On Friday’s broadcast of Radio Sputnik’s By Any Means Necessary, Eugene Puryear argued that it’s difficult to fathom Assad would have misread the international political situation so poorly. "It seems strange to think someone who has survived this long would so misread the political situation as to think it was possible" to retain power when the international community was bound to condemn any sort of biochemical warfare.
Puryear remained skeptical, however, that the explosion was the result of Syrian jets taking aim at a rebel chemical weapons plant, Russia’s official explanation of the attack, saying that this narrative "has some holes and relies on a probable but highly contingent set of events."
"Clearly there needs to be some sort of investigation here that looks for evidence, not point scoring … we have way too much evidence that [the missile strike] will only deepen the war and violence, not bring it to and end."
And while the Trump administration has condemned Assad for the attack, Washington has no viable alternative for governing Syria unless it literally occupies the country as it did in Iraq following the removal of Saddam Hussein. "There is no game plan," Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink, said on By Any Means Necessary.
Ousting Assad would leave a massive power vacuum in the Middle East. Puryear contended that if Assad falls, "the only real outcome" will be "a Taliban-like force sweeping into power."
Don’t expect countervailing or diverse opinions on the strikes to come from MSNBC or CNN, the supposed "opposition party" that has risen to counter Trump’s agenda in light of Democrats’ political weakness. Indeed, the US military industrial complex has broad bipartisan support.
In a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan, top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi said "the crisis in Syria will not be resolved by one night of airstrikes" and that American voters deserve a "comprehensive" strategy.
A major point missing from the discussion is how Assad gains strategic benefits from using chemical weapons to kill his own people, Puryear noted.
In a recent interview between CNN anchor Kate Bolduan and Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, the congressman stated of the alleged chemical attack, "frankly, I don’t think Assad would have done that; it doesn’t serve his interests."
Bolduan was "visually stunned" as CNN’s own writers put it, as if the major allegations of human rights violations were not worthy of a thorough, independent investigation before assigning culpability.
