Forum Post: US Joint Chiefs of Staff Mobilize to Stop World War III

Within 24 hours after American UN Ambassador Susan Rice claimed that a military intervention "outside of the UN" in Syria may be necessary, the Joint Chiefs Staff appear to have leaned on Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to ensure that he repudiate Rice's statement. A reporter traveling with him on his way to Singapore, confronted Panetta with that question. "No, I cannot envision that," Panetta said, although he still insisted that "all options" remain on the table for "any contingency." The Joint Chiefs of Staff, led by Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, have been working tirelessly behind the scenes, and with carefully crafted public statements, to do their damnedest to prevent any action that would lead to thermonuclear confrontation with Russia.

The fact that the Joint Chiefs have a long-standing dialogue with the Israeli military establishment — regular exchanges take place between them at both the civilian and military levels — has its reflection in the saner voices in Israel who have warned against military strikes against both Iran and Syria. As reported yesterday, Israeli elder literary figure Amnon Shamosh, writing in Yedioth Ahronoth, after denouncing a failed and wrongheaded Syria policy, warned that a military strike on Iran could lead to a "Third World War." Moshe Ronen, vice president of the World Jewish Congress and national chair of the Canada-Israel Committee, writing also in Yedioth Ahronoth on May 29, said that there is no alternative to Assad, and that Western military intervention will only cause more bloodshed and bring to power a regime worse than Assad's.

Ronen is no softy when it comes to Israel's adversaries. According to his biography, Ronen has been a staunch defender of Israel in Canada and elsewhere for decades. In the op-ed, Ronen calls Assad "a wicked conscienceless dictator," but, he says, "experience has taught us that the West does not understand the Middle East, and that every time it tries to change Mideastern realities, it encounters negative surprises." He points to the U.S. experience in Iraq, where "the outcome is still unclear," and Afghanistan, from which America will withdraw "with its tail between its legs." He also points to Egypt, where Obama supported the Tahrir Square revolution, but where the former regime of Hosni Mubarak may be about to be replaced by the Muslim brotherhood,— and to Libya, where, too, "it's still unclear whether we got a democratic regime or an al-Qaeda government."

On Syria, Ronen concludes that "we can assume that should the West dispatch military forces and intervene... this will only increase the bloodshed. Moreover, the regime that will replace the secular tyrant will be a religious, Sunni tyranny that will be even worse."

http://larouchepac.com/node/22901