Here’s another brilliant little video from the Jimmy Dore Show, which casts further light on the US’ role in spreading the carnage and chaos in Syria. In this clip, the comedian, with his co-hosts Steffi Zamora and Ron Placone, talk about a story which appeared in March, 2016, in the Los Angeles Times. The Pentagon and the CIA are backing different rebel factions in Syria. The Pentagon is backing one bunch as part of their campaign against ISIS, while the CIA is arming another group in order, the paper claimed, to bring Assad to the negotiating table. As Dore points out, this isn’t what the CIA and its government paymasters want. They want to oust Assad altogether. He reminds his viewers how the United States was approached by Saudi Arabia and Qatar several years ago. The two Arab nations offered to pay if America invaded Syria and overthrew Assad. They want to put an oil pipeline from their countries through Syria into Turkey, but Assad, an ally of Russia, is opposing it. This is the real reason behind the concerted military campaign against Assad, loudly supported by the American media. It has absolutely nothing to do with humanitarian atrocities by the Syrian leader. It’s just about oil, and corporate profit.
But the different rebel factions are turning their guns on each other, fighting over the territory between Aleppo and the Turkish border. Not only have they been fighting in the northern suburbs of the city of Aleppo itself, but in February 2016 the Fursan al-Haq, or Knights of Righteousness, a militia backed by the CIA, was thrown out of the town of Marea, 20 miles north of the Aleppo, by the Syrian Democratic Forces advancing from Syria’s Kurdish areas, backed by the Pentagon. The paper stated that this shows how little control US intelligence has over the various factions it funds and arms in the Syrian civil war.
Dore makes the point of comparing this to the chaos of Iraq and Libya. Both are now failed states, and the latter is riddled with terrorist factions. The politicians and military had absolutely no clue how to run these countries, or what to do if they ousted the dictator. And now they’re doing it again. He goes further and states that America shouldn’t be trying to overthrow other governments, when it can’t even supply its own people with clean drinking water in Flint, Michigan.
Dore states that this shows that these stories do get into the news. He was moved to talk about this story because a person he was talking to about the situation in Syria not only didn’t believe him, but called him a conspiracy theorist, like Alex Jones. So Dore decided to present this piece of news, to show how bonkers he must be to get something like this from the mainstream press. He cites the example of another American news commenter, who used to come on his show with a stack of papers to show that the items he was talking about really had happened, and were in the press. However, they weren’t on the front page. They were buried on page 18, and only appeared every one in a while. But as George Bush said, the essence of lying is to keep repeating the lie. So the American press puts on the front page stories about how Assad is a butcher, who must be overthrown. He then goes on to say that if it was up to him, the New York Times would have on its front page the news that 45 million Americans were now living in poverty in the richest country in the world. And 33,000 people every year die from lack of healthcare, although he qualifies this by saying he’s not sure if its the real figure.
On Wednesday, Counterpunch contributor Andre Vltchek published some of the pictures and comments about Syria from Yayoi Segi, a foreigner, who has been living and working there for three years, and is passionate about the country and its people. Segi states
“Syria is not what the mainstream media wants us to believe it is. One has to see it, to understand. Seeing is believing! It is an extraordinarily exceptional country. All that we have been told about Syria and its people is a lie.”
She talks about how the Syrian people are decent, warm people trying to get on with their lives despite the horrors and inconveniences of the war. She is also impressed by their manners and respect for education and culture.
“Syrians are the most hospitable, gentle people. When we meet, we never talk about the war, the conflict. It is a tremendous civilization… They always talk about their life, the future. They discuss their poets and their thinkers. People in Syria are very well educated. They know what is going on, on our Planet. Despite what some parts of the world have done to them, they are extremely respectful and polite to everybody. I never heard them speaking ill of others. They appreciate that you come and work with them, and they are confident.”
She also remarks that all of the international conferences and debates about the situation in Syria have carried on without reference to the wishes or ideas of the Syrians themselves.
“There have been so many seminars, conferences and meetings on Syria, yet the Syrian people are very rarely invited. All these events are ‘about them’ but without even inviting them, and without listening to them.”
Segi works for the national education system, and describes the system’s resilience and high quality compared to other nations.
“On the education front, the system was one of the best in the region, before the crisis began. Now, despite more than 6 years of horrendous war, the system is still standing and strong. Syrians know exactly what they want, and they have the capacity to implement their aspirations. Like in Aleppo; after the victory, the government immediately moved in and began opening schools.”
Her photographs show the devastation caused by war. But they also show people enjoying themselves in cafes and restaurants, as well as one of the great medieval fortresses and a sculpture, which looks like it may well come from the ancient past. Several of the photos are of schoolchildren. These show a mixed class of little boys and girls, smiling and dressed in western style clothing. There’s also what looks like a crowd of sports fans – football? – heading towards a match, and a sign with spells out in coloured letters ‘I heart Damascus’.
There is much that Vltchek writes with which I disagree. He’s of Czech-Russian ancestry, and is a film maker specialising in the Developing World. His fierce attacks on western exploitation of the undeveloped world is well meant, but sometimes he goes too far in attacking the Developed World and the needs and desires of its ordinary citizens. It’s also struck me several times that he has a far too optimistic view of the Soviet past. Russia and the eastern bloc did make some truly vast, impressive achievements under Communism, but this was at the cost of a vicious political repression which under Stalin resulted in deportations, massacres and a system of forced labour, which claimed tens of millions of lives. The Soviet Union also dominated and exploited the satellite countries conquered by Stalin from the Nazis during World War II.
