They published the article in seven parts in ICH. Here is part 7.
I am studying it for myself and put in some colors and bolding and underlining.
If it bothers you: read the ICH version.
The Debate on the Imperialist
Violence in Syria
The Imperialist Violence in Syria, Part 1 of 7
The Imperialist Violence in Syria, Part 1 of 7
By Kim Petersen and B. J. Sabri
"I
cannot help asking those who have forced that situation: Do you realize what
you have done?"
—
Russian President Vladimir Putin pointing to the US policy in the Middle East,
address to the United Nations General Assembly, 2015, excerpts
on CNBC
January 06, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - Is it best
for the world to remain on the sidelines or engage in nugatory “peace”
negotiations while the United States, Britain, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia,
Jordan, Qatar, Israel, and their terrorist groups destroy Syria with fire and
violence? How would the entry of Russia at the side of the legitimate Syrian
government affect the situation?1Would it add to the death and destruction or end them?
Now that Russia is committed to eliminating all armed
opposition groups (except the so-called Free Syrian Army for political
calculations), while knowing that civilians will die in the process, does it
make sense to ask it to stop its violence—though legal and legitimate under the
U.N. Charter—because it might take out “a few innocent kids along the way”?
Aside from calls to stop the carnage, we believe that the wider debate should
focus on one major aspect of the conflict: why and who planned the violence and
made it a daily scene of Syrian life for over four and half years?
A great number of progressive analysts have written
about Syria. Recently, Joshua Frank, the managing editor of Counterpunch, asked, "Are
we to ignore the geopolitical situation and just back Russia’s bombings because
IS is so damn evil, even if Russia takes out a few
innocent Syrian kidsalong the way?”2 In a rebuttal to Franks' position, T.P. Wilkinson
published an article where he expressed criticism of Frank’s views.3 Whether the news of a few innocent Syrian kids killed
by the Russians is true or false, the fact remains Syrians are being killed
every day. We are not suggesting that Russia's air strikes are not causing
civilian deaths. Even if Russia hits only armed groups' infrastructures and
compounds, civilians nearby at the time might die. What we want to emphasize though
is that the Syrian people will continue to die in great numbers unless someone
stops the violence. More importantly, because the United States is conducting
its war against Syria through proxies, Russia is the only other world power
that can effectively defeat these proxies, stop the killing, and impose a
political solution. U.N. Security Council
Resolution 2254—despite
shortcomings—passed on December 18, 2015 adduces our point. (To evaluate media
news reporting on victims killed by Russia's airstrikes, read, “Information
Warfare? Russia accused of killing civilians in Syria”).
Frank's statement begs the question of whether or not
saving the lives of the many deserves consideration over the possible deaths of
“the few,” albeit innocent kids. Let us debate this point without equivocation:
if a Russian military intervention could save tens-of-thousands of Syrian lives
while also taking the lives of a “few innocent Syrian kids,” would it have been
better to be a non-interventionist anti-war dissident and allow thousands to be
killed—including, likeliest, some innocent kids—at the hands of rebels and
mercenaries?
Frank wraps up his article with this thought: “Those
are a few of the questions we should be asking while we oppose all
international military involvement in Syria as well as Assad’s murderous human
rights violations. It’s time to demand the impossible. It’s time to demand the
U.S. and Russia get out of Syria. If the anti-imperialist Left doesn’t do it,
who will?”
Although some of Frank's conclusions needs to be fully
debated, his take on the topic of war casualties—regardless of who is causing
them—is forceful. However, any
meaningful discussions on Syria must take into account the history of plans and
motivations that shaped and caused the ongoing tragedy.
For starters, Frank asks, "If the
anti-imperialist Left doesn’t do it, who will?" This comes across with
conviction. He urges the Left to take action due to its stance as the prominent
front concerned with war and peace issues. There is a problem though. First, we
need to define what the Left is. Second, a cohesive, organized anti-imperialist
Left does not exist. Therefore, a unifying Leftist political platform
advocating universal issues—such as stopping wars or violence—does not exist
either. As a consolation, there are countless anti-imperialist writers and
thinkers—although not all of them can be ascribed to the traditional Left in
Marxist context or even in its diluted version of social democracy. Third, the
qualifier Left is no magic potion leading to mass mobilization of antiwar
activists capable of stopping aggressions or reversing injustices.
In situations like Syria, there is a need to see
things in depth before proceeding any further. Also, considering the scale of
sheer violence, nightmarish devastation, and colossal displacement of
population that has been taking place in over four years of a catastrophic
upheaval designed and fueled by Western and regional interventions, calls to
end the slaughter of the Syrian people are a matter of elementary human
decency.
Is it not odd that since the start of conflict
(including 14 months of US, Emirati, and Turkish bombardment of Syrian
territory under the pretext of fighting the so-called Islamic State), we rarely
heard voices calling for the United States to quit Syria? Yet, not even a day
after Russia started hitting terrorist groups supported and armed by the US via
client states, the gates of indignation exploded and everyone on the side of US
imperialism wants Russia to quit that bleeding country.
Consequently, when
antiwar activists call on both the US and Russia to get out of Syria, we
understand that in an ideal situation this should be the right option. Is it?
The answer is no for one important reason: the US plan for Syria is at such an
advanced stage of completion that only Russia can stop it, and may even reverse
it. There is no doubt that calls for foreign powers to leave Syria have
serious merit. Nonetheless, such merit instantly expires considering the
evolving realities of the conflict and the actors involved. What we see in
Syria today goes beyond the fortunes of a legitimate government fighting armed groups
financed and trained by the West and Arab lackeys. To describe it properly, it is a violent power
struggle between a mad neocon superpower wanting to overthrow a sovereign
government and destroy the country, and all those who resist its onslaught.
As we reject US claims of moral legitimacy to
intervene in Syria, we might want to ask if the United States (an imperialist
aggressor state guilty of serial war crimes), its absolutist partners (Gulf
states) chauvinist Turkey, and the Zionist occupation regime) have any mandate
under the international law to decide the fate of a sovereign nation. Because
no world authority (e.g., the United Nations) has ever conferred such a
mandate, one might think that the lack of authorization would make it easy for
the emerging anti-imperialist front to demand a stop to the senseless mass
killing and destruction of Syria. Would that be the logical thing to demand?
Theoretically, the answer should be yes. But calls to
stop the wars of imperialism and violence are one thing, bringing an end to the
warring is another. We know in advance that all non-Syrian entities operating
in Syria have stakes in the mayhem.
Given that, is it possible that the Left or mass protests could stop the
carnage? Are those who foment the violence willing to lift their hands off
Syria? Will Obama, Al Saud following, Qatar, and Erdogan stop recruiting,
training, and paying for killers and mercenaries? (Note on the diction: Al
Saud. Al means clan in Arabic. In this series,
we occasionally refer to the House of Saud as Al Saud, meaning, the Al Saud
clan or the Saud ruling family. This diction is widely used in the Arab world
to denote the tyrannical rule and corruption of the House of Saud.)
As a reminder, did the international protests against
the looming invasion of Iraq in 2003 succeed in stopping the United States from
invading it? After he ordered the invasion of Iraq, and in response to calls
for the US to withdraw from it, war criminal George W. Bush told Bob Woodward,
“I will not withdraw, even if Laura and Barney [his dog] are the only ones
supporting me.”4
Incidentally, to whom should we address our
stop-the-killing appeal? To the US, Britain, France, or Germany who are busy
overseeing the execution of the plan to remake the Middle East to meet Western
and Israeli hegemonic criteria? Would despotic Turkey (despite ostentatious
democracy), Jordan, Saudi Arabia, or Qatar be receptive or amenable to such an
appeal? Or maybe we can discuss the
matter with the American-controlled United Nations? Better yet, maybe we
can talk with the American-made ISIS or the Saudi al-Nusra Front (widely
considered as "al-Qaeda") and sister groups. Could the Syrian
government (desperately engaged in the defense of the country, as well as of
itself) help us realize our appeal? More importantly, would the United States,
which is promoting and directing the vicious mercenaries and volunteers, listen
to any anti-violence plea?
Who then has
the ability to stop the violence?
Could it be the world at large? Can we, for example,
take our appeal to all nations and ask them to rise against a nightmare called
regime change in Syria at any cost? This is romanticism. Do we not all realize
that in a world permeated by insouciance, fear, psychological subjugation, and
consumed by the daily struggle against the crises of capitalism, corporate
globalization, and escalating poverty, that too few might protest? If facts
matter, the world today is not the world of the 1950-1980s, and it is not the
world of Nasser, Gandhi, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, and el Che. Do we not all
know that after the collapse of Communism and the emergence of the United
States as a globally unchallenged hegemon, that a great majority of
nations—even Viet Nam—succumbed to American diktat, and in the process
revolutionary fervor and anti-establishment discontent entered into a deep
hibernation?
Is it possible to stop the violence in Syria at this
stage of the conflict without first militarily defeating the international
armada of Saudi- and Qatari-armed groups? Thus far, realistically, the answer
is no based on continuing anti-Bashar pronouncements by Saudis, Turks, Qataris,
and by a duplicitous United States that continues to play all of her regional
pawns according to predetermined schemes.
We are told that the House of
Saud and the United States want to see Assad and his regime gone before they
decide to stop the violence. We are also told that Russia must target ISIS but
spare all other Islamist factions that the US, Turkey, and Gulf states support.
This is nonsense. In practical terms, it means a cruel game with a clear purpose:
continue with the violence regardless of human cost until regime change is
achieved. Russia's entry into the war foiled this objective.
Regarding the issue of Assad leaving, we have a question:
why should the leader of a recognized sovereign nation, his political
entourage, and government leave in obedience to foreign diktat? Is this not a
matter to be decided by the Syrian people and the Syrian people alone? Why
demand the departure of one person as a condition to halt the mass killing and
destruction of an entire country by foreign governments, outsiders, and
mercenaries? Another question to ponder: Which is the greater evil, engaging in
mass killing and creating a mass exodus of refugees to carry out the illegal
act of imposing a change of government on a sovereign state by foreign powers,
or leaving the fate of Bashar al Assad and his government to the Syrian people
to decide? These writers submit that this should be self-evident to everyone.
So why then are western state/corporate media focused on the demand for
carrying out an illegal act rather than preventing it?
A logical alternative to this imperialist coercion to
end the war exists. We can ask the United States (and its lackeys) to stop
interfering in Syria, cut off financing and weapon supplies to their
mercenaries thus allowing them to return to where they came from. As a result,
the Syrian people will be able to decide their own fate, form of government,
and future. After the US destroyed Iraq and Libya (and now Yemen via Saudi
Arabia and the UAE), does anyone think that it would tip its hat, show remorse,
and put an end to the imperialistic violence it unleashed on Syria? As we
stated, before the Russian intervention, the game to smash and partition Syria
was approaching completion. It is certain that notwithstanding this
intervention, the US and vassals would continue with their plan for some time
before they would capitulate to the objective reality on the ground.
Short of an overwhelming mass mobilization of the
world's citizenry demanding all non-Syrian state actors desist from
interference in Syrian affairs, we cannot advise on solutions (solutions that
require immediacy in implementation) to stop the violence in Syria. But at this
stage, we can predict this: based on developments in the conflict, and seeing
that the US is persisting with its ISIS and al-Nusra-linked
strategies to destroy Syria and remove its legitimate government, it
seems—paradoxically—that only violence with a purpose can end US imperialist violence. Like
it or not, Russia's decisive entry into the conflict to eradicate all forms of
terrorism against the Syrian people and its government fits this purpose
despite the fact that more people would die.
This sounds perhaps cynical and heartless. Are we
suggesting that some Syrian civilians should accept their death as a price to
save what remains of their country? Are we borrowing from the American
imperialist notion of "collateral damage" or proposing sustained war by
Syria and its legitimate allies to end this war regardless of human costs? No,
but considering the forces involved and their declared aims to bring about a
new regime at any cost, this appears to be the least bad immediate (the clock
will not stop for the killing) solution with the minimal casualties, and the
entry of Russia has become the decisive factor in this direction. Will Russia
succeed at imposing a political solution with its intervention? Based on the
conferences and events of the last two months, this seems possible.
Why is Russia intervening anyway?
The Russian president used soft exaggeration to depict
the reach of "Islamist terrorism." He said, "What we are trying
to achieve is to contribute to the fight against terrorism, which is a threat to
both the United States to Russia to European countries and the whole
world."5 His prime minister
was forthcoming. He spoke in terms taken directly from the American
interventionist lexicon, “We are not fighting for specific leaders, we are
defending our national interests.”6
We do not have to speculate that Putin and Medvedev
have indeed told us something that went beyond the appearance of words. This is
how we interpret Medvedev's notion of Russia's national interests: contrary to
circulating western insinuations, Russia is not that intimated by the return of
Islamist militants to the Russian Federation. For instance, Bandar Bin Sultan,
a member of the Saudi ruling family and former Saudi intelligence chief with
strong ties to Washington, tried to buy Putin by asking him to abandon support
for Syria in exchange for Saudi (and American, of course) manipulation of oil
prices. Most important, he
implicitly threatened Putin. He said, “I can give you a guarantee to protect
the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of
the games are controlled by us.”7 With this statement, Bin Sultan unequivocally confirmed
that Saudi Arabia finances and directs the international movements of Islamist
militants in the pursuit of a policy conceived by the US and Israel but
implemented by his government. Did Bandar's bribe or blackmail work? No, which
means Russian leaders are not overly concerned about Islamist fighters being
mobilized against their territory. Russian motives for intervening in Syria are
much deeper. So, why is Russia concerned about US-promoted violence Syria?
