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BARACK Obama has freakishly tried to downplay the devastating consequences of the brutality of Egypt’s military authorities as they continue to wantonly spill the blood of thousands of civilians, all of them judged guilty of the unforgivable crime of protesting against the forceful removal of Egypt’s first ever democratically elected government.
Suddenly Obama realises the sanctity of life, thanks to a complex and almost inexplicable mishap that happened in Syria on August 21 — an atrocity caused by an as yet to be known perpetrator. The chemical attack reportedly killed over a thousand people, and the atrocity has since been described as a sarin gas attack.

The attack provides a sudden and uncannily find for Obama, just the way to make the Syrian challenge bigger than it has ever been, big enough to warrant what Washington has for all along been hankering for — a reasonable pretext for actively joining the civil war on the side of the retreating and depleting rebels.

Washington’s rhetoric speaks to high heavens of the glaring quest for war justification, and far less for the humanitarian cause of protecting Syrian lives.

The world saw Obama buoyantly holding talks with smooth-faced David Cameron, both men impressively pretending to be immensely burdened by the compelling need to save Syrians from what Washington and London confidently labelled “a murderous regime.”
The two men agreed on the need for a retaliatory strike on behalf of hapless Syrians, and against these people’s own government. Cameron hastily recalled his parliamentarians from recess, so he could put before the House of Commons a motion that Britain needed to join America in going to war against Syria.

The British MPs promptly shot down the motion by a majority of 13 members, presumably mindful of the Snowden revelations, and most certainly still feeling the burns of the Iraq War.

Quite emphatically the Brits opted out of the next Middle East adventure, leaving Obama contemplating the repercussions of a solo venture under the prevailing circumstances. Ever since this landmark rebuttal of a British PM, unprecedented in the last 200 years, it has been queasily fascinating to watch Obama vacillating over the Syrian issue, and the circus is fast approaching the arbiter of humiliation.
After the House of Commons shocker, Obama in turn shocked his backroom team and perhaps the entire American community by turning to Congress for authority he had earlier on indicated he did not need.

More startling is the fact that Obama has spectacularly failed to articulate what he hopes to accomplish with the proposed attack, prompting the Russian president to describe the whole basis for the proposed attack as “utter nonsense.”

Australia’s Kevin Rudd probably became the first notable casualty of the anti-war sentiment in the West as he just worsened his waning political fortunes by vaingloriously pledging commitment to Obama’s impending retaliatory attack on Syria. In the process Rudd cemented beyond doubt the Australian Labour Party’s landslide defeat at the hands of the coalition of the Liberals and the Nationals in an election described by Clive Palmer as characterised by gross “voting irregularities,” and lack of “security of ballots.”

“Even in Zimbabwe you have to mark your thumb with ink and have identification,” complained Palmer. It is ironic that Australia is on record demanding an election re-run of Zimbabwe’s July 31 election.

It is quite amusing to watch John Kerry advocating for the ill-defined Syrian mission. After being quizzed on why Obama was approaching Senate when he had said his “red line” had already been crossed, Kerry ducked the question and declared that in fact the “red line” crossed by Syria’s Bashar al-Assad was “humanity’s red line.”

As it stands only France is proposing to join Kerry’s crusade for enforcing humanity’s red line, but even Hollande has rescinded on an earlier vow to go to war, now premising his pledge on the condition of the findings of a UN team of investigators.

Frustrated by a barrage of excruciating questions, Kerry labelled sceptics of intervention in Syria “armchair isolationists,” presumably isolating themselves from the world majority opinion as represented by the utterances from the White House and by the French president.
Chuck Hagel described the US objective in Syria as “to hold the Assad regime accountable, degrading its ability to carry out these kinds of attacks and deter it from further use of chemical weapons.”

It is quite informing that such utterances were made pending the outcome of the US investigations on who actually carried out the chemical attacks and how.

John Kerry offered the revealing explanation that the missile attacks would have the “downstream effect” of diminishing Assad’s “overall military capacity.” Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, agreed with Kerry, adding that the actual goal of the intervention in Syria is to weaken Assad’s regime for the benefit of US-sponsored rebels.

An out of sorts Obama had earlier on borrowed a naval term to describe his proposed missile strikes. He said the strikes would constitute “a shot across the bow.” Essentially the term means a warning shot not intended to hit the opposing ship.

It is unthinkable to believe Obama is going to Congress and embarking on this vigorous rhetoric to attract global allies so that he can get approval for the US Navy to fire off volleys of missiles that deliberately miss the target.

Kerry, Hagel and Dempsey have been more forthcoming with the real intentions of the proposed war, plainly telling the world that the United States intends to attack Syria for the sole reason of fighting down Bashar al-Assad — nothing more and nothing less.

It is quite possible that poor Obama is trying to fight for a more positive legacy in history, and he is probably secretly hoping for a Congress rebuttal so he appears like he was president enough to stand up to a foreign state thwarting US objectives, only democratic enough to be stopped by Congress from dealing with the marauding nuisance once and for all.

From however many the number of angles one may look at the Syrian issue, the whole episode of alleged chemical attacks is just a slam dunk case founded on widely discredited claims, and it hardly makes sense to even talk of humanitarian intervention.