But Vltchek’s article is in this case exactly right, necessary and welcome. Syria is a repressive state. Even in the 1980s it had something like eight different secret police agencies. But under the Ba’ath party it is a modern, secular state, where Christians and Muslims live in peace. As for its education system, a few years ago the BBC screened a documentary about the Syrian school system, following the pupils in one particular school through a school day. At the end of the documentary the Beeb informed viewers how they could join a scheme that would link schools in this country with those in Syria.
As for the high regard for its poets and intellectuals, several of the books I’ve read on Islam and the Arabs have said that poetry has a very high status in the Arab world, to the point where newspapers may be written in a distinct, half-poetic style. As for its antiquities, you can still walk down the Street called Straight, mentioned in St. Paul’s Epistles in the Bible. The country has monuments from a succession of ancient civilisations, such as Palmyra, going all the way back to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. The tombs of some of the kings mentioned in the Bible have even been found.
It’s people are not monsters, and while Assad is a dictator, his government is surely better than the Islamist regime, which the rebels – al-Qaeda and ISIS – hope to impose. This would mean the destruction of ancient monuments, as has happened in Iraq and those parts of Syria, which fell under ISIS’ rule. Women’s rights would be attacked and withdrawn, the secular education system and rule of law swiftly dismantled. The country isn’t quite as tolerant in the religious sphere as it could be. From what I’ve heard on programmes about the country and its history on the Beeb, the Sunni Muslim majority is oppressed. But the Ba’ath party in Syria was founded as a secular, Arab nationalist party, which included both Christians and Muslims. If it is overthrown, the country’s tolerance of peoples of different sects and religions will also go, to be replaced by the type of vicious, genocidal persecution ISIS carried out in Iraq. Dan Snow’s programme on the country, broadcast by the Beeb, featured chilling footage of a foaming rant by an Islamist mullah calling for the genocide of the Alawis, the ruling Muslim sect. And as we’ve seen in Iraq, the Islamists not only persecute non-Muslims, they also viciously terrorise and butcher other Muslims for their religious beliefs. Historic mosques as well as Christian churches were destroyed and desecrated by ISIS in Iraq, and ordinary Muslims, whose only desire was to live in peace with their fellow Iraqis, were also murdered for not being what the Islamists considered proper Muslims.
I and many other bloggers have said repeatedly that the American regime and its western allies and lackeys aren’t interested in punishing Assad for his war crimes. This is all about geopolitics. It’s about making sure a Qatari oil pipeline goes through Syria, not one built by the Russians, and about removing a key ally of Russia and Iran. The American military-industrial complex has done its level best to overthrow secular Arab nationalist governments in the Middle East from the 1950s, as they were seen as being too close to Communism. Quite apart from the challenge they posed to western imperialism and its attempts to dominate and exploit the Middle East and its oil.
I therefore urge anyone, who has doubts about the justice of Trump’s attack on Syria, and the sabre-rattling of the western political class demanding regime change, to go and read Vltchek’s article and look at the pictures of Syria and its people. And look at the faces of the people, who will suffer if the oil lobby and the military-industrial complex have their way, and send American troops in. These are ordinary, decent people, who will be massacred by the hundreds of thousands, just like the people of Iraq.
Counterpunch also carried another very good article critiquing the intelligence services’ report on Russian hacking by Mike Whitney. After analysing the report and its contents, Whitney argues that the report actually doesn’t say anything new and doesn’t back up its case. What it is trying to do encourage Trump to pursue an increasingly hard-line policy towards Putin and engineer a war with Russia. This is response to the Russians’ and Assad’s successful attacks on the American proxies in Syria – al-Qaeda and ISIS. This is perceived by the hawks as a danger to American global military dominance. Whitney writes
But the case, as presented, is one-sided and lacks any actual proof. Further, the continued use of the word “assesses” – as in the U.S. intelligence community “assesses” that Russia is guilty – suggests that the underlying classified information also may be less than conclusive because, in intelligence-world-speak, “assesses” often means “guesses.” (“US Report Still Lacks Proof on Russia ‘Hack’”, Robert Parry, Consortium News)
Bottom line: Brennan and his fellow spooks have nothing. The report is little more than a catalogue of unfounded assumptions, baseless speculation and uncorroborated conjecture. In colloquial parlance, it’s bullshit, 100 percent, unalloyed Russophobic horse-manure. In fact, the authors admit as much in the transcript itself when they say:
“Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents.”
What kind of kooky admission is that? So the entire report could be BS but we’re supposed to believe that Putin flipped the election? Is that it???
What’s really going on here? Why have the Intelligence agencies savaged their credibility just to convince people that Russia is up to no good?
The Russia hacking story has more to do with recent developments in Syria than it does with delegitimizing Donald Trump. Aleppo was a real wake up call for the US foreign policy establishment which is beginning to realize that their plans for the next century have been gravely undermined by Russia’s military involvement in Syria. Aleppo represents the first time that an armed coalition of allied states (Russia, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah) have actively engaged US jihadist-proxies and soundly beat them to a pulp. The stunning triumph in Aleppo has spurred hope among the vassal states that Washington’s bloody military juggernaut can be repelled, rolled back and defeated. And if Washington’s CIA-armed, trained and funded jihadists can be repelled, then the elitist plan to project US power into Central Asia to dominate the world’s most populous and prosperous region, will probably fail. In other words, the outcome in Aleppo has cast doubts on Uncle Sam’s ability to successfully execute its pivot to Asia.
