The recent cruise missile attack by the U.S. and its allies the U.K. and France ( former colonial exploiters in the region) raises some interesting dilemmas for Western military planners .
If we are to believe the Russian military assessment of the strike, 71 of the of 103 cruise missiles were brought down by Syrian air defence systems, particular via the Russian made Pantsir surface-to-air missile systems.
While the United States and its two allies have claimed that the missile attack was in response to their espoused view that there had been a gas attack by the Assad military in Douma against the civilians trapped there, the evidence seems to suggest that this attack was aimed at eliminating the air support threat from the Syrian Air Force for the jihadists those 3 Western governments have been extensively supporting since the start of the war to overthrow the Assad regime.
Having failed in their bid to convince the United Nations of a ‘no-fly’ zone in Syria on multiple occasions ( ie elimination of Syrian government aircraft from the skies above rebel-held territory) ; the use of a chemical weapons attack as a pretext for bombing airfields has become the next best option. Using The American government ( and Muslim Brotherhood) funded Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), and the largely British intelligence funded and managed White Helmets to produce videos purporting to show a chemical weapons attack in Douma, Western media has been united in showing moral outrage at ‘animal Assad’s” killing of his own people, and baying for more attacks on the Syrian military.
The apparent logic given by Western media and politicians for ‘animal Assad” to drop barrel bombs filed with toxic chemicals on the people of Douma was to demonstrate that there was no hope for the rebels there and they should surrender. According to this logic, it was worth the risk of a repeat of the previous cruise missile attacks ordered by President Trump last year for the Assad regime to drop a few barrels of toxic chemicals on Douma to dislodge the few remaining “rebels’ there who were already negotiating an exit with the Syrian government from the enclave . One assumes those politicians and the Western media think their publics are very very stupid….Unfortunately for Western intelligence, the overrunning of the last of the rebel enclaves in Ghouta and their departure in buses to Idlib came far sooner than they expected, allowing the Syrians and Russians and journalists like the respected British Robert Fisk, to enter the area where the supposed gas attack had occurred and interview civilians and medics there .
One finds it strange that neither Western media nor their governments have bayed for large cruise missile attacks on the Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra, or ISIS, or any of the other head-choppers supported by Gulf and Western states. And that in fact there have been no reported cruise missile attacks by Western countries on ISIS throughout this entire war. How could this be one wonders?
The chemical weapons scam is largely similar to the earlier and still ongoing farce in the Western media about Assad’s “barrel bombs”. “Barrel bombs’ are nothing but impromptu explosives packed in drums and dropped from government helicopters and fixed wing aircraft. They are in fact, unguided ordinance, which the majority of the aerial weapons at play in Syria by the United States and its allies, as well as the Russians and the Syrian government, are. But we are somehow expected to believe that packing munitions into oil drums and dropping them on targets creates far worse dangers, chaos, injury and death than those caused by other unguided munitions. But again the ‘barrel bomb’ farce is one more attempt by the Western media and politicians to remove the threat to their tunnel based jihadists from aerial warfare of any kind. If the Syrian airforce can be removed and then the Russian airforce, then ISIS and the other Al Qaeda affiliates and salafists out to exterminate all Christians , Allawites, Shi-ites and other non fundamentalist Sunni sects in Syria, will have a much free-er hand on the ground.
Despite American denials, it would appear that in fact the vast majority of the cruise missiles were therefore aimed at Syrian airfields, rather than the alleged chemical weapons storage and production facilities ( which had been vetted by the OPCW as ‘clean’ just last October 2017). The Syrian and Russians had in fact deployed most of their more effective anti-missile stations around those airfields; and if they are to believed, destroyed the vast majority of the incoming missiles at those airfields. There is some speculation that Russian electromagnetic interference jamming systems may have played a part in the incoming missiles’ lack of effectiveness, but that cant be confirmed as yet.
It would appear that the Americans ,French and British are relying on their NATO fellow members of the OPCW to influence the public statements of the OPCW in regards to the alleged Douma gas attack , whilst acknowledging that the inspectors themselves will draw their own conclusions which they can not publicly release as OPCW staff ( but will likely leak to the public or Wikileaks if they do not coincide with the political narrative) . Note that the most recent media release by the OPCW on their survey of the Dhouma site in Syria states that “On arrival at Site 1, a large crowd gathered and the advice provided by the UNDSS was that the reconnaissance team should withdraw. At Site 2, the team came under small arms fire and an explosive was detonated. The reconnaissance team returned to Damascus. “
Very clearly, the battle to partition Syria by the West and its Gulf allies using jihadists is far from over.
But -as in previous unilateral totally illegal strikes ( ie not approved by the U.N. Security Council) by Western governments on states that do not comply with the Western political and economic agenda , this latest missile attack provides ample rationale to China, as the upcoming dominant global power, that missile strikes on countries who do not acquiesce to its political and economic agenda, are a completely legitimate response, in the future.
It may not be too long before China’s aircraft carrier armada are patrolling the seas off the United States, the U.K and France..
Postscript
A more detailed assessment of the cruise missile numbers and targets from Joe Quinn at sott.net
Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_bomb
http://eng.mil.ru/en/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12171300@egNews
Robert Fisk’s Douma Report Rips Away Excuses for Air Strike on Syria
New Antarctica 