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If
Damascus falls, Europe won’t be far behind – US senator
As
a new report details the devastation wrought upon Syria by four years
of rebellion, a Virginia state senator who once thanked the Syrian
government for defending Christians is worried about the fate of
Damascus, the Middle East and Europe.
RT,
19
March, 2015
“If
Damascus falls, the dreaded black and white flag of ISIS will fly”
over Syria, Virginia state Senator Richard Black told RT. “Within a
period of months after the fall of Damascus, Jordan will fall and
Lebanon will fall,” he said, adding that the self-proclaimed
Islamic State would then target Europe next.
Black
is no stranger to the Syrian crisis. Last year, he wrote a letter
thanking the government in Damascus for a “gallant and effective
campaign” to liberate Christian villages on the border with
Lebanon. Most Americans are not aware that Christianity started in
present-day Syria, he pointed out.
Years of US interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere have resulted in vast numbers of displaced Christians in Syria, Iraq and the Balkans. “If you look at the history of American involvement,” since the first Iraq war, Black told RT, “the one central theme has been that in each instance we’ve purged Christians from various countries.” Christians who lived in Kosovo for over a thousand years “are gone, completely annihilated.”
During
the four-day pogrom in Kosovo 11 years ago, more than 4,000 Christian
Serbs were driven out of six towns and nine villages. Over 900 houses
and 39 churches were also destroyed by ethnic Albanian rioters.
According
to a recent report by the Syrian Centre for Policy Research, six
percent of the country’s population has been killed or wounded in
the fighting in Syria. Life expectancy went from 79.5 years in 2010
to 55.7 years. More than 5 million Syrians became refugees or
migrated in search of work, while 40 percent of the remaining 17.65
million are internally displaced. The country has lost over $200
billion through destruction, looting, capital flight and GDP loss;
unemployment is officially at 58 percent; and most of those who have
jobs work for the government.
The
current conflict in Syria began in 2011, when the US-backed
opposition began an armed rebellion against President Bashar Assad’s
government during the Arab Spring. By 2013, large portions of eastern
Syria and western Iraq had fallen under control of militants known as
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (IS, or ISIS/ISIL). While
declaring the need to fight ISIS, Washington has continued to demand
the overthrow of Assad in favor of “moderate opposition.”
Black,
who served in the US Marine Corps and retired as a Colonel in the
Judge Advocate General (JAG) corps before getting elected to the
Virginia legislature, maintains that the Assad government is
effectively fighting against the Islamic State and protecting the
remaining Christians of Syria. Its fall, he says, would let ISIS
quickly seize Jordan and Lebanon, and continue its drive westward.
“I
look at Syria as the center of gravity… for Western civilization,”
Black said, using the military strategists’ term for a place or
event that can determine the outcome of a war. “If it falls, we’ll
begin to see a very rapid advance of Islam on Europe.”
To counter this, here I have quoted a lost voice from Lattakia, Afrona, a Syrian born architect, as she recounts her experience under the ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ that Washington had brought to her country, and the foreign involvement they had attempted to hide from the prying eyes of their domestic civilian populations:
“Please, keep Syria
safe…"
Notes:
US Drone Downed in Latakia Spied on Syrian Army for ISIL: Analyst
18
March, 2015
Syrian
forces brought down a US drone while it was spying on the military
bases in order to pass on the information to the Islamic State
militants.
A
US drone was shot down over the city of Latakia in northwestern
Syria. It was reported that the drone was observing the movement of
government troops and trying to determine the location of the Army
Staff, military expert Hassan al-Hasan told RIA Novosti.
Peaceful
Resolution to Syrian Conflict Can Help Fight ISIL Threat - Envoy
On
Wednesday night the Syrian military shot down a US drone flying in
the suburbs of Latakia in the north-west of the country near the
Turkish border. According to media reports, the scouting aircraft
crossed the Syrian airspace from the sea. Later, the United States
announced that it had lost contact with the UAV over Syria.
“This
aircraft is high tech and has the ability to capture the movement of
the Syrian army, its maneuvers and its command headquarters in order
to identify its military secrets, in order to pass on the information
to the terrorists,” said Al-Hassan.
Al-Hassan
does not exclude the possibility that the downed drone may have been
combat, "in that case it could have attacked any civilian or
military facility." The destruction of the drone, according to
him, proved the effectiveness of the Syrian army, which "is
ready for any surprises."
