Freedom of Speech?

FINIAN CUNNINGHAM | 13.10.2016 | OPINION

West is Gunning for Russian Media Ban

It would be monumental, but Western states seem to be moving, ineluctably, towards banning Russian news media channels from satellite platforms and the internet. That outcome – albeit with enormous ethical and political implications – seems to be a logical conclusion of the increasingly frenzied transatlantic campaign to demonize Russia.

Washington, London and Paris appear to be coordinating an unprecedented media onslaught that is vilifying Russia for almost every conceivable malfeasance, from alleged war crimes in Syria to threatening the security of Europe, to shooting down civilian airliners, to subverting American presidential elections. And that’s only a sample.

British foreign secretary Boris Johnson declared this week that Russia is in danger of becoming a «pariah state». Ironically, that fate has less to do with Russia’s actual conduct and more to do with the desired objective driving Western policy towards Moscow – to isolate and portray Russia as an international reprobate.

If Russia can be sufficiently demonized in the eyes of the Western public by their governments, then the political context is created for drastic measures, which would otherwise be seen as unacceptable infringements of democratic rights. Measures that go way beyond economic sanctions and into the realm of media censorship. How weird is that? The «free world» which deplores «Russian authoritarianism» moving towards media censorship and policing what it deems as «thought-crime».

European parliamentarians this week voted for a resolution calling for greater «institutional capacities to counter Kremlin-inspired propaganda». The vote was passed by the EU’s foreign affairs committee and will go before the full parliament next month. If it is voted through then, the next step would be institutional mechanisms to block Russian media access.

The hostility towards Russia, as conveyed by the wording in this week’s EU resolution, can only be described as rabid, if not bordering on paranoid. The Russian government was accused of aggressively employing a «disinformation campaign», of «targeting EU politicians and journalists», and of «disrupting democratic values across Europe». In short, Moscow was accused of plotting the downfall of the European bloc.

Of particularly sinister note, the EU foreign affairs committee gave special attention to Russia’s «wide range of tools and instruments such as multi-lingual TV stations and pseudo news agencies to divide Europe».

So, not only is the Russian government being recklessly accused of harboring subversive, destructive designs on European states, its professional news media channels are conflated with an alleged Russian agenda of hybrid warfare. The Russian state is demonized as a foreign enemy, and its news media are part of the hybrid warfare arsenal. In other words, legitimate Russian public information services are in effect being delegitimized by the European parliament.

Astoundingly, professional media channels like RT and Sputnik are actually being referred to as «pseudo news agencies» and «tools of Kremlin propaganda».

The oft-cited issue of these Russian channels being «state-owned» and government-funded is irrelevant. So too are Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, BBC, France 24 and Deutsche Welle, to name a few of the Western state-owned broadcasters. Indeed, aggregate Western government funding for news publishing is many multiples that of Russia’s budget.

The Western drumbeat to delegitimize Russia’s popular news media has escalated in recent months. Last month, for example, the US-led NATO military alliance issued yet another report warning: ‘West Losing Information War Against Russia’.

It is a fair question to ask, what has a supposed military-security organization got to do with espousing on matters of journalism and public information services?

A Voice of America report added: «The West must step up its efforts to combat and counter the information war being waged by its opponents, according to NATO officials. They warn that countries like Russia are exploiting the freedom of the press in Western media to spread disinformation».

Note how it is alleged that Russia is somehow underhandedly «exploiting» Western media freedom. The implication here is that counter-sanctions on Russian media would therefore be justified because of alleged transgressions.

Meanwhile, also last month, the Director of US National Intelligence James Clapper Jr reportedly briefed members of Congress on Russian «information warfare». He singled out RT and Sputnik as media weapons for Russian «information warfare». Their purpose, according to Clapper, was subverting Western societies by tapping into radical groups and sowing public confusion.

This marks a dramatic deterioration in West-Russia relations, whereby Russia’s mass news media are tarred as enemy weapons. Such thinking also betrays how degenerate Western political leaders have sunk into Cold War stereotypes; and how willing they are prepared to go to further antagonize Russia.