Part 2 of 7 will be posted
January 07, 2015
Kim Petersen is a former editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached atkimohp@inbox.com
B. J. Sabri is an observer of the politics of
modern colonialism, imperialism, Zionism, and of contemporary Arab issues. He
can be reached at b.j.sabri@aol.com
NOTES
1.
Tons
of philosophical, political, and jurisprudential studies have been
made on the concept of legitimacy and legitimate government. Being of elusive
nature and speculative interpretations that depends on who is defining it and
in what context, we think, for the purpose of this work, that a dictionary
meaning would suffice. Dictionary.com
has compiled a succinct definition for "Legitimate government.” It defines it as, A government generally acknowledged
as being in control of a nation and deserving formal recognition, which is symbolized
by the exchange of diplomats between that government and the governments of
other countries.
By dint of this pragmatic definition, the Syrian government satisfies this
condition. (It is brazen hypocrisy that Obama keeps blaring that Bashar Assad
lost his legitimacy, yet he still maintains an embassy in Damascus.)
2.
Joshua
Frank, “The
Need to Oppose All Foreign Intervention in Syria,” Counterpunch, 2 October 2015.
3.
T.P.
Wilkinson, “Saving
Private al-Baghdadi,” Dissident
Voice, 4 October 2015 Note: while the authors agree with the brunt of the
logic in Wilkerson’s essay, they would submit it was overly critical toward
Frank and bordered on ad
hominem. Some criticism is weak; e.g., Wilkerson chides Frank: “Needless to
say the ‘Free World’ has been extinct since 1989 but Frank hasn’t noticed.”
However, the fact that Frank used quotation marks around free world indicates
he regards the term scathingly.
5.
Russia Today, “ISIS calls
on ‘Islamic youth’ to ignite holy war against Russians& Americans,” 14 October 2015.
7.
Geoffrey
Ingersoll, “REPORT:
The Saudis Offered Mafia-Style 'Protection' Against Terrorist Attacks At Sochi
Olympics,”
27 August 2015
The Broader Design of the
Anti-Syria Forces
By Kim Petersen and B. J. Sabri
January 09, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - Previously, we asked, why is Russia
concerned about US-promoted violence Syria?
In a news dispatch, "Why Russia is standing by Syria's Assad," BBC, the voice of
British imperialism, answers our question with these words, "By standing
up for Damascus, the Kremlin is telling the world that neither the UN, nor any
other body or group of countries has the right to decide who should or should
not govern a sovereign state." The writers agree with the expressed
sentiment; however, Russia's position on the Syrian conflict should be looked
at from a different perspective. A principled Russia appears to have concluded that the US-engineered
violence in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Ukraine, and other parts of the world is a
means to implement a longstanding agenda: global US imperialist domination.
We, therefore, view Russia's
intervention in Syria as a way to stop the United States from carrying out its
plans for devouring the world, one country at a time. If the relentless US
attempts to place world nations under its control or tutelage are allowed to go
unchallenged, Russia and China will be left completely isolated to defend their
own people, territory, history, culture, economy, aspirations, and way of life
from American imperialist predation.
Most notably, after Russian jets started hitting
terrorist camps and infrastructures regardless of their "Islamic" or
"secular" affiliations or the phony distinction between
"extremist" and "moderate," many voices, especially
American and those of her Arab and European vassals, clamored against its entry
in Syria. Their objection is preposterous: that Russia's involvement is an
aggravating factor leading to the prolongation of war.
First, if that were so, why did the West and co-actors
allow the carnage to continue before Russia called their bluff? Second, the US
is not interested in ending the war on the Arabs even if Assad falls. There is
no reason to doubt that after Assad, ISIS and sisters would take his place in
the American agenda as evidenced by US officials repeatedly declaring that
defeating ISIS would take 10 to 30
years.
However, 30 years later and long after ISIS has disappeared from the news, it
is expected—based on the historical record—that the United States would
continue to create pretexts and persist in its interventionist policies.
Emphatically, deciding how
this conflict should end must never be allowed to rest in the hands of US
imperialists and Zionist neocons—and this is what Russia is trying to
do. In essence, starting with Syria, Russia is powerfully moving to end US
hegemony. Second, the clamor seems to suggest that only the United States (and
its European vassals) should enjoy the unrequested privilege to fly sorties
against targets of its choosing—like hitting bare dunes or insignificant
targets instead of encamped or convoyed armed groups. This can explain why
after 14 months of American bombardment of Syria and Iraq, US-trained groups
(like ISIS, al-Nusra, etc.) were still doing well and expanding.
Curiously, did
analysts ever point to the fact that western air campaigns, regardless of who
carries them out, are destroying Syria's civilian and economic infrastructures? Consider this: While
Russia is confining itself to hitting the military structures and transport
logistics of ISIS and affiliated organizations, the West pursued an extremist
agenda to bring about the dissolution of the current Syrian state: namely, the
systematic destruction of its economic assets. When the Pentagon brags "Most
of Islamic State’s oil refineries in Syria have been destroyed,” when Britain's RAF
bombs ISIS "oil fields,” and when France joins in the wanton
destruction, the fact remains: there is no "Islamic State" except in
name. And there are no refineries belonging to it—snatching them is another issue.
However, what the US, British, and French jetfighters—and as of late even
Russia, as reported by the Independent—destroyed were
expensive oil-refining structures, facilities, and oil trucks belonging to the
Syrian people.
Ample evidence suggests that the West created
so-called ISIS as a pretext to attack Syria (and partition Iraq) without a
declaration of war. As for the denomination of "Islamic State," we
should mention that, besides how this terrorist organization likes to call
itself, only the West emphasizes it is a "state" and capitalizes both
noun and adjective. Most Arab media, on the other hand, correctly call it
"the organization of the islamic state." (Notes: 1) there is no
capitalization in the Arabic language, 2) the present writers call it islamist
state without capitalization because this western creation has nothing to do
with Islam, hence it should not share its adjective; in addition, it is not a
state.)
Based on our observations of the military developments
just after the entry of Russia, we could say that the US was in a race with
time to destroy Syria before Russia destroys the foreign-backed Islamist
groups. Secretary of State John Kerry explained this design in a twisted way.
He recently said, "US
wants to avoid total destruction of Syria." What he essentially meant was
this: the United States wants the destruction of Syria but not all the way to
total. Besides, why did he say this just now and not immediately after becoming
State Secretary?
Recently, 55
Wahhabist and Muslim Brothers "scholars" in Saudi Arabia issued a
so-called jihad fatwa against the "Russian Orthodox Crusaders."1 Well, during the
past 14 months of illegal US bombardment of Syria (and now of ground troops in
the guise of advisors to their terrorist groups), we never heard these dubious
characters releasing even a whisper against the "American multi-religion
Crusaders."
This episode can tell us just a little bit, as to who is directing Saudi
Wahhabists and associates.
Writing about violence in Syria without investigating
first the forces that created and shaped it is similar to investigating ocean
tides without mentioning the role of the moon in creating them. Accordingly, we
must attempt to frame the issue of violence in Syria in exacting terms: who is turning Syria into a
wasteland and theater of death similar to those the United States and
Britain created in Iraq, to a slightly lesser extent in Libya, and now in Yemen
via the fascist Wahhabi state of Saudi Arabia?
Let us begin by citing the Syrian regime's harsh
response (resulting in deaths) to the anti-regime protests in Daraa. First,
that Daraa was the starting point of the protests is by itself very suspicious
for one good reason. Daraa is a border city with Jordan. This means many
foreign intelligence services in cooperation with the sold-to-imperialism
Jordanian regime had easy access to
foment protests under the guise of the so-called Arab Spring.
Our question: who,
just three weeks after that response, poured gasoline on the fire and began
installing tent cities in Turkey and Jordan in expectation of refugees?
This suggests that someone was expecting
mass violence to erupt and refugees to start escaping to neighboring
countries. Who then sent Saudi,
European, Chechen, and others Islamists to Syria, armed them with heavy
weapons, anti-tank missiles, gave them salaries, dressed them with Afghani
garbs, made them carry black banners with religious themes taken from the Saudi
flag, and topped all that with convoys
of brand-new shimmering Toyota trucks?2
What should be done if the anti-war front does not
possess the material means to end the bloodshed? How to stop the tens of
thousands of foreign groups paid for and armed mostly by Saudi Arabia and
Qatar, and trained by the US and its regional clients Turkey and Jordan? Is it not ludicrous to watch killers coming
to Syria from every corner of the world to overthrow the Syrian government
under the banners of an Islam turned into a cult and re-defined and supported
by the Wahhabis of the Gulf, by the United States, by the West, and of course
by Israel?
To emphasize our point: the unspeakable destruction of
Syria is not a Syrian-made event. Those who are destroying Syria and killing
its people are doing it following a precise imperialist design using
tried-and-tested violence carried out before in many parts of the world.
The pain of the Syrian people is undoubtedly real. While the present writers
express our deepest sorrow for all those who have died and empathy with all
those who are still alive but may still die senselessly pending a solution, we
need to uncover more facts.
For instance, we noticed that those who armed
the domestic opponents of the Syrian regime— such as so-called free Syrian army
(composed of defectors and other unknown elements), as well as foreign islamist
terrorists, and non-Muslim mercenaries—never
tire from repeating that they are fighting in response to the Syrian regime's
atrocities. Yet, they themselves are the direct cause of atrocities and
terrorism.
We also noticed that the US and its Arab and Turkish
instruments are in the sleazy habit of saying they support freedom in Syria. We wonder, since when have the rulers of
Americans, Turks, Saudis, Qataris, and Emiratis ever cared about freedom,
democracy, human rights, and the prosperity of nations? Where is meaningful
evidence for this? What is the broader design of the forces that organized
international death legions and ordered them to destroy Syria under the pretext
of fighting a bad regime?
While we are on the subject,
since the objective of US imperialism is known: global, unrestrained hegemony,
why is Syria in the bullseye of countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar?
Have these countries, known for their dreadful suppression of freedom and political
rights become overnight the standard-bearers of humanist values, personal
freedoms, and political emancipation!
From the Right, Left, and from everywhere, genuine and
crocodile tears had been shed for the victims of violence in Syria; sincere but
also fake grief had been heaped on the plight of refugees. Yet, with all
exceptions considered, the near generalized destruction of Syria and its rich
historical and human heritage is obliquely mentioned. And, we see images of
cities destroyed, heads decapitated, people thrown from rooftops, captives
burnt alive, women raped, and men and women (accused of “illicit sex”) stoned
to death, the blame in western media and
Arab news outlets (mostly owned by Saudi Arabia and Qatar) invariably goes to
the Syrian regime—but never to terrorist groups and their backers.
Is it not odd that the Qatari ruling family
supports the Muslim Brothers in Syria with all means possible while its
governing system, besides housing American military bases, is void of any
sign of the Brothers' values?
Saudi Arabia is another
ridiculous story. It proselytizes Wahhabism, arms and trains the inductees, put
them at the service of the United States to conduct terrorism—especially in the
Arab states that oppose US hegemony, but then it boasts it is fighting a Syrian
regime that kills its people!
From our side,
we shall never tire from repeatedly posing the same questions: who wants to see Syria destroyed
and why?
Unless one posits a pathological intolerance and hatred for Syria's government,
it is hard to come up with an elucidating rationale for Saudi Arabia's violent
animus. This leads us to consider an
outside agent. What caused the Saudi rulers to assume a primary role in the
destruction of Syria, and before it a
role in the destruction of Iraq, then Libya, and now Yemen? Who is destroying the Arab lands
with their marvelous cultural, ethnic, and religious mosaics? How could
anyone understand anything about violence in Syria if the prevailing tendency
to analyze it is focused on flash news and made-for-mass-media stories?
Overlooking related facts—by design, conformity, lack of specific knowledge, or
just plain powerlessness—has also become a trend. This has not only caused the
roots of the conflict to be eventually oversimplified, but it has also diluted
the long documented history behind the war's growth and expansion. In short, who wants to see Syria
destroyed and why? Let us investigate.
In a 2007 TV interview, Gen. Wesley Clark stated the
following:
About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon
and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs
just to say ‘hello’ to some of the people in the joint staff who used to work
for me, and one of the Generals called me in. He said, ‘Sir, you’ve got to come
in and talk to me for a second.’ I said, ‘You’re too busy.’ He said, ‘No. We
have made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.’ I said, ‘We’re going to
war with Iraq? Why?’ He said, ‘I don’t know, I guess they don’t know what else
to do.’ So I said, ‘Well did they find some information connecting Saddam to
Al-Qaeda?’ He said, ‘No, there’s nothing new that way, they just made the
decision to go to war with Iraq.’ So I came back to see the same guy a few
weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, ‘Are we
still going to war with Iraq?’ And he said, ‘Oh it’s worse than that.’ And he
reached over to his desk, picked up a piece of paper and he said, ‘I’ve just
got this down from upstairs.’ (Meaning the Secretary of Defence’s [sic]
office) and he said, ‘This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out
seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya,
Somalia, Sudan and Iran.’ I said, ‘Is it classified?’ He said, ‘Yes, sir.’ I
said, ‘Well don’t show it to me.’ And I saw him a year or so later and I said,
‘You remember that…?’ He said, ‘Sir, I didn’t show you that memo. I didn’t show
it to you.3
In a TV interview that took place two
years before large-scale violence exploded in Syria, Roland Dumas, former
French Foreign Minister said the following:
I’m going to tell you something. I was in England, two
years before the violence in Syria, on other business. I met with top British
officials who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This
was in Britain, not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels
into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer Minister for Foreign
Affairs, if I would like to participate.” Responding to a question on the
motive behind inciting violence in Syria, Dumas said, “Very simple, with a very
simple aim – to overthrow the Syrian government because in the region it’s
important to understand that the Syrian regime makes anti-Israeli talk.” And
then the former Foreign Minister added that he’d been told, by an Israeli Prime
Minister a long time ago, that Tel Aviv would seek to destroy any country that
did not get along with it in the region. It is not just about Israel, it is
about the acquisition of country after country across the Middle and Near East,
North Africa and then going deeper and deeper South into Africa. This has been
planned for decades.4
Next: Part 3 of 7
NOTES
2.
