Hmmm Interesting, the articles l did track down had the information on what was going on in Syria re Israel strategic strike. This is why Russia is saying bad Israel, because they were a Russian resupply of missiles to Hizbullah. I came across this in the Times article
The early-morning strike in a border area west of Damascus targeted a convoy of trucks carrying Russian-made SA-17 missiles to Hezbollah, the anti-Israel Shiite militant and political group in Lebanon, according to a Western official briefed on the raid.
Response from UK military guy to: US supports Islam in Balkans
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2013 10:17:53 -0800
Largely in agreement. The sheer historical ignorance, parochialism and the complete inability to accept that other cultures think differently, and will resist thinking like an American is criminally negligent of the US State Dept.
Much as I have liked most Americans I have met in the US and elsewhere, America as the world's policeman causes me to view the US as dangerous, very dangerous, and frequently acting for ill - oftimes with the good intentions that proverbially pave the road to hell.
The citizenry have handed the Sheriff's badge to a huge, well armed and powerful man who is, unfortunately, the village idiot, whose schooling and mental and emotional advances stalled around seven years old, and whose thinking and actions are dominated by the last person he spoke to - who are almost invariable either rogues, idiots or both. (And sadly, for at least the past two decades, The British Foreign Office are as woefully ignorant or the reality of other cultures.)
If it was not for the liking I have for the American people, I would hope that the wish wish expressed by the imbecile Tom Lantos in his. " The United States' principles are universal, and in this instance, the United States stands foursquare for the creation of an overwhelmingly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe." .. should be realised not inBritain but somewhere say, three to four thousand miles west. How d'ya like them apples, Tom?
Which state would you like to be Muslim dominated? Wyoming maybe? Plenty of room for herding goats and raising huge families on Welfare, and I’m sure the Wyoming Shariah Republic could find a use for the nuclear missile silos. HowzaboutAlaska, Tom, with it's oil reserves? Good bit of tradition there too, you know- Whites discover and develop a resource in the face of huge obstacles, which then gives Muslims a life of wealth and ease hitherto unimagined of outside of Seventy-Two -Virgin territory. Howsabout both Alaska and Wyoming, Tom?
WTF makes American politicians think they have the right to dictate either an EU future or a Muslim future for Europe?
It it took 9/11 to get a discrete deal for Britain with the US with regard to why they should be less accommodating of harbouring the IRA terrorists who murdered civilians in Britain. Maybe it would take a mass invasion of Muslims in tandem with the Reconquista (which yesterday Obama announced that he wants legalised) for White Americans, or Americans of other ethnicity who realise that (for the most part) it was Americans of European origin who made America such a desirable place to live, to realise that they should not try to wish to eliminate European culture or ethnic majority in either Europe or America?
Don, you gotta educate your countrymen.
I remember watching news item with a visiting friend who has worked for years in Muslim nations. Clinton was addressing a jubilant, worshipping crowd of Kosovar Muslims just after he'd ordered Bosnia pounded into rubble, and given Kosovo independence by force of arms.
He had smirkingly accepted the plaudits, then spoke to them of welcoming their fellow Kosovars who were Serbian with open arms, and putting all their differences behind them, forging new future together, etc.. My friend and I both laughed, more in disbelief than amusement, and although the meeja tried to only show the few nodding in agreement, I spotted many more prayer-capped greybeards and most of the younger ones looking at him with a disappointed disbelief.
They wanted to do what comes naturally in multi-kulti Balkan enclaves-as soon as they get the power, to be out and aboutslitting your neighbours’ throats. I was very unhappy about Clinton’s war in Kosovo,and its forced separation.
Albanian Muslims had been moving encroaching peacefully into Kosovo for centuries – until they became big enough to get lippy, then the usual pattern of violent Islamisation manifested itself. Post WW2, Tito’s Communism kept ethnic differences suppressed, but when that dictator died, multi-kulti took on its sadly natural alternative—riot, rape and bloodshed.