Destroying
Cultural Sites: Something ISIL and US Army Have in Common
Military
experts said what happened in Latakia does not mean that the Syrian
army had adopted a new air defense system. “To bring down a drone a
conventional anti-aircraft guns or air defense systems can be used.
What kind of weapon was used in this case will remain a military
secret, known only to military commanders,” he added.
United
States with the support of a number of allied countries began its
combat operation against Islamic State in Syria. A similar operation
started in Iraq back in August.
During
the operation the US air forces conducted airstrikes on territory of
Syria without the approval from Syrian authorities
The West Doesn't Want to End the Syrian Crisis: Just to Use the Atrocities for Hegemony
Western
Leaders Feign Sympathy for a Crisis They Instigated &
Intensified
Tens of thousands of Syrians gather for a pro-government rally at the central bank square in Damascus March 29, 2011. CREDIT: REUTERS/WAEL HMEDAN
18
March, 2015
Obama
in 2014 stated
“we must… [pursue] the political solution necessary to solve
Syria’s crisis once and for all,” Senator McCain as well recently
said
“But what haunts me even more than the horror unfolding before our
eyes in Syria is the thought that we will continue to do nothing
meaningful about it.” However it is helpful to ask, are our
leaders at all serious in their remarks?
Ever
since at least as far back as 2005 the US has been financing and
training anti-government oppositions in Syria with a view toward
regime-change. When members of these US-funded groups complain
about their connections to America, concerned over serving foreign
interests rather than the national cause, evidence from Egypt shows
that they are quickly ousted from membership. (1)
The
ostensible justification for this funding is ‘democracy promotion,’
however we should remember what International Relations scholar John
J. Mearsheimer said
about Washington’s democracy promotion activities abroad, referring
to the crisis in Ukraine he stated “and when you talk about
promoting democracy, what you’re really talking about is putting in
power leaders who are pro-Western and anti-Russian… promoting
democracy, which was all about putting in power pro-Western leaders.”
However,
Syria was in the crosshairs of the empire long before 2005. In
a speech
given in 2007, General Wesley Clark recounts a conversation he had
with then Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in 1991 regarding
Operation Desert Storm. He quotes Wolfowitz as saying “one
thing that we learned is that we can use our military in the Middle
East and the Soviets won’t stop us, and we got about 5 or 10 years
to clean up those old Soviet client regimes, Syria, Iran, Iraq,
before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.”
In
the same speech Clark recounts another conversation he had 6 weeks
after 9/11 with an officer of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which the
officer quotes a classified memo received from the Secretary of
Defense’s office which stated that it was US policy to attack and
destroy the governments of 7 different countries in the next 5 years,
starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and
finishing off with Iran.
Long
before any outrage was spurned at Assad’s crackdown of protesters,
and long before any pretexts or justifications were concocted, it was
already decided that the US would attack and topple the Syrian
government, going at least as far back as 1991. The intention
of regime change came first, propaganda and pretexts came later.
Further
adding to this evidence is the testimony
of former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, who stated on
television that roughly 2 years before hostilities began in Syria
British officials admitted to him that they were ‘preparing
something’ in the country. “England was preparing the
invasion of the rebels in Syria,” he said, stating that the
officials had asked him to participate, to which he refused. “This
is to say that this operation comes from far away. It was
prepared, conceived, and organized… in the simple purpose of
removing the Syrian government, because, in the region, it is
important to know that this Syrian regime has anti-Israel remarks…
I’m judging the confidence of the Israeli Prime Minister who had
told me a while ago: “We will try to get along with the neighboring
states, and those who don’t get along, we will take them down.”
It is a policy. It is a conception of history.”
Eventually
this policy, this conception of history, coupled with the financing
of regime-change opposition groups, deteriorating social conditions,
and the legitimate need for reforms, culminated in very minor,
small-scale and sporadic anti-government demonstrations in Syria in
early 2011. The real unrest began in mid-March when clashes
between protesters and police occurred in the southern city of
Daraa. From that point the conflict began to escalate.
Media reports in the West became flooded with news of Assad’s
violent crackdown of protesters, and the Syrian government is in no
way justified for violent suppression of peaceful demonstrations and
brutal military crackdowns, however little attention was paid to the
fact that at this time the protesters had as well been armed, and had
been attacking the security forces, or the fact that significant
pro-government demonstrations also occurred.