For
reading: “Obama
Proposes $500 Million to Aid Syrian Rebels”; “The nations that
sent arms and money to Syria”; “Where
Does ISIS Get Those Wonderful Toys?”; “See
other "ISIS" convoys.”
Kim Petersen is a former editor of
the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached atkimohp@inbox.com
B. J. Sabri is an observer of the politics of
modern colonialism, imperialism, Zionism, and of contemporary Arab issues. He
can be reached at b.j.sabri@aol.com
3
Divide et Impera
By Kim Petersen and B. J. Sabri
From The WikiLeaks Files:
A December 13, 2006 cable, "Influencing the SARG [Syrian government]
in the End of 2006," indicates that, as far back as 2006 - five years
before "Arab Spring" protests in Syria - destabilizing the Syrian
government was a central motivation of US policy. The author of the cable was
William Roebuck, at the time chargé d'affaires at the US embassy in Damascus. The cable outlines strategies for
destabilizing the Syrian government. In his summary of the cable, Roebuck
wrote:
We believe Bashar's weaknesses are in how he chooses to react to looming
issues, both perceived and real, such as the conflict between economic reform
steps (however limited) and entrenched, corrupt forces, the Kurdish question,
and the potential threat to the regime from the increasing presence of
transiting Islamist extremists. This cable summarizes our assessment of these
vulnerabilities and suggests that there may be actions, statements, and signals
that the USG can send that will improve the likelihood of such opportunities
arising.
This cable suggests that the US goal in December 2006 was to undermine the
Syrian government by any available means, and that what mattered was whether US
action would help destabilize the government, not what other impacts the action
might have. In public the US was in favor of economic reform, but in private
the US saw conflict between economic reform and "entrenched, corrupt
forces" as an "opportunity." In public, the US was opposed to
"Islamist extremists" everywhere; but in private it saw the
"potential threat to the regime from the increasing presence of transiting
Islamist extremists" as an "opportunity" that the US should take
action to try to increase.
Roebuck lists Syria's relationship with Iran as a "vulnerability"
that the US should try to "exploit." His suggested means of doing so
are instructive:
Possible action:
PLAY ON SUNNI FEARS OF IRANIAN INFLUENCE: There are fears in Syria that the
Iranians are active in both Shia proselytizing and conversion of, mostly poor,
Sunnis. Though often exaggerated, such fears reflect an element of the Sunni
community in Syria that is increasingly upset by and focused on the spread of
Iranian influence in their country through activities ranging from mosque
construction to business....
Roebuck thus argued that the US should try to destabilize the Syrian
government by coordinating more closely with Egypt and Saudi Arabia to fan
sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia, including by the promotion of
"exaggerated" fears of Shia proselytizing of Sunnis, and of concern
about "the spread of Iranian influence" in Syria in the form of mosque
construction and business activity.
By 2014, the sectarian Sunni-Shia character of the civil war in Syria was
bemoaned in the United States as an unfortunate development. But in December
2006, the man heading the US embassy in Syria advocated in a cable to the
secretary of state and the White House that the US government collaborate with
Saudi Arabia and Egypt to promote sectarian conflict in Syria between Sunni and
Shia as a means of destabilizing the Syrian government. At that time, no one in
the US government could credibly have claimed innocence of the possible
implications of such a policy...
It was easy to predict then that, while a strategy of promoting sectarian
conflict in Syria might indeed help undermine the Syrian government, it could
also help destroy Syrian society. But this consideration does not appear in
Roebuck's memo at all, as he recommends that the US government cooperate with
Saudi Arabia and Egypt to promote sectarian tensions.1
From the US Congress
The US path to destroy Syria is long. On 12 April 2003, twenty-four days
after the US invasion of Iraq, a Zionist representative from New York, Eliot T.
Engle, sponsored the Syria
Accountability Act (SAA). The charge was
Syria's involvement of terrorism, aiding Saddam Hussein (meaning Iraq) escaping
sanctions, helping the insurgency against the US invasion of Iraq, supporting
of Hezbollah, chemical weapons, and so on. (We have to go on record on an
important issue. Saying "a Zionist representative" is not a vacuous
namedropping—it is a political statement indicative of how Israel passes its
policy aims in Syria and the Arab world through the American legislative
system.) The Act was passed in December 2003. Invoking the omnipresent pretext
of American national security and pretending "constitutional"
presidential privileges on foreign policy, George Bush essentially turned the
Israeli policy toward Syria into a policy of the United States. (For reading: Statement by the President on H.R. 1828)
In his article, “The Syria Accountability and Lebanese
Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003: Two Years On,” David Schenker, from the Zionist-imperialist think tank, the Washington Institute, recalled
his experience in testifying before the House of Representatives (7 June 2006).
He wrote, “Syria has proven a tough nut to crack. The SAA has helped, although
the Legislation itself is not sufficient to compel a change in Syrian behavior.
The Bush Administration has adopted some steps, but the challenge is how to
leverage the SAA in conjunction with other tools at the Administration’s
disposal—multilateral efforts in particular—to ratchet up the pressure on Syria
to force behavioral change.” “Ratchet up pressure” is the key phrase as to what
US neocons/Zionists believe they must do in Syria, not only in connection to
Lebanon, but also, obviously, in relation what Syria represents for Israel—a
rejectionist state of Israel that must be destroyed.
The Assassination of Rafiq Hariri
The assassination of Rafiq Hariri (a billionaire, dual citizen of Saudi
Arabia and Lebanon, and a former prime minister of Lebanon) on 14 February 2005
is the paramount example of how the United States, Western Europe, and Israel
plan their subversion against the Arab states that do not obey US diktat, or
resist US-backed Israeli colonialist-imperialism. The assassination offers a
very interesting angle with regard how pretexts are developed and used. Let us
see why Hariri was killed. On 2 September 2004, the UNSC issued resolution 1559 calling on Syria to withdraw its remaining forces from Lebanon. Syria
complied but only partially and slowly.
The ruse to get Syria out of Lebanon—which was a part of Greater Syria in
history until France, using its Sykes-Picot mandate over Syria, severed it and
made it an independent state in 1943—had, therefore, to be achieved by other
means. The assassination of Hariri was that specific means. With the accusation
that Syria was behind the assassination, the stage was set to force Syria's
complete withdrawal from Lebanon under the threat of enforcing resolution 1559
by military means. Forty-five days after the assassination (5 April 2005),
Syria began its withdrawal from Lebanon and completed it by the end of that
month.
Who ordered the assassination of Hariri?
Since neither Syria nor Hezbollah had stakes in the assassination of
Hariri, who benefited from it? Our logical answer is Israel and the
United States. [2] Considering the long list of objectives of these two
states in the situation of all Arab states, proving this assertion is a matter
of deductive reasoning.
Having briefly described the path the United States took in the quest to
destabilize Syria, it is important to see its current methods of war. If the US
plans in Syria were insufficient to raise alarm, we have to deal with other
features applied on the Syrian theater of death (and before that in Afghanistan
and Iraq). We are talking about an imperialist instrument of war: vocabulary as
a weapon of mass confusion. Many terms and phrases had been coined to make
people conform to Washington's indoctrination. But do terms such as
"moderate," "extremist," "moderate Arab states—who are
they?", "Islamic," Islamist," "dictator,"
"democracy," "no role for Assad in the future of Syria,"
"Sunni," "Alawite," "Shiite," "ISIS,"
"stop the Iranian occupation of Syria," "IS,"
"DAESH," "U.S. hitting ISIS," etc., have any tangible
meaning outside the world of imperialist propaganda?
Let us examine some of these terms. Does the diction "a future for
Syria without Assad" have any meaning? Would that be a re-made Syria with
a bankrupt sectarian system similar to the one a criminal named George W. Bush
and his Zionist neocons installed in Iraq? Would the US bringNoah
Feldman or others to write a "constitution"
for Syria? (Feldman is a Zionist lawyer from New York and a theoretician on "Islamic terrorism," "Jihad," and on so-called
Islamic democracy. He authored the sectarian constitution for Iraq while this
was under active US military occupation led by Paul Bremer. Bremer's constitution,
as the Iraqis call it, has become the cornerstone and foundation for the
partition of Iraq on approximate confessional and ethnic lines.3
Or, would it be a so-called Islamic state swearing allegiance to US
imperialism, to Al Saud, and to the British-installed al-Thani ruling family of
Qatar? What is the implication of saying that Assad is the problem, yet names
behind state policies such as Obama, Erdogan, Hollande, Merkel, Turki
al-Faisal, or Bandar Bin Sultan go unmentioned in this context? What does the
Syrian "moderate opposition" mean in the US imperialist lexicon, if
not groups financed and supported by Washington? And for clarity's sake, we
ask, moderate in what?
Again, what is the US game in Syria?
Let us cite Condoleezza Rice. Rice is the quintessential dual-face American
hypocrite when the issue is US interventions. Although the first quotation we
cite below is about Iraq, its philosophy and intent applies to US policy in
Syria.
Rice, describing in petty melodramatic terms (similar to those one can find
in a cheap romance novel) how she confronted her master criminal boss on the
sectarian violence that the United States designed and implemented in Iraq,
wrote the following [Italics are ours]:
"So what's your plan, Condi?" The president was suddenly
edgy and annoyed. "We'll just let them kill each other, and we'll
standby and try to pick the pieces?"
I was furious at the implication…."No, Mr. President," I
said, trying to stay calm. "We just can't win by putting our
forces in the middle of their blood feud. If they want to have a civil war
we're going to have to let them."4
Comment: 1) Rice is shameful. She made her criminal boss look caring. 2)
Rice, daughter of a Presbyterian minister who presumably taught her not to lie,
lied big. First, calling sectarian infighting "civil war" is
deception because these are two different entities. Sectarian strife within a
nation pits a community against another with dissimilar beliefs or ethnic
origins. Civil conflict is between political factions within a nation
regardless of sectarian or confessional beliefs. The US uses both terms
interchangeably to obfuscate the nature of its interference in the pursuit of
specific policy objectives. Besides, there never was any sectarian infighting
between Arab Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq until the US invasion and
occupation fomented it to preempt resistance to its occupation. 3) Rice and her
neocon masters thrive when sectors of a nation they occupy engage in violent
infighting—it provides them easier means of control. This happened in the
Philippines, Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, and it is now happening in Libya and Syria
through mercenaries and proxies. That is why we often hear US imperialists and
Arab stooges talking about things like "Assad wants to make an Alawite
state," "ISIS is a fact," "Kurds want their own state and
so do the Assyrians and the Armenians," and so on. Regardless of
terminology or concepts, the US strategy is unexceptional—it is an ancient
Roman imperial and military strategy: Divide et Impera.
With regard to how US duality works in the Syrian example, let us consider
the exchange she had with Syrian Foreign Minister, Walid Muollem:
"... I delivered my point about Syria's interference in Lebanon, and
its failure to stop terrorists in their country from crossing their borders
into Iraq."
"it's hard to stop them," he said, but I was having none of it.
"They're coming through Damascus airport," I countered.5
Comment: We know what US exceptionalism means: it is okay for the
US to interfere in the affairs of every country in the world, but others are
not permitted to do so except with US approval. It is not okay that
volunteers cross Syria into Iraq to fight the US invasion force, but it is okay
for America's stooges to allow weapons and mercenaries to Syria through Turkish
and Jordanian airports.
In recalling the documented history of US interference in the affairs of
myriad countries including its staunchest ally Britain (read, “Harold
Wilson, Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War, 1964-68”), the present
authors state the following:
The violence in Syria is not
an accidental product of uncontrolled events, is not a result of a civil war,
is not because the Syrian state is ruled by despotic elites—but it is a result
of a combined American-Israeli geopolitical strategy to install a new Syrian
regime at the order of Tel Aviv and Washington. Syria, therefore, is not but
another link—after Iraq, Libya, and Yemen— in the US and Israeli quest to dismantle
the Arab system of nation, and to end the Palestinian Question permanently.
Let us now examine what was cooking in the US pot against Syria 60 years
ago. In his outstanding research on the CIA plotting and machinations against
the Arab nations including Syria during the 1950s, California State University
history professor, Hugh Wilford, wrote the following:
On August 21, 1956, Foster Dulles convened GAMMA, a top-secret task force
with representatives from State, Defense, and the CIA ... GAMMA's main contribution was to agree to a proposal to send the
eminent foreign service veteran Loy Henderson on a tour of the Middle East that
seemed intended to incite military aggression against Syria by its Arab
neighbors.... Henderson told a meeting in the White House that he had
discovered a deep sense of anxiety about Syria in the region, yet little
concerted will to act; only Turkey, a NATO ally, showed much appetite for
intervention...."6
Let us fast forward to the US occupation of Iraq.
On page 473 of his book, The
Twilight War
(Penguin Press, New York, 2012), David
Crist
(a historian from the US imperialist establishment) writes, “'Recock' (de
haan van het geweer opnieuw spannen) became the word of the day at CENTCOM.
The United States would get out of Iraq and prepare for
the next war in the global fight against terrorism, with rumors circulating that Syria was next. The U.S.
military concurred.”
Why Syria "was next" on
the US list of priorities?
Has Syria ever harmed or
threatened the national security of the United States? No.
