An American friend in Europe sent me a forwarded e-mail the other day from parts unknown. It was entitled “Are you confused?” Once in a while she gets a good one. Here it is:

Are you confused by what is going on in the Middle East?  It’s simple really.  Let me explain...

We support the Iraqi government in the fight against ISIS.  We don’t like ISIS, but ISIS is supported by Saudi Arabia who we do like. We don’t like Assad in Syria. We support the fight against him, but ISIS is also fighting against him. We don’t like Iran, but Iran supports the Iraqi government in its fight against ISIS.

So some of our friends support our enemies, some enemies are now our friends, and some of our enemies are fighting against our other enemies, who we want to lose, but we don’t want our enemies who are fighting our enemies to win.  If the people we want to defeat are defeated, they could be replaced by people we like even less.

 

And all this was started by invading a country to drive out terrorists who were never actually there until we went in to drive them out. We also went into that country to destroy their weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there.

 

Do you understand now?

I must admit, this was a big improvement over many of her prior, forwarded messages. It is right on track. However, I am more exigeant. I require detail and background. “Let me make it clearer for you, so you will be even less confused,” I wrote back. Here is what I sent her:

...The White House bears ultimate responsibility for creating ISIS. Washington injected the Jihadist virus into Syria, which then spread to Iraq. It was Tel Aviv's obsession with getting rid of President Bashar Al Assad of Syria that prompted White House action. It was Tel Aviv and Washington who covertly instigated the civil war in Syria, financed largely by Saudi Arabia, using the theme of the "Arab Spring" as a front.

Why was Tel Aviv obsessed with Assad? Because he was helping Hezbollah in Lebanon. Many of the rockets which Hezbollah used to checkmate the IDF in recent conflicts in southern Lebanon came from Iran then travelled overland through Iraq and Syria, or at least overland from Syria to Lebanon. The Shiite crescent. Ergo, the civil war in Syria. Assad had to go, no matter what the collateral damage. The best way to destroy the nation-state of Syria was to foment/ignite/instigate a civil war based upon religion. Sunni v. Shiite. 

Netanyahu & Associates does not care if Syria turns into a basket case, like Iraq for instance, because Israel figures it has enough drones and fighter bombers, cruise missiles and long range artillery to police the area. Gaza is the template. A free fire zone. They are all terrorists. It simplifies everything. Netanyahu & Associates must now be thinking to themselves: we can do whatever we want and get away with anything. Gaza proves that.

Seymour Hersh gave a heads' up on this brilliant US/Israel strategy of utilizing Sunni crazies as surrogates for US policy in his 2007 New Yorker article The Redirection. Cheney/Bush initiated the madness; Obama let it roll. It has now come to fruition. Another Washington foreign policy debacle. 

What we are seeing in Iraq and Syria is the result of  sophisticated strategists with a lot of resources from America and Europe at their disposal. Moreover, they are fanatics. The modus operandi has been to concentrate upon one target at a time and utilize the old Roman Empire principle of divide et impera. The Shiite/Sunni divide is perfect to exploit. The actual, ground-zero source of the problem is the Likud component in Israel, and its world-wide network of enablers, dupes and agents. The lone surviving Superpower is being punked.

Assad's  secular regime in Syria remained the last independent power, to wit, a non-US puppet state, in the region. The most advanced Arab state in the Middle East, Iraq, had been destroyed thanks to the Neocons in Washington. Syria was an ally of Hezbollah in Lebanon, right next door. Years ago Israel annexed the Golan Heights, which belongs to Syria, and has no intention of returning it. Israel needs the water of the Latani river in Lebanon.

In short, Israel wants nothing less than absolute, unchallenged imperium over the immediate area, including the oil and gas rights in the Mediterranean offshore Gaza. Not to mention all of Palestine, with the Palestinians relegated to helots. 

Recall that George Bush and Dick Cheney sold the invasion of Iraq as a crusade for democracy and to remove the threat of WMD and a possible mushroom cloud over the US. These were deliberate falsehoods and part of an elaborate cover story designed to bamboozle the ignorant American public. In fine, The Bush White House punked its own citizens. England's Tony Blair was the Bush/Cheney point-man for the project in Europe.

The unstated, hidden objective in Iraq and now in Syria is to get the natives to fight one another, and tear their country apart. Did Bush Jr himself realize the grand design? Probably not. Mission Accomplished.

As I've indicated, should the crazies come out on top at the end of the day, it really does not matter, because they can be monitored, controlled and disposed of with drones, long range artillery, cruise missiles, and fighter bombers. It can be done, with little damage to the imperial overlords who have created the disasters in the first place by their schemes and interventions. In the meantime, Uncle Sam takes the heat and the American taxpayer gets the bill. Bled dry. Cui bono? Why is this happening?

Are you still confused? Join the club.