I don’t often choose to write in the first person, but the shit that’s been pouring from the mouths of western politicians, over Syria in general and Aleppo in particular, needs to be confronted. Don’t think for one moment this means I don’t consider Aleppo, or Syria more generally, anything less than a disaster zone for those innocents trapped there by the Sunni rebels who are using them as human shields. The suffering of those people is beyond diabolical.
According to western politicians, Assad is guilty of war crimes and should be brought to justice. I would like to remind them of Iraq in general, and Fallujah in particular. Fallujah was virtually razed to the ground by U.S. forces using white phosphorus and depleted uranium munitions. This has resulted in the most abominable birth defects – there’s overwhelming evidence of a multitude of them despite the whitewash of a WHO ‘investigation’ that concluded:
“The rates for spontaneous abortion, stillbirths and congenital birth defects found in the study are consistent with or even lower than international estimates. The study provides no clear evidence to suggest an unusually high rate of congenital birth defects in Iraq.”[1]
That’s very strange considering other investigations, carried out by a number of non-governmental organizations, have found a monumental spike in birth defects following the razing of Fallujah in April 2004 and again in November 2004.
As noted by The Independent newspaper in July 2010:
Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study….Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that “to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened”.
US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions…Dr Busby says that while he cannot identify the type of armaments used by the Marines, the extent of genetic damage suffered by inhabitants suggests the use of uranium in some form. He said: “My guess is that they used a new weapon against buildings to break through walls and kill those inside.” [2]
The American military isn’t good at winning the hearts and minds of those it conquers:
“You have to understand the Arab mind,” one company commander told the New York Times, displaying all the self-assurance of Douglas MacArthur discoursing on Orientals in 1945. “The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face.” Far from representing the views of a few underlings, such notions penetrated into the upper echelons of the American command. In their book “Cobra II,” Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor offer this ugly comment from a senior officer: “The only thing these sand niggers understand is force and I’m about to introduce them to it.”[3]
The latter quote was from a pep-talk given to his troops by a commander (who’s name has been carefully extricated from all reports) just prior to one of the assaults on Fallujah.
The newly-invested British Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, has suggested that Russia may be guilty of a war crime IF it bombed an aid convoy near Aleppo recently. I wonder if he’d be so quick to condemn the U.S. if it’s ever revealed those bombs came from one of the Pentagon’s aircraft? There’s no evidence it was Russia. The American government is quick to lay the blame elsewhere, and British politicians are equally quick to pick it up and run with it. I might remind Boris Johnson that the British military were also involved at Fallujah, as well as the Americans. Better not to be the pot that calls the kettle – especially if the kettle turns out to be a little less grimy than the pot.
Western media would have us all believe the civil war in Syria is an uprising against the regime of Bashar al-Assad by Syrian citizens fed up with the regime’s dictatorial tactics and desperate for democracy. They’ve said similar about Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and almost every other Middle Eastern nation in which the United States, or NATO (same thing) have interfered over the past four decades. It simply isn’t true.
The U.S. government uses the guise of ‘spreading democracy’ to attempt subjugation of nations that refuse to bow to Western political will. In every case since its double-edged intervention in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s (the deliberate downing of a civilian airliner – Iranian Flight 655 – was another war crime that went unpunished***) it has failed to do so.
Note that the U.S. only picks on nations with substantially less military power than itself. Yet they never win in any conflict. Iraq is a quagmire, as are all the other nations mentioned above. The reason is simple: all U.S. administrations since Gerald Ford (and possibly before that) have failed to take the Muslim religion into account before setting out on some wild military enterprise, supposedly to install democracy in place of dictatorship.
America’s political advisers are expected to have at least a degree of intelligence and common sense, yet totally ignore the blatantly obvious religious fact that the Koran categorises all non-Muslims as infidels. Are Arab Muslims likely to allow infidels into their country, telling them how to run it and how to be democratic? Study what has happened in Iraq, Libya, etc., and the answer is painfully obvious. How many lives has it cost? How many more will be lost, families shattered, children orphaned, before U.S. administrations finally see the obvious?
Still the U.S., together with its NATO puppets, entangles itself in the same old conflicts. The Syrian civil war is the latest venture doomed to failure, but Hell, it’s great for the profits of the U.S. military-industrial complex. Never mind the continuing slaughter of the innocent. We’ll just call it ‘collateral damage’. Think of the profits for the body-bag manufacturers.
Prior to the civil war Syria was predominantly Sunni (74%), with a minority Shia population (14%) and an even smaller contingent of a sect known as Alawites(11%) whose beliefs and traditions are more Christian in style, though they are closer to Shia Islam than Sunni. The ruling family of Assad are Alawites, which has caused continuous intermittent rebellion by the Sunni majority since Bashar’s father, Hafez, took power as president in 1971.