In
Daraa the unrest began when demonstrators destroyed governmental
buildings which prompted a response from the government. (2) It
should be noted however that those protesting in Daraa were largely
motivated by genuine desires for change and to oppose abuses of
power, much like our own Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements in
the West, and the courage shown by these individuals to demonstrate
in a state where doing so meant harsh and brutal repressions deserves
to be honored and commended. However the possibility of foreign
involvement threatened to exploit the unrest and usurp the
population’s hardships for non-domestic interests, to use the
Syrians blood, sweat, and tears to achieve their own self-interested
geopolitical goals. Thus while facing government repression
another more daunting challenge faced the local demonstrators as
well…
Amidst
reports of violent crackdowns, Israeli
National News on March 21st
would report that “Seven police
and at
least four
demonstrators in
Syria have been killed in continuing violent clashes that
erupted in the southern town of Daraa last Thursday.” The report
indicates that although the government’s response had been brutal,
the opposition was not altogether peaceful, but instead were armed
and firing at police. There were more police killed than
protesters in this incident. (emphasis mine)
On
March 29th
Reuters
would report that tens of thousands of Syrians gathered for a
pro-government rally, signifying that many in the country continued
to support the government, corroborating later polls organized by
Qatar which found that the majority of Syrians (55%)
wanted Assad to stay in power.
By
August 1st,
Israel’s Debkafile
intelligence news source, awarded Forbe’s “Best
of the Web” award, would report that “[Syrian forces] are now
running into heavy
resistance:
Awaiting them are anti-tank
traps and
fortified barriers manned by protesters
armed with heavy machine guns…
Syrian troops encountered armed
resistance…
there is
no shortage of arms.”
(emphasis mine)
These
were no typical protests, armed with anti-tank machinery and heavy
machine guns. How did they accomplish this without significant
foreign assistance?
Debkafile
would report on August 15th
“NATO
headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are meanwhile
drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria, which is to
arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters
spearheading
the Assad regime’s crackdown on dissent. Instead of repeating the
Libyan model of air strikes, NATO
strategists are thinking more in terms of pouring large quantities of
anti-tank
and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy
machine guns
into the protest centers for beating back the government armored
forces…
the arms would
be trucked into Syria under Turkish military guard and transferred to
rebel leaders at pre-arranged rendezvous…
Given
Debka’s previous report, these heavy machine guns and anti-tank
equipment seem to already have entered Syria. This report would
go on to state “Also discussed in Brussels and Ankara, our sources
report, is a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim
volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight
alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these
volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria.”
(emphasis mine)
This
have since been verified.
It
has been an open secret that there has been a steady supply line of
arms and fighters from Turkey into Syria, Vice President Joe
Biden even admitting as much, and recently Turkish Intelligence
Agency (MIT) veteran Önder Sığırcıkoğlu has stated that all
weapons supplies and militant incursions into Syria from Turkey were
organized by MIT. Estimates as well attest to the fact that
not only thousands, but tens
of thousands of foreign fighters hailing from over 80 different
countries have made their way into Syria to fight for the opposition.
Reports surfacing later would as well detail the kinds of
‘Muslim volunteers’ that were being recruited and supported,
Christian rights groups would document attacks on Christians amidst
the chants “Alawites
to the grave and Christians to Beirut!”, the New York Times
would report that the flow of arms was going “largely
to hard-line Islamists,” and other reports detailed how the
rebels recruited and trained by the US were largely going on to join
extremist
elements like ISIS.
This
all tells us that from the beginning of clashes in March the
protesters were armed, and that by August they bore the resemblance
of a full-on insurgency incorporated with extremist elements, yet how
could this be possible without foreign sponsorship?
The
reports also demonstrate that at least by August the West was drawing
plans for an insurgency, however further evidence attests to the fact
that this foreign intervention actually began much sooner.