When the Serbs were committing atrocities against Kosovar Muslims (who were just as guilty) I went to a local church to help pack aid for the refugees who had fled to Macedonia, if I remember rightly.
I did so out of human charity, but I sure as hell did not want them coming to my homeland and living off us in Britain.
Thanks to Prime Ministers Tony B-Liar, Brown and CaMoron, we have umpteen of them here now,breeding like flies on welfare and committing crimes at a hugely disproportionate rate.
Don, I despair.
America really needs to try a little Islamisation before they wisen up. A less painful lesson would be to read and travel more like you do.
G
As a refresher,
BRINGING LONG TERM PEACE AND PROSPERITY TO THE BALKAN REGION
James George Jatras
Former policy adviser to the U.S. Senate Republican leadership, former U.S. diplomat
Director, American Council for Kosovo
The topic today is bringing long-term stability and peace to the Balkans, by which we primarily mean the bloody breakup of former Yugoslavia. It is a region that figured prominently in the news in the 1990s but which most Americans have been happy to forget ever since.
Forgetting is not always bad. Sometime to move forward on a productive basis, we need to stop reopening old wounds and focus on what can be done now and in the future.
That, however, is not possible when the dead hand of the past continues to exert a tenacious grip on the present, and preclude fresh and honest approaches. That, unfortunately, is the case with the Balkans, where outside powers – primarily the American and secondarily the European foreign policy establishments – insist that the Balkans’ future must be confined by the reverent preservation of past idols.
We can discuss the specifics in detail today, but two idols that have distorted our understanding of the Balkans and block genuine progress are especially noteworthy:
First, the notion that the United States and NATO intervened in the Bosnian war of 1992-95 to rescue European failures, and brought “peace” by imposing the Dayton Agreement (To End a War, in the self-congratulatory and dishonest title of the book by the late Richard Holbrooke). But in fact, not only did Washington play a key role in touching off the Bosnian war in 1992, the U.S. was instrumental in prolonging the war and opening the door to radical Islamic influences, including Iran and al-Qaeda.
Second, the notion – even more zealously maintained as an article of faith – that in the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija in 1999 the U.S.-led NATO war was the textbook example of a successful “humanitarian intervention.” But in fact, far from stopping a claimed “genocide” of Albanians in Kosovo – a claim about as real as Saddam Hussein’s WMDs – it precipitated a genuine eradication of most of the province’s Serbian community, along with Roma and others. Even more dangerously, the “Kosovo precedent” has become the template for U.S. interventions in contempt of the international legal order (in Iraq, Libya, and now in Syria – see, for example, “To deter extremists in Syria, Obama must heed lessons of Kosovo intervention,” The Christian Science Monitor, 1/7/13.) outside the authority of the Security Council; has led to more instability, not less; and has empowered not “moderates” and “democrats” but Islamic radicals and criminal groups.
At the macro-level, the Balkan interventions and their legacies have fed the dangerous notion that “American exceptionalism” means that the rules of international conduct don’t apply to us, and that whatever we do is right because we claim as our goals promotion of democracy and human rights. It also has reinforced NATO as the favored mechanism for U.S. hegemony, first in Europe, then globally.
At the micro-level, U.S. policy in the Balkans is based on two simple identity-based rules and one corollary, which apply to all questions in a variant of the game “rock-paper-scissors,” where right and wrong are determined not by actions but by the identities of the actors and of those acted upon.
Rule One: The Serbs are always wrong, and all claims and interests they might have must be thwarted.
Rule Two: Muslims are always right, and all claims and interests they might have must be facilitated.
The Corollary: Deriving from the two rules, the claims and interests of non-Serbs, non-Muslims – notably Croats – are dependent on their relationship to Serbs or Muslims respectively. So Croats are right when in conflict with Serbs (who are always wrong), for example in the former Krajina; but Croats are wrong when in conflict with Muslims (who are always right), for example on the former Herceg-Bosna.
These rules and the corollary apply in all circumstance: verdicts at the Hague so-called “tribunal” (cf., treatment of Gotovina, Markac, Oric, Haradinaj, vs. Serbian defendants), allocations of territory, constitutional arrangements, participation in international organizations, and others.