That’s why the Intel agencies have been employed to shape public perceptions on Russia. Their job is to prepare the American people for an escalation of hostilities between the two nuclear-armed superpowers. US powerbrokers are determined to intensify the conflict and reverse facts on the ground. (Recent articles by elites at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institute reveal that they are as committed to partitioning Syria as ever.) Washington wants to reassert its exceptional role as the uncontested steward of global security and the lone ‘unipolar’ world power.
That’s what this whole “hacking” fiasco is about. The big shots who run the country are trying to strong-arm ‘the Donald’ into carrying their water so the depredations can continue and Central Asia can be transformed into a gigantic Washington-dominated corporate free trade zone where the Big Money calls the shots and Capital reigns supreme. That’s their dreamstate, Capitalist Valhalla.
They just need Trump to get-with-the-program so the bloodletting can continue apace.
In this video from the Jimmy Dore Show, the American comedian and his team comment on media censorship and lies about the war in Syria. They start off by playing a clip of Wesley Clarke talking about how a general he was interviewing told him, and handed him a paper, showing that America was going to invade seven countries including Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria and Iran. The general did not know why these countries were targeted for invasion, and there was no new evidence against them which would justify invasion.
Dore also makes the point that Obama, despite all his rhetoric about ‘hope’ and ‘change’, has expanded the number of wars being fought by America from two to eight. If this had occurred under Trump, the public would be horrified, by as it has been done under supposedly liberal Barack Obama, it’s been apparently acceptable.
Dore also describes how Google, which owns YouTube, are attempting to stifle independent comment and reporting on the war on Syria by demonetising videos that are critical of American support for the rebels. This has been done not just to Dore, but also to another poster.
He then shows another video of a rare instance where a reporter in the mainstream media has criticised the official reporting of the civil war. The presenter, Ken or Ben Swan shows scenes of a crowd in east Aleppo celebrating that part of the city’s liberation by Assad and the Russians from the rebel groups supported by America. He makes the point that if Assad is as bitterly hated by his own people, as the media claims, then why should they be celebrating his victory?
Swan goes further and demolishes the notion of ‘moderate’ rebels, who America and the West are supposedly helping to defeat Assad. In fact, these moderate rebels don’t exist. The Free Syrian Army was disbanded last year. They gave their weapons, which had been supplied by America, to the Al-Nusra Front, which is the name for the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. And the biggest force now fighting Assad is ISIS. But the mainstream media simply refers to them as ‘rebels’. It does not tell the American public that their government is supporting ISIS and al-Qaeda.
Swann also shows footage of the buses that were sent into eastern Aleppo by Assad to evacuate the civilians there. These were attacked and set on fire by the rebels. It was done deliberately to prevent the civilians from leaving, as the rebels hide behind them.
Dore makes the point that you will not hear any mention of the above on any of the mainstream channels, such as CNN, MSNBC, Rachel Maddow and so on, and jokes about Swan himself being assassinated.
Here’s the video, which contains strong language.
Although Dore is commenting from an American perspective, the same is very much true of British journalism on Syria, with some exceptions. The I did report the attacks on the buses sent into evacuate the civilians in eastern Aleppo. However, we have had various Tory MPs jumping up and down demanding that we send planes in to bomb Assad and support the non-existent ‘moderate’ terrorists, who are going to liberate Syria for Islamism. With the exception of the I, and possibly the Independent, I don’t recall anyone making the point that ISIS is now the largest opposition group, and that if we send troops into the country, we will joining forces with them.
The media are deliberately feeding the American and British peoples lies to promote a war that has absolutely nothing to do with spreading democracy.
It’s not just the BBC of course. It’s the whole corporate media. But the journalist explicitly mentions the Beeb and the New York Times as lying about the situation in the country.
In this video from The Jimmy Dore Show, the comedian and occasional guest on The Young Turks talks about the revelations about the war in Syria from an independent Canadian journalist, Eve Bartlett. Bartlett was speaking at the United Nations, and described how the situation in Syria is precisely the opposite of what we’re being told by the corporate media here in the West. She’s been to Syria, and particularly Aleppo several times. She states that the people of Syria are 100 per cent behind Assad, and want to be rid of the terrorist groups occupying their country. These are the same ‘moderate’ terrorist groups that the West is funding to overthrow Assad, some of which have connections to extremists like ISIS. Dore states that this is nothing to do with democracy. It is simply about overthrowing Assad to force a pipeline through his nation.
Bartlett states that she was personally at the Costello Road humanitarian centre when the Syrians and Russians opened up a humanitarian corridor to allow civilians to leave the areas that they’re bombing. They’ve done this eight times before in different parts of the country. Contrary to western propaganda, the Syrians and Russians actually care about not killing civilians. However, the terrorist factions opposing Assad do not want them to leave. They are keeping them hostage. When civilians have tried to leave, several times they’ve been attacked by those same terrorists. There have also been times, when the Syrian army has stepped in to protect them, firing back at their kidnappers. She talks about one old man, who expressed his gratitude to the Syrian army for saving them from the terrorists, who were holding him and others hostage.
She states that the western media concentrates on the damage to buildings in the city. This is not what concerns the Russians and Syrians. They’re actually worried about the people in the city. The terrorists occupy bunkers deep underground – about three stories – and emerge to fire on Russian and Syrian planes before retreating back underground.
She also describes the truth behind the Syrian and Russian bombing of a school. It had been taken over by the terrorists, who were using it to manufacture bombs. She states that she was saw the bomb-making equipment. She also states that several of the terrorist factions, that are supposed not to exist, are still very much around, such as the Free Syrian Army amongst a number of others, evidence for which was shown to her.
