[News] Putting Syria into some perspective

[Anti-Imperialist News]

The Anti-Empire Report
http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer104.html

April 6th, 2012
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org
Putting Syria into some perspective

The Holy Triumvirate — The United States, NATO, 
and the European Union — or an approved segment 
thereof, can usually get what they want. They 
wanted Saddam Hussein out, and soon he was 
swinging from a rope. They wanted the Taliban 
ousted from power, and, using overwhelming force, 
that was achieved rather quickly. They wanted 
Moammar Gaddafi's rule to come to an end, and 
before very long he suffered a horrible death. 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide was democratically 
elected, but this black man who didn't know his 
place was sent into distant exile by the United 
States and France in 2004. Iraq and Libya were 
the two most modern, educated and secular states 
in the Middle East; now all four of these 
countries could qualify as failed states.

These are some of the examples from the past 
decade of how the Holy Triumvirate recognizes no 
higher power and believes, literally, that they 
can do whatever they want in the world, to 
whomever they want, for as long as they want, and 
call it whatever they want, like "humanitarian 
intervention". The 19th- and 20th-century 
colonialist-imperialist mentality is alive and well in the West.

Next on their agenda: the removal of Bashar 
al-Assad of Syria. As with Gaddafi, the ground is 
being laid with continual news reports — from CNN 
to al Jazeera — of Assad's alleged barbarity, 
presented as both uncompromising and unprovoked. 
After months of this media onslaught who can 
doubt that what's happening in Syria is yet 
another of those cherished Arab Spring "popular 
uprisings" against a "brutal dictator" who must 
be overthrown? And that the Assad government is 
overwhelmingly the cause of the violence.

Assad actually appears to have a large measure of 
popularity, not only in Syria, but elsewhere in 
the Middle East. This includes not just fellow 
Alawites, but Syria's two million Christians and 
no small number of Sunnis. Gaddafi had at least 
as much support in Libya and elsewhere in Africa. 
The difference between the two cases, at least so 
far, is that the Holy Triumvirate bombed and 
machine-gunned Libya daily for seven months, 
unceasingly, crushing the pro-government forces, 
as well as Gaddafi himself, and effecting the 
Triumvirate's treasured "regime change". Now, 
rampant chaos, anarchy, looting and shooting, 
revenge murders, tribal war, militia war, 
religious war, civil war, the most awful racism 
against the black population, loss of their 
cherished welfare state, and possible 
dismemberment of the country into several 
mini-states are the new daily life for the Libyan 
people. The capital city of Tripoli is "wallowing 
in four months of uncollected garbage" because 
the landfill is controlled by a faction that 
doesn't want the trash of another faction.1 Just 
imagine what has happened to the country's 
infrastructure. This may be what Syria has to 
look forward to if the Triumvirate gets its way, 
although the Masters of the Universe undoubtedly 
believe that the people of Libya should be 
grateful to them for their "liberation".

As to the current violence in Syria, we must 
consider the numerous reports of forces providing 
military support to the Syrian rebels — the UK, 
France, the US, Turkey, Israel, Qatar, the Gulf 
states, and everyone's favorite champion of 
freedom and democracy, Saudi Arabia; with Syria 
claiming to have captured some 14 French 
soldiers; plus individual jihadists and 
mercenaries from Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, et 
al, joining the anti-government forces, their 
number including al-Qaeda veterans of Iraq and 
Afghanistan who are likely behind the car bombs 
in an attempt to create chaos and destabilize the 
country. This may mark the third time the United 
States has been on the same side as al-Qaeda, adding to Afghanistan and Libya.

Stratfor, the private and conservative American 
intelligence firm with high-level connections, 
reported that "most of the opposition's more 
serious claims have turned out to be grossly 
exaggerated or simply untrue." Opposition groups 
including the Syrian National Council, the Free 
Syrian Army and the London-based Syrian 
Observatory for Human Rights began disseminating 
"claims that regime forces besieged Homs and 
imposed a 72-hour deadline for Syrian defectors 
to surrender themselves and their weapons or face 
a potential massacre." That news made 
international headlines. Stratfor's 
investigation, however, found "no signs of a 
massacre," and declared that "opposition forces 
have an interest in portraying an impending 
massacre, hoping to mimic the conditions that 
propelled a foreign military intervention in 
Libya." Stratfor added that any suggestions of 
massacres are unlikely because the Syrian "regime 
has calibrated its crackdowns to avoid just such 
a scenario. Regime forces have been careful to 
avoid the high casualty numbers that could lead 
to an intervention based on humanitarian grounds."2

Reva Bhalla, Stratfor's Director of Analysis, 
reported in a December 2011 email on a meeting 
she attended at the Pentagon about Syria: "After 
a couple hours of talking, they said without 
saying that SOF [Special Operation Forces] teams 
(presumably from US, UK, France, Jordan, Turkey) 
are already on the ground focused on recce 
[reconnaissance] missions and training opposition 
forces." We know of Bhalla's comments thanks to 
the 5 million Stratfor emails obtained by the 
Internet hacker group Anonymous in December and passed on to Wikileaks.3

Human Rights Watch has reported that both Syrian 
government security forces and Syria's armed 
rebels have committed serious human rights 
abuses, including kidnapings, torture, and 
executions. But only the Holy Triumvirate can get 
away with the sanctions they love to impose. 
Assad's wife is now banned from traveling to EU 
countries and any assets she may have there are 
frozen. Same for Assad's mother, sister and 
sister-in-law, as well as eight of his government 
ministers. Assad himself received the same 
treatment last May.4 Because the Triumvirate can.