But because Israel strongly
influences US foreign policy (read, John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, “The Israel Lobby
and U.S. Foreign Policy”) toward the Arab states, and because Syria is the last Arab state
resisting Israeli imperialism there are two concrete answers.7
First, Israel wants to weaken Syria
and dismember it, as it wanted done to Iraq by American neocon Zionists. Dismembering Syria should expose the Lebanese resistance
movement Hezbollah that depends on Syria for support.
The second is more complex. First,
controlling Syria enters in the logic of American quest of global hegemony. Second,
to carve out a Kurdish autonomous region to be joined with the areas controlled
by Iraqi Kurds creating a Kurdish State
potentially at the service of US imperialism and Israel.8, 9 Third, Syria's eastern regions and Israeli-occupied Golan
Heights have sizeable oil deposits.
(Read, “World
powers must recognize Israeli annexation of Golan Heights”; “Huge oil
discovery in Golan Heights - Israeli media”). 4) From an
imperialist perspective, the geopolitical re-design of the region would help
expand plans for the strategic control
of world resources and distribution.
Crist's revelation impels (zet
ons aan om) us to reflect on the motives
and ideologies that underlie all anti-Arab actions taken by the United States.
What we have today in Syria
(and Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, and Palestine) is an accurate reproduction of
age-old tested policies by the West at the expense of nations targeted for
reasons rooted in the politics of imperialism, colonialism, Zionism, and piracy
of resources.
In Syria, however, the situation is a little bit more intricate (ingewikkeld)
due to the presence of a long list of operators never seen before in a single
regional war, not even in Afghanistan.
Kim Petersen is a former editor of the
Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached atkimohp@inbox.com
B. J. Sabri is an observer of the politics of modern colonialism,
imperialism, Zionism, and of contemporary Arab issues. He can be reached at b.j.sabri@aol.com
Next: Part 4 of 7
NOTES
1. Robert Naiman, “WikiLeaks
Reveals How the US Aggressively Pursued Regime Change in Syria, Igniting a
Bloodbath,”Truth-out, 9 October 2015
2.
4. Note: since the dawn of Islam in Iraq (early 7th century) until the US
invasion (2003), and regardless what administrative geopolitical form
distinguished it, there have never been confessional lines in all Arab regions
of Iraq or ethnic lines separating the various communities. However,
historically, and during the rule of the Ottoman Turks, Arab Shiite Muslims
formed a relative majority in the South of Iraq and Sunnis in the rest. After
WWII, the lines between Arab Shiite and Sunni Muslims became integrated due to
internal migrations and economic development. The US deliberately created the
lines when it imposed a No-Fly Zone on specific regions of Iraq in 1991 after
the war for Kuwait. As for the Kurdish regions, with the exception of
Sulaymaniya and Erbil with a Kurdish Majority, most of the north of Iraq was
inhabited by a mixture of ethnic Groups including Arabs, Assyrians, Armenians,
Turkoman, Kurds, and Yezidis. The US arbitrarily delineated Kurdish areas when
it imposed the non-fly Zone on the north of Iraq in 1991.
5. Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor, Crown Publishers, New York,
2011, p. 544, 561
6. Rice, 561
7. Hugh Wilford, America's Great Game: The CIA's Secret Arabists and
the Shaping of the Modern Middle East, Basic Books, New York, 2013, p. 273
8. Note: Lebanon cannot be described as a resister state. Resistance to Israel
in Lebanon follows confessional lines. 1) The Saudi-controlled faction led by
Saad Hariri is in line with the policy of accommodation adapted by Al Saud vs.
Israel. 2) Christians are divided in two camps: the Faranjia and Aoun camp that
opposes Israel; and the Geagea and Jmail (supported by Saudi Arabia) that seeks
accommodation and had very close relations with Ariel Sharon and Menachem Begin
during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon). The Jumblatt Druze faction (supported
by Al Saud) has been known for continuous zigzagging on the issue of the
resistance to Israel. This leaves only Hezbollah as the real opponent of
Israeli settler-imperialism. Outside the Arab world, Iran is the only other
remaining state that opposes Israel.
9. The Kurdish Question in Iraq goes beyond the scope of this work.
Succinctly, there is a US-Kurdish connection in the context of imperialism,
dependency; Iraqi Kurdish politician Masoud Barzani has collaborated in turning
a potential Kurdish state into a tool at the service of US imperialism and
Israel.
10.In his article, “To
defeat ISIS, Create a Sunni State,” John Bolton stated, "The Kurds still face enormous challenges, with
dangerously uncertain borders, especially with Turkey. But an independent
Kurdistan that has international recognition could work in America’s
favor." [Italics added]
Exceptionalism: A Wile for
Imperialism (a wile = een list)
The Imperialist Violence in
Syria, Part 4 of 7 - Part 1
By Kim Petersen and B. J. Sabri
January 13, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - So far, we
have argued that international and regional interventions brought Syria to the
present violent point and that Western imperialist and regional objectives
(American, Israeli, European, Saudi, Turkish, etc.) are at work throughout the
Arab world. It is also self-evident that
all of America's wars after WWII were about imposing its dominance and confirming
its aspiration to be a super-hegemon. Moreover, American imperialism
(hyper-imperialism1) is
not only the model driving its interventions, but also a mechanism to change
political and economic systems of other sovereign nations to suite its imperialistic
and economic interests. The
central motor of this type of imperialism is the Zionist neocon doctrine to
expand the boundaries of American Empire and the strategy to implement
it—especially in the Arab World.2
Four forces have been driving the
rabid course of the United States since the collapse of the Soviet Union: aggressive, hyper-militarized
capitalism; belligerent ideology of empire; Israel and Zionism; and a
psychopathic sense of exceptionalism, with this not being a force per se
but an expedient to a wider purpose. That is, America's claim of exceptionalism
is only a ruse to promote an artificial notion of supremacism and thus
entitlement.
As
for the role of Zionism, and how it is shaping the other three driving forces,
this is a topic requiring discussion beyond the scope of the present essay.
However, briefly described, Israel and
Zionism have become so entrenched inside the American ruling system that all US
policies regarding relations with the Arab states are viewed with a Zionist
Israeli bias.
With regard to US global outlook: while the American
system with its war machine, particular brand of capitalism, and intimate ties
with the military industry is the soul of its imperialism, its ideology of
empire and creed of exceptionalism is the religion. An added aggravating factor
is the unrestrained willingness—since
the foundation of the so-called republic—to
inflict massive death and destruction on others whenever recalcitrance or
disobedience arises. The mantra for this genocidal lust is "Bomb them back into the
Stone Age"—used first by Gen. Curtis LeMay in his 1965
autobiography, and then repeated by every US military commander till this very
day whenever the US wants to intimidate those who oppose it.3
For US imperialism to impose its global hegemony, it
needs superior military power and an unrestrained willingness for violence and
aggression. A neocon thinker of the Brookings Institution, Bruce Jones,
expressed the imperialistic passion with a 4-word book title, "Still Ours to
Lead" while
using 214 pages of text to detail ways for protracted control.
To begin answering the question
"why Syria?" let
us consider the following topic from recent American political history. In the memoir of his
White House years (Waging Peace, Double Day & Company, New York,
1965), President Dwight Eisenhower denigrated President Gamal Abdul Nasser of
Egypt with unkind epithets and proposed that Saudi Arabia and its kings become
the spiritual leaders and rulers of the Arab world. Eisenhower's aversion
toward Nasser was mainly motivated by the latter's revolutionary decision to
put Egypt on a course independent from American and British interests such as
seeking the USSR's financing and technology to build the Aswan Dam.
Eisenhower even called the revolutionary transformation
of Egypt from a monarchy to a republic (1952) as a change to dictatorship. The
motive behind what Eisenhower thought of Nasser and of the new Egypt is
transparent. Nasser embraced Egyptian and Arab nationalism as catalysts for the
new course of Egypt and called for union between Arab states. A union between
Arab states is anathema to Washington; Eisenhower saw it as a challenge to
American interests.
What kind of man was Eisenhower? He was the Commander
of the Occupation Force in Germany that intentionally exterminated (in the
period 1944-49) over one million German prisoners of war in American and French
camps through starvation, extreme calorie restriction, and disease.4
What is the connection between Eisenhower's position
vis-Ã -vis Nasser and Eisenhower's conduct in Germany? How does this relate to
violence in Syria?
Eisenhower clearly embodied the violent bent of
American militarism and imperialism to impose its policies regardless of cost.
When the US decides something, retreat is unlikely despite external objections.
He set the policy to confront Egypt and the Arab world if these countries
sought independence from Western control. He portrayed Israel as a state
surrounded by enemies without ever spending a word on how it came about to be a
state. And he never mentioned the name of Palestine or its adjective
Palestinian in his 700-page book. But Eisenhower's treatment of German
prisoners of war set the precedent for George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and
George W. Bush to impose a 13-year near total blockade of Iraq that caused the
death of over one million Iraqis from malnutrition and lack of medicine.
Eisenhower's impulse for criminality is the same impulse that drives all
successive presidents including the incumbent Barack Obama.
These criminal American presidents cannot imagine
retreating from mass killing and mass destruction. Obama's criminal policy in
Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Palestine, and Afghanistan is no different
from his predecessors. George H. W. Bush expressed no retreat with his words,
"I will never apologize for the United States." Mitt Romney echoed
Bush's words almost verbatim, "I will never apologize for America."
In the Egyptian example, when Nasser turned to the
Soviet Union, Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers charged that Nasser was
spreading communism; hence, stopping his influence in the Arab world should
become a US priority. Yet, in suggesting that the Saud clan become the rulers
of the Arabs, Eisenhower displayed historical illiteracy of the Arab nations
and their aspirations. Essentially, by consigning the Arabs to the rule of
Wahhabi rulers—whose hallmarks are corruption, suppression of political
dissent, fake Islamic values cast to serve the ruling clan, buying off foreign
governments, lust for concubines, and beheading of convicted inmates in public
squares.5
Eisenhower's idea was, however, not accidental. He
envisioned that the Al Saud's "appeal" as the "custodians of
Islamic shrines" would sedate the Arab Muslim masses yearning for
independence and a decent life. In other words, the US of Eisenhower was
already thinking to turn Wahhabism into ersatz Islam and use it as the Trojan
horse to control the Arab nations from inside by echoing the Marxist axiom,
"Religion is the opium of people." We can deduce what Eisenhower was
aiming to accomplish. He was implicitly fantasizing to make Wahhabism the
dominant confessional ideology of Arabs and Muslims. In this way, Arabs would
be dominated through the Wahhabist tool.
Can we read Wahhabism as an imperialist tool of control?
Colonialist Britain and its offshoot, the United
States, share the same culture, same background and ideology of empire, same
intelligence gathering, same supremacism, and similar history of colonialism,
imperialism, militarism, and resort to genocide. When Eisenhower advocated Al
Saud to rule the Arabs, he considered how to control Saudi oil of which ARAMCO
owned fifty percent at the time of its founding in 1933. Wahhabism, therefore,
was that single imperialist tool to fend off any attack against US imperialist
interests in that region. In doing so, Eisenhower was following in the
footsteps of Britain. Britain, as a former occupier of most of the eastern and
southern shores of the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, helped in the
promotion and spread of Wahhabism in the mid-19th century6 to harass and weaken
the Ottoman Empire that was occupying the rest of the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq,
and greater Syria.
But to see Wahhabism as an imperialist tool, we need
to know what motivates US imperialism. Particularly since Manifest Destiny, the
American culture of domination has been fixated on the notion that the world is
an object that only powerful, blessed-by-god US hands can reshape, civilize,
and democratize. Following in the footsteps of countless American figures who
mythologized the stature of the American empire, Zionist neocon Dick Cheney and
his daughter Liz have joined the brigade of US aggrandizers with their recent
book, Exceptional: Why the
World Needs a Powerful America. Conclusively, exceptionalism is not just an
artifice to dominate based on supremacist notions of self—it is a tool to
expand the boundaries of US domination.
For example, after the United Stated had invaded and
occupied Afghanistan in 2001, it did not ask the Afghani people to vote; it
used a tool of Afghani tradition, the Loya
Jirga (Council), to select
Hamid Karzai—from the majority Pashtuns—as a "president" of the
American-shaped "democratic" Afghanistan. And when the United States
occupied Iraq, it used the tool of the Shiite Marjaeya(highest
body legislating Islamic Shiite edicts) to preempt the Iraqi Arab Shiite
Muslims from rising against the US occupation. On that occasion, the Marjaeya abstained from issuing any fatwa to
resist the invaders. Shiite clerics Jawad al-Khalisi and Muqtada al‑Sadr were
the exception. And with that abstention, it agreed with the Americans via Ahmad
Chalabi and the al-Hakim clan, and the US managed to impose its occupation
regime on Iraq.
Shaping a country or region according to imperialist
models, however, requires control by many means including military. To achieve
such control, American ideologues of empire have created operative rules to
facilitate the launching of wars and interventions. Specific objectives of an
imperialist phase, their long-term benefits, and tools needed to implement
them, are just a limited sampling of such rules.
Now, in trying to understand what Eisenhower was
thinking about how the Arab nations should be ruled, we must mention that his
approach for control by proxy, cohabitation, or auxiliary means, has been
applied before by all European colonialist powers in the territories they
colonized and before them by many other powerful states and empires throughout
history. Moreover, we look at Eisenhower's idea of control via auxiliary means
(using religions, ethnic animosities, sectarian rivalries, etc.) from a
conventional perspective: the American system (from Washington to Obama)
deliberately misreads how the world works. Meaning, US ruling classes and their
capitalistic orders know that world societies want to be free in choosing their
path for change and progress
The plan to reshape the Arab nations from within is in
tune with the basic American modalities of domination. The Eisenhower
administration considered the use of the Wahhabi tool along these lines:
because Wahhabism's primary precept requires people's total obedience to their
rulers, controlling the Arab and Muslim masses through proxy Wahhabist regimes
would be easier to accomplish. So this American generalissimo had a vision:
submitting the Arab Muslims to the will (via religious fatwas and edicts) of a
Saudi "king" indirectly implies obedience to the United States, which
protects Saudi rulers. (Note: obedience to rulers is cited in the Quran [An-nisa Surah: 4:59]. However, the
concept was taken out of context since the verse of the Surah puts conditions
on how obedience is applied and what types of rulers deserve it.)
