Washington Plans War on Syria

by Stephen Lendman
Global Research
March 13, 2012

On March 11, Assad repeated what he’s said numerous times. He’s “ready to support any honest effort to solve the situation.”

He told former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan (Ban Ki-moon’s envoy appointed with Washington’s approval) that doing so depends on accurately assessing conditions on the ground. It also requires admitting Syria’s dealing with Western-backed insurgents.

As a result, he’s obligated to protect Syrians from heavily armed gangs. Violence won’t stop until chaos, instability, and terrorism they cause ends.

Annan came to Syria on a mission. A reliable imperial tool, his one-way settlement terms involved Assad accepting Western demands.

Assad said “no political dialogue or political activity can succeed while there are armed terrorist groups operating and spreading chaos and instability.”

Annan wanted none of it. His pro-Western marching orders mandated he follow them to the letter. Assad never had a chance for honest dialogue and peaceful resolution. Washington won’t tolerate it.

Russian-Led Five-Point Conflict Resolution Plan

Over the weekend, Russia, China, and Arab League states met in Cairo. They agreed on a five-point plan. It includes:

“(1) First, to stop violence, wherever it comes from.

(2) Second, to create an impartial and free monitoring mechanism.

(3) Third, no external interference.

(4) Fourth, unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid to all Syrians.

(5) Fifth, first support for [UN and LAS Special Envoy] Kofi Annan’s mission in order to start political dialogue between the government and all opposition groups.”

Despite agreement, post-meeting comments revealed unresolved disputes.

Saudi Arabia criticized Russian and Chinese Security Council vetoes. Despite clear evidence, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani claimed:

“There are no armed gangs. The systematic killing came from the Syrian government side for many months. After that, the people were forced to defend themselves so the regime labeled them armed gangs.”

He also called the Russian and Chinese ceasefire proposal inadequate. In response, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said:

“My country has always supported people’s rights and their striving for freedom and development. This resolution has a chance to be agreed upon, provided we are not guided by the desire to support the opposition armed groups to win the battle in the cities.”

“But if we are driven by the desire to make sure there is no fighting in the cities and towns, then the relevant proposals are on the table, and we have plenty of opportunities to agree on them.”

Separately he said Assad’s confronting armed gangs with Al Qaeda members. They’re involved in violence, killings and atrocities.

On March 12, Syria’s Information Minister Adnan Mahmoud accused armed gangs of committing an “atrocious massacre against women, children and elderly citizens in Karm al-Zaytoun, and mutilating their bodies in order to put pressure to elicit international stances against Syria.”

He called Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other complicit states accomplices in willful terrorism. “We’ve grown accustomed to the bloody escalation of these terrorist groups in committing massacres, murdering citizens and attacking public and private establishments which preceeds international meetings,” he said.

He called Karm al-Zaytoun’s massacre one of many armed gangs committed. A local resident this time said ordinary people were targeted, including family members and a 75-year old man. A local woman added that insurgents rape, kill, throw bodies in streets, then film them for Al Jazeera and Saudi’s al-Arabia TV.

Al Jazeera’s War on Syria

Once a reliable news and information source, Qatar-based Al Jazeera abandoned professionalism and integrity. Like Western media scoundrels, it broadcasts propaganda, not truth and full disclosure.

Last April, its Beirut chief and popular host Ghassan Bin Jiddo resigned. Others remaining at the time criticized AJ’s biased/falsified reporting, especially on Libya, Bahrain, Syria, and elsewhere in the region.

Last September, top AJ executive Wadah Khanfar quit after eight years heading its satellite news operation. In 2003, he became managing director, then later made director general.

Qatar royal family member Sheikh Hamad Ben Jassem Al-Thani replaced him. He formerly chaired its board with veto power over program content. Now directing programming assures compromised coverage lacking credibility. AJ’s fall from grace hit bottom. Khanfar had enough and quit. He wasn’t the last to go.

On March 12, Russia Today said AJ again lost staff over biased reporting. Beirut staff members resigned over falsified Syria reporting.

Last week, managing director Hassan Shaaban, correspondent Ali Hashem, and a producer quit. The Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar said Hashem left because AJ “refused to show photos he had taken of armed fighters clashing with the Syrian army in Wadi Khaled.”

Instead, he was criticized for disloyalty. Hashem was also furious over AJ’s refusal to cover regime instigated Bahraini violence. At the same time, it falsified reports on Assad. “In Bahrain,” he said, “we were seeing pictures of a people being butchered by the ‘Gulf’s oppression machine,’ and for Al Jazeera, silence was the name of the game.”

Beirut’s producer left because AJ wouldn’t cover Syria’s overwhelmingly approved constitutional reform referendum. Former AJ correspondent Afshin Tattansi said it’s now a pro-Western tool no different from BBC and Western media. The way it covers Syria and most else is totally one-sided.