In
a series of reports in November and December, former FBI translator
Sibel Edmonds, described as credible
by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, would
break the story that US and NATO, accompanied by hundreds of
soldiers, were operating a secret training camp in Turkey to
“organize and expand the dissident base in Syria,” since
April-May of 2011, where operations were conducted to smuggle US
weapons into Syria, conduct psychological and information warfare,
and to help funnel intelligence and military operators across the
border. Sibel quotes high-level, insider governmental sources
from both the US and Turkey, as well as journalists and eye-witnesses
on the ground, who had first contacted main-stream news outlets who
had refused to cover the story, one BBC reporter even being detained
and barred from reporting on the matter. It would be picked up
by Turkish and Iranian media. (3)
These
accounts, verified by high-level sources and foreign media outlets,
further corroborate Debkafile’s reports of NATO arming and
facilitating fighters to the opposition, though revealing that this
had already begun long before Debka learned of it, and helps to
explain the violent nature of the conflicts beginnings, a time when
Western media was only reporting on the violence of government
crackdowns, refusing to cover this story, and refusing to cover the
violence of the protesters, all of this further suggesting that the
violent nature of the opposition was largely a product of foreign
involvement and that the Western press would not cover this fact.
A
month before these revelations in September, WikiLeaks
cables of Stratfor communications would attest to the violent
nature of the protests “The opposition remains largely
nonviolent,”
and would go on to verify that the protests movements were incapable
of large armed resistance, the kind that Debkafile had reported was
already present, without substantial foreign involvement “the
opposition is very unlikely to overwhelm and topple the regime
without
substantial foreign military and financial backing…
Without
foreign backing, the opposition movement is unlikely to acquire
enough money or gain enough traction to acquire large quantities of
weaponry,
let alone achieve regime change. The
movement is simply too small and too ill equipped.”
(emphasis mine)
Sibel’s
revelations of foreign aid beginning in April, corroborated by
reports of armed protesters beginning at the end of March, Stratfor’s
assessment that that a viable armed resistance was only possible
through substantial foreign backing, and Debkafile’s reports of a
heavily armed opposition by August, further verify the foreign hand
in instigating and facilitating the beginning of the crisis; without
substantial foreign backing the relatively small-scale protests would
never have been able to spawn into the armed resistance that they
did; the ‘civil war’ was a product of foreign intervention.
Further
corroborating these assertions is a
PressTV article quoted by Sibel in her reports, whcih cites
Syrian state media detailing confessions made by captured rebels
about receiving foreign aid “Confessions by a number of Syrian
rebels about foreign-sponsored plans to carry out armed operations
and killing ordinary people as well as security forces prove that
recent developments in the country are part of an attempt to incite a
revolt in the strategic country neighboring the Israeli regime,
aiming to overthrow the current government and replace it with a
US-backed regime... Damascus blames the violence on foreign-sponsored
terrorist groups, with the Syrian state TV broadcasting reports
showing seized weapons caches and confessions by terrorists
describing how they obtained arms from foreign sources.”
A
month after these reports in December another WikiLeaks cable would
prove this foreign involvement.
The
cable
accounts a December 2011 meeting at the Pentagon between Stratfor
personnel and United States Air Force (USAF) officers at the
Lieutenant Colonel level, who would detail how Special Operations
Forces, presumably from the US, UK, France, Jordan, and Turkey, were
“already
on the ground
focused
on recce [reconnaissance]
missions
and training opposition forces.” The
USAF officials would state that “there
isn't much of a Free Syrian Army to train right now,”
further validating the claim that the armed resistance was not
domestic but instead was a product of foreign intervention.