Dore and his off-camera team make the point that the western news media is deeply compromised. Our governments do not want the Russian and Syrian side to be heard. He talks about the closure of the Syrian embassy by the Canadian government. He also describes how, when CNN sends journalists to cover these war zones, they’re embedded within army units. This was done when the veteran American newsman, Ted Koppel, went to Iraq. The result was, in Dore’s words, ‘a love letter’ to the US army. This is done deliberately so that the journalist only sees the country from the army’s point of view. Dore ends by repeating his point that the media is deeply corrupt, and that this war is all about big oil. As for MSNBC, the so-called ‘liberal’ US network, all it’s executives are millionaires, making more money in a day than most Americans make in a year. It’s a club to which we’re not invited. And so they’re lying to us, with news slanted to suit their corporate agenda. This is all about western corporate profit and imperialism.
Counterpunch ran an article years ago on the way the US army uses embedded journalists to present their side of international conflicts, specifically of the Iraq War. The article is in the Counterpunch book End Times: The Death of the Fourth Estate, which is about media bias. This, and other tactics, were formulated following the lessons of the Vietnam War. The US military and political establishment realised that the Vietnamese had very astutely used the American media’s coverage of the war to undermine public support. This was particularly true of the Tet offensive. Although this was beaten off within hours, coverage by the US media showed that the American army had been unprepared for the attack, which took place during the Vietnamese New Year. This persuaded many Americans that their armed forces were incompetent and could not fight their opponents effectively. Americans’ perception of the competence and moral integrity of their own side was also disastrously affected by the footage of continuing dead and maimed soldiers returning home, and war crimes against the Vietnamese people themselves. And so the US political and military authorities devised policies to structure media coverage so that it showed only what they wanted to be shown. Coverage of the repatriation of the dead and mutilated was to be minimised. Journalists were deliberately embedded in army units, so that they became dependent on their comrades in the army, and so presented sympathetic views of their performance. Hence Ted Koppel’s ‘love letter’.
Bartlett states that what she says about the terrorists holding civilians hostage, and that they have been liberated by the Syrian army instead of massacred and fired upon, has been documented, and that footage exists elsewhere, outside of the Beeb and New York Times. These news organisations, which pride themselves as institutions ‘of record’ are blatantly lying to us. In the case of the Beeb, you may remember the adverts for itself it ran a few years ago, in which various foreign correspondents were heard talking about how people in despotic foreign regimes around the world preferred to listen to the Beeb, as unlike their own state broadcasters, it was telling the truth. This is now a lie. The BBC is pushing corporate, state propaganda as the willing accomplice of western imperialism. But I’ve no doubt that, come the summer and the festival season, BBC spokesmen, broadcasters and journalists will be speaking at literary festivals up and down the country, along with other intellectual events, making speeches about the Corporation is internationally respected and an important British institution. I agree that it is an important institution. And I don’t want it sold off. But I don’t want it to be a state, corporate propaganda mouthpiece.
And so I don’t respect it, its news service nor its executives. They are lying to promote a war, which is destroying a country simply for the enrichment of western big business and Gulf oil despotisms, like the Saudis and Qatar. They are lying when they tell us that murderous jihadis are moderates and freedom fighters.
The Beeb cannot be trusted.
Take your news from other, better, alternative sources.
Counterpunch on Monday published an article by Luciana Bohne that made it very plain that not only was Hillary Clinton risking nuclear war with Russia by pressing for a no-fly zone in Syria, she was also lying when she claimed that it would save lives. She wrote
In her last presidential debate, Clinton said that she wants a no-fly zone in Syria because it will “save lives”:
“I’m going to continue to push for a no-fly zone and safe havens within Syria, not only to help protect the Syrians and prevent the constant outflow of refugees, but to, frankly, gain some leverage on both the Syrian government and the Russians.”
The “leverage” she is seeking is Russian roulette with the planet. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dunford, noted in response that a no-fly zone in Syria might trigger a war with Russia, a nuclear power. Neither does she believe that a no-fly zone will save lives. In a closed-door speech to Goldman Sachs in 2013, Clinton said:
“To have a no-fly zone you have to take out all of the air defense, many of which are located in populated areas. So our missiles, even if they are standoff missiles so we’re not putting our pilots at risk—you’re going to kill a lot of Syrians.”
She knows what is at stake with a no-fly zone in Syria, and yet she tells us the opposite of what she knows will happen. In other words, she’s lying.
She also makes the point that no-fly zones are illegal under international law, are not recognised by the UN, and that the Russians are in Syria perfectly legally, as they have been invited in by the internationally recognised, legitimate government of Assad.
A no-fly zone is a coercive appropriation of the partial airspace of a sovereign country. It is the arbitrary creation of a demilitarized zone in the sky to prevent belligerent powers from flying in that air space. In Syria, the “belligerent power,” ironically, would be the internationally recognized legitimate Syrian government and its legitimate ally, Russia.
According to former UN Secretary Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in an interview with John Pilger, a no-fly zone is illegal under international law. No-fly zones are post-Soviet inventions. The measure was never proposed, used, or authorized to this day by the UN Security Council until the Soviet Union virtually dissolved. This restraint was exercised by the US for the excellent reason that no such aggression on a sovereign state would have been tolerated without massive fuss at the UN Security Council and a bad rap for the US. There have been only three instances of a no-fly zone so far, all in the wake of the disappearance of the USSR: Iraq (1991-2003), Bosnia (1993-95), and Libya (2011), all initiated on the hypocritical pretense of “saving lives.”