In closing, I wish to note the predominance of the second rule: in U.S. eyes, the Muslims are always right. It cannot be emphasized enough that American policy-makers trotted out a commitment to Muslim causes in the Balkans specificallybecause they are Muslim causes. This is a complex phenomenon, going back at least to our support for the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, and continuing to our support for jihadists in Syria today. In general, the idea seems to be that if Washington continues to adopt the political agendas of Muslim (especially, Sunni) communities they will reject violence and be friendly toward the United States. It appears this idea was consciously patterned on American support during the Cold War for socialist and social-democratic parties as the best “antidote” to possible sympathy for communism.
In the Balkans, this has meant support for Bosnia’s Muslim community and Albanians in Kosovo specifically because they are Islamic movements. For example, the late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) -- Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee -- said the following at a hearing on Kosovo in 2007:
“Just a reminder to the predominantly Muslim-led government[s] in this world that here is yet another example [i.e., “another” example after Bosnia and Herzegovina] that the United States leads the way for the creation of a predominantly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe. This should be noted by both responsible leaders of Islamic governments, such as Indonesia, and also for jihadists of all color and hue. The United States' principles are universal, and in this instance, the United States stands foursquare for the creation of an overwhelmingly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe.” (emphasis added)
Not to be outdone, Mr. Lantos’ Senate counterpart at the time, now Vice President Joseph Biden, expressed similar views (Financial Times, January 3, 2007):
“ . . . [A]droit diplomacy to secure Kosovo’s independence could yield a victory for Muslim democracy, . . . a much-needed example of a successful US-Muslim partnership . . .”
In other words, American support for Islamic communities in the Balkans is not primarily driven by Balkan realities. Rather, this aspect is guided by a larger, global concept regarding how the United States wants to be perceived in the Islamic world.
Still, it remains paramount to our approach to the Balkans today, for example in a recent American proposal to reform the absurd Dayton structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina in favor an even more absurd structure to strengthen the hand of the Muslim community over Orthodox Serbs and Roman Catholic Croats. To this day, real progress is stymied because Washington insists on championing the concept of Bosnia as a “Muslim country” (in Mr. Lantos’s words) even though it in fact has a Christian majority. Similar observations could be made with respect to Kosovo and to Albanian efforts in the name of “natural Albania” to dominate parts of FYROMacedonia, Montenegro (the so-called “Malesia” region), the Presevo Valley in southern Serbia, and southern Epirus (“Çameria”) in Greece.
Until the dead hand of the idols that were wrong in the 1990s and even more out of place today is removed, real progress – which might otherwise be achieved – will be blocked. Instead, what we will have is a permanent lock consisting of:
Former policy adviser to the U.S. Senate Republican leadership, former U.S. diplomat
Director, American Council for Kosovo
The topic today is bringing long-term stability and peace to the Balkans, by which we primarily mean the bloody breakup of former Yugoslavia. It is a region that figured prominently in the news in the 1990s but which most Americans have been happy to forget ever since.
Forgetting is not always bad. Sometime to move forward on a productive basis, we need to stop reopening old wounds and focus on what can be done now and in the future.
That, however, is not possible when the dead hand of the past continues to exert a tenacious grip on the present, and preclude fresh and honest approaches. That, unfortunately, is the case with the Balkans, where outside powers – primarily the American and secondarily the European foreign policy establishments – insist that the Balkans’ future must be confined by the reverent preservation of past idols.
We can discuss the specifics in detail today, but two idols that have distorted our understanding of the Balkans and block genuine progress are especially noteworthy:
First, the notion that the United States and NATO intervened in the Bosnian war of 1992-95 to rescue European failures, and brought “peace” by imposing the Dayton Agreement (To End a War, in the self-congratulatory and dishonest title of the book by the late Richard Holbrooke). But in fact, not only did Washington play a key role in touching off the Bosnian war in 1992, the U.S. was instrumental in prolonging the war and opening the door to radical Islamic influences, including Iran and al-Qaeda.
