Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Obama administration split on “Plan B” for Syria intervention

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Obama administration split on “Plan B” for Syria intervention

Click here to access article by Bill Van Auken from World Socialist Web Site.

The author reviews the recent items in the Washington Post which report on the secret meetings of the National Security Council (NSC) regarding strategies to pursue in Syria. (Unfortunately WSWS's policy is not to include any links to relevant articles, and I don't have time to search for them.) The NSC is a top agency that decides on the imperialist policies of the US. Because the meetings are secret, the substance of the Post's articles must have been leaked to the Post.

Although no decisions have been reached yet, the Post reports seem to indicate that the preponderance of opinion is for the most aggressive strategy which would likely result in the shooting down of Syrian and Russian airplanes.

I fully agree with the author's concluding remark:

The recklessness of such policies, aimed at deliberately provoking military confrontation with Russia, a power that controls the world’s second-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, is staggering.