This is how Al Saud generated obedience: the
foundation of the Saudi state (1932) was based on a pact between them and the
Wahhabi religious establishment—thriving since the mid-19th century with the
help of Britain, which physically occupied most of the Arabian Peninsula—that
they rule while Wahhabi clerics control all religious aspects of the state.
These include teaching their brand of Islam and interpretation of the Islamic
sharia (laws), school religious curricula, graduating imams and muftis,
proselytizing, raising funds, but most importantly: providing absolute
obedience by the people to the state. The direct result of such an arrangement
was that any resistance to or criticism of the Saudi clan is automatically
translated into contravention of Islamic laws and even defection from Islam.
(For expanded information, and to understand how Saudi rulers use Wahhabism
(conveniently named, "Islam") as an instrument of absolute state
power, read footnote # 7)
Still, to render the idea of how Wahhabism controls
the Saudi people on behalf of Al Saud, consider the two following examples.
When over 500,000 US soldiers camped in Saudi Arabia under the pretext of
defending it from an Iraqi threat (Operation
Desert Shield, 1990), Al Saud reined in the objections of the citizenry
via the Wahhabi clergy. They issued fatwas supporting the US military buildup
and the looming American war under the justification that Iraq was atheist
because of the Baath ideology of Arab Socialism.8
Unlike the official Wahhabi establishment paid for and
controlled by the House of Saud—thus keeping the establishment is in line with
the aims and policies of the United States via the ruling family—mainstream
Wahhabism broadly defined as Salafism is militant and follows a pan-Islamic
ideology. This pan-Islamic ideology is not necessarily anti-West or East.
Rather it is centered on one purported tenet: "defending Muslims" and
their lands anywhere in the world using the strictest interpretations of
Islamic sharia.
No one harnessed the power of militant ideological
Wahhabism better than the United States of Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew
Brzezinski. With the House of Saud ready, for any number of reasons, to spend
billions of dollars in support of the US aims in Soviet-invaded Afghanistan,
Carter and Brzezinski transformed Wahhabism from a creed mostly concerned with
the strict interpretations of the Quran and dogmatic application of Islam into
a warring ideology (jihad) to fight the "atheist" Russians. Some 30
years after the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, new teams of US imperialists,
neocon Zionists, and Saudi rulers amplified the objectives of
"Afghanist" Wahhabism to create another tool whose declared aim, as
demonstrated by events, is the disintegration of the Arab system of nations.9 The occasion leading to this planned disintegration
was the so-called Arab "spring". Aside from the genuine Tunisian and
Egyptian uprisings (later contained and reversed by the West and Saudi Arabia),
it was not surprising that the successive violent waves of that "spring"
hit only selected Arab countries (Libya, Syria, Yemen) not yet subjugated to
the US and Israel. Not only that, but militant Saudi Wahhabism has gone beyond
its Afghanist model to become a multi-national force directed specifically
against the Arab Muslims. Thus, after over 1400 years from converting to Islam,
Arab Muslims are now accused of apostasy and deviation from Islam.
The reason that we do not see the banners of armed
Wahhabi militants anywhere except in those selected Arab states, is an evidence
that their use is politically and strategically coordinated between the US and
Saudi Arabia. It also points to a reasoned conclusion: because these two
countries are fighting for similar objectives in Syria—removal of Bashar Assad
by means of armed groups financed and trained by both, and isolation of
Hezbollah to finish it off—then these objectives unify them on three fronts. 1)
The US (and Israel) and the House of Saud converged their forces to implement
the US plans for the partition of Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen. 2) To reward
the Saudis for their role in implementing these plans, the US would ease its
pressure on them while promoting their sense of becoming a regional military
power as evidenced by their war of aggression against Yemen—publically
justified as an opposition to Iran's assumed penetration in the Arab world. But
the threatening Saudi stance against Iran has a hidden target: destroying Islam
from within by openly declaring the Shiite Muslims as apostate and heretic.
This has radicalized the conflict within Islam and within the Arab nations,
divided Muslims in good and bad according to Wahhabi metrics, and made
religious violence an acceptable way to resolve political problems. 3) The
redesign of the Middle East would make of Saudi Arabia and Israel the pivot of
a new alliance that would define the future of the Palestinian Issue and the
Arab world. (For more information on the emerging alliance between Saudi Arabia
and Israel, read note 10.) (For an overview on
Saudi animosity toward Shiism, which is incidentally the official confessional
creed of Iran, see note 11, 12.)
With regard to how the US strategically spreads
spurious "Jihadist ideologies", we must mentions that immediately
after 9/11, new terms started to circulate massively—Islamic, jihad, radical
Islam, holy war, etc. (We do not know who are the people editing the website Washington's Blog.com. But the
article, “Sleeping
With the Devil: How U.S. and Saudi Backing of Al Qaeda Led to 9/11,” gives considerable
information on how the United States used Saudi Wahhabism in its wars. More
information can be searched online.)
While controlling the Arab masses from within (as with
the examples of the Gulf Sheikdoms now called emirates, states, or kingdoms)
has been an effective method, controlling them by external means is direct,
violent, and has all the imprints of classical colonialist imperialism.
Comprehending how these policies work brings us a step closer to understand the
wider meaning of violence in Syria. Consequently, we must bring into the
discussion another issue: the plan behind the systematic destruction of Syria
(and Iraq, Libya, and Yemen) and the destabilizations of all Arab states cannot
be separated from the general plan to dismantle and destroy the Arab system of
nations called the Arab world. And, although not Arab, Iran belongs in this mix
as its inclusion points to a dynamic used in pushing imperialist aims—dividing
and conquering—through amplification and demonization of confessional
differences.
From the moment in which Britain promised Palestine to
the Zionist movement, from the moment oil was discovered under Arab soils, and
considering the quasi homogeneity of Arab societies across their vast lands,
devising a plan to keep them under continuous Western colonialist control has
been an objective. In such a plan, any of the following items is equally
important: 1) preventing projects of Arab unity to weaken their collective
power, 2) promoting sectarian and ethnic conflicts as a means to erode state
power, 3) destabilizing the Arab system through Israel, 3) preventing solutions
to the Palestinian issue to antagonize the Arabs and pushed them into Western
hands, and 4) imperialist control of oil and other resources.
As for Arab unity, the plan has been around since the
secret British-French Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916 to partition the previous
Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Yet, with all Arab nations in Western
Asia and North Africa obtaining their independence from European colonialism
after WWI and WWII, the idea of Arab nationalism and unity survived the Western
plan to partition them into separate entities and continued to be an
unconquerable ideological force. Above all, the single most important catalyst
that pushed the Arabs to a common ground was their rejection of a Jewish
Zionist European state on Arab Palestine.
Kim Petersen is a former editor of
the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached atkimohp@inbox.com
B. J. Sabri is an observer of the politics of
modern colonialism, imperialism, Zionism, and of contemporary Arab issues. He
can be reached at b.j.sabri@aol.com
NOTES
1.
B.
J. Sabri, The
Hyper-Imperialist Paradigm, Parts Part
1, Part
2, Part
3, Part
4, Dissident Voice, 2003
2.
Free
Republic, Empire Builders:
Neoconservatives and their Blueprint for U.S. Power, Note: originally
published by theChristian Science Monitor in 2003
3.
Quoted
in the New York Times Obituary, Gen. Curtis LeMay, an Architect Of
Strategic Air Power, Dies at 83, 2 October 1990. Quoted in Spartacus Educational, “Curtis LeMay.” Quoted in History News Network, “Bomb them Back to the Stone Age: An
Etymology.”
4.
James
Bacque, Other Losses,
Third Edition, Talonbooks, Vancouver, 2011.
6.
David
Livingstone, Globalists created Wahhabi
Terrorism to Destroy Islam and Justify a Global State .
8.
Judith
Miller, WAR IN THE GULF: Muslims; Saudis Decree
Holy War on Hussein,” New York Times, 20 January
1991.
* For an American Zionist view, Atlantic piece, Israel and Saudi Arabia: Togetherish at
Last?
* For an imperialist view, WSJ piece, Saudi Arabia Reluctantly Finds Common Ground With Israel About Iran.
* For an imperialist view, WSJ piece, Saudi Arabia Reluctantly Finds Common Ground With Israel About Iran.
Whose Violence and Why?
The Imperialist Violence in Syria, Part 5 - Part 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 -7
By Kim Petersen and B. J. Sabri
The Imperialist Violence in Syria, Part 5 - Part 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 -7
By Kim Petersen and B. J. Sabri
January 15, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - As
viewed from American, European, and Israeli angles, a system of united Arab
states presaged a challenge mainly on three issues: the primacy of imperialism,
Zionism, and anti-communism in their geopolitical agenda. This explains why the
West has consistently adopted anti-Arab policies. For the imperialist West,
accepting the emergence of unified or even confederated Arab states means
dealing with the largest political entity on earth sitting on an enormous land
mass in excess of five million square miles stretching from the Arab-Persian
Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean and having the vastest wealth imaginable.
As a reflection of American long-term planning,
consider the following: when Syria and Egypt merged in a union as the United
Arab Republic in 1958, Allen Dulles, Eisenhower's CIA chief, had this to say in
a NSC briefing in 1958:
The United States agreed that union between Syria and
Egypt would be dangerous to all our interests and if we remained passive it
would expand and would shortly take in Jordan and the Lebanon and ultimately
Saudi Arabia and Iraq leaving us with a single Arab State ostensibly under
Nasser but ultimately under the Soviet Union.... In this view, if we were going
to oppose it effectively we must do so very rapidly.... It might be that some
parts of Syria might wish to secede and join Iraq. If there were such an idea,
Iraq should follow it up and could count on the United States backing.1
We see, therefore, the United States and the West
manufacturing events in the Arab world to serve cumulative objectives. As such,
in no particular order, the Zionist rape of Palestine; the US virtual invasion
of Lebanon in coordination with Camille Chamoun in 1958; the fomenting of
ethnic strife inside Arab states with large ethnic minorities;
Britain-France-Israel's war on Egypt in 1956; the CIA-organized Baathist coup
against Abdul Kareem Qasim in 1963; Israel's war against Syria, Egypt, and
Jordan in 1967; King Hussein's war against the PLO in 1970; the Lebanese civil
war; Iraq's invasion of Iran and Kuwait; the Egypt-Israel peace treaty; the
destruction of Iraq in 1991; the 13 years of sanctions on Iraq; Algeria's civil
war; the suspicious event of 9/11; the US invasion of Iraq in 2003; the
partition of Sudan; Israel's repeated devastation of Lebanon and Gaza; and the
destruction of Libya and Yemen are but a few chapters in the long road to
dismantle and subjugate the Arab nations.
Within all these events, other chapters (after WWI)
set the stage for the next phases of the future
American-British-French-European-Israeli onslaught against the Arab states.
Here is how it happened. Arab states situated in Western Asia: Iraq, Syria,
Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine, as well as the Arabic Peninsula have
international borders designed by colonialist Britain and France. This is
standard practice by western colonialism; it divided all of Africa, the western
hemisphere, and some parts of Asia into colonies, political states, enclaves,
and protectorates. The modern history of what the West now calls the Middle
East—instead of Arabia—to allow for the insertion of a European settler state
in the body of the Arab lands cannot be separated from oil, Israel, and
geo-strategic location in relation to competing powers.
When the early objectives of Britain and France
(1920-1950s) in Arabia (current Middle East) and Arab North Africa met the
objectives of US imperialism in ascendency after WWII, the results would be
devastating—for the Arabs only—until this very day. The dreadful plight of the
Arab nation states today was caused, to varying degrees, by the unrepentant
West (ends justifying the means) as well as despotic Arab rulers and their
regimes of the past 100 years.
We can identify some of the primary objectives of
Western imperialism in the Arab world as follows: 1) perpetually keeping Arab
nations under direct/indirect colonialist or imperialist control; 2) installing
military bases as outposts for empire's expansions and local control; 3)
installing a Zionist state on Palestine and using it as a destabilizing factor;
4) imposing mandatory protection regimes on oil-producing countries; 5)
controlling oil, gas, and other resources; 6) keeping oil money in Western
banks; 6) re-absorbing oil money through sale of advanced weapons systems; 7)
keeping the Arab masses from rebelling against the status quo through deals
with rulers; 8) employing the Divide and Rule model as a means of political and
physical control; 9) igniting sectarian and ethnic strife to destabilize
established political orders and forestall progress; 10) impeding the project
of Arab unity by promoting Wahhabism, Muslim Brothers, and Salafism—these
currents and movements vehemently oppose the notion of one Arab nation, but
endorse the notion of one Islamic nation. (Note: Muslim Brothers and Wahhabism
are forms of Salafism. Salafism can stand alone as an "Islamist"
religious ideology but not as Islam—the religion founded by Mohammad.
(Discussing the differences among these creeds goes beyond the scope of this
work.)
In writing about what is happening in Syria, it is
necessary, to recall how the events of the past 100 years have unfolded. We
know that Syria (and all other Middle Eastern Arab states) exists as a modern
state with its current borders because it was carved out of pan-Arabia by
British-French secret collusion: the Sykes-Picot Agreement (approved by the
Wilson Administration). After these states became independent nations, citing
Sykes-Picot is relevant as a reminder of how the Arab lands and peoples have
been divided and individually controlled by various Western colonialist states.