Russia and China Oppose Foreign Intervention

Both countries strongly oppose replicating Libya’s model in Syria. Their vetos and resolute stand so far prevented Washington’s interventionist scheme succeeding, but for how long. Regime change by any means is planned, including war.

Ominous signs suggest it. Paris-based Syrian National Council (SNC) head Burhan Ghalioun calls no solution possible without military intervention.

Washington, Britain, France, Israel, and rogue Arab states want it. For months, they’ve recruited, funded, armed and trained rogue killer gangs. They’ve destabilized Syria to facilitate Western intervention. Annan’s mission was more theater than honest conflict resolution diplomacy.

Like Ban-Ki-moon, his entire UN Secretary-General tenure reflected betrayal and failure. An imperial tool, he never achieved peace or worked for it.

He didn’t condemn or act against Washington’s devastating Iraqi economic sanctions. They killed 1.5 million or more defenseless men, women and children. Silence betrayed his complicity.

He showed it later in Washington’s 2003 war, its 2001 Afghan one, and Israel’s Palestinian occupation and crimes against humanity.

For a decade (January 1996 through December 2006) go-along position supported imperial Washington. His Syria mission mandated reinventing his earlier role. Instead of seeking peaceful resolution, he subverted it. As a result, he came, dialogued, and left with no deal because what he offered no responsible leader would accept.

His one-way terms demanded Assad “stop the killing and the misery and the abuse that is going on today and then give time for a political settlement.” He ended talks telling Assad the ball’s in his court. He also said he’ll try to unite opposition against him. Some diplomat.

On Sunday, he flew to Qatar to meet its pro-Western rogue emir (Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani), another leader complicit in Western war crimes. He actively supported NATO’s Libya killing machine. He’s now involved in stoking Syrian violence and instability. It involves targeted assassinations, killing civilians, and wrongly blaming Assad.

He, Russia, China, and others want peaceful conflict resolution. Washington plans military intervention. On March 10, Washington Post writer Karen DeYoung headlined, “Talk of military aid rises as hopes fade for peaceful Syria resolution,” saying:

Washington and key allies began discussing “potential military involvement in Syria….Possibilities include directly arming opposition forces (of course, ongoing for many months), sending troops to guard a humanitarian corridor or ‘safe zone’ for the rebels (effectively a ground-based no-fly zone assuring war), or an air assault on Syrian air defenses, according to (US) officials and other” anti-Assad nations.

In other words, after failing to get Security Council approval, circumventing it’s now planned to accomplish the same thing belligerently.

DeYoung said governments involved in discussions “remain deeply divided over the scope of any intervention, how, when it would happen, and who would participate.”

Many question its legitimacy. Of course, it has none, nor did NATO’s Libya intervention. So what hope has Syria to prevent Washington’s regime change plans by any means, and perhaps intent to go it alone if willing allies aren’t found or enough of them.

On March 8, Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul expressed concern about intervention “from outside the region,” but remains firmly allied with Western regime change plans.

Syria’s state media SANA said the nation’s Italy-based expat community firmly rejects foreign intervention. It supports Assad’s reform process.

“Under the motto – No to Foreign Interference, No to War and Yes to Peace….No to Armed Gangs….No to Fabricated Media and No to Economic Siege on the Syrian People – the Syrian and Arab communities in Italy staged a huge mass rally in the center of the Italian capital, Rome, on Sunday.”

Participants called for denouncing anti-Assad goals through killings, terror tactics, and efforts to destabilize and destroy Syria.

On March 8, huge pro-Assad crowds massed in Damascus’ Bahart Square. Participants rejected all forms of foreign interference. So do nonviolent anti-Assad protesters.

Damascus participants chanted national songs, held Syrian flags and banners, and opposed all schemes undermining Syria’s stability, independence and dignity.

International law prohibits interfering in other countries’ internal affairs. Among others, the 1933 Montevideo Convention of Rights and Duties is very explicit.

Article 8 says “No state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another.”

Under Article 10, differences between states “should be settled by recognized pacific methods.”

Article 11 calls sovereign state territory “inviolable….”

The UN Charter also mandates state sovereignty, equality among all nations, non-interference in their domestic affairs, self-determination, non-interference in other states’ internal affairs, settling disputes peacefully, and avoiding threats or force.

Washington spurns international and US law. As a result, independent states like Syria are vulnerable. Months of externally-generated violence continues.

Replacing its independent regime with a pro-Western one is planned. If current methods fail, expect war. It’s America’s last resort and sometimes its preferred one.