Ever since the much-vaunted «reset» friendlier policy towards Russia under US President Barack Obama was abandoned during his first administration, circa 2011, Washington’s hostility and that of its European allies has crescendoed to current levels of apparent hysteria.

Probably the key factor in why Washington jettisoned its reset policy was that it realized Russian President Vladimir Putin was not going to be a pushover like his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, who cravenly submitted to American hegemony, whether on matters of geopolitical interests, global finance, or overseas resource-wars. Putin was having none of it. Russia would not be an American vassal state, as European Union states all-too evidently are.

It is because of Russia’s independence and boldness on speaking out against American caprice towards international law, for example in its conduct of illegal wars and regime change machinations in the Middle East, North Africa and Ukraine, that Washington finds such attitude so intolerable.

When asked recently by German media why the West is so hostile towards him, Putin reportedly responded with one word: «Fear».

By that, the Russian leader did not mean that the West was afraid of Russia attacking militarily. He meant that the fear was due to his power of demonstration. A strong counter-weight to US-led imperialistic conduct is a powerful negation of presumed American unipolar supremacy over the world. It means that the world is not a doormat for American subjugation. Russia’s defiance of US hegemony is a harbinger of a multipolar world, one in which America and its European subsidiaries must begin working with other nations as equals and within the mutual confines of international law, not as renegades above the law.

Syria is a classic illustration. Washington and its British and French allies, along with regional client states, presumed that they could pull off another illegal regime-change operation in that Arab country, as they had done previously in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. Russia’s military intervention in support of its Syrian ally was a stark demonstration that the Western regime-change playbook was no longer permitted. Furthermore, Russia’s intervention also exposed the covert criminal involvement of Washington and its partners in using terrorist proxies for regime change.

The same can be said about Ukraine, where Russia’s political support for ethnic Russian separatists has prevented Washington’s coup d’état in Kiev in February 2014 turning the entire country into a US puppet-regime.

This is why Washington fears Russia under Putin. It is an obstacle to its full-spectrum global dominance, as envisaged by American imperialist ideologues following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

However, Russia is more than an obstacle. In its conduct of independent foreign policy, Russia is exposing American crimes of international lawlessness and state-sponsorship of terrorism. And Russia is also exposing the pathetic servility and complicity of European states, the Western mass media and UN institutions in pandering to Washington’s hegemonic ambitions.

Russia’s foreign policy is, of course, wholly legitimate. But from Washington’s point of view it is an intolerable defiance of its tyrannical desires. To that end, Russia must be transmogrified into an enemy state. And the servile European leaders go along with that agenda in order to conceal their own odious complicity.

It so happens that Russian news media have shown commensurate journalist independence and critical examination on major world events, such as what is really going on in Syria and Ukraine. Western governments can be provably connected to covertly supporting terrorist networks for illegal regime change. If that sounds far-fetched and «unfair comment» it is only because Western media have failed to expose their own governments’ bogus claims and pretensions. It nevertheless does not delegitimize the journalism of Russia media. In fact, it makes such journalism commendable.

To say that the Western states are frustrated by Russia is an understatement. They are livid, as can be seen from the way their Syrian regime-change criminal enterprise has been routed. Hence, Western efforts are aimed at accusing Russia of «war crimes» and being comparable to Nazi Germany.

Combine this demonization with sensational claims of Russia subverting Western democracies, the toxic political climate becomes conducive to more far-reaching measures.

This is a recklessly reductionist logic: Russia equals enemy state, and Russia news media are tantamount to enemy propaganda.

As the European lawmakers voting this week on curbing Russia news media suggests, the next logical step is the outright banning of Russian news channels from the airwaves and internet.

But as Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief at RT told Deutsche Welle, the draconian move to ban Russian media only shows how empty Western claims of «free speech» are

«This is a rather interesting interpretation of the much-touted western values, particularly that of the freedom of speech – which in action apparently means attacking a rare voice of dissent amongst literally thousands of European media outlets,» added Simonyan.

Western governments are displaying the standards of a despot.

Unable to get their absolute way, including violating international law and going to war whenever and wherever they want, they then lash out at resistant nations like Russia, to the point where Russia is being labelled as an enemy state liable for military attack.