Second, the notion – even more zealously maintained as an article of faith – that in the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija in 1999 the U.S.-led NATO war was the textbook example of a successful “humanitarian intervention.” But in fact, far from stopping a claimed “genocide” of Albanians in Kosovo – a claim about as real as Saddam Hussein’s WMDs – it precipitated a genuine eradication of most of the province’s Serbian community, along with Roma and others. Even more dangerously, the “Kosovo precedent” has become the template for U.S. interventions in contempt of the international legal order (in Iraq, Libya, and now in Syria – see, for example, “To deter extremists in Syria, Obama must heed lessons of Kosovo intervention,” The Christian Science Monitor, 1/7/13.) outside the authority of the Security Council; has led to more instability, not less; and has empowered not “moderates” and “democrats” but Islamic radicals and criminal groups.
At the macro-level, the Balkan interventions and their legacies have fed the dangerous notion that “American exceptionalism” means that the rules of international conduct don’t apply to us, and that whatever we do is right because we claim as our goals promotion of democracy and human rights. It also has reinforced NATO as the favored mechanism for U.S. hegemony, first in Europe, then globally.
At the micro-level, U.S. policy in the Balkans is based on two simple identity-based rules and one corollary, which apply to all questions in a variant of the game “rock-paper-scissors,” where right and wrong are determined not by actions but by the identities of the actors and of those acted upon.
Rule One: The Serbs are always wrong, and all claims and interests they might have must be thwarted.
Rule Two: Muslims are always right, and all claims and interests they might have must be facilitated.
The Corollary: Deriving from the two rules, the claims and interests of non-Serbs, non-Muslims – notably Croats – are dependent on their relationship to Serbs or Muslims respectively. So Croats are right when in conflict with Serbs (who are always wrong), for example in the former Krajina; but Croats are wrong when in conflict with Muslims (who are always right), for example on the former Herceg-Bosna.
These rules and the corollary apply in all circumstance: verdicts at the Hague so-called “tribunal” (cf., treatment of Gotovina, Markac, Oric, Haradinaj, vs. Serbian defendants), allocations of territory, constitutional arrangements, participation in international organizations, and others.
In closing, I wish to note the predominance of the second rule: in U.S. eyes, the Muslims are always right. It cannot be emphasized enough that American policy-makers trotted out a commitment to Muslim causes in the Balkans specificallybecause they are Muslim causes. This is a complex phenomenon, going back at least to our support for the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, and continuing to our support for jihadists in Syria today. In general, the idea seems to be that if Washington continues to adopt the political agendas of Muslim (especially, Sunni) communities they will reject violence and be friendly toward the United States. It appears this idea was consciously patterned on American support during the Cold War for socialist and social-democratic parties as the best “antidote” to possible sympathy for communism.
In the Balkans, this has meant support for Bosnia’s Muslim community and Albanians in Kosovo specifically because they are Islamic movements. For example, the late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) -- Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee -- said the following at a hearing on Kosovo in 2007:
“Just a reminder to the predominantly Muslim-led government[s] in this world that here is yet another example [i.e., “another” example after Bosnia and Herzegovina] that the United States leads the way for the creation of a predominantly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe. This should be noted by both responsible leaders of Islamic governments, such as Indonesia, and also for jihadists of all color and hue. The United States' principles are universal, and in this instance, the United States stands foursquare for the creation of an overwhelmingly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe.” (emphasis added)
Not to be outdone, Mr. Lantos’ Senate counterpart at the time, now Vice President Joseph Biden, expressed similar views (Financial Times, January 3, 2007):
“ . . . [A]droit diplomacy to secure Kosovo’s independence could yield a victory for Muslim democracy, . . . a much-needed example of a successful US-Muslim partnership . . .”
In other words, American support for Islamic communities in the Balkans is not primarily driven by Balkan realities. Rather, this aspect is guided by a larger, global concept regarding how the United States wants to be perceived in the Islamic world.