The
officials would detail the nature of their mission “the idea
'hypothetically' is to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination
campaigns, try to break the back of the Alawite forces, elicit
collapse from within,” no mention of freedom or democracy mind
you, the goal was regime-change, the same goal behind the financing
of opposition since 2005, and they were willing to use violence to do
it. (emphasis mine)
That
same month Philip
Giraldi, a former CIA officer, would corroborate this information
citing CIA sources “NATO is already clandestinely engaged in the
Syrian conflict, with Turkey taking the lead as U.S. proxy… The
intervention would be based on humanitarian principles, to defend the
civilian population based on the “responsibility to protect”
doctrine that was invoked to justify Libya…
“Unmarked
NATO warplanes are arriving at Turkish military bases close to
Iskenderum [sic] on the Syrian border, delivering weapons from the
late Muammar Gaddafi’s arsenals as well as volunteers from the
Libyan Transitional National Council... French and British special
forces trainers are on the ground, assisting the Syrian rebels while
the CIA and U.S. Spec Ops are providing communications equipment and
intelligence to assist the rebel cause…
“CIA
analysts are skeptical regarding the march to war. The frequently
cited United Nations report that more than 3,500 civilians have been
killed by Assad’s soldiers is based largely on rebel sources and is
uncorroborated. The [Central Intelligence] Agency has refused to sign
off on the claims. Likewise, accounts of mass defections from the
Syrian Army and pitched battles between deserters and loyal soldiers
appear to be a fabrication, with few defections being confirmed
independently. Syrian government claims that it is being assaulted
by rebels who are armed, trained, and financed by foreign governments
are more true than false.” (emphasis mine)
Another
enlightening revelation is gleaned from the previous WikiLeaks cable,
especially in light of the pretexts used to justify the US bombing
campaigns. The Lt. Col. USAF officials were acutely aware that
bombing was only possible if there was enough media attention on a
massacre committed by Assad (read- the false claims that, now
debunked,
Assad had used chemical weapons in 2013) “They dont [sic] believe
air intervention would happen unless
there was enough media attention on a massacre, like the Ghadafi move
against Benghazi.
They think the
US
would
have a high tolerance for killings as
long as it doesn't reach that very public stage.” Thus we see
that there was an intention to bomb long before any ‘red-lines’
were crossed, long before any ISIL was present, and they needed
perceived massacres by Assad to do it. One need only look at
Western media headlines to see this playing out in the supreme,
laser-like focus that is given to Assad’s bombings, with nowhere
near comparable attention given to massacres committed by US-backed
rebels, even though death-toll figures indicate that the rebels are
responsible for the majority
of the deaths
overall, and not Assad’s forces. (emphasis mine)
This
intention of utilizing mass killings to justify military intervention
is well known. In 1997 Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National
Security Advisor to Jimmy Carter, co-founder of the Trilateral
Commission, and current un-official aid and mentor to President
Obama, wrote that “[America] may find it more difficult to fashion
a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstances of
a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat…
It [a consensus on foreign policy issues during WWII] was rooted,
however, not only in deeply shared democratic values, which the
public sensed were being threatened, but also in a cultural and
ethnic affinity for the predominantly European victims of hostile
totalitarianism.” (4) (emphasis mine)
Surely
the consensus fashioned from perceived victims of Assad’s
government is not the product of a shared affinity with other
Europeans, however we can see how the same kind of consensus against
hostile totalitarianism has been formed in the case of the Syrian
crisis, and further how a US bombing campaign, and overt US military
involvement more generally, necessitated this kind of perception
amongst the public, something that is well known to high-level policy
planners.
Without
the hyper-focus on Assad’s crimes, and the complete media black-out
of the nature of the armed insurgency, their presence as well as
their aggressive actions, a foreign policy consensus for overt
foreign involvement in the Syrian crisis would not have been
possible.
Following
these developments reports started to openly admit the foreign nature
of the conflict, however while still portraying it as a domestic
‘civil war’ and not a proxy insurgency. Yet we can see that
this representation is not at all the reality, and that this conflict
was instigated and started by the very same Western leaders who claim
to want to see it end, erroneously blaming Assad for starting a
conflict that their actions actually facilitated. Remember that
a violent and armed opposition was not possible without foreign
intervention, that there was not ‘much of a Free Syrian Army’
present until NATO arrived, that Syria was in the crosshairs of the
empire long before any ‘red-lines’ were crossed, and that as soon
as Western involvement began throwing money, guns, and foreign
fighters into the mix, the clashes between an armed opposition and
the Syrian security forces began, and all blame was placed upon Assad
because an affinity for ‘victims of hostile totalitarianism’ was
needed to ‘fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues,’ and
justify Western involvement in the eyes of the public.
How
are we then to believe that our leaders are honestly seeking an end
to the hostilities, when those very same leaders are the ones who
began them? When they as well continually insist on
escalating the violence and bloodshed by pouring more money
and weaponry into the country?