And when news media expose these criminal Western double standards and hypocrisies, then such media are also lambasted as enemy propaganda that must be shut off and banned.

Western decadence is truly sinking into the gutter or corruption and absurdity. That is a fate of its own making due to its own internal collapse of oligarchic mis-rule and warmongering. And the Western public increasingly know that, with or without Russian assistance.

Shooting the messenger, doesn’t alter that message.

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/10/13/west-gunning-russian-media-ban.html

Necessary Briefing on Syria

OCTOBER 14, 2016

An Urgently Necessary Briefing on Syria

by GARY LEUPP

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Photo by Patrick Feller | CC BY 2.0

1. Syria is country about the size of Washington state, with an extraordinarily long, well-documented and glorious history, and central role in the emergence of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Before the current war, it had a population of around 22 millions. It has never threatened and poses no threat to the United States.

It is a secular, constitutional republic recognized diplomatically by the United Nations and has diplomatic and usually cordial relations with Russia, Iran, China, India, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, the Philippines, Argentina, Tanzania, Cuba, Egypt, Iraq, Algeria, Oman, etc. It has historically been a battleground of Arab, Iranian and Turkish peoples, at different times a part of the Persian Empire, the Arab-led Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, or the Ottoman Empire. It fell under French colonial administration after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire (centered on what is now Turkey) in the course of World War I. It was briefly declared a kingdom under the Arab Emir Feisal until the French drove him out of Damascus in 1920.

Thereafter the League of Nations awarded France a  “mandate” to govern Syria (including Lebanon, which the French made a separate state). This colonial administration continued to 1946. After independence from France, political parties representing merchants and intellectuals from Damascus or Aleppo vied for power while the Communist Party was (to Washington’s alarm) tolerated. The secularist Ba’ath Party founded by Christians, Sunnis and Alawites in 1947 began to organize.

2. The U.S. has a long history of pressing for “regime change” in Syria. After Syria became independent, the U.S. routinely intervened in the country in pursuing its Cold War political agendas. It is widely suspected that the military coup in Syria in 1949 was abetted by the U.S., which saw the previous regime as soft on communism. And the CIA openly acknowledges responsibility for the failed coup attempts designed to install a suitable anti-communist regime called “Operation Straggle” in 1956 and “Operation Wappen” directed by Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. in 1957. The latter included failed bribery efforts which, when exposed, embarrassed the U.S.  (After the Syrian government foiled the plot, Washington began accusing Syria of being a “Soviet client.”)

Syria and Egypt briefly united as the United Arab Republic, perceived by the U.S. as pro-Soviet, in 1958; after it collapsed following another coup in 1961, the Baathists rose to power. Following the Baathist coup in neighboring Iraq in February 1963, their comrades in Syria took power. But the Syrian partisans split into factions, and relations between the two countries’ parties soured. Still, they constituted the ruling status quo in both Syria and Iraq from this time to 2003 when the U.S. Occupation dissolved the Baath Party of Iraq. (It then numbered some 400,000 members).

3. Up to the 1967 War, Washington saw the Baathists as the preferred option in the Middle East—a middle force between Islamism and Communism. Promoting secularism, pan-Arabism, and economic nationalism they seemed relatively non-hostile to the U.S.  Although during the early years of the Cold War in particular, the U.S. vilified “neutral” parties in general, the Baathists could be partnered with for common purposes.  (Saddam Hussein—as you surely know?—after the 1963 coup in Iraq worked with the CIA to round up, torture and execute Iraqi communists in the Qasr al-Nehayat, the Palace of the End.  A former senior State Department official who was there told UPI: “We were frankly glad to be rid of them. You ask that they get a fair trial? You have to get kidding. This was serious business.”)

But after Israel’s 1967 victories Washington decided to rethink its Middle East relationships and to defer more and more deeply to the Israel Lobby—-which saw the Baathists as anti-Zionist (hence “anti-Semitic”) pan-Arab nationalists who were dangerously sophisticated (precisely because they were secular, anti-Islamist, and appeal to religious minorities), who provided political and material support to Palestinian and Lebanese groups resisting Israeli occupation, and who demanded the return of the occupied Golan Heights that the entire world agrees is Syrian land—by listing Syria and Iraq as “terror-sponsoring” nations.  Meanwhile Syria intervened in Lebanon repeatedly from 1976, ostensibly in response to appeals from different parties in a widening civil conflict involving Palestinians and Israeli invaders after 1982.