Still, it remains paramount to our approach to the Balkans today, for example in a recent American proposal to reform the absurd Dayton structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina in favor an even more absurd structure to strengthen the hand of the Muslim community over Orthodox Serbs and Roman Catholic Croats. To this day, real progress is stymied because Washington insists on championing the concept of Bosnia as a “Muslim country” (in Mr. Lantos’s words) even though it in fact has a Christian majority. Similar observations could be made with respect to Kosovo and to Albanian efforts in the name of “natural Albania” to dominate parts of FYROMacedonia, Montenegro (the so-called “Malesia” region), the Presevo Valley in southern Serbia, and southern Epirus (“Çameria”) in Greece.
Until the dead hand of the idols that were wrong in the 1990s and even more out of place today is removed, real progress – which might otherwise be achieved – will be blocked. Instead, what we will have is a permanent lock consisting of:
- Perpetual U.S. hegemony via NATO, with the EU playing handmaid.
- Re-Islamization of the region – in effect, reversal of the liberation wars fought by the Balkan Christian peoples in the 19th and early 20th centures – with major roles assigned to a neo-Ottomanized Turkey under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and secondarily to Saudi Arabia, UAE, and other Sunni states.
- Continued imposition of a “Carthaginian peace” on Serbia, abetted by successive quisling governments in Belgrade.
- MIDDLE EAST NEWS
- Updated January 30, 2013, 8:16 p.m. ET
Israeli Jets Blast Arms Shipment Inside Syria
By FARNAZ FASSIHI, JULIAN E. BARNES and SAM DAGHER
Israel bombed a suspected shipment of antiaircraft missiles in Syria on Wednesday, according to regional and U.S. officials, in its most ambitious strike inside its neighbor's territory in nearly two chaotic years of civil war there.
The early-morning strike in a border area west of Damascus targeted a convoy of trucks carrying Russian-made SA-17 missiles to Hezbollah, the anti-Israel Shiite militant and political group in Lebanon, according to a Western official briefed on the raid.
Israel launched an airstrike against a convoy of trucks moving near the Lebanon-Syria border Tuesday, a senior U.S. official and a Lebanese security official said. WSJ's Farnaz Fassihi joins The News Hub with the latest. Photo: Getty Images.
Israeli officials declined to comment on the report, and to a Syrian allegation that Israel had bombed a Syrian military facility.
Syria in the Spotlight
Track the latest events in a map, see the key players and a chronology of the unrest.
A strike draws Israel further into Syria's conflict—a civil war that has already deepened the region's divides as its powers have taken sides with arms and funding. It also marked a challenge to Iran, which has backed and financed Hezbollah.
"An attack of any kind is a major escalation," said Timor Goksel, an expert on Hezbollah and a professor at American University in Beirut. "Why would Israel do this out of the blue?"
The answer, according to several Western officials and security analysts, is that Israel took a calculated risk that Syria's government, strained by its own internal war, would choose not to retaliate. Meanwhile, Hezbollah and Iran—both facing coming elections and financial challenges—would also be unlikely to strike back at Israel now.
In addition to taking out weapons that could be used by Hezbollah against Israeli warplanes in a future conflict, Israel sent what amounted to a message of warning to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iran against attempting to transfer any chemical or biological weapons to Hezbollah, U.S. and Western officials said. The use of such weapons has been singled out by PresidentBarack Obama as a "red line" that could trigger a U.S. intervention.
Syria maintained that the accounts of a strike on an arms convoy near the country's border with Lebanon were wrong. Instead, Syria's military said, Israeli jets had attacked a military facility near Damascus.
Enlarge Image
"Israeli warplanes violated our airspace at dawn today and directly struck one of the scientific research centers responsible for elevating resistance and self-defense capabilities in the area of Jamraya in the Damascus countryside," Syria's military said in a statement carried by the official Sana news agency. The attack killed two workers and injured five others, it said, and "caused significant material damage and the destruction of the complex" and an adjacent parking lot.