She points out that the Queen of Chaos started pressing for a no-fly zone because the anti-Assad opposition America, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been funding and supplying, which includes as well as the Free Syrian army, Daesh and al-Nusra – the latter the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda – have been hard hit by the Russians. The American led coalition would like to overthrow Assad, but realises that they cannot unless the Russians are somehow prevented from aiding their ally. And so Hillary’s false claim that a no-fly zone would save lives. Failing that, Obama also had a plan B. This was to provide ground to air missiles to the Free Syrian army and the ‘moderate’ opposition, even if the so-called moderates were allied with the Islamists.
I mention this because on Saturday, Mike posted a piece commenting on an article by Iain Duncan Smith, which called for Britain and the West to arm the people of Aleppo so that they could shoot down the Russian warplanes.
Mike makes the same points Bohne does in her article. He states that Aleppo is being pummeled because it does contain real terrorists. Assad and the Putin are not attacking it for no reason. Furthermore, if British arms were used to shoot down a Russian plane, this would result in the escalation of further Russian attacks in Syria, as well as demands by Russia for restitution from Britain. And, he asks rhetorically, who knows what form that would take?
As the title of Mike’s article makes clear, Iain Duncan Smith is demanding we help the Syrian opposition shoot down Russian aircraft because Smudger is a ‘bloody fool’.
And in answer to Mike’s other rhetorical question, whether IDS wants us to fund terrorists – the answer is ‘yes’. Yes, America is already funding Islamist terror groups in Syria in order to oust Assad, and yes, IDS wants to give the weapons if he really believes in this stupid, murderous policy. I assume that Smitty already knows that the US and our ally, Saudi Arabia, are funding the Islamists if he has seriously studied the situation in the region. Of course, this might be demanding too much of a moral and intellectual vacuity like Smith. He showed absolutely no sense of any kind of critical intelligence when he led the Tory party and even less when he was head of the DWP. He doesn’t think about the consequences of his actions or policies, just blindly follows them no matter how many thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands may be harmed. Rather than change these policies, his strategy is to start denying his critics access to information on them, and lie through his teeth.
So I thoroughly agree with Mike’s conclusion:
There was blood on his hands at the DWP and now he is trying to get them dirty on the international stage.
He deserves poetic justice – the swift and final kind.
And let’s also bring IDS military career into the debate. For all that he claims to have been an officer in the Scots Guards, it seems very strongly to me that IDS is a chickenhawk. He was a soldier in the British army, but he was never a captain as he claims and I think Mike’s right when he says that the closest IDS has come to being bombed personally is when a bird dropped a message of its own on him. Photo in Mike’s article, above. IDS is a coward as well as a bully. How else would you describe a man, who turned up at parliamentary committee surrounded by bodyguards and armed coppers, just in case the disabled people and their carers in the gallery turned violent. Or runs and hides from protesters in hotel laundry baskets. He’s a foul individual, who has absolutely no right or business demanding that other people risk their lives for him and his political and corporate masters and colleagues.
With the Conservatives and their pet media now howling for further military action against Assad in Syria in this country, and the American government gearing up for the same, Counterpunch has published an article by Gary Leupp. Entitled, ‘An Urgently Necessary Briefing on Syria’, it discusses the country’s history in the 20th century, and the very numerous attempts by the US to undermine or overthrow its government.
Its first paragraph gives a brief description of Syria’s size and population, states that it is not a threat to the US, and has cordial relations with very many other nations. It states that at various periods it was rule by the Persians, Arabs, and Ottoman Turks, before being ruled by the French from the First to the Second World. The current ruling Ba’ath party was founded in 1947.
Under the French and after independence, the Syrian authorities tolerated the Communist party. The Americans thought they were too soft. It is widely believed that the 1949 military coup in Syria was sponsored by the US to install an anti-Communist regime. The CIA openly acknowledges that it was responsible for two further abortive coup attempts in 1956 and 1957. After the latter was exposed, embarrassing the US, America responded by declaring Syria to be a Soviet client.
It notes that Syria and Egypt were briefly united in the same state, until this collapsed in 1961. The Ba’ath party seized power a couple of years later in Iraq and Syria. The Ba’ath party continued ruling Iraq until the western invasion in 2003.
Up to the 1967 war the US broadly favoured the Ba’athist as the middle ground between Islamism and Communism. The Ba’ath party stood for pan-Arab nationalism, economic nationalism and secularism. After the 1963 coup Saddam Hussein worked with the US to round up and execute Communists in Iraq.
After the 1967 war, America was strongly influenced by the Israel lobby to declare Syria an ‘Anti-Zionist’ and ‘Anti-Semitic’ state, because it provided political and other support to the Palestinians and Lebanese other one hand, and demanded the return of the Golan Heights, which had been seized by Israel. America declared Syria and Iraq to be ‘terror-sponsoring states’. From 1976 onwards the Syrians also interfered militarily in Lebanon.
This did not prevent the Americans also allying with Syria when they found it convenient, such as during Gulf War I in 1991, and then with the extraordinary renditions programme of suspected terrorists after 9/11.
It notes that in the 21st century, the American authorities have been divided between the Neocons, who wanted to overthrow the Syrian government in a strategy of regime change across the Middle East, and those who did not, fearing the consequences.
The Iraq invasion was part of a Neocon strategy which planned the overthrow of the governments of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Iran. George Dubya’s government included individuals, who parroted Israel’s accusation that the missing WMDs not found in Iraq were in Syria. They are also supported the Israeli bombing of a Syrian nuclear reactor.