On March 25, the US and Turkish governments 
announced that they were discussing sending 
non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition, implying 
quite clearly that until then they had not been 
engaged in such activity.5 But according to a US 
embassy cable, revealed by Wikileaks, since at 
least 2006 the United States has been funding 
political opposition groups in Syria as well as 
the London-based satellite TV channel, Barada TV, 
run by Syrian exiles, that beams anti-government 
programming into the country. The cable further 
stated that Syrian authorities "would undoubtedly 
view any U.S. funds going to illegal political 
groups as tantamount to supporting regime change."

Regime change in Syria has been on the 
neo-conservative wish list since at least 2002 
when John Bolton, Undersecretary of State under 
George W. Bush, came up with a project to 
simultaneously break up Libya and Syria. He 
called the two states along with Cuba "The Axis 
Of Evil". On a FOX News appearance in 2011 Bolton 
said that the United States should have 
overthrown the Syrian government right after they 
overthrew Saddam Hussein. Amongst Syria's crimes 
have been their close relations with Iran, 
Hezbollah (in Lebanon), the Palestinian 
resistance, and Russia, and their failure to 
conclude a peace treaty with Israel, unlike 
Jordan and Egypt; all this constituting evidence 
to the Holy Triumvirate of Syria, like Aristide, being "uppity".

The clinical megalomania of the Holy Triumvirate 
can scarcely be exaggerated. And never prosecuted.

A closing word from Cui Tiankai, Chinese vice 
foreign minister for United States affairs:

     The US has the strongest military in the 
world and spends more than any other country. But 
the US always feels unsafe or insecure about 
other countries. ... I suggest the United States 
spend more time thinking about how to make other 
countries feel less worried about the United States.6

President Obama's accomplishments

Last month, Alan S. Hoffman, an American 
professor from Washington University in St. 
Louis, was forbidden by the US Treasury 
Department to travel to Cuba to give classes in a course on biomaterials.7

At the same time, the State Department refused to 
grant two Cuban diplomats in Washington, DC 
permission to travel to New York City to speak at 
The Left Forum, the largest annual gathering of 
the left in the United States, which this year attracted over 5,000 people.8

The State Department has also been occupied 
recently with preventing Cuba from being invited 
to the Summit of the Americas in Colombia in April.9

And that's just the past month.

I mention all this to keep in mind the next time 
President Obama or one of his supporters lists US 
relations with Cuba as one of his accomplishments.

And I still cannot go to Cuba legally.

Another claim the Obamabots are fond of making to 
defend their man is that he's abolished torture. 
That sounds very nice, but there's no good reason 
to accept it at face value. Shortly after Obama's 
inauguration, both he and Leon Panetta, the new 
Director of the CIA, explicitly stated that 
"rendition" was not being ended. As the Los 
Angeles Times reported: "Under executive orders 
issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has 
authority to carry out what are known as 
renditions, secret abductions and transfers of 
prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States."10

The English translation of "cooperate" is 
"torture". Rendition is equal to torture. There 
was no other reason to take prisoners to 
Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, 
Somalia, Kosovo, or the Indian Ocean island of 
Diego Garcia, to name some of the known torture 
centers frequented by the home of the brave. 
Kosovo and Diego Garcia — both of which house 
very large and secretive American military bases 
— if not some of the other locations, may well 
still be open for torture business. The same for 
Guantánamo. Moreover, the executive order 
concerning torture, issued January 22, 2009 — 
"Executive Order 13491 — Ensuring Lawful 
Interrogations" — leaves loopholes, such as being 
applicable only "in any armed conflict". Thus, 
torture by Americans outside environments of 
"armed conflict", which is where much torture in 
the world happens anyway, is not prohibited. And 
what about torture in a "counter-terrorism" environment?

One of Mr. Obama's orders required the CIA to use 
only the interrogation methods outlined in a 
revised Army Field Manual. However, using the 
Army Field Manual as a guide to prisoner 
treatment and interrogation still allows solitary 
confinement, perceptual or sensory deprivation, 
sleep deprivation, the induction of fear and 
hopelessness, mind-altering drugs, environmental 
manipulation such as temperature and perhaps 
noise, and possibly stress positions and sensory overload.