The conflict in Syria is described by Western media as ‘rebels’ versus the government of Bashar al-Assad. This is not strictly true. Certainly, there’s a large Sunni faction, some Shias and even certain Alawites, who want regime change (the latter due mainly to the sons and husbands they’ve lost to the conflict). Assad’s not considered a true Muslim, but ‘ordinary’ Syrians who make up the bulk of the populace i.e. non-‘rebels’ strongly support Assad, as seen in this poll from December 2015:
[4]
This is hardly the impression put out by Western media organizations, and in particular those of the United States. Syria under the Assad regime is a secular country with civil and criminal courts. There are religious courts but these only hear personal disputes, or family matters appertaining to the particular religion of those involved. The present civil war is an attempt by jihadists to overthrow the regime and introduce Sharia law with its accompanying restrictive practises and Islamic court system.
The war began as a series of uprisings and demonstrations which quickly metamorphosed into a more serious conflagration, which Assad failed to quell despite making concessions to the ‘rebels’. At first, various religious factions joined forces, but with so many differing agendas splits resulted in infighting. The result was several groups, mainly Sunnis, fighting their individual battles against Assad’s forces, a situation Islamic State exploited to muscle-in and control.
Assad knew if his regime was toppled Syria would follow Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq into the mire of failed states with no rule of law and ISIS would take control. He was forced to fight the rebels, who used guerrilla tactics with the populace as human shields. Inevitably, there would be heavy casualties, and there were. Fortunately, he had backing from alliances forged years ago with Russia and Iran, otherwise it’s unlikely he would have survived. Without Russia, in particular, the United States would have gone in and taken out Assad, as they did with Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Gaddafi in Libya. The result would have been catastrophic for the Syrian people, just as it has been in America’s other ‘liberated’ nations.
Whatever you may think of Arab dictators it would seem that only strong-handed leadership can keep a nation together when powerful religious factions are constantly vying to pull it apart. In Iraq under Hussein, Sunni and Shia lived in harmony, inter-married, and had mixed families. In Libya under Gaddafi there was free healthcare, education, and subsidised housing and transport.
Regime change in Syria will not solve any problems. It’s time western governments realised that fact and stopped using the farce of ‘spreading democracy’ as a means of advancing their own hidden agendas. It doesn’t work and only results in misery and suffering for many thousands of people.
Even as I write this John Kerry, with his puppet Boris Johnson at his side, is threatening sanctions against Syria and Russia if they don’t come to heel. Kerry is calling it, “the largest of humanitarian disasters,” and “crimes against humanity.”
Hypocrisy is alive and well and John Kerry is its spokesperson.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has just stated she’s in favour of a no-fly zone over Syria. Presumably this means she’s prepared to shoot down Russian aircraft, an act that could likely result in a nuclear WW3.
We are in the grip of mad, power-crazed, people. American arrogance leads it to believe it can take on Russia and win. The only losers will be us all.
***They called it an “accident.” The story put out by the U.S. government was that on July 3rd 1988 the American cruiser, USS Vincennes patrolling the Persian Gulf and in international waters, shot down an Iranian airliner, an Airbus 300 with 290 passengers and crew aboard. It was flying outside of the designated commercial aircraft corridor and appeared to be in descent on an “attack profile.” The ship’s captain, Will Rogers III, identified the aircraft as an Iranian F-14 fighter and gave the order to open fire.
In point of fact, however, the American version of events consisted mostly of untruths. The Vincennes was actually sailing inside Iranian territorial waters, thereby violating international law. Transiting the Gulf from Bandar Abbas, Iran, to Dubai on a regularly scheduled flight, the Airbus was flying well within its assigned flight path. Most important, rather than descending, the aircraft was gaining altitude. In short, the assertion that Iran Air 655 had been closing on the Vincennes and thereby posing a threat was outright wrong…Vice-President George H W Bush made his own position [over the incident] clear: He wasn’t about to send flowers to any memorial service. “I will never apologize for the United States – I don’t care what the facts are,” he remarked, “I’m not an apologize-for-America kinda guy.” [5]
The most likely explanation is that the aircraft was deliberately targeted in an attempt to ‘persuade’ Iran to end the war with Iraq. Three weeks later, Khomeini agreed to a ceasefire.
[1] “How the World Health Organisation covered up Iraq’s nuclear nightmare” Guardian, October 13th 2013
[2] “Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah ‘worse than Hiroshima'” Independent, July 24th 2010
[3] “What’s an Iraqi Life Worth?” Washington Post, July 9th 2006
[4] “Bashar Al-Assad Has More Popular Support than the Western-Backed “Opposition”: Poll”, Global Research, December 11th 2015
[5] Excerpt from, “America’s War for the Greater Middle East – A Military History,” Pages 105-106, Andrew J. Bacevich