Although Bashar al-Assad was hailed as a reformer when he came to the Syrian presidency, and Shrillary was still calling him such in 2010, the plans to overthrow him were in place before 2011. After the Arab Spring and the regime’s attacks on demonstrators, Clinton and Obama demanded that Assad should step down. Shrillary was keen to start arming rebels. A group of 53 were so trained in Turkey, but gave themselves up or defected after they entered Syria. The backbone of the anti-Assad movement is forces descended from al-Qaeda, such as Daesh, which seized the area around Raqqa, and al-Nusra, which has connections to Pakistan, which holds Damascus and Aleppo. Al-Nusra is the core of the ‘Free Syrian Army’, and receives aid from Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Obama was all set to invade Syria after a Sarin gas attack in a Damascus suburb was attributed to Assad. The Russians prevented this by claiming that it may have been the opposition instead, and manoeuvring to allow the Assad regime to surrender its chemical weapons to the UN.
The article points out that the rapid expansion of ISIS in Iraq is a severe PR disaster for the Americans, as it shows how the Iraq invasion overthrew a secular state and created the militant theocratic regime based on torture and other horrific human rights abuses. The US has been forced to bomb Daesh, but not al-Nusra, which it continues to support. At the same time, it claims that the real reason for the rise of ISIS is opposition to the Ba’ath regime.
The article makes clear that this claim is utterly nonsensical. The Ba’ath regime is authoritarian and Fascistic, but it was the Americans who created ISIS by arming the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, destroying Iraq and trying to overthrow Assad. Daesh was formed after the Americans threw its leader, al-Zarqawi, and his troops out of Afghanistan, alienated Iraq’s Sunnis and then weakened Syria.
The American government is also torn by indecision about what it can or should do about the situation, whether to overthrow Assad or destroy Daesh. Most of the American administration now favours overthrowing Assad.
In 2015 General Petraeus, then the director of the CIS, recommended using al-Nusra against ISIS in Syria. This means allying with al-Qaeda to destroy an even worse branch of that organisation, as a means of ultimately overthrowing Assad.
Russia began bombing ISIS a year after the Americans began their attacks. It was at the request of the regime, which is supported by the UN and a plethora of other nations. Under international law, the Russian action is legal while the Americans’ isn’t.
It also notes that the US press has ignored Russian successes in aiding the Syrians to recapture Palmyra from ISIS and destroying the terrorists’ illegal oil convoys. Instead it just follows the State Department’s line of attacking Russian support for the Syrian state against the rebels.
The Russian successes forced the Americans to ally briefly with them in operations against the various terrorist groups. A one week ceasefire was arranged to allow the US-backed rebels to separate themselves from the al-Nusra front, which would then be attacked. At the same time, peace talks were to begin in Geneva. The US-backed rebels refused to do so, and some turned on the US. The Americans then accidentally bombed a Syrian army base then fighting against Daesh. Syria then resumed attacks on east Aleppo, controlled by al-Nusra. The US then blamed the bombing of an aid convoy on Syria or Russia, although Counterpunch notes that the bombing is still unexplained. America has thus sabotaged the peace talks designed to end a conflict American foreign policy has massively exacerbated.
Hillary Clinton supports a no-fly zone, although she realises that this will mean the deployment of tens of thousands more troops and result in a war with Syria and Russia. Last June, 51 members of the State Department signed a memo of dissent demanding that the focus be switched from combating Daesh to overthrowing Assad. She also wants to appoint Michele Flournoy as her Secretary of Defence. Flournoy also supports no-fly zones and limited military action to overthrow Assad involving the deployment of US troops.
Leupp’s article concludes
Is it not obvious? Public opinion is being prepared for another regime-change war. The most high-stakes one to date, because this one could lead to World War III.
And it’s hardly even a topic of conversation in this rigged election, which seems designed to not only to inaugurate a war-monger, but to exploit crude Russophobia to the max in the process. The point is for Hillary not only to ascend to power—whatever that might require—but to prepare the people for more Afghanistans, Iraqs and Libyas in the process. The point is to lull the people into historical amnesia, blind them to Hillary’s record of Goldwater-type reckless militarism, exploit the Cold War mentality lingering among the most backward and ignorant, and insure that the electorate that, while generally deploring the result of the rigged election in November, will soon afterwards rally behind corrupt Hillary as soon as she seizes on some pretext for war.
The article notes how the US media automatically follows the government’s line on Syria, as does ours. And I think Leupp’s article is correct in its conclusion that the western public is being prepared for Hillary’s assumption to power as the latest American warmonger. As the article shows, the Americans have long wanted to overthrow the Ba’ath regime in Syria because it was too ‘soft’ on Communism, allied to Russia, and a threat to Israel.
I think there are other factors involved. I’ve no doubt that the Americans also want to seize its oil industries and reserves, as well as its state assets, which will also be sold to suitably grasping American and western countries, just as the Americans looted Iraq. And somewhere lurking behind this is the Saudis. My guess is that they want the Syrian regime overthrown because of its secularity, and tolerance of Christians, Shi’a and Alawis. The last two are bitterly hated as heretics by the Wahhabis, who would no doubt like to see the creation of a theocratic state similar to their own.
We are being brought to the very edge of a nuclear war to enable Hillary Clinton get into power, destroy another nation in the name of corporate profit, and support the emergence of yet another theocratic state under the influence of the Saudis.
