Israel's Dangerous Escalation

A dangerous escalation, initiated by Israel, has begun in the Syrian civil war. This from a Sunday story by Anne Barnard, Michael Gordon and Jodi Rudoren, "Israel Targeted Iranian Missiles in Syria Attack":

On Sunday, the Syrian government said that the Israelis had launched a missile attack against the military complex at Jamraya just outside Damascus overnight. 

Large blasts sent towering plumes of flame and smoke into the night sky above Qasioun Mountain, which towers over downtown Damascus, according to residents and videos posted by opposition activists. The videos showed multiple explosions over a period of several minutes, suggesting that more than one target may have been hit. 

The mountain is home to an array of Syrian military facilities, including military research centers, and is the source of much of the government shelling of rebel positions in the suburbs. Residents and activists said the explosions struck the mountain headquarters of the army’s Fourth Division, the elite and feared unit run by the president’s brother Maher, as well as al-Hamah, where the command of the Republican Guard, one of the government’s elite forces, is located.

Ikhbariya television, a state-owned channel, asserted that Israeli had carried out the strikes. “The new Israeli attack is an attempt to raise the morale of the terrorist groups which have been tottering after facing strikes by our noble army,” the station said.The government has long said that the uprising against it was fueled by foreign-backed “terrorists” and served Israeli and American interests. 

Israeli officials had no comment on the explosions. Nor did American officials, who signaled that the United States did not carry out the attack. 

“They are definitely going after military facilities on or around Qasioun,” said Andrew J. Tabler, an expert on Syria as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “There are a lot of research and military facilities there that are tied into the command and control structure of the regime.” 

“It is unprecedented and something all of Damascus can see,” he added, stressing that it would likely have an important political impact in Syria.

The cat is out of the bag. This no longer has anything to do with the Arab Spring. This is pure power politics. It's the United States operating through its Israeli cat's paw along with an Al Qaeda-affiliated opposition funded and armed by the gulf states. What does this tell you about the "Global War on Terror" (GWOT)? It should be obvious by now that it's a ruse to maintain our permanently militarized state along the lines of the Cold War that it replaced. If we are willing to align ourselves with Al Qaeda against a secular state then GWOT is obviously secondary to other considerations, such as the addiction that elites in power have to the fantasy of full-spectrum dominance and perpetual war.

This is not going to end well. Russia, which has a naval installation in Syria and is a great power, is not going to look the other way. Lebanon will be destabilized because Hezbollah will do whatever it can to aid Assad. Iraq will split along a Shiite-Sunni fault, as it is already.

Israel must have done what it did because the Syrian offensive against the rebels at the end of last week was successful.