Most certainly Obama is drifting into a debacle he is not going to like, and his furious blur of activity trying to spin up rationales continues to make him appear more mindless by each utterance. The apparent lack of front-line allies in this proposed venture goes to show how at face value the Obama rhetoric has become rattlepated.

John McCain has always wanted the United States right in the middle of the Syrian civil conflict, and he has personally gone on the ground to be a guest commander to the hardcore jihadists and Al-Qaeda operatives that make up the Syrian rebel forces.
McCain wants to reverse an Assad victory and he wants to use Obama’s presidential powers to do so.

Obama himself is clearly at crossroads, and that is why he has decided to pass the ball to Congress. His team is frantically trying to intimidate senators by telling them “Iran is watching, Hezbollah is watching,” all an effort to stir up the war spirit in Congress.
Realising that Congress was going to vote against the war Obama has backtracked on his rhetoric, asking Congress to indefinitely postpone the vote in favour of a diplomatic solution suggested by Russia, specifically that Syria’s chemical weapons be placed under the control of the United Nations. That saves Obama from further humiliation, but his reputation as a cowardly and confused president will remain in the minds of many.

The seemingly inflated figure of 1 500 victims of the alleged chemical attack is not big enough to warrant public concern in America, especially given who is providing the information, and also the fact that the two-year conflict has already claimed over 100 000 lives, according to the UN. Obama is in this Damascene dilemma for one simple reason: that Bashar al-Assad is prevailing over US-sponsored militants. Everything else uttered from the White House is utter nonsense, to borrow the words from Putin.

By failing to pull the trigger after shouting the intention to shoot, Obama is not only undermining the saber-rattling US foreign policy but also making a huge fool of himself.

He knows his intelligence on what happened in Syria is not convincing enough, and he also knows his rhetoric about an utterly unacceptable red line is just harebrained. He is now trying to sanitise his vainglorious venture by seeking Congress approval, which won’t be forthcoming.

Clearly the Cameron parliamentary rebuke loudly spoke to Barrack Obama as well, and it is about the only reason he had this huge behavioural shift. While Cameron conceded defeat, Obama seems to be heading for one in his own backyard.

After all it is David Cameron who has so far played the leading role in the West in advocating military intervention on the side of the Syrian rebels, just like he is the leading voice advocating for the continuation of illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe.

A rebuttal by his own parliament means the EU reads very little in Cameron’s vociferous rhetoric, and this is why there is no appetite for war on the part of the regional body.

The Syrian crisis has become to the people of Britain and to the EU an arbiter showing a leader who misreads his own parliament, misreads his party, and misreads his public.

Obama knows that is not good enough to drag along the French into a war venture while the Brits join the rest of the world watching, and that is exactly why he has been jumping up and down with all manner of explanations and excuses.

He is more than aware that the UN Security Council is not about to do another Libyan Resolution 1973 — not another no-fly-zone directive this time around. Obama knows China and Russia won’t support such a proposal or abstain from voting if such voting were to take place. Expectedly and understandably, Washington and London have opted not to have any vote taken.

The dispatching of two of Russia’s most important warships to the Eastern Mediterranean has just added to Obama’s headaches. He knows even a military triumph over Russian warships would still constitute a huge political failure on his part, and that is exactly why delaying any strikes on Syria is the most attractive option for him.

The bright line against the use of chemical weapons has been less than impressive, and this is why the coalition of the willing is remarkably so small — almost non-existent.

There is no logic in imagining Assad massacring the fewer civilians on the side of rebels in a war he is clearly winning, and not many people can see why the chemical attack would be necessary for Assad, much as it is abundantly clear that such an attack is quite handy for the politics of Washington.

To most Americans Obama is increasingly sounding like George W. Bush on Saddam Hussein and the Weapons of Mass Destruction. It is very hard to believe Obama is not lying about the whole story of chemical weapons in Syria. As mentioned in the opening paragraph of this essay, most people cannot take Obama seriously when he sheds crocodile tears over alleged atrocities in Syria while blissfully choosing not to address the far greater numbers of civilians killed by Egypt’s military government for protesting on behalf of Egypt’s only ever democratically elected government.

But we all know how the thinking goes in the White House. Obama doubtlessly believes that drowning people to death and killing them with sophisticated bombs and missiles is a lot more acceptable than bludgeoning them with knobkerries or spearing them to death, or killing them with terrorist makeshift bombs or gassing them to death. The kind of weapons used by the Egyptian military government to kill thousands of innocent civilians is quite acceptable to Obama and that is why the Egyptian military will never cross Obama’s “red line.”
You do not cross that line if the weapons you are using are supplied from Washington, and it is unimaginable that Israel can one day ever cross Washington’s red line, regardless of how many Palestinians they choose to bomb down.

What is unfolding in Syria must inform Zimbabweans a lot more about American interventionism, and those who hanker for the involvement of Westerners in the affairs of the country must remember that Western interventionism is never for the good of the domestic population. Capitalism does not work like that.

Africa we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!!

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in Sydney, Australia.