Mike over in Vox Political put up another good piece about ‘Bomber’ Benn being taken to task by the great British public in Twitter for his wretched support for airstrikes against the terrorists in Syria. He made a speech declaring his support for such action in parliament late last year against the wishes of his party leader, Jeremy Corbyn. In return, he got applause from the Tories, which should, as Mike says, fill him with shame.
Now there is that terrible image of a young boy, covered in blood, being taken away in ambulance. The footage shows the lad looking confused and horrified as he wipes his face, and his hand comes away bloody. Mike’s article has a cartoon from an Arab artist showing the results of our actions, whatever we do. If we continue hitting Syria and its people, it will result in more child victims, symbolised by this boy. If we leave, then it will result in an exodus of refugees, many of which will drown, like the boy, whose body washed up on the shore of Turkey a few months ago, to his father’s horror.
Someone on Twitter pointedly asked Benn to make a speech explaining how the bombing is going. This got the rather tetchy reply from Benn advising his questioner to go and ask Russians and Syrians. Though he did have the grace to admit that what was going in Aleppo was shocking.
Benn’s comments cut no ice with the crowd on Twitter, however. They told him very clearly that it was he who helped bring these horrors about by demanding an expansion of the wars in the Middle East into Syria. They also stated that the Russians are currently talking to the Turks about finding a way to stop the fighting.
Mike also makes the point that western bombing and fighting in the Middle East has only created a vicious cycle, which creates more jihadis, ready to rise up and create more atrocities. The people who suffer are the children of everyone involved. But it creates big profits for the arms manufacturers and military-industrial complex.
This is just the latest vile policy from Hillary Benn. A few years ago, when New Labour was in power and trying privatise everything that wasn’t nailed, Benn turned up in the ‘In the Back’ section of Private Eye. He was one of a coterie of MPs and officials, who were turning the Commonwealth Development Agency, or whatever it was then called, from a charity into a for-profit company. The result was that a British government organisation that gave countries in the Developing World funds to promote their economy by establishing businesses, was going to concentrate instead on finding ways to get the maximum amount of profit from their already impoverished and seriously indebted clients. Once again, western money men were going to get rich from Third World debt. Partly thanks to Benn.
The truth is that Benn is, like his former master Tony Blair, a Neocon, who believes in the right of private companies to loot the world as they please, and in expanding western power through war and invasion. He should get on well with Shrillary Clinton, as she is also a full-on hawk, a corporate warmonger who has made it very clear that she support airstrikes in Syria. And the American atheist/ secularist news show, Secular Talk, has made it very clear that the cycle of violence described by Mike is very real. Secular Talk has even played a piece of a speech from one of the leaders of al-Qaeda, in which he urges the various jihadi factions to stop fighting each other and concentrate on killing the Americans instead. The man openly says that he’s afraid America will cut back its operations. If that happens, then the fragile unity which exists between the various jihadi groups around opposition to the America will fall apart, and they’ll start killing each other again. Kyle Kulinski, the show’s host, has said that the jihadis have told us in this video very clearly how we can defeat them: we do nothing. Mind you, to quote Tom Baker’s Doctor in the classic Who serial, ‘Warrior’s Gate’, it has to be the right kind of nothing. But if we scale back our operations, and stop killing civilians, then the jihadis will do our work for us and butcher each other.
But that’s not something either Bush, Obama, Hillary or Benn on this side of the Pond want to think about. Probably because it means less arms sales to murderous foreign despots, like the Saudis abroad, and less military expenditure at home, leading to a further dip in profits for the merchants of death.
In my last post, I put up two videos by the American internet news programme, The Young Turks, on American girls trying to run away to Syria to join ISIS, and the situation for women in the areas occupied by the Islamic State. They made the point that those joining ISIS would mostly kill other Muslims, who don’t share ISIS’ extremist beliefs.
The video report below by RT shows how terribly true this is.
Along with general reports on the fighting in Syria, it also covers the murder of Muslim clergy and the closure of mosques by ISIS for their refusal to collaborate with them. About 800 mosques have been closed, and 20 Muslim clerics killed. One of the people interviewed is the son of an imam, who was offered $100,000 for preaching a Friday sermon urging his congregation to join ISIS’ jihad. Apart from the money, the Islamic State also promised to take him and his family to Turkey, where they would be looked after.
This would, obviously, have made him a hypocrite as well as a collaborator.
To his eternal credit, the mullah refused. He paid for his integrity and honour with his life. He was kidnapped and shot through the eyeball.
ISIS declared him to be an enemy of Islam, despite the fact that the man’s whole professional life was devoted to teaching Islam and leading its prayers.
The programme also interviews a priest with the Arab Evangelical Church in Aleppo. The church has been forced to close, and services are now held in private homes. The priest, Ibrahim Nseir, states that Christians are under threat, as their bonds with their Muslim compatriots show their common humanity, and that it is possible for people to live together in peace.
And that’s a situation that the Islamic State does not want and cannot tolerate. Hence the attacks on ordinary Muslims as well as non-Muslims.
Despite co-operation between America and Syria after 9/11, sections of the American government were suspicious and increasingly hostile to Syria, particularly the supporters of Israel and the Neo-Conservatives. Syria remained on the US State Department list of sponsors of terrorism. Syria provided sanctuary and support for Palestinian terrorist organisations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The latter maintained missile outposts aimed at Israel. After the invasion of Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld accused the Syrian regime of permitting insurgents to enter Iraq from their side of the border. Italian investigators have identified Syria as the hub through which suicide bombers belonging to the terrorist network of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have entered Syria. Although the Syrian regime has denied that its intelligence service is aiding terrorists and insurgents to enter Iraq, Iraqi officials have stated firmly that this indeed the case. Ra’ad al-Samarrai, the chief Iraqi customs officer at the Waleed border crossing, has stated that ‘Syrian intelligence is controlling Syria’s border post(s). I can see in the Syrian customs agents eyes who is really in control’. Colonel Aref Fanus, the head of the border police at Anbar, confirmed this, stating ‘If they really wanted to help, they could stop any (terrorist) crossings’.
