Obama being pushed to ‘a clandestine war on Syria’: Analyst

American arms manufacturers and congressional “Hawks” are pressing the Obama administration to launch “a clandestine war against Syria,” using the ISIL terrorist organization as a pretext, an international lawyer says.

“The simple fact is that a number of US corporate arms suppliers grew fat on easy money from a decade of arms deals with Iraq at the US taxpayers’ expense. Now they want more,” said Barry Grossman, who is based in Indonesia’s Bali Island, in a phone interview.

“There is also those within the apparatus of government– both on the political side and the security apparatus– who have other agendas and who want to drum this up into a clandestine war against Syria,” he added.

Senior members of Congress have stepped up pressure on the White House to more forcefully deal with ISIL days after President Barack Obama said “we don’t have a strategy yet” to confront the militant group.

Representative Mike Rogers, a Republican from Michigan who heads the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that cities in the United States and Western Europe were being eyed as future targets by ISIL militants and President Obama needed to take action soon to avert such an attack.

“I’ve learned one thing about this president, and that is he’s very cautious. Maybe in this instance, too cautious,” Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Sen. John McCain (R- Ariz.) said Sunday Obama is “either in denial or overwhelmed” by the threat posed by ISIL, and outlined specific steps the US should take to break the terrorist group’s grip in Iraq.

“McCain imagines that Obama is ‘overwhelmed’ and Feinstein says he is ‘too cautious’ on the ISIL issue. Remember, both of these loons were keen supporters of the US war in Iraq and both would like to see the US take an even stronger lead in Syria as well,” Grossman told Press TV.

“Feinstein, at once both the great champion of the CIA drone wars and, at the same time, the only elected official who has ever come out and essentially called the CIA a ‘rogue’ organization, should know better, since she spared no words in quite properly pointing out how rogue elements in the CIA had crossed the line by both interfering with those elected members of government responsible for the legislative process and by misleading the president,” he added.

“Maybe she should focus on getting Obama to declassify the House Foreign Relations Committee report which essentially describes the CIA as out of control, instead of kowtowing to special interests in order to pressure Obama into expanding the vague US mission in Iraq,” the analyst continued.

Grossman said Sen. McCain is viewed by many as a “criminal” and “supporter of terrorism” and a “stooge” of the pro-Israel lobby who has little understanding of foreign policy matters.

Last year ISIL exploited the chaos of the Syrian conflict to capture large swaths of territory there, before sweeping into neighboring Iraq where the militants have been rampaging through villages and towns beheading prisoners, carrying out massacres and expelling hundreds of thousands of residents for months.

“The fact is that there are few in the Islamic World who do not straight out denounce ISIL for what it is. But with decades of bitter experience with US deceit, mission creep, broken promises and aggression, few are naive enough to believe that the US will be of any help in defeating these thugs whose emergence, military prowess and weaponry the US itself encouraged, whether by design or by carelessness.,” the analyst noted.

Obama first authorized limited airstrikes in Iraq several weeks ago and has ordered surveillance flights over Syria to gather intelligence on ISIL as he considers expanding the military action against the terrorist group.

“There is very little the world can be grateful to President Obama for these days, but his reluctance to entirely cave in to the ‘Hawks’ who were against the US withdrawal [from Iraq] in the first place and his corresponding reluctance to run with the opportunity created by this rearrangement of thugs around the new ISIL banner, is certainly better than the alternative,” Grossman concluded.