Also, let us not forget that the Agreement was conceived to allow for the
creation of Zionist state in Palestine.
Notwithstanding the above, considering the unremitting
global objectives of US imperialism and European vassals, the Sykes-Picot
Agreement that divided the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire is now as
relevant as ever. In simple words, it adduces that American, British, and
French imperialist schemes to divide and conquer have become permanently
ingrained in their ideological makeup. To substantiate our statement, when the
United States and European vassals prepared to attack Iraq in 1991 consequent
to the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, ear-piercing Western voices shouted that
Iraq was an artificial state created by Britain—although as a state, Iraq has
been around in different political forms for the past 6000 years. Well, simple
logic has it that being an "artificial" or "natural" state
is an irrelevant fact vis-Ã -vis the crime of occupation.
When Tony Blair rubbed shoulders with the US to invade
Iraq in 2003, imperialist operatives in Europe and the US summoned the spirits
of Sykes-Picot. This how Britain did it. Besides the spurious charge that
Saddam could hit Britain with his "ballistic missiles" within 45
minutes of an order, a so-called scholar, Christopher Catherwood, an advisor to
Blair on Iraq, provided him with another rationale. He went as far as stating,
in not too many words, that without Winston Churchill's miscalculation to
create Iraq, all that was about to happen would not have happened.2
Considering the game plan of western colonialist
imperialism, we can understand how Catherwood reached the conclusion that the
events leading to Iraq's invasion were due to Churchill's folly instead of
plans stipulated by Britain and the United States. To conclude, Catherwood and
thousands like him want to indoctrinate that Iraq's troubles did not stem from
plans by US neocon imperialism but from whims of a former British prime
minister who designed its new administrative borders by turning it from a
Turkish province into a state under British mandate.3
We can state unequivocally that whatever Sykes-Picot
designed has been converted into a pretext for continuous wars and intervention
in Asian Arabia. It is beside the point to say that whenever imperialist
objectives target an Arab country, Western historians, politicians,
commentators, blabbering heads, and so-called experts promptly call in the
teachings of Sykes-Picot with the purpose to help them apply its core schemes
on the designated victim. This happened in Iraq and Libya (this country was not
part of the Agreement, but after the NATO bombardment of Libya and the murder
of Muammar Gaddafi, Western imperialists summoned the Sykes-Picot model by
saying that Libya was made out three provinces which Italy had joined).
Syria is no exception. That is why a re-invented
Sykes-Picot model aimed at partition is being invoked frequently.
The history of Europe and the US in the Arab regions
is one of aggressions, colonialist occupations, and encroachment. Take for
example the European influx that was granted a "homeland" on the land
of Palestinians without asking the Indigenous residents and in total disregard
of their sovereignty, to which the United Nations, a body representing the
interests of so-called winners of WWII acquiesced in 1948.
We see Syria as a chapter in the long list of Western
aggressions—particularly American— around the world. It is instructive to
recall that after WWII, the US embarked on a series of direct aggressions and
wars in many places: Korea, Viet Nam, Panama, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan, and
several more.4 The Soviet Union also
was involved in aggression outside its territory. We also remember that
following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia was promised by US
administration officials that NATO would not intrude into former Soviet
territory.5 The US reneged on its
word and has been ever since in an unremitting expansionist mode.
Pointedly, the United States has an agenda:
re-shuffling the configuration of the existing order of independent nations to
create a new geopolitical arrangement amenable to its global interests. Also,
it is clear that the US has a plan to redraw borders.6 The US is keen at changing this government or that
regime without scruples or concerns for the destruction and violence that
ensues. The US has a predilection for domestically cultivated dictators and
collaborators (examples: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in Iran, Ngo Dinh Diem in South
Viet Nam, Sygnman Rhee in South Korea. Curiously about Iraq, when the US failed
to install its point man, Ahmed Chalabi, another point man, Ayad Allawi took
his place, and when this did not take hold, other collaborators entered the
scenes. )
Psychologically, regime change is an American neurotic
fixation whereby the US uses its military power, directly or through proxy, to
put a new regime in place. Recently, the US has been behind regime changes in
Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, and Libya. Afterwards, the objective grew to Ukraine,
a former Soviet state, and now it is aggrandizing and moving threateningly
toward Russia and China. In its criminal game to be the sole gendarme of the
Arab states and the world, the US is using killers of all stripes, creating
fake "Islamic" groups to discredit Muslims, and importing mercenaries
through regional players.
As stated, Syria is a serious geo-political pawn in
the attempt to build a lasting American Empire. In addition, Syria is an
opponent of the Zionist state. It has relations with the Lebanese resistance
movement, Hezbollah, Iraq (which, although inserted inside the US orbit after
the invasion, has good relations with Iran—influencing its cohabitation with
the United States), as well as itself having relations with Iran which, for
ideological and political reasons, opposes the US and Israel. If Syria were to
fall to western imperialism, it is very conceivable that a widening
encirclement of Russia would be enabled, as well as control of pipelines and
fossil fuels. This would all be to Russia’s economic detriment–brought about
not by open economic competition, but militarism. (We will leave China out of
the discussion, although it is important to state that China is also being
encircled and threatened as well.)
At this point, what are the interests of the United
States, Israel, France, Britain, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar in
launching their combined war of aggression against Syria?
The United States and Violence in
Syria
If one wants to know what US imperialists are thinking
at a given moment, the shortest way is to read their dedicated media. In 2013,
Robin Wright, a columnist of the unofficial voice of American Zionism, the New York Times, joined in the battle to partition
several Arab states with her article, “Imagining
a Remapped Middle East,” and added a larger map (How
5 Countries Could Become 14) with notes detailing rehashed arguments proposed by
the Zionist "historian" Bernard Lewis, and by Ralph Peters, a
novelist and a rabidly-frothing military commentator on Iraqi and Arab affairs.
Peters was the author of “Blood Borders: How a
better Middle East would look.” (See his map).
In her article here above mentioned, Wright presented
her version of Peters' map with unsurpassed imperialistic clarity. She wrote,
"A different map would be a strategic game changer for
just about everybody, potentially reconfiguring alliances, security challenges,
trade and energy flows for much of the world, too." [Italics added]. In essence, from the comfort of her New York City
office, this Zionist decreed—just like Peters—that thousands upon thousands of
Syrians would become pawns on the imperialist chessboard, shunted aside, and as
is clear seeking checkmate involves entails genocide, all in the name of
"reconfiguring alliances (alliances between who and who?), security
challenges [security for whom?), trade and energy for much of the world (but
can all these be achieved without changing borders and the killing of 250,000
Syrians and over two million Iraqis before that?)
Let us examine Wright's map. Notably, she expanded on Peters'
map by partitioning Saudi Arabia into five states instead of Peter's four. (See
Wright's map, compare it Peters' map, and then compare them to the map created
by Oded
Yinon in 1982 to reflect
Theodor Herzl's idea for a greater Jewish state on Arab lands. Why Saudi
Arabia, America's favorite ally after Israel, was the primary target designated
by the map? The answer is simple, with Iraq and Syria no longer relevant on the
Arab arena, Saudi Arabia is rich, has oil, and easily pliable for American
demands. An attentive analysis of Peter and Wright's articles and related maps
would reveal that the United States was sending a specific message7 whose implied threat
was unmistakable: the kingdom could be partitioned unless the Saudis bent to US
objectives on Syria as they did before in Libya. In the public realm, there was
utter silence from the House of Saud on the proposed partition of their country. Since the US calls Saudi Arabia an
ally, then what is the purpose of divulging plans to partition it? And why
partition a homogeneous country, despite confessional differences, that has
been stable since its foundation in 1932?
While Saudi rulers remained undisturbed by Peter's
plan, Turkey, reacted with anger, and the US responded with typical
dissociation from Peters' map. In its editorial, “Carved-up
Map of Turkey at NATO Prompts US Apology,” the Turkish paper, Today's Zaman, wrote, "The U.S. State
Department assured Ankara that the map did not reflect the official American
view, and denounced it as unacceptable." For a department used to
deception, the ploy was evident. "Did not reflect the official American
view," the Americans said. Why apologize for something you had no part in?
And nine years after that phony apology, the pending partition of Iraq and the
still unaborted plan to partition Syria lends credence to Peters and Wright as
media mouthpieces for what is cooking the US imperialist oven. The story then
is simple: faithful to its tradition, US imperialism sends trial balloons before
implementation of its designs.
Further, in comparing Wright's map to that of Peters',
we noticed that Wright focused only on Arab states (Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia,
and Libya), decreased the size of Jordan, increased Kurdish areas taken from
Syria and Iraq, and, as we stated, increased the partition of Saudi Arabia from
four to five states. Wright embodied the cynicism of American Zionist
imperialism. In reading her map, we cannot but notice that she used the
Urdu-Persian suffix "stan" [meaning place or land] to denote the
planned partition of the Arabs. She called regions with mostly Arab Shiite
Muslims, "Shiitestan", and regions with Arab Saudis assumed
collectively to adhere to Wahhabism, "Wahhabsitan", then we read
"Sunnistan", Alawitestan.
Seeing and reading about all this redistribution of
peoples and lands, an imperative question arises: based on what authority did a
journalist and a former army officer decide to re-draw maps and partition
nations? The answer is pragmatic and it is based on our knowledge of how the
imperialism state works: the
orders to partition the Arab nations have come from a consortium of the
decision makers outlining prescribed goals and agendas. Consequently,
Wright and Peters are spokespersons for the American imperialist systems and
its ruling elites. Unlike Peters, Wright's proposed partition of Syria, and the
establishment of a Kurdish State excluded Turkish territory with Kurdish
majorities. The reason is easy to guess. The US does not want to antagonize
Turkey for the time being. This explains why Turkey is now ready to recognize a
Kurdish state in Iraq but only in exchange for the US promise not to join parts
of its own territory to the proposed Kurdish state in Iraq.
The larger geopolitical scenario is this: with a
Kurdish state being imposed on Iraq and Syria, and with Syria under its
control, the US will order Qatar to proceed with its gas pipeline to the
Mediterranean in a move meant to push the Russian gas out of the European
markets. Ultimately (prior to the Russian intervention), once Syria vanishes as
a cohesive independent state, the US would finally deal a massive blow to the
Arab resistance against Israel (i.e., historical Palestine under Zionist
occupation) thus facilitating control of the Arab world. Syria, therefore, is
no more than another stage in the US (and Israeli) calculation of global
hegemony.
To conclude, regardless of its political system, Syria
is the only remaining Arab state that is embracing Arab nationalism,
independence, and resistance against US imperialism and Israel. If Syria were
to fall, Arab aspirations for emancipation from imperialist control would
likely die for a long time to come. The US intent to dismember Syria is
multi-pronged: 1) remove Syria as a threat to Israel, 2) isolate Hezbollah and
prepare it for elimination, 3) carve out a portion of Syrian territory and make
it an extension to a potential Kurdish state in Iraq,8 4) make Syria a
transit station of oil from Syrian and Iraqi oil fields, and 5) allow Qatar to
pass gas pipes through.
Israel and Violence in Syria
Talking about Israel in the Middle East requires
separate treatment. With Syria gone as a centralized state, Israel is intended
to be the master of the region. It will permanently annex the Syrian Golan
Heights (already annexed by Israel in 1981). Most importantly, if Syria falls,
the Lebanese Resistance will be exposed, and the Jewish-Zionist occupation of
Palestine will be resolved according to Israel's liking.9
Europe (especially Britain and
France) and Violence in Syria
Capitalist Europe has two pathetic features: obedience
to the United States and a keen appetite to share in the spoils of war and
business contracts with a new Syria (as they did in Iraq and Libya) under
American hegemony. We should mention that the Eastern regions of Syria have oil
deposits that could rival those of Iraq and Kuwait combined.10
Turkey and Violence in Syria
Recep Erdogan and his Muslim Brothers have three
objectives. 1) Revive Ottoman post-WWI claims on the province of Aleppo.11 2) Revive the Ottoman
imperialist posture toward the Arab countries, over which it ruled more than
four centuries.12 3) See the Muslim
Brothers in power everywhere to vindicate the "Islamic model"
invented by his Justice and
Development Party—favored by the US since it offers a model of submission
to religious themes in tune with Washington designs.13
For the record, when Assad rejected his proposal to
share power with the Syrian Muslim Brothers, Erdogan turned against him. Before
that, to use Erdogan's slogan "Zero problems with neighbors,"
relations and trade between Syria and Turkey were at their best.14 Indeed Erdogan's
ambitions show little restraint as Turkey has now provoked the military might
of Russia—something not sanely imaginable unless hiding under the skirt of
NATO.
Jordan and Violence in Syria
The Jordanian monarchy has one purpose: to survive as
a monarchy. To do that, however, it feels it must appease Britain, Israel, and
the United States before any others. Meaning that Jordan's monarchs do what
they are told to do. Moreover, if Israel is the paradigm of a parasitic regime,
Jordan is the model for disgusting regime opportunism. Curtly, Jordan will work
for whoever pays it. From the early days of the conflict in Syria, Jordan's
"king" has changed his positions several times; yet he was always on
the side of Britain and the United States when forced to take sides. When the
US invaded Iraq in 2003, its forces invaded coming from Jordan. (This was
despite the fact that during the Iraq-Iran war, Iraq gave Jordan free oil, not
to mention a $12 billion investment in the al-Aqaba port). Jordan supplied
massive support for the anti-Syrian front through facilitating military
training and the passage of weapons and armed groups.