Humanity wonders who’s next and whether rogue US policies may engulf the world in flames and destroy it. Maybe it’s the only way Washington’s killing machine can be stopped. Nothing else so far worked.

Given America run by warmongering zealots spurning peace, be scared. Be very scared.

Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net .

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/ .
Stephen Lendman is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Stephen Lendman

[hat tip: Infowars]

March 13, 2012 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, sovereignty, Syria, tyranny, war | 2 Comments

The Bloody Road to Damascus

Boiling Frogs
March 11, 2012

The Triple Alliance’s War on a Sovereign State

By James PetrasThere is clear and overwhelming evidence that the uprising to overthrow President Assad of Syria is a violent, power grab led by foreign-supported fighters who have killed and wounded thousands of Syrian soldiers, police and civilians, partisans of the government and its peaceful opposition.

The outrage expressed by politicians in the West and Gulf State and in the mass media, about the ‘killing of peaceful Syrian citizens protesting injustice’ is cynically designed to cover up the documented reports of violent seizure of neighborhoods, villages and towns by armed bands, brandishing machine guns and planting road-side bombs.

The assault on Syria is backed by foreign funds, arms and training. Due to a lack of domestic support, however, to be successful, direct foreign military intervention will be necessary. For this reason a huge propaganda and diplomatic campaign has been mounted to demonize the legitimate Syrian government. The goal is to impose a puppet regime and strengthen Western imperial control in the Middle East. In the short run, this will further isolate Iran in preparation for a military attack by Israel and the US and, in the long run, it eliminates another independent secular regime friendly to China and Russia.

In order to mobilize world support behind this Western, Israeli and Gulf State-funded power grab, several propaganda ploys have been used to justify another blatant violation of a country’s sovereignty after their successful destruction of the secular governments of Iraq and Libya.

The Larger Context: Serial Aggression

The current Western campaign against the independent Assad regime in Syria is part of a series of attacks against pro-democracy movements and independent regimes from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. The imperial-militarist response to the Egyptian democracy movement that overthrew the Mubarak dictatorship was to back the military junta’s seizure of power and murderous campaign to jail, torture and assassinate over 10,000 pro-democracy protestors.

Faced with similar mass democratic movements in the Arab world, the Western-backed Gulf autocratic dictators crushed their respective uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The assaults extended to the secular government in Libya where NATO powers launched a massive air and sea bombardment in support of armed bands of mercenaries thereby destroying Libya’s economy and civil society. The unleashing of armed gangster-mercenaries led to the savaging of urban life in Libya and devastation in the countryside. The NATO powers eliminated the secular regime of Colonel Gadhafi and along with having him murdered and mutilated by its mercenaries.Nato oversaw the wounding, imprisonment, torture and elimination of tens of thousands of civilian Gadhafi supporters and government workers.NATO backed the puppet regime as it embarked on a bloody pogrom against Libyan citizens of sub-Saharan African ancestry as well a sub-Sahara African immigrant workers – groups who had benefited from Gadhafi’s generous social programs. The imperial policy of ruin and rule in Libya serves as “the model” for Syria: Creating the conditions for a mass uprising led by Muslim fundamentalists, funded and trained by Western and Gulf State mercenaries.

The Bloody Road from Damascus to Teheran

According to the State Department ‘The road to Teheran passes through Damascus’: The strategic goal of NATO is to destroy Iran’s principal ally in the Middle East; for the Gulf absolutist monarchies the purpose is to replace a secular republic with a vassal theocratic dictatorship; for the Turkish government the purpose is to foster a regime amenable to the dictates of Ankara’s version of Islamic capitalism; for Al Qaeda and allied Salafi and Wahabi fundamentalists a theocratic Sunni regime, cleansed of secular Syrians, Alevis and Christians, will serve as a trampoline for projecting power in the Islamic world; and for Israel a blood-drenched divided Syria will further ensure its regional hegemony. It was not without prophetic foresight that the uber-Zionist US Senator Joseph Lieberman demanded days after the ‘Al Queda’ attack of September 11, 2001: “First we must go after Iran, Iraq and Syria” before considering the actual authors of the deed.

The armed anti-Syrian forces reflect a variety of conflicting political perspectives united only by their common hatred of the independent secular, nationalist regime which has governed the complex, multi-ethnic Syrian society for decades. The war against Syria is the principle launching pad for a further resurgence of Western militarism extending from North Africa to the Persian Gulf, buttressed by a systematic propaganda campaign proclaiming NATO’s democratic, humanitarian and ‘civilizing’ mission on behalf of the Syrian people.

The Road to Damascus is Paved with Lies

An objective analysis of the political and social composition of the principle armed combatants in Syria refutes any claim that the uprising is in pursuit of democracy for the people of that country. Authoritarian fundamentalist fighters form the backbone of the uprising. The Gulf States financing these brutal thugs are themselves absolutist monarchies. The West, after having foisted a brutal gangster regime on the people of Libya, can make no claim of ‘humanitarian intervention’.

