I wish I were not so cynical. I wish I could watch the news, read the paper, listen to the talking heads and accept their offering at face value. I wish my brain cells didn’t automatically spin up and start analyzing the agenda and looking for the angle. I am confident life would be much simpler with less frustration if I could turn off the skeptical questioning, ignore the blatantly obvious lies, misdirection and the ever changing contradictions that permeate what is defined as news.
I blame/credit my Dad for my affliction. Just as in William Golding’s essay Thinking as a Hobby (Link), I was continually asked as a kid growing up, “Don’t you ever think at all?” It took me many years, but I finally did start thinking. I never stopped listening to what I was being told was important. Instead I started thinking about why I was being told something was important. I constantly question what is the medicine their spoon full of sugar is supposed to help go down?
Ok, so back to Syria. Civil War. Arab Spring. Syrian people wanting to rise up and over through the leadership team of Assad. Why should we care? Fast forward to just before the “chemical attack”, it is estimated there has been 80k to 100k deaths. Deaths by rocket, gun, shrapnel, bombs … death by acceptable means I suppose. Then came the allegations and video of a chemical attack. Then came the ZOMFG! Syria bad. We must intercede. We must arm the rebels. Rebels who are Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda who hates us. Who killed our ambassador. Who we’ve been killing via drone for years now. Who cuts the organs of their foes and eats them? (NSFW Link. Do NOT watch if EASILY offended) The Syrians do not get a free pass. There are plenty of videos of their forces showing their best. (NSFW Link. Syrian Soldiers abusing prisoners)
Actually never mind the above video links. While horrible and unthinkable. They have absolutely nothing to do with our involvement in Syria.
It’s the money.
At first I thought it was for Raytheon, the Tomahawk (Link) cruise missile supplier. With a cruise missile going $1.45M a pop. Toss 80 to 100 of those at Syria, that’s a nice revenue adjustment for their quarter. Thinking this through, that is rather short sided. Especially with all the chest thumping by the Obama administration. Even with positive stock market adjustments for Raytheon, I don’t think there are enough dollars to make it worth our while.
Then I remembered reading an energy article in Bloomberg Businessweek about US energy production from fracking is putting pressure the Russia energy market (Link) .
Russia’s Gazprom supplies 50% or so of Europe’s energy needs. Gazprom has been known to turn off energy supplies before, and is threatening again. (Link)
The United States and Europe do not have a free trade agreement in place. But something is in play. (Link)
Hear it from the horses mouth directly.
So how does this all tie together? My take it is Syria is nothing more than a proxy war between the US and Russia. More specifically Obama and Putin, and our energy financial interests and Russia’s Gazprom. I think Obama going to Congress is nothing more than buying time for him to present to G20 to drive his agenda.
Remember, we do not kill for humanitarian reasons. We do not kill for Mom and Apple pie. We kill for many reasons, but these three are the cream that will always rise to the top. 1. Control. 2. Energy. 3. Revenue. And not necessarily in that order.
tl;dr: Energy is the long term investment that makes our meddling with Syria justified.
In the immortal words of Forrest Gump, that’s all I have to say about that.