The
truth is they have never wanted to see it end, lest Assad was ousted
and they themselves gained power over Syrian policy-making. The
recent
calls by John Kerry for a negotiated settlement, if serious,
represent a concession from the West that they have failed in their
military goals, and are resorting to a political solution as a final
resort. Their real intent from the very beginning was always to
foment unrest with a view toward regime-change, and then to highlight
Assad’s inevitable crackdowns while supporting an armed insurgency
against him, obfuscating the fact that there was an armed insurgency
of their own making directed against government forces, and to use
the violence of the government as justification for further attacks,
thus making their attacks appear defensive rather than an offensive,
which of course they were not.
Therefore,
what occurred in Daraa was not simply an authoritarian regime
violently cracking down on peaceful protesters but instead was a
situation whereby the violent clashes involved significant foreign
involvement. The protest movement was hijacked by foreign
powers who would seek to exploit the unrest for their own ends, and
therefore the ‘revolution’ was actually anything but, and was
instead the result of a proxy insurrection and attack upon the Syrian
state by foreign powers which displaced the sincere protest base and
eliminated any prospects for actual reforms, reforms which could have
been possible had the Syrian people been left free from foreign
intervention to determine their own affairs. This is
corroborated by the Syrian opposition activist Dr.
Haytham Manna who was involved in the uprising since its
inception “The first negative result of the use of arms was to
undermine the broad popular support necessary to transform the
uprising into a democratic revolution… the pumping of arms to
Syria, supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the phenomenon of the
Free Syrian Army, and the entry of more than 200 jihadi foreigners
into Syria in the past six months have all led to a decline in the
mobilisation of large segments of the population… and in the
activists' peaceful civil movement. The political discourse has
become sectarian; there has been a Salafisation of religiously
conservative sectors.”
The
media would then walk in lock-step with the narrative that suited the
US establishment’s interests, even going so far as to detain
journalists and block reporting when credible insider information
came to light, thus obscuring the true nature of the situation in the
eyes of the Western public, which made it possible to fashion a
consensus for this specific foreign policy issue.
Surely
the small scale and sporadic protests that began before March in 2011
were met with violent repression from the Syrian state, and none of
these findings absolve the Assad government from blame for this,
however it is also true that these opposition movements were
financed, trained, and advised by the US through ‘democracy
promotion’ endeavors, that evidence shows that when members of
these groups complain about their connections to Washington they are
subsequently ousted from membership. The goal of financing
these groups is regime-change, intended in Syria for 2 decades, and
from the very beginning the US was arming and training the opposition
to attack the state. Money, weaponry, and foreign fighters
flowed in and were facilitated by the US special forces from the
onset with a view towards targeted assassinations and eliciting a
collapse from within. The government needed justification for
this which was accomplished by the media’s refusal to report on
information that ran counter to the official narrative.
Open-source
information detailed in this report demonstrates that what is
commonly referred to as the Syrian “civil war” is more accurately
described as a proxy insurgency that exploited the social unrest in
the country to go about achieving a long-standing policy goal of
regime-change in Damascus. This further belies the stated
claims of Western officials that they are at all serious about ending
a crisis which they themselves instigated and escalated, and suggests
that the only way the crisis will end is if the West achieves its
stated goal of regime-change or if they are forced to accept a
political settlement in the face of a military defeat or stalemate.
Recent
developments suggest that they have failed in their attempts to oust
Assad; the pro-government forces are too well equipped and the
government maintains too large of a domestic support base.
Impediments to the West accepting the inevitable political solution
consist of the intent to further inflame the conflict as a means to
keep Syria weak and unstable, using that as leverage to force
concessions from Damascus and weaken the resistance bloc of Syria,
Iran, and Russia, the fears from US allies that the jihadi’s they
have been backing for years would turn against their own regimes in
light of a cessation of hostilities in Syria, and the US and its
allies insistence on molding Syrian policy-making to conform to their
own interests, shown in their persistence that Assad must step down.
Until these impediments are overcome, or until domestic populations
force their leaders to stop committing these crimes, atrocities, and
aggressions, the best we can hope for is to watch Syria’s secular
society deteriorate until it falls victim to the fate of countless
other recipients of Western ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy.’
The
hope is that domestic populations overcome the propaganda narrative
propagated by the main-stream media and the ideological supporters of
state-terror and expose the Syrian crisis for what it really is, and
demand to hold those guilty accountable for their crimes.