The armed groups infiltrate towns and use population centers as shields from which they launch their attacks on government forces. In the process they force thousands of citizens from their homes, stores and offices which they use as military outposts. The destruction of the neighborhood of Baba Amr in Homs is a classic case of armed gangs using civilians as shields and as propaganda fodder in demonizing the government.

These armed mercenaries have no national credibility with the mass of Syrian people. One of their main propaganda mills is located in the heart of London, the so-called “Syrian Human Rights Observatory” where it coordinates closely with British intelligence turning out lurid atrocity stories to whip up sentiment in favor of a NATO intervention. The kings and emirs of the Gulf States bankroll these fighters. Turkey provides military bases and controls the cross-border flow of arms and the movement of the leaders of the so-called “Free Syrian Army”. The US, France and England provide the arms, training and diplomatic cover. Foreign jihadist-fundamentalists, including Al Qaeda fighters from Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, have entered the conflict. This is no “civil war”. This is an international conflict pitting an unholy triple alliance of NATO imperialists, Gulf State despots and Muslim fundamentalists against an independent secular nationalist regime. The foreign origin of the weapons, propaganda machinery and mercenary fighters reveals the sinister imperial, ‘multi-national’ character of the conflict. Ultimately the violent uprising against the Syrian state represents a systematic imperialist campaign to overthrow an ally of Iran, Russia and China, even at the cost of destroying Syria’s economy and civil society, fragmenting the country and unleashing enduring sectarian wars of extermination against the Alevi and Christian minorities, as well as secular government supporters.

The killings and mass flight of refugees is not the result of gratuitous violence committed by a blood thirsty Syrian state. The Western backed militias have seized neighborhoods by force of arms, destroyed oil pipelines, sabotaged transportation and bombed government buildings. In the course of their attacks they have disrupted basic services critical to the Syrian people including education, access to medical care, security, water, electricity and transportation. As such, they bear most of the responsibility for this “humanitarian disaster”, (which their imperial allies and UN officials blame on Syrian security and armed forces). The Syrian security forces are fighting to preserve the national independence of a secular state, while the armed opposition commits violence on behalf of their foreign pay-masters – in Washington, Riyadh, Tel Aviv, Ankara and London.

Conclusions

The Assad regime’s referendum last month drew millions of Syrian voters in defiance of Western imperialist threats and terrorist calls for a boycott. This clearly indicated that a majority of Syrians prefer a peaceful, negotiated settlement and reject mercenary violence. The Western-backed Syrian National Council and the Turkish and Gulf States-armed “Free Syrian Army” flatly rejected Russian and Chinese calls for an open dialogue and negotiations which the Assad regime has accepted. NATO and Gulf State dictatorships are pushing their proxies to pursue violent “regime change”, a policy which already has caused the death of thousands of Syrians. US and European economic sanctions are designed to wreck the Syrian economy, in the expectation that acute deprivation will drive an impoverished population into the arms of their violent proxies. In a repeat of the Libya scenario, NATO proposes to “liberate” the Syrian people by destroying their economy, civil society and secular state.

A Western military victory in Syria will merely feed the rising frenzy of militarism. It will encourage the West, Riyadh and Israel to provoke a new civil war in Lebanon. After demolishing Syria, the Washington-EU-Riyadh-Tel Aviv axes will move on to a far bloodier confrontation with Iran.

The horrific destruction of Iraq, followed by Libya’s post-war collapse provides a terrifying template of what is in store for the people of Syria: A precipitous collapse of their living standards, the fragmentation of their country, ethnic cleansing, rule by sectarian and fundamentalist gangs, and total insecurity of life and property.

Just as the “left” and “progressives” declared the brutal savaging of Libya to be the “revolutionary struggle of insurgent democrats” and then walked away, washing their hands of the bloody aftermath of ethnic violence against black Libyans, they repeat the same calls for military intervention against Syria. The same liberals, progressives, socialists and Marxists who are calling on the West to intervene in Syria’s “humanitarian crises” from their cafes and offices in Manhattan and Paris, will lose all interest in the bloody orgy of their victorious mercenaries after Damascus, Aleppo and other Syrian cities have been bombed by NATO into submission.

# # # #Professor James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has a long history of commitment to social justice, working in particular with the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement for 11 years. He writes a monthly column for the Mexican newspaper, La Jornada, and previously, for the Spanish daily, El Mundo. Dr. Petras received his B.A. from Boston University and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. You can visit his website here.

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March 13, 2012 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, sovereignty, Syria, tyranny, war | Leave a comment