Syrian activists say the Jamraya site is in a mountainous area of military facilities and training camps located on a heavily guarded road just off the main Damascus-Beirut highway.
Later Wednesday, a U.S. official said the accounts of two targets—a convoy of weapons, and a military site—weren't mutually exclusive.
The U.S. believes Israeli warplanes bombed a Hezbollah-bound convoy of antiaircraft missiles, U.S. officials said. The vehicles may have been close to a military facility, they said, cautioning their information remained incomplete.
Tensions in the broader region have been building for days. On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is vigilantly watching the disintegration of Syria and the fate of its "deadly weapons.'' Israel's army deployed an Iron Dome missile-defense system in northern Israel that same day.
Enlarge Image
EPA
A religious Jewish man collects gas mask kits from a distribution area in a mall in Pizgat Ze'ev, East Jerusalem on Wednesday.
Two days later, four Israeli jets flew low over villages in southern Lebanon, a violation of the country's airspace, according to the Lebanese military. A spokesman for the United Nations' peacekeeping forces in Lebanon said the group had recorded a higher-than-usual number of Israeli jets entering Lebanon's airspace in the past few days.
Hezbollah keeps a stockpile of weapons in military bases in Syria located near the Lebanese border, according to security officials in Iran and Lebanon.
As Syria's security has deteriorated, Hezbollah has grown increasingly concerned that its weapons cache could fall into the hands of rebels, said Gen. Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese security official.
"Hezbollah has decided that it's no longer safe to keep the weapons sheltered inside Syria," Gen. Hanna said, adding they want to "bring them back before it's too late."
For months, Israeli officials have also spoken of the risk that Syria's weapons caches might fall into the hands of Hezbollah amid the civil war, and vowed to act if necessary. Israel has worried about specific types of weapons that would mark a "game changing" shift on the battlefield in a future conflict with the Shiite militia. Though most attention has been focused on Syria's chemical weapon stockpile, if Hezbollah were to obtain the SA-17 missiles, it would limit Israel's air superiority in Lebanon, said analysts.
Hezbollah denied that Israel had attacked a convoy of its weapons in Syria. "We have no information about this issue. We are not concerned at all," said Hezbollah spokesman Ibrahim Mousawi.
An attack on Syria would be a relative rarity for Israeli forces. In November, Israel said its forces had targeted and hit a Syrian military vehicle after a Syrian mortar shell landed in the Golan Heights. The retaliatory attack was the only previously reported Israeli attack inside Syria in its nearly two years of internal conflict.
For much longer, though, Israel has been tied to attacks aimed at blocking weapons from reaching the country's regional foes. Israel is widely believed to have attacked a site in Syria in 2007 that was suspected of being a nuclear facility under construction. The Israeli government has declined to confirm or deny that strike.
In late October, Sudanese officials accused Israel of using fighter jets to attack a weapons factory inside Sudan. Israel has viewed Sudan as a conduit for arms to the Palestinian militant group Hamas, according to regional intelligence analysts. Israel didn't comment publicly on the strike, which came about two weeks before Israel and Hamas fought an eight-day battle in the West Bank.
"Israel has a long history of intercepting and preventing weapons that are on their way to terror groups, whether it is Hamas or Hezbollah,'' said Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political science at Bar Ilan University.
Israel has typically maintained silence amid allegations of pre-emptive attacks, a stance Israeli analysts and Western officials alike view as an effort to avoid escalating hostilities.
"The usual way this plays out is the Israelis won't take credit, whoever suffered the effects will divert attention or try to down play it," said Aram Nerguizian, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan think tank. "The Israelis got their point across. If anyone had any questions that Israel would act on what it perceives to be its red lines…now they have an answer."
—Adam Entous, Joshua Mitnick and Nada Raad contributed to this article.
Write to Farnaz Fassihi at farnaz.fassihi@wsj.com, Julian E. Barnes at julian.barnes@wsj.com and Sam Dagher atsam.dagher@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared January 31, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Israeli Jets Blast Arms Shipment Inside Syria.
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