The US Treasury identified four nephews of Saddam Hussein, who had fled to Syria after the invasion, from where they funded the insurgency. The main source of funding for the Ba’athist insurgency in Iraq, according to American officials, another relative of Saddam Hussein, his cousin Fatiq al-Majid. Al-Majid is a former officer in Hussein’s Special Security Organization, who took refuge in Syria. With two of his cousins and other associates, whose number is currently unknown, al-Majid responsible for funding both the indigenous Iraqi insurgents and al-Zarqawi’s terrorists. The supporters of the radical Islamist preacher, Abu Qaqa’a, centred in Aleppo, aided terrorists to cross the Iraqi border, until a crackdown in January 2005.
In 2003 there was a battle between American and Syrian forces along Iraq’s border. They Americans believed they had encountered a convoy taking Iraqi officials across the border into Syria. US helicopters attacked the convoy, which was pursued into Syria by the Americans. As many as 80 Syrians were killed, and a number of border guards captured. This incident caused a further deterioration in relations between Washington and Damascus, and has been seen by some observers as an attempt to intimidate the Syrians into closing the border.
Syrian occupied Lebanon also acted as a sanctuary for former members of Saddam Hussein’s regime. According to American officials, Iraq’s former charge d’affaires in Beirut, Nabil Abdallah al-Janabi, is still in Lebanon, from whence he provides funding for foreign terrorists to enter Iraq. The Lebanese newspaper al-Nahar also reported that the Bush regime showed video footage of former Iraqi government officials jogging around the Ein Mreisseh boulevard on Beirut’s seaside and having a meal at a restaurant in the seaside of resort of Bloudan to the Syrians.
It is also believed that Syria has also provided a secure haven for terrorists attempting to infiltrate Jordan. In 2004 police in the country’s capital, Amman, uncovered a cell of al-Zarqawi’s terrorist network, consisting of ten men. They were planning to bomb the office of the prime minister, the General Intelligence Directorate, and the US embassy. From the police reports and the televised confessions of four of the conspirators, it appears that the majority of them were acting under the command of al-Zarqawi’s chief commander in Syria, Suleiman Khalid Darwish. The conspirators had trained in, entered Jordan from, and had smuggled most of their funds and equipment from Syria. The Jordanians also intercepted further shipments of arms from Syria. The Syrians, however, refused to extradite Darwish to face trial for his part in the conspiracy.
The American government was also critical of Syria for breaking the UN boycott of Iraq by illegally importing Iraqi oil through the Kirkus-Banyas pipeline. Furthermore, Syria voted against the invasion of Iraq during the debate in the UN, and sided with France and the other members of the Security Council in passing a compromise measure, Resolution 1441, which they believed would prevent war. Assad’s Ba’ath regime in Syria is militantly secular, nationalist and socialist, and so stands opposed to militant Islam. Several times in its history the regime has severely cracked down on militant Islam. It did, however, appear to use Zarqawi’s terrorist network to de-stable Iraq and prevent its emergence as a secure state.
Syria has also signed a non-aggression pact with Iran. Assad himself has further provoked American hostility by declaring that ‘The armed operations against American occupying forces in Iraq (are) a legitimate resistance because it represents the majority of the people’. The regime has also caused concern in Washington and Israel through the test firing of Scud missiles.
The possibility that America would itself launch an attack on Syria was raised a decade ago in 2003. In October that year Israeli forces destroyed an alleged Palestinian terrorist based in Syria. This attack was not condemned by the American government. Despite attempts by the American government to engage Syria in negotiations, it appeared that Israel, and by extension America, would retain the option of military action in future. Despite pressure from the Americans over its sponsorship of Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups, it was believed that the Syrian government would still support them as a bargaining chip for negotiations with Israel over possession of the Golan Heights.
It seems to me that these are the real reasons Obama now wishes to strike against Iraq. Now nations have a right to defend themselves and their citizens, and our forces in Iraq have every right to fight to stop the entry of militants and terrorists into the country. This is not, however, what we are being told by our leaders. We have absolutely no right to order a strike against Syria under the pretext demanded by President Obama and David Cameron. Cameron’s motives for demanding the attack are simple: since Tony Blair’s administration British governments have automatically followed American demands for military assistance out of fear that not doing so would harm the ‘special relationship’. Sparaszczukster over on her blog has reported that the anti-immigration party, Veritas, has set up a petition demanding an inquiry into what the British government has really been doing in Syria. Sparaszczukster has made it very plain she does not share their attitude towards multiculturalism. In this case, however, they are doing the right thing. Go to her website at http://sparaszczukster.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/what-has-our-government-really-been-up-to-in-syria-petition-for-an-investigation/ and follow the link to the petition.
Sources
Michael Young, ‘Syria, the US and Terrorism’, in Christopher Heffelfinger, ed., Unmasking Terror: A Global Review of Terrorist Activities (Washington D.C., Jamestown Foundation 2005) 223-6.
Sherifa Zuhur, ‘Syria: A Haven for Terrorists?’, ibid, 227-30.
Gary Gambill, ‘How Significant is Syria’s Role in Iraq’, ibid, 235-9.
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