SAUDI ARABIA AND VIOLENCE IN
SYRIA
Saudi Arabia's violence in Syria stems from a complex
platform. There were no specific reason or pressing national interests for
Saudi Arabia to be a major co-player in the destruction of Iraq, Libya, Syria,
and now Yemen. So what are the Saudi explanations for the violence and
destruction they are inflicting on Syria? 1) To be accepted as the
"indispensable" ally of the United States. 2) To destroy what remains
of the concept of Arab nationalism, which, not a long time ago, was a major
force opposing Al Saud and their relentless efforts to destabilize progressive
Arab regimes. 3) The Saudi rationale for fighting Iran in Syria is ludicrous,
and the irrational stance against the Arab Alawites, because they mix Shi'ism
with Sunnism, is both criminal and pathetic. The fact is they want the head of
Bashar Assad because he, during the Israeli aggression against Gaza in 2008,
demeaned them by calling them “half-men.” 4) Saudi
Arabia used aid as an enticement to make Syria sever relations with Iran and
Hezbollah.
Many factors caused the open hostility between Saudi
Arabia and Syria. Principal among these: 1) Iran being acknowledged as a
nuclear state and its coming exit from the sanction regime—this will allow it
to compete with Saudi oil on the international market. It also means more money
to Syria and Hezbollah. 2) Syria's dependence on Iran for assistance against
Israeli aggression. 3) Syrian ties to Hezbollah—receives assistance from
Iran—as an anti-Israeli ally. 5) Syria's refusal to align its regional policy
(Iraq and Lebanon) with that of Saudi Arabia. 5) By spreading Wahhabism, Saudi
Arabia is seeking hegemony over Arab and Islamic countries including, of
course, Syria. 6) Saudi Arabia's intense animosity toward Syria is old. It
started when Syria refused to back Iraq's was against Iran. This had a
consequence for the dogmatic Saudis: the friend of my enemy is my enemy. In
addition, Saudi Arabia's intense animosity toward both Syria (the Sunni
controls the economic life, while Alawites' elite controls the political one)
and Iran (predominately Shiite) is
not about Shi'a-Sunni antagonism as the West likes to repeatedly state.
Instead, it is due to Iran's appeal (after the Iranian revolution of 1979) to
the Muslim people of Saudi Arabia to rise against the pro-American corrupt
Saudi ruling family. 7) Saudi Arabia has been actively seeking to partition
Iraq, and it wants to partition Syria to appease its own goals—weaken its
strong neighbors—and US hegemonic goals.
QATAR AND VIOLENCE IN SYRIA
First, Qatar is the unofficial spokesperson of US
policy in the Arab world. Second, from the viewpoint of strategic or military
value, and excluding gas output, tiny Qatar (barely 4,400 square miles; native
population 278,000) should have little regional or international relevance. We
do not disparage any nation because of size or population count, but on the
chessboard of intentional relations, tiny Qatar must stop thinking of itself as
a giant, just because its rulers are billionaires. The fact is that Qatar, a
powerless pawn in US hands, speaks and acts tough because the US installed its
Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia's CENTCOM on its territory. Take
the gas out; and abolish the regimes' propaganda outlet, the Al-Jazeera network;
and Qatar will have nothing to show except idiotic machismo.
Recently, Qatari foreign minister Khalid al-Attiya
roared that Assad will leave whether by force or by diplomacy. Well, and who is
going to make Assad leave: him, the Qatari armed forces, ISIS, or Saudi Arabia?
Qatar's quarrel with Bashar Assad is well known. First, Syria refused the
Qatari proposal to allow gas to duct through Syria in exchange for Syria
severing relations with Iran and Hezbollah. Second, Syria refused the Qatari
request that Bashar allow the Muslim Brothers to have a political voice in
Syria. (While open political discussion is preferable, the close relations
between the United States and the Muslim Brother of Yusuf al-Qaradawi go beyond
the scope of this work.) In essence, what applies to Saudi Arabia vis-Ã -vis
Syria applies to Qatar with the difference that while Saudi Arabia, according
to some pundits, is being strong-armed to enact a proxy war on behalf of the
United States, Qatar is a willing executioner of the US agenda. As for the
issue of the Muslim Bothers in Syria, this is only a flimsy rationalization
because the Qatari ruling family and the country do not adhere to or practice
their ideology—it only uses it in coordination with the US.
Next: Part 6 of 7
Kim Petersen is a former editor
of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached atkimohp@inbox.com
B. J. Sabri is an observer of the
politics of modern colonialism, imperialism, Zionism, and of contemporary Arab
issues. He can be reached at b.j.sabri@aol.com
NOTES
1.
Quoted in Malik Mufti, Sovereign
Creations: Pan-Arabism and Political Order in Syria and Iraq, Cornell
University Press, 1996, p. 100
2.
Christopher Catherwood, Churchill's
Folly, Barnes & Noble, New York, 2004
3.
For a comprehensive understanding of how the British
colonialist mind works and how it interprets Arab history, politics, and power
in terms of utility to British and Western imperialist systems, we recommend
the work by J.B. Kelly: Arabia,
the Gulf, & the West.
4.
See William Blum, Rogue
State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press,
2000).
5.
Walter C. Uhler, “The Hypocritical United States
of Amnesia and Russia,” Dissident Voice, 15 March 15
2014.
7.
American political science professor James Lee Ray pointed
to US government using the media to convey its foreign policy objectives in his
book, American Foreign Policy
and Political Ambition (2007): “[T]he
media serves as a tool that the government can use to communicate to the public
about foreign policy issues, as well as persuade the public and important,
influential elements within it that its policy choices are prudent and their
impacts beneficial.” (164-165)
8.
For a comprehensive view, read, “Plans for Redrawing the Middle
East: The Project for a 'New Middle East”
9.
Read: “Syria’s future: Israel favors
fragmentation while Saudis want reliable counter to Iran”; “Partitioning Syria“ by the imperialist think tank: foreign Policy Research
Institute.
10.See map, also read: “How the War in Syria is About
Oil, not ISIS” and “Migrant Crisis & Syria War
Fueled By Competing Gas Pipelines”
11.Christina Lin, "NATO, Turkey, annexation of
north Syria like north Cyprus?",
Asia Times, 25
November 2015.
12.http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/22243. (Arab media). Nicola Nasser, “Syria, Egypt Reveal Erdogan’s
Hidden 'Neo-Ottoman Agenda'” Global Research, 20 November
2013.
13.Thierry Meyssan, "The uprising against Brother
Erdogan," Voltairenet,
10 June 2013. Thomas Seibert, "Turkey is a model for every
Muslim state, Recep Erdogan says," National, 1 October 2013.
14.Read these two informative
articles: Erdogan's Syria Policy: Wrong
from the Start and Why Erdogan Would Benefit from
Bashar al-Assad’s Fall?
A Russian White Knight or an Interventionist Power?
“It is noteworthy that the only government objecting to the substance of
our initiative is the United States, which for many years has stood in almost
complete isolation trying to block successive efforts of the international
community to prevent an arms race in outer space.”1
By Kim Petersen and B. J. Sabri
January 16, 2016 "Information
Clearing House" - Unlike the 4-year US active involvement in
every aspect of the Syrian conflict, Russia's direct intervention started just
recently (30 September 2015). Russia's intervention is important to distinguish
under international law: unlike the US illegal bombardment of Syria, unlike the
antics of states like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar who operate in Syria in
contravention to international agreements between sovereign states, Russia was
invited by the legitimate government of Syria to assist in defeating the
mercenary insurrection. Do we need to debate that the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia
were not invited to assist—which would be ludicrous on its face: a regime
asking states seeking its overthrow to assist it? (The latest news is that
Obama is putting US boots on Syrian soil unbidden by that sovereign nation.
Imagine the response by the US regime if, for example, in solidarity with Black
Lives Matter, Africa unilaterally placed troops on US soil to protect
African-American lives?)
It is also important to note that if the US regime and its anti-Assad
instruments had not participated in the aggression against Syria, then there
likeliest would have been no Russian involvement, and Syrians might have been
able to settle the matter for themselves. Logically, any blame for casualties
resulting from Russian military involvement must be directly attributed to the
anti-Syrian regime coalition—it is the law of action and reaction. In the end,
we see that the ultimate culpability for all those who died in Syria rests
exclusively with those who initiated the violence in the first place.
About Russia: it can be argued that from the time of Gorbachev until the
overthrow of the legitimate Ukrainian government by the CIA and its Ukrainian
operatives, Russia had allowed the world to be damaged through passivity
against American imperialist expansions. The present authors understand why
that happened and realize the constraints put on Russia since the Yeltsin
years. But when the imperialist heat reached its borders, Russia awakened.
Honestly, we cannot ask too much of Russia (all countries threatened by the US's
march to absolutist empire must take their share of responsibility) and we
cannot blame Russia for the treason committed by Gorbachev and Yeltsin. But we
can blame it, under the first Putin presidency, for consenting to the joint
US-British occupation of Iraq after strenuously opposing the planned invasion
of 2003. We are also extremely critical of Russia's consent, under the second
Putin presidency, to UN Resolution 2216 that sanctioned an already started American-Saudi
aggression against Yemen—an aggression that has thus far killed
thousands of Yemenis, and destroyed
much of the country. We have other problems with
Russian policy, but this is not the forum.
Still, from our viewpoint as inflexible opponents of American imperialism,
we are convinced that Russia's entry to the side of the Syrian government has
great potential for finally stopping the US from treating the world as a
stepping-stone to unchallenged global hegemony. What was Russia supposed to do:
wait for the US (and its anti-Assad allies) to enact regime change in Damascus
and moving thereafter to its borders? Above all, what could be more dictatorial
than outsiders determining by military means and violence who should govern a
sovereign nation?
Russia's intervention has another angle—it exposed the cruel geopolitical
game the United States has been playing in Iraq and Syria. For openers, the
United States is not bombing both countries to rid them of so-called ISIS;
gargantuan evidence points to the contrary. This could not be otherwise—the US
founded, armed, and trained this "state," and it needs it as a means
to destabilize and break up all Arab states.
Strong suspicions surround the US conduct toward ISIS thus leading to one
unavoidable conclusion: ISIS is a multinational enterprise that the United
States, the West, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar created, financed, and armed
to fight both the Syrian and Iraqi governments according to predefined
objectives. For instance, when ISIS emerged as a military power and crossed
into Iraq from Syria, the US did nothing to stop it. And when it moved its
convoys to occupy the city of Mosul, then descending south to occupy the city
of Baiji that houses Iraq's largest oil refinery, the US and vassals just
reported the news. And when ISIS occupied Tikrit and Ramadi, the only reaction
coming from the US and its regional supporters was to portray the
American-trained Iraqi army as inept. And when ISIS was almost on the gates of
Baghdad, the US and company just spoke of its imminent fall.
Something disrupted this chain of events though. In Iraq, ISIS sacked the
Yezidi areas and moved their Toyota convoys toward Erbil, which the Kurds
consider their provisional capital, and almost seized the oil-rich,
multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk that the Kurds consider their future capital. In
Syria, ISIS entered Ain al-Arab (Kobane) thus disrupting the connection between
Iraqi Kurds and Syrian Kurds. At that point, the US, the West, European
volunteers, and the Kurds made their combined moves to drive ISIS out of
Kirkuk, Erbil, and Kobane. In the meanwhile, no action was taken to remove ISIS
from the cities and territory it occupied in Iraq and Syria.
This must be by design. In fact, once the US started pounding ISIS forces
entrenched near Kirkuk and Erbil, the Kurds—who have been claiming Kirkuk as
theirs since the US invasion of Iraq—moved their Peshmerga forces to occupy the
city immediately. At which point, the Baghdad government, itself a servant of
Washington, declared the Kurdish occupation of Kirkuk null and promised to
retake it once it finishes its business with ISIS.
What to conclude from all this is simple: For the US, disrupting the scheme
to create a Kurdish state extending from Iraq to the Mediterranean while taking
territory from Turkey and Syria was a red line that ISIS crossed. This explains
why Turkey supports ISIS against Kurdish separatists. And it explains why Saudi
Arabia supports ISIS under the pretext to fight Iran in Iraq and Syria. And
when the Kurds declare that any area they "liberate" from ISIS become
a Kurdish territory (as when they took, with American air support, the
multi-ethnic cities of Duhok and Sinjar), then we cannot but conclude that ISIS
is a player created by the West and regional powers to facilitate the partition
of the Arab states in Western Asia. Kurds should not rejoice. The history of
imperialism and colonialism warns that the final aim of the US and the West is
not about caring for the national aspirations of the Kurds. Creating a Kurdish
state at the service of American and Israeli objectives is the target. And the
Kurds are moving into this trap. (Discussing the Kurdish issue goes beyond the
scope of this work.)
Let us recap the ISIS move against Arab, Kurdish, Assyrian, and Yezidi
areas in Iraq and Syria areas. Although ISIS is an American (and Saudi
creation)—it provided the United States with the operational rationales for
massive intervention in Iraq and Syria—its moves and attacks suggest one of two
things: either it has developed a separate agenda, or it is following American
orders as a part of a plan to rein in the moves of the Kurds. In the end, the
US reasons for allowing ISIS to survive and expand despite pretentious bombardment
and publicity balloons is all too evident: the US and Israel want to create a
Kurdish state from parts taken out of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Iran,2 and ISIS is the means to implement it.
Are the Kurds and ISIS enemies? There is a plenty of evidence to suggest
they were not when ISIS occupied Mosul only. In fact, once Mosul fell to ISIS
and the weakness of Baghdad's central government was exposed, it gave Kurds the
opportunity to move instantly to occupy Kirkuk (with its Arab, Kurdish,
Turkoman, Assyrian, and Armenian population) which Kurds have been claiming as
theirs since the American invasion of Iraq. This is reinforced by the fact that
when ISIS attacked Ain Al-Arab (a Syrian own with a Kurdish majority), Iraqi
Kurds crossed into Syria to fight it.3 One can surmise, therefore, that the US has been effectively
coordinating with ISIS to execute the strategic purpose of creating a de facto
expansionist Kurdish state.