4. Still, while looking at Syria through an Israeli lens, and considering it “terrorist,” U.S. policy makers have generally maintained diplomatic relations with Syria (last broken off in 2011) and even sought its cooperation on occasion. Syria, then ruled by the current president’s father Hafez al-Assad, participated in the international coalition organized by George W. Bush against Iraq in 1991 (yes, despite the fact that wings of the Baath Party ruled both Syria and Iraq at the time). A decade later, after 9/11, the U.S. sought Syrian cooperation in another war; it—how do you say it?—rendered covert service to the extraordinary renditions program following cordial talks with Colin Powell and other officials.

5. So far in this century, U.S. officials have been divided between those more or less eager to use U.S. power to bring down the regime, and cooler heads fearing the consequences. The neoconservatives dominating the first George W. Bush administrations had clearly articulated in 1996 (to the Israeli government, which they advised as Israeli-U.S. dual-nationals) their vision of  U.S.-triggered regime-change from Iran to Iraq to Syria to make the region more hospitable to Israel.

9/11 allowed the neoconservative regime-changers and their allies to move quickly. Exploiting fear and ignorance, they immediately set about preparing for war on Iraq, even though Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. We know from Gen. Wesley Clark’s often-quoted words, after talking with a Pentagon general shortly after 9/11, that there was a plan already in place to “take out seven countries in 5 years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” There were loud voices in the Bush administration (most notably undersecretary of state John Bolton, who Trump has said is one of the foreign policy experts he most respects) calling for strikes on Syria (as “low-hanging fruit”) and echoing baseless Israeli allegations that the WMDs not found in Iraq must have been sent across the border to Syria. And of course everyone applauded in Sept. 2007 when the Israel Air Force bombed an alleged nuclear reactor in Syria.

In 2005 the Lebanese politician Rafik Hariri was assassinated in Beirut. The U.S. blamed Syria and forced Syria to withdraw its forces from Lebanon. Yet it maintained relations with Damascus. When Bashar succeeded his father as president in 2000, he had been welcomed as a reformer; Hillary Clinton had still referred to him as such as of 2010. But leaked diplomatic messages indicate that the Damascus U.S. embassy was actively pursuing the overthrow of the president even before 2011.

6. The “Arab Spring” of 2011 ended the discussion about regime change. The neocon faction at the State Department kicked into gear. Hillary Clinton and soon Barack Obama commanded Bashar al-Assad to step down, after some fatal encounters between demonstrators and police afforded them the opportunity to deploy a pre-determined accusation: “He has attacked his own people!” The U.S. closed its Damascus embassy, planning to return after the moderate opposition was in power as planned. The then-Secretary of State is known to have advocated overt military aid to the rebels, although Obama was reluctant. In fact, the U.S. covertly trained 53 Syrian militants in Turkey who as soon as they entered Syria in September 2015 were captured or defected, handing over their weapons. Efforts to turn Syria’s “Arab Spring” into a quick pro-U.S. regime change exercise have failed dismally while resulting in mass slaughter.

7. At the same time, the al-Qaeda forces gathered, quickly becoming the backbone of the anti-Assad armed movement.  ISIL (Islamic State in the Levant) appeared in 2013, latest incarnation of the al-Qaeda franchise established in Iraq by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi  (after the U.S. occupation on 2003 had for the first time made the country an al-Qaeda breeding ground). It carved out a niche of territory in northeast Syria headquartered in Raqqa (pop. 220,000), captured in March 2013. Meanwhile al-Nusra, emerging from a group of jihadis more connected to Al-Qaeda Central in Pakistan, assumed leadership of the armed opposition around the major cities of Damascus and Aleppo. The two groups held unity talks but Al-Qaeda’s al-Zawahiri rejected a merger and the two have been antagonistic ever since.

