We have warned on several occasions about the reasons why Damascus is an important religious symbol to plant the roots of a Sunni Caliphate. Anyone with 8th grade level knowledge of Muslim history and the rise of the Umayyad Dynasty that further cemented Sunni power over the region and the Shia faith would be foolish not to grasp the meaning of the war in Syria.
Not only the Mullahs in Iran see it as a threat to their own self-existence, but in light of al-Qaeda’s rise, the US and Western Europe would be ill-advised not to see the threat of the upcoming religious wars that will suck them in no matter how disengaged they are.
In Denmark alone, some 30 Danish Muslims have joined al-Qaeda in Syria to fight the Shia of Iran and eventually turn their attention against the Western world. Already, Jordanian authorities captured a Syrian woman refugee yesterday trying to enter the Kingdom wearing a belt of explosives, which sealed the Jordanian borders to all Syrians.
A No-Fly Zone for Syria is not an option, it has become a necessity with national security implications.
Instead of prevention, the Obama Administration is engaged into a campaign to deny reality because Obama’s foreign policy experts are ignorant of Muslim history. With every passing day, the danger grows stronger and more potent. Does anyone from the Chicago circles of Obama understand the real Muslim History?
By denouncing Jabhat al-Nusra (JAN) as a terrorist organization when JAN was filling the void Syrians hoped the US would fill by arming the FSA to defeat Assad; and when JAN was providing food and basic necessities to the civilian population, Barack Obama had turned Syrians against the US. Whomever provided that advice to the President (Is that you Ben Rhodes?), or to Hillary Clinton, ought to resign his/her post immediately. Such ill-timed stupidity at a time when the US refuses to help the Syrian people free themselves reek of either naivete in international politics or lack of common sense.
The US would have fared far better in fighting terror if it also aided those the terrorists needed, in the Syrian people, to oxygenate their cause with. To label JAN a terrorist organization and simultaneously ignore the plight of the Syrian people is as demented a policy as we have ever seen.
Instead of learning, Obama is piling up the mistakes. Al-Qaeda is now deeply rooted in Syria not because of the number of fighters that keep joining every day, many of them Syrians who were studying law or history few months ago; however, because of what AQ has done to save the civilians from Assad’s terror, millions of ignorant Syrians now stand behind the very same organization that attacked the US on 9/11. Obama could not have done a worse job even by design.
Unlike the Libyans who chased al-Qaeda after the senseless and cowardly murder of Ambassador Stevens, Syrians will not duplicate. They will be chasing Ambassador Ford, the official representative of President Obama who was forced to the sidelines by Obama’s inner circle. Ambassador Ford deserves better and so do many in the Foreign Service who pressed the President to expand the aid to include sophisticated weapons to the FSA but were silenced by Obama himself and political appointees who grew up in Chicago, stayed in Chicago, and Washington DC was their first international voyage.
For every problem, there is a solution. Here is ours to save whatever credibility the United States may have lost in Syria due to lack of understanding of Muslim history.
- Because of the use of SCUDS against civilians in Aleppo, the President must announce that the international community can no longer stand by in the face of the destruction of Syria. (Logic: The nuanced statement should disclose that several clandestine attempts have failed to oust Assad; this is why the US is turning a new page. Further, Putin will have to understand if he does not want Islamic terror to knock on his door).
- Effective immediately, NATO will designate a No-Fly Zone for a humanitarian corridor to protect the northern territories north of al-Qusayr on a longitudinal line to Abu Kamal on the Iraqi borders from Assad MIGs and helicopter gunships (Logic: Approximately 500 nautical miles from Adana in Turkey, manageable under the F-16 range of 1,740 nautical miles. Further, 2 million Syrian refugees demand that we protect the civilians and neighboring countries from the humanitarian disaster we can no longer ignore).
- Effective immediately, new sophisticated weapons will be provided to the liberal FSA brigades inside Syria to defend themselves accompanied by NATO specialists (Logic: As Russians operate Russian radars, so should NATO operate its own sophisticated weapons. Stop this nonsense of saying “Weapons may fall in the wrong hands”. You are fooling no one when such was not uttered for Libya. In addition, by empowering the FSA, Syrians will tilt away from JAN).
- The Patriot Missiles batteries on the Turkish borders will immediately intercept any SCUDS fired by Assad (Logic: By installing such batteries, only to protect Turkey, you are sending a message the civilians in Syria are fair game. The President can tilt the Syrian population away from JAN with just one simple effort. Just ask the Israelis what it means to be sitting ducks for SCUDS to understand the importance of this statement).
Short of correcting the course on Syria, history will correct it for us down the road at the cost of American lives and taxes. This will happen after hundreds of thousands of Syrians and possibly millions of Muslims die for no reason, which will turn the region into a center of hardened fundamentalist warriors with vengeance on their minds against anything western.
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