" from "government
forces". At the same time she incites "security
forces" to go for regime change. So what's the
story; the killers suddenly become democrats? Why
not? That's a classic Hollywood plot twist.
Meanwhile, State Department spokeswoman
Victoria Nuland could give Octavia Spencer a run
for her money as best supporting actress. Nuland -
married to uber-neocon Robert Kagan - blasted
Syria's referendum on the grounds that this
"ridiculous proposal" put forward by Bashar
al-Assad coincided with "the guns and the tanks
and the artillery ... still firing into Homs and
Hama and cities all over the country".
Nuland seems to have conveniently
forgotten that that's exactly what the US had been
doing when promoting "free" elections in both Iraq
and Afghanistan - with the helpful addition of
electoral forces such as killer drones, F-16s,
Apache helicopters and compliant corporate media
shills reciting the Pentagon script.
Both
State Department actresses also conveniently
forgot that if you're an unemployed sniper in the
West or in the Arab world, the place to go - apart
from Hollywood - is Syria. Many of the snipers who
have been killing civilians in Syria belong to the
Friends of Hillary coalition. They are working for
the NATOGCC compound - the American, partly
European and partly Arab coalition that financed,
trained and weaponized a shadow army inside Libya
and now Syria.
Syria has nothing to do
with a unilateral state-sponsored massacre; it's
an internal war between a government and a shadow
army - with civilians caught in the crossfire.
La Clinton herself has been forced to
admit "a very strong opposition to foreign
intervention from inside Syria, from outside
Syria"; that implies that most Syrians, not only
minorities but even secular Sunnis, know
al-Qaeda-style jihadists and/or fanatical Salafis
are heavily infiltrated. They also know the Syrian
National Council (SNC) is a Muslim Brotherhood
and/or Washington puppet.
What the Empress
of Libya also conveniently leaves aside is how the
"opposition", split between SNC opportunists and
their rivals, the National Coordination Body
(NCB), are virtual nullities inside Syria. The
resistance against the undoubtedly police state
Assad regime is mostly coordinated by local
committees.
Sunset Boulevard,
revisited On with the show. Expect the
Salafi-jihadist fest in Syria to soon rival Vanity
Fair's after-Oscars party. After all, that's the
official strategy of those paragons of democracy,
Gulf Cooperation Council stalwarts Saudi Arabia
and Qatar. The House of Saud's Foreign Minister
Saud al-Faisal said that arming the rebels is "a
very good idea". Same for Qatar's Prime Minister
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani. The GCC loves
the smell of a napalmed Arab secular republic in
the morning. Feels like ... victory.
What's actually happening, as Asia Times
Online has reported, is that both Qatar and the
House of Saud have been weaponizing the Free
Syrian Army (FSA) for months now, while Washington
sticks with the "lead from behind" plot twist.
Now try arguing that arming Shi'ites in
Saudi Arabia's eastern province, or the
pro-democracy protesters in Bahrain is also a
"very good idea". You'll be visited by a Hellfire
missile - or hit by a sniper - in less time than
it took Angelina to show off her leg.
Anyway, as a Hollywood plot, what a better
sequel to the Resident Evil franchise than
this: Sunni Persian Gulf monarchies weaponize
al-Qaeda-style freaks to promote democracy and
human rights in Syria. This is even bigger than
Angie's right leg. Forget this is not Hollywood,
it's real life. And forget Norma Desmond; now it's
al-Qaeda's CEO Ayman Al-Zawahiri who is ready for
his close up. He used to be big, but now that the
pictures became small, he's bound to be even
bigger. Angie's right leg better watch out.
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