Al-Nusra has been the indispensable partner of the so-called “Free Syrian Army” since its inception, and has received massive amounts of aid from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

8. In September 2013, as the Syrian state forces made advances against the armed opposition and many analysts concluded that the tide had turned in the conflict, someone released sarin gas in a Damascus suburb. Some blamed it on the Assad regime. John Kerry, Hillary Clinton’s successor as secretary of state, was eager to attack Syria. A year earlier, Obama had indicated that the U.S. would attack if it saw “a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.” Obama was on the verge of ordering an attack when careful Russian diplomacy stayed his hand. Moscow challenged the U.S. attribution of the attack to the regime, pointing instead to the opposition, and in any case facilitated the Assad regime’s resignation of its chemical weapons stockpiles to the UN. This was an important triumph for Russian diplomacy and setback for neocon regime change plans in Syria.

9. The lightning victories of ISIL in early 2014, as it returned to Iraq conquering Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosul, were a PR nightmare for the U.S. They were clear testimony that the U.S. destruction of the secular, modern Iraqi state had paved the way for child-beheading, woman-enslaving, monument-destroying crazies. The U.S. had to bomb ISIL, both in Iraq (with permission from the government) and in Syria (where U.S. warplanes, unlike Russian warplanes, operate illegally). From Sept. 2014, the U.S. and its “coalition” have bombed ISIL (although not al-Nusra, which is so entwined with groups the U.S. considers “moderate” that it’s been generally spared attack)  while simultaneously maintaining that the main problem—somehow giving rise to this problem of these people who burn people in cages, and bury people alive, and force conversions—is the Baathist regime.

It has been difficult to argue this because it does not make any sense. There is no rational perception of historical causality here. Even if the Syrian example of Baathism constitutes an authoritarian, even in some respects fascistic system (although in its corruption, inefficiency and religious tolerance it seems quite un-fascistic), it did not give rise to al-Qaeda or any of its spin-offs. The U.S did that, by supporting the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan during the 1980s (in league with Osama bin Laden), by destroying the secular state of Iraq, and by targeting the secular state of Syria for regime change. ISIL arose because the U.S. drove Abu Musad al-Zarqawi out of Afghanistan in 2001; alienated the Sunnis of Iraq by the destruction of Iraq’s institutions, producing a base for Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda recruitment; and destabilized Syria, producing more opportunities for caliphate expansion.

To suggest that Assad is responsible for the presence of ISIL in his country (due to his refusal to heed the U.S. diktat, and step down paving the way for the U.S.’s alternative) is just stupid. That it should be so widely repeated by pundits in the mainstream press should be the cause for mass alarm if not despair. Such State Department talking points are the drumbeats of war. As it is, from 2014 there have been many press reports of frustration in both the State Department and Defense Department about the unclarity of the Syrian mission: is it to get ride of Assad (the “main problem”), or to “destroy” (as Obama put it) the child-torturers conjured up by the criminal Iraq invasion? The preponderance of opinion in the State Department seems to have drifted to near-term regime change.

In August 2015 it was widely reported that Gen. David Petraeus, then CIA director, was advocating “using so-called moderate members of al Qaeda’s Nusra Front to fight  ISIS in Syria.” Yes that’s right—ally with al-Qaeda, against an even worse al-Qaeda spin-off, the better to topple Assad who stubbornly clings to power defying Washington’s orders.

10. Russia’s intervention in the Syrian conflict, beginning in September 2015 (precisely one year after the U.S. began bombing ISIL targets in the country), intended to shore up the Syrian state against an opposition interwoven with what the U.S. deems the “moderate opposition,” has been a game-changer. Occurring at the request of the Syrian government (which, to repeat, is the government of a secular, constitutional republic recognized diplomatically by the United Nations and has cordial relations with Russia, Iran, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, the Philippines, Argentina, Tanzania, Cuba, Egypt, Iraq, Algeria, Oman and many other countries despite Washington’s efforts to isolate and overthrow it), this intervention is legal, while the U.S.’s is not.