The
Syrian population is strong and resilient in the face of imperial
aggression, we in the West who are privileged enough to not be
suffering a similar fate thus have a great responsibility to use all
of our resources and democratic freedoms to reverse the tide of the
unjust policies committed in our names by our governments, which
constitute nothing less than crimes against humanity. This is
by no means impossible, and we in the West have the unique ability to
oppose state policy with a great degree of freedom. We should
use this opportunity to combat imperialism, to give the Syrians back
the sovereignty they deserve, and to restore back to America the
values and ideals that are actually worthy of the people who inhabit
it, those that we were taught our country represented in school, yet
that since we have learned were mere ideological cover for something
much worse.
But
we can change that.
We
should be as strong as the Syrians who face with courage untold
terror committed against them on a daily basis by our governments,
and never let ourselves forget that “It
does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless
minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”
And
perhaps most absent from analysis on Syria are the voices of the
Syrian people themselves, their thoughts, desires, feelings, and
pronouncements. Their experiences, the ones aggressor nations
claim to represent, unfortunately fall upon deaf ears in the West.
To counter this, here I have quoted a lost voice from Lattakia, Afrona, a Syrian born architect, as she recounts her experience under the ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ that Washington had brought to her country, and the foreign involvement they had attempted to hide from the prying eyes of their domestic civilian populations:
“It was 2011 , the year of the color revolution , arab spring , the real color was black , and the real season was without features ,Obama and the global society never feel shy to announce it as it is a freedom revolution!
syrian people was worried of what was going on in Egypt at that time , total mess , also was sad for Libya and the war crime against people there by the NATO.
we recognized there is something planned for us , it is our turn ,as in domino game
Here it is they started in my city, savage groups was rushing in streets with shameful slogan repeating it non stop (christian should displace to Beruit ,alawit will be in cemetery ) , they trained them to look like civil war , And the mainstream media started to talk about peaceful protests in Syria
one of their first victims was a person in his way to his work , those gangs caught him , gathered as wolves around him and slaughtered him , his guilt was his religion , they want it to be real civil war , they want people to take revenge and kill each other by the name of religion
at that time our government issued , that it is allowed to everyone to join demonstration , and it is not allowed to any police man to bother them , the result was those gangs killed young police man they shot him ,, they were armed gangs
we realized more and more that we are under dirty war , not revolution at all , Then that scene we used to see in Afghanistan and those countries under terror groups as Al-Qaeda which is ,CIA” made , that scene of suicide bombers , car bombs , took place in Syria , not important for the world if the victims were kids students and innocent civilians , the western media turned blind eyes , and instead of reporting the truth , they were spreading lies
later the horrible crimes started by cannibals’ Free Syrian Army , Al-Nusra front , start to beheaded , eat livers , rape women , burn people alive …that was by FSA under the slogan Allaho Akbar, not by what they call now ISIS or Daesh , countries which r under FSA control suddenly ended up to ISIS , USA now invades my country to fight ISIS ! , but they still arming financing and funding FSA .
who is ISIS , who is FSA who is Moderate rebels ? they are their doll here to invade Syria , clever plan , don’t forget The Creative Chaos of Condoleezza Rice , and her preaching of new middle east ! , please keep Syria safe ,”
Given
the fact that polls
consistently show that the majority of Syrians support the
government, this is not an isolated viewpoint.
For
more on Afrona’s story, watch interviews here
and here. For further
accounts of voices from Syria that the main-stream-media won’t
report upon, follow Eva Bartlett at www.ingaza.wordpress.com,
who regularly travels to Syria to account the voices of the
voiceless.
Notes:
1.)
Craig Whitlock, Washington
Post,
“U.S.
secretly backed Syrian opposition groups, cables released by
WikiLeaks show”, April 17, 2011. “The London-based satellite
channel, Barada TV, began broadcasting in April 2009 but has ramped
up operations to cover the mass protests in Syria as part
of a long-standing campaign to overthrow the country’s autocratic
leader, Bashar al-Assad… Classified U.S. diplomatic cables show
that the State Department has funneled as much as $6 million to
the group since 2006 to operate the satellite channel and finance
other activities inside Syria… The U.S. money for Syrian
opposition figures began flowing under President George W. Bush after
he effectively froze political ties with Damascus in 2005.”; AFP,
“US
trains activists to evade security forces”, April 8, 2011. “The
US government, Posner said, has budgeted $50 million in the last two
years… And it has organized training sessions for 5,000 activists
in different parts of the world.”; Ron Nixon, New
York Times,
“U.S.
Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings”, April 14, 2011.
“American government-financed organizations were promoting
democracy in authoritarian Arab states… But as American
officials and others look back at the uprisings of the Arab Spring,
they are seeing that the United States’ democracy-building
campaigns played a bigger role in fomenting protests than was
previously known, with key leaders of the movements having been
trained by the Americans in campaigning, organizing through new media
tools and monitoring elections… Affiliating themselves with the
American organizations may have tainted leaders within their own
groups… some members of the group had accused… leaders of
“treason”… the group ousted the members who were complaining…”
2.)
Joseph Holliday, Institute
for the Study of War,
“The
Struggle for Syria in 2011”, December 2011.
3.)
Sibel Edmonds, BoilingFrogsPost,
“BFP
Exclusive: Syria- Secret US-NATO Training & Support Camp to Oust
Current Syrian President”, November 21, 2011. Sibel
breaks the story on the secret US-NATO base in Turkey, and further
explains its operations, to organize and expand the dissident base,
smuggle in weapons, psychological operations and information warfare,
and to funnel intelligence and military operators across the border;
Sibel Edmonds, BoilingFrogsPost,
“US
Media: Distorters of Reality & Gravediggers of Truth”,
December 3, 2011. Sibel follows up to her first story, citing
insiders in Turkey and government insiders in the US. She notes
how Iranian media has picked up her story, but not the Western
press. She asks one of her inside sources why they hadn’t
taken their information to the main-stream-media outlets first, to
which they replied that they had tried but the Western press wouldn’t
touch the story without State Department approval; Sibel
Edmonds, BoilingFrogsPost,
“War
on Syria Cover-Up Update: Who is Breaking the Blackout?”,
December 9, 2011. Sibel recounts how Turkish and Iranian media have
picked up her story, noting that US media did not have the guts to
run the story even though it was backed by credible military sources
in the US and abroad. She states that she has further been
contacted by additional credible sources, including a high-level
military official in Syria; Sibel Edmonds, BoilingFrogsPost,
“BFP
Exclusive- Developing Story: Hundreds of US-NATO Soldiers Arrive &
Begin Operations on the Jordan-Syria Border”, December 11,
2011. Sibel details how estimates of hundreds of foreign
military personnel were seen amassing near the Jordan-Syrian border,
that US forces had left Iraq and were re-routed to Jordan at a NATO
Command Center there, and that according to Jordanian reports Western
officials had requested the Jordanian King to establish a spy station
near the border for the purpose of contacting Syrian officers to
convince them to instigate a military coup; James Corbett,
CorbettReport,
“BREAKING: US
Troops Deploying on Jordan-Syria Border”, December 11, 2011.
James Corbett reports on the developments from the BoilingFrogsPost
story, conducting an interview with former Syrian journalist Nizar
Nayouf, previously imprisoned for 10 years for speaking out against
the Syrian government, who accounts how hundreds of foreign soldiers
were seen moving back and forth near the Jordanian-Syrian border;
Sibel Edmonds, BoilingFrogsPost,
“Syria
Coverage Update: BBC Reporter was detained & Prevented from
Covering US-NATO- Syrian Operations in Turkey!”, December 15,
2011. Sibel details how a BBC reporter who went to Turkey to follow
up on her story was placed under surveillance, prevented from
following the story, stopped from interviewing key personnel, and how
BBC subsequently excused the scandal.
4.)
Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Conclusion,” The Grand Chessboard:
American Primacy And It’s Geostrategic Imperatives (New
York, 1997), pg. 211.
Additional sources:
- Raven Clabough, The New American, “Possible U.S. Involvement in Covert Warfare in Syria”, March 7, 2012.
- Michel Chossudovsky, Centre for Research on Globalization, “SYRIA: Who is Behind The Protest Movement? Fabricating a Pretext for a US-NATO “Humanitarian Intervention””, May 3, 2011.
- Tony Cartalucci, Land Destroyer, “Syrian Conflict Escalates”; “It’s Official: “Arab Spring” Subversion is US Funded”; and “Syria: Intervention Inevitable”.
- Zafar
Bangash, Crescent
International,
“ISIS
takfirist: McCain-Obama’s offspring”, March 2015.
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