Overall, the US strategy regarding ISIS is apparent. 1) Keep the
"islamic state" in Iraq viable to harass the Iraqi government—under
US control, anyway—thus browbeating Iraq's regime to give in to Kurdish demands
to secede and form an independent state. 2) Keep “ISIS” strong enough in Syria
to help with the toppling of the Assad government. 3) Keep spreading the
propaganda that the "Islamic state" is real and here to stay; this
will allow for protracted Western military intervention. 4) Continue with
current strategy to keep the region—with the exception of Israel—afire and permanently
unstable. Ponder: how could we explain the fact that ISIS seems more intent on
fighting Arab Muslims than fighting European Zionist Jews or American
interests? What drives the rage to re-Islamize Arabs who have been Muslims for
over 1500 years unless this drive was designed by Washington and Tel Aviv to
discredit Muslims and prepare the path for the final conquest? What should one
make of an organization that has no program about anything except making people
worship in the regressive and oppressive Wahhabi way? This seems a premeditated
plan for the total destruction of the Arab Muslim mind.
Keeping the preceding arguments in perspective, and tying them to the
Russian intervention in Syria, we see this intervention in positive way. Unlike
all the other uninvited interlopers, Russia intervened at the behest of Syria
and its legitimate government. Yet, this is war, and war causes casualties
including civilian deaths. However, since it became clear that Russia's
approach to eradicate Western-controlled violence was resolute, fake sources
were formed to cast doubt on Russia's role including the accusation of causing
more civilian deaths than those caused by the US and its terrorist allies.
Because we support Russia's intervention to end violence in Syria, as is happening
now, some might think that we are defending Russia. This is not the case. A
balanced investigation, however, posits that when propaganda and disinformation
contradict facts, we must debate it.
One dubious source is Airwars.org. This site reports of “104 incidents of
concern in Syria in which Russian aircraft allegedly killed between 528 and 730
non-combatants.” Of those “incidents as fairly reported” there “are likely to
have killed between 255 and 375 civilians.”4 The reliability of such reporting does not
improve: “The number of Russian airstrikes which caused non-combatant deaths
has to an extent been exaggerated.” This is self-contradicted somewhat later by
the claims: “Even so, credible allegations of civilian fatalities inflicted by
the Russan [sic] Air Force are worryingly high.”
A number of questions arise from such sources. First, for example, what
denotes “fairly reported” and who determines what this is? What is the
difference between a “credible allegation” and a “fact”? Second, what is one to
make of imprecise, waffling phrases as “likely to,” "to an extent,"
and again who determines this extent and likelihood? Third, who is Airwars.org?
From the source site: “Airwars.org is a collaborative, not-for-profit
transparency project aimed both at tracking and archiving the international air
war against Islamic State, in both Iraq and Syria. With a dozen nations
reportedly bombing – along with the air forces of Iraq, Iran and Syria – there
is a pressing public interest need for independent, trustworthy monitoring.”
Airwars.org's “data is drawn heavily from US and allied militaries. In addition
to tracking the strikes, we also seek to report – and where possible follow up
on – credible allegations of civilian casualties.”
Credible? What is the verisimilitude of information disseminated by US and
allied militaries?
Nonetheless, even if the present writers were to accept, on its face,
everything reported by US propagandists; it does not change the thesis of our
argument: regrettably, in warring, civilian casualties are bound to
occur. However, casualties occurring after the entrance of Russia to the
violence in Syria have to be weighed against the quarter million people killed
prior to Russia coming on the scene. Any subsequent deaths attributable to
Russia's air warfare against violent armed groups have to be weighed against
those who would not have been saved if Russia didn’t enter the fray. Yes,
Russia weaponry may have caused civilian deaths, but how does one calculate all
the civilians saved from death at the hands of mercenaries and other killers?
Moreover, we are arguing that all deaths since Russia intervention are to
be blamed on US-, Saudi-, Gulf state-, Turkey-, and other western-backed
mercenaries and terrorists. Had these forces and proxies never invaded Syria
and Iraq, and had they never received protection in Turkey and Jordan, then
Russian warplanes would not be fighting today.
To conclude our note on Russia, although it entered the war on the side of
the legitimate government, Russia has never declared any strategy or long-term
objective in Syria except the one supporting a legitimate U.N. member from not
being overrun by American/Saudi-supported terrorists and mercenaries.
Consequently, Western imperialists and their media stenographers have no moral
underpinning or legal standing to criticize Russia.
Kim Petersen is a former editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He
can be reached atkimohp@inbox.com
B. J. Sabri is an observer of the politics of modern colonialism,
imperialism, Zionism, and of contemporary Arab issues. He can be reached at b.j.sabri@aol.com
Next: Part 7 of 7
NOTES
1. Matthew Bodner, UN Approves Russia-led
Proposal To Limit Militarization of Space," Moscow Times, 2 December 2015.
4. See Chris Woods, “International
airstrikes and civilian casualty claims in Iraq and Syria: October 2015.”
On the Left and
Violence in Syria
By Kim Petersen and B. J. Sabri
"You
cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."
- Albert Einstein1
January 17, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - When we talk
about violence in the context of mortal struggle between or inside nation
states, we have to consider the factors that generated it. It is a given that
every decent person in the world should decry the killing of kids, women,
elderly, and civilians of all ages anywhere. However, our rage, analysis, and
criticism should be directed primarily on all those governments whose
involvement in imperialism, warring, and killing make tragedies and consume
their course. Can we all work to end the bloodshed in Syria and elsewhere? Will
humanity have a chance of stopping
what our national governments are doing in our name?
In the end, rather than resorting exclusively to
meaningless leftist rhetoric, however much one is in agreement with the tenor
of the words, bold action is called upon to stop the murderous onslaught of the
US hyper-empire, and Russia should be applauded for having the fortitude to
stand up to this empire.
First, in addressing the Syrian situation, we do not
think it is possible to ignore the geo-political situation of Syria (and the
region) even if we want to. Simply put, the complex issue besieging the Arab
states cannot allow us to ignore other related realities: Israel and its
machinations in the Arab world, for example. Second, theoretically, a
nation-state is predicated on doing what is best for that state and its people;
i.e., pursuing trade relations that benefit the state and its people, providing
jobs and a high quality of life in the state, seeking alliances that provide
security for the state, etc. Should that state not pursue objectives that are
of benefit to its people and security? Or is the so-called national interest only for the benefit of
imperialism, colonialism, corporations, capitalists, and elitists?
To expand on the issue of violence, we propose a new
argument. Even if violence among some nations could be prevented through
diplomacy and dialogue, and even if violence in and against Syria would end one
way or another, there remains in the making a potentially tsunamic violence
that US hyper-imperialism, Israel, and lackeys plan to unleash against a world
that does not want to be subjugated.2
Leftist Solidarity against War
Progressivism is rooted in principles. However, to
view complex geo-political machinations as black-and-white scenarios and pose
this to the Left—a complex grouping itself—is superficial analysis.
Clearly, for progressivists war is anathema, and it
behooves progressivists to agitate to the utmost so that war may be avoided. In
the present case of Syria, warring was already underway before Russia was asked
to assist the Syrian government to dispel the mercenaries and terrorists
wreaking devastation within Syria (and next door in Iraq as well). Russia did
not initiate violence or war in Syria. Russia is there to end the violence and
warring. Russia is using violence as a means to end the violence. In so doing,
and if effective, Russia will ultimately wind up saving many lives--many more
lives saved than the unfortunate civilians who end up killed from being in
wrong place at the wrong time. That is the nature of war, violence winds up
killing people: combatants and non-combatants. The sad fact is that the best
one can hope for in war is to minimize the killing of civilians.
Progressivist principles hold that during a period of
non-hostility or relative peace--that is, when there is no state-on-state
violence—the initiation of violence, be it militaristic or coercive, is opposed
on all levels.
However, once violence has been unleashed by one state
actor (de jure or pseudo)
against another state, the aggrieved state has a legitimate right to defend
itself-- a right anchored in international law by United Nations
Charter Article 51.
Indisputably, Syria is a state under attack from
mercenaries backed by foreign states. In fact, this constitutes a
not-so-stealthy aggression. Consequently, the Syrian state has the right
granted under international law to defend itself. Since Syria is under attack
by a multitude of hostile state-backed actors, it is entirely understandable
and justified that the Syrian government would seek assistance from other
friendly state actors, like Russia, to aid in its self-defense. Russia is
beyond reproach by leftists, and other critics, because it is engaged in
self-defense of an allied state. Russia has not initiated violence; its
violence is borne out of a request from a sovereign UN state engaged in
self-defense.
It is understandable that progressivists would call
for an immediate cessation of violence, but such a call must not be issued in a
vacuum. The end of violence does not signal an end for the moral Left.
Progressivists must not issue calls upon state actors based in ignorance. In
the present case of Syria and assorted state actors, any call must be issued to
all belligerent states and their proxies that have harmed another state through
initiating violence to cease and desist followed by making restitution and
paying reparations to Syria for the crime of war. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia,
the Gulf states, Turkey, the US and involved western states, along with Israel
must be summoned to the docket of a modern-day Nuremberg Tribunal and
prosecuted according to Nuremberg Law.
Aggression being the embodiment of evil must not be
permitted to coyly disappear into the pages of time unprosecuted and
unpunished. That would be a horrible precedent, and already too many such
precedents exist. Existing law must be upheld if initiating wars of aggression
is to be prevented; otherwise, any deterrence effect for the future launching
of wars is damaged. The result of non-prosecution is easily inferred and
discernible: increased lawlessness, the persistence of warring and violence to
impose hegemonic will on smaller states, and continued mass murder of
civilians.
Thus, it is important that leftists not make
well-intentioned but flippant statements painting all actors in a violent
conflict with the same brush. It is also important to parse disinformation and
propaganda from media and state narratives. Usually in a violent conflict, one
actor has first resorted to violence. Some leftists point a finger at Bashar al
Assad and an alleged heavy-handed response to protests (the western corporate/state
media framing of which brought to mind the US-orchestrated and failed
right-wing coup in Venezuela in 2002). But as Eva Bartlett pointed out in a
brilliant article, that is disinformation and Assad has the backing of the
masses of Syrian people.3
However, even if Assad were behind the shooting of
protestors, that would no more have granted legitimacy to sending mercenaries
and terrorists to shoot up Syria and bring about regime change that it would
have granted legitimacy to sending mercenaries and terrorists to shoot up the
United States to bring about regime change following the US regime's shooting
of Kent State University students protesting the US war against Viet Nam or the
shooting of people protesting racial segregation at South Carolina State University.
Can we, the people, stop the violence in Syria and
give hope to its people? That will depend on future developments. The Vienna
Conference on Syria (October 2015) and follow
up in November did not mean that much. It is preposterous
that the US and Saudi Arabia define who is a moderate resistance and who is
not. It is preposterous that Saudi Arabia hosts the discussion on who
represents the "Syrian Opposition." And it is preposterous that a few
voices call on the ultra-terrorist Wahhabi al-Nusra front to drop its
"al-Qaeda" connections so it can participate in the peace talks. The
Turkish downing of a Russian jet fighter allegedly flying in Syrian airspace,
perhaps having penetrated for a few seconds in Turkey's airspace, is poised as
a harbinger for a major conflagration. Some speak of a World War III. That must
be avoided.
History is replete with examples that power resides
with the masses. Despite all the differences and embracing all the diversity
among peoples, there is an undeniable unifying fact that underneath everything
we are all one humanity. Since divide and conquer
does not serve the interests of the masses but serves to enrich the
capitalists, imperialists, and elitists through immiseration of the masses, the
only moral and logical option is for the masses to solidarize and resist. To
effectively resist, it is incumbent that people make an effort to know and
understand what is happening and why. With epistemological empowerment,
humanity can recognize and reject propaganda and disinformation. For the
purposes of an effective resistance to warmongers, the Left bears a great
responsibility to be informed and make prudent, well thought-out and
enlightened statements based in morality that serve the masses of humanity.
Then perhaps, most importantly, the enlightened masses can stand together to
reject the scourge which has for too long plagued humanity, the scourge of
initiating violence and war.
In other words, a revolution. A revolution to tear
down the military-industrial conglomerates, to disarm all states, and to rid
the world from profiteering through the death and destruction of war.
Idealistic? Perhaps so, but some ideals, some
principles, are worth striving for and fighting for.
Kim Petersen is a former editor
of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached atkimohp@inbox.com
B. J. Sabri is an observer of the
politics of modern colonialism, imperialism, Zionism, and of contemporary Arab
issues. He can be reached at b.j.sabri@aol.com
NOTES
1. In Einstein: A Portrait (Corte Madera, CA: Pomegranate Artbooks,
1984).
2. The following are
just a few examples of what has been simmering in the criminal minds of US
imperialists and Zionists.
·
Gaspar
Weinberger, The Next War,
Regnery Publishing, D.C., 1996
·
George
Friedman and Meredith Lebard, The
Coming War With Japan, St. Martin's Press, 1991
·
Ted
Galen Carpenter, America's
Coming War With China, St. Martin's Press, 2006
·
Leon
Panetta, Worthy Fights,
Penguin Press, New York, 2014
·
Matthew
Kroening, A Time to Attack: The Looming Iranian Nuclear Threat,
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014
3. See Eva Bartlett, “Deconstructing
the NATO Narrative on Syria,” Dissident
Voice, 10 October 2015.
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