The U.S. press has virtually ignored Russian successes in aiding the Syrian army in recapturing Palmyra from the horrific ISIL, which had destroyed the Temple of Bel, and destroying oil convoys heading from terrorist-controlled territory to Turkey for illegal sale. Instead it has, echoing the State Department, merely accused Moscow of supporting the internationally recognized government against rebels whom the U.S. wants to win.

11. Russian actions, by further strengthening the regime’s position and weakening those officially regarded by both Washington and Moscow as terrorists, forced the U.S. to respond positively to Russian appeals for joint action against the latter groups. On Sept. 9 Kerry and Lavrov agreed on a plan for a one-week ceasefire (to which the Syrian government agreed) between state forces and the “legitimate” (U.S.-backed) opposition. During this period, the latter would separate themselves from al-Nusra to avoid being bombed themselves.

These measures were to be followed by coordinated U.S.-Russian action against the terrorists while peace talks resumed in Geneva. Unfortunately the U.S. was unable or unwilling to persuade its many proxies in the conflict to split with al-Nusra. (That’s what really doomed the deal; the U.S.’s failure to hold up its end.) Some clients angrily refused and turned on their U.S. advisors. On Sept. 16 (supposedly by mistake) the U.S. and several of its allies bombed a Syrian army base killing 62 soldiers engaged in combat with ISIL. Enraged, Syria resumed the bombing of East Aleppo, which is controlled by al-Nusra (Fateh al-Sham). The U.S. blamed the still-unexplained bombing of a UN aid convoy, killing 20 three days later, on Syria or Russia and suspended negotiations with Russia, period, over Syria.

In other words, having temporarily conceded the need to cooperate with Syria’s ally Russia to resolve a conflict that the U.S. had deliberately exacerbated, with horrific results, the U.S. sabotaged the talks. And after doing so, suddenly slipped into a mode of unprecedented vitriol; witness UN ambassador Samantha Power’s performance at the UN Sept. 18 where she angrily dismissed the death of the Syrian soldiers as a minor detail in a war, and berated the Russian ambassador for calling a Security Council meeting to discuss Syria a “stunt.” (She obviously wearies of Russia’s stubborn refusal to concede to the “exceptional nation” the future of its ally.)

12. Meanwhile Hillary Clinton as recently as Oct. 9 reiterated in the “debate” with Trump that she (still) supports a no-fly zone. Even though the brass has told her that that would mean the deployment of tens of thousands of U.S. troops in a war with Syria and Russia. She is buoyed by that highly unusual dissent memo signed by 51 current State Department officials last June opposing the current focus on ISIL and demanding immediate regime change in Syria. She knows that the State Department is more hawkish than the Pentagon, but that the Pentagon is also leery about any cooperation with Russia, anywhere, such as Lavrov has repeatedly proposed. She knows the news media in this country has entire bought the line that Russia through its support for a brutal dictator is responsible for genocide in East Aleppo—while the U.S. sits back and does nothing!

She is eager to appoint Michele Flournoy (formerly the third-ranking civilian in the Pentagon under Obama) as her Secretary of Defense. Flournoy has also called for a “no-fly zone” over Syria and “limited military coercion” to drive Assad from power. She has actually proposed the deployment of U.S. ground troops against the Syrian Arab Army.

On Oct. 8 France proposed a UNSC resolution prohibiting Syrian or Russian bombing of al-Nusra controlled East Aleppo, while saying nothing about the illegal bombing of Syria conducted by the U.S and its allies. It was a preposterous joke, opposed by China and Russia, immediately vetoed. It was intended to further vilify the Syrian government and Russia.
Is it not obvious? Public opinion is being prepared for another regime-change war. The most high-stakes one to date, because this one could lead to World War III.

And it’s hardly even a topic of conversation in this rigged election, which seems designed to not only to inaugurate a war-monger, but to exploit crude Russophobia to the max in the process. The point is for Hillary not only to ascend to power—whatever that might require—but to prepare the people for more Afghanistans, Iraqs and Libyas in the process. The point is to lull the people into historical amnesia, blind them to Hillary’s record of Goldwater-type reckless militarism, exploit the Cold War mentality lingering among the most backward and ignorant, and insure that the electorate that, while generally deploring the result of the rigged election in November, will soon afterwards rally behind corrupt Hillary as soon as she seizes on some pretext for war.

Very, very dangerous.

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Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, (AK Press). He can be reached at: gleupp@tufts.edu

More articles by:GARY LEUPP

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http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/14/an-urgently-necessary-briefing-on-syria/

U.S. Still Serves Israel and Saudi Arabia

Kerry’s Anger as Assad Poised to

 Win; the U.S. Still Serves Israel and 

Saudi Arabia

By Michael S. Rozeff

October 10, 2016

 

The headline reads “John Kerry calls for war crimes investigation of Russia and Syria over Aleppo attacks”. John Kerry is angry that the Syrian army is about to take eastern Aleppo. He’s angry because the U.S. has no viable force to stop this. He’s angry because Assad is still in power. He’s angry that Assad has allies in Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah. He’s angry that the chemical rap didn’t stick on Assad. He’s angry that the U.S. didn’t launch a massive air attack on Syria’s infrastructure and military in 2013. He’s angry that no viable force of “moderate” rebels exists. He’s taking his anger out on Russia.

Kerry attacks Russia with phony charges because his other options are so unpalatable. He acts as if attacking a city to win a war has suddenly become a war crime, today, in 2016, in Aleppo. He acts as if it was not a crime for Saudi Arabia to attack Yemen, for NATO to attack Libya and for the U.S. to attack Iraq and Afghanistan. He acts as if the moral designation of acts of war has changed drastically from the time that the U.S. mercilessly bombed Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. This was a mere 45 years ago. Does the turning of a calendar page into the 21st century mean that an act of war that was always in mankind’s arsenal of killing suddenly has become a war crime? If so, then the U.S. stands in the docket too.

Kerry is so angry and frustrated that he launches a propaganda salvo to obtain what he cannot win on the battlefield. He attacks Russia and Syria on grounds that apply to Israel, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in the 21st century. Is this also blindness? Is it also confidence that the American public and media will not call him on this because he’s gotten a free pass up to now? Is it that in the lame duck presidency, he feels free to express his frustration and lash out at convenient objects?

Kerry wants Russia and Syria not to attack the jihadists lodged in eastern Aleppo, but these jihadists are associated with al-Qaeda and ISIL and/or similar Islamic fundamentalist armed groups.

Physical Gold & Silver in your IRA. Get the Facts.

Kerry is mighty confused. The U.S. signed onto a U.N. resolution just 10 months ago that called for attacks like these. Kerry is cited in that document saying “the test now was to defeat the terrorists and put Syria on the road to the political transition envisioned in the Geneva Communique.” The document itself “Reiterates its call in resolution 2249 (2015) for Member States to prevent and suppress terrorist acts committed specifically by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as Da’esh), Al-Nusra Front (ANF), and all other individuals, groups, undertakings, and entities associated with Al Qaeda or ISIL, and other terrorist groups,…”

Kerry’s confusion has a simple source. He wants Assad out of power and the only forces capable of bringing this about are jihadist forces whom he also wants out of the game. He has to choose one or the other. He is choosing to support the jihadists, also commonly called terrorists. This choice has been in effect for years. The U.S. sold arms to Saudi Arabia and they supplied them to the jihadists. Jihadists were recruited from many nations beyond Syria’s borders. Turkey participated.

Because of Kerry’s choice and the previous role of the U.S. government in cutting the jihadists a lot of slack, knowing full well what arms they were getting that were made in America, theAmerican attack on Syrian forces on August 15, 2016, takes on a sinister look. It looks intentional. It looks like a rogue Pentagon in action. It’s the Pentagon that publicly resisted coordinating with the Russians against terrorists. It’s the Pentagon that has suddenly bombed bridges on the Euphrates. It is now military and neocon think tank people who are suggesting that the U.S. bomb the airplane runways of the Syrian air force. It is all of these and Kerry who are renewing their outcries against Russia.

This is all because eastern Aleppo is about to fall to the Syrian forces. That victory will release forces for ongoing offensives in other parts of the country. The U.S. has no other options to prevent an Assad victory or at least safe options that do not directly confront Russia and make unmitigated and undeclared war against