After Panetta was questioned by a Senate panel, 
the New York Times wrote that he had "left open 
the possibility that the agency could seek 
permission to use interrogation methods more 
aggressive than the limited menu that President 
Obama authorized under new rules ... Mr. Panetta 
also said the agency would continue the Bush 
administration practice of 'rendition' — picking 
terrorism suspects off the street and sending 
them to a third country. But he said the agency 
would refuse to deliver a suspect into the hands 
of a country known for torture or other actions 
"that violate our human values."11

Just as no one in the Bush and Obama 
administrations has been punished in any way for 
war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and the other 
countries they waged illegal war against, no one 
has been punished for torture. And, it could be 
added, no American bankster has been punished for 
their indispensable role in the world-wide 
financial torture. What a marvelously forgiving 
land is America. This, however, does not apply to 
Julian Assange and Bradley Manning.

In the last days of the Bush White House, Michael 
Ratner, professor at Columbia Law School and 
former president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, pointed out:

     The only way to prevent this from happening 
again is to make sure that those who were 
responsible for the torture program pay the price 
for it. I don't see how we regain our moral 
stature by allowing those who were intimately 
involved in the torture programs to simply walk 
off the stage and lead lives where they are not held accountable.12

I'd like at this point to remind my dear readers 
of the words of the "Convention Against Torture 
and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment 
or Punishment", which was drafted by the United 
Nations in 1984, came into force in 1987, and 
ratified by the United States in 1994. Article 2, 
section 2 of the Convention states: "No 
exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a 
state of war or a threat of war, internal 
political instability or any other public 
emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

Such marvelously clear, unequivocal, and 
principled language, to set a single standard for 
a world that makes it increasingly difficult for 
one to feel proud of humanity. We cannot slide back.
Joseph Biden

 From a document found at Osama bin Laden's 
compound in Pakistan after his assassination last 
May: A call to kill President Obama because 
"Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him 
automatically will make Biden take over the 
presidency. ... Biden is totally unprepared for 
that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis.13

So ... it would appear that the man America loved 
to hate and fear was no more knowledgeable of how 
United States foreign policy works than is the 
average American. What difference in the War on 
Terror — for better or for worse — against the 
likes of bin Laden and his al Qaeda followers 
could there have been over the past three years 
if Joe Biden had been the president? Biden was an 
outspoken supporter of the war against Iraq and 
is every bit the pro-Israel fanatic that Obama 
is. In his 35 years in the US Senate Biden avidly 
supported every American war of aggression 
including the attacks on Grenada in 1983, Panama 
in 1989, Iraq in 1991, Yugoslavia in 1999 and 
Afghanistan in 2001. Whatever was Osama bin Laden thinking?

And whatever was Joe Biden thinking when he 
recently said the following after hosting China's 
presumptive next leader Xi Jinping in a visit to the United States?

America holds at least one key economic advantage 
over China. Because China's authoritarian 
government represses its own citizens, they don't 
think freely or innovate. "Why have they not 
become [one of] the most innovative countries in 
the world? Why is there a need to steal our 
intellectual property? Why is there a need to 
have a business hand over its trade secrets to 
have access to a market of a billion, three 
hundred million people? Because they're not 
innovating." Noting that China and similar 
countries produce many engineers and scientists 
but few innovators, Biden said, "It's impossible 
to think different in a country where you can't 
speak freely. It's impossible to think different 
when you have to worry what you put on the 
Internet will either be confiscated or you will 
be arrested. It's impossible to think different 
where orthodoxy reigns. That's why we remain the 
most innovative country in the world."14

Holy Cold War, Batman! This is exactly the kind 
of stuff we were told about the Soviet Union. For 
years and years. For decades. Then came Sputnik, 
the first artificial satellite to be put into 
Earth's orbit. It was launched into an Earth 
orbit by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957. The 
unanticipated announcement of Sputnik 1's success 
precipitated the Sputnik crisis in the United 
States and ignited the Space Race. The USSR's 
launch of Sputnik spurred the United States to 
create the Advanced Research Projects Agency to 
regain a technological lead. Not only did the 
launch of Sputnik spur America to action in the 
space race, it also led directly to the creation of NASA. 15
Notes

     Washington Post, April 1, 2012 ?
     Huffington Post, December 19, 2011?
     See the document on WikiLeaks ?
     Washington Post, March 24, 2012?
     Ibid., March 26, 2012 ?
     Ibid., January 10, 2012 ?
     Prensa Latina (Cuba), March 18, 2012 ?
     See the video description on Cuba's UN Ambassador at Left Forum '12?
     BBC News, "Ecuador to boycott Americas 
summit over Cuba exclusion", April 3, 2012?
     Los Angeles Times, February 1, 2009 ?
     New York Times, February 6, 2009 ?
     Associated Press, November 17, 2008 ?
     Washington Post, March 16, 2012 ?
     Ibid., March 1, 2012 ?
     Wikipedia entry for Sputnik 1 ?



–

William Blum is the author of:

     Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
     Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
     West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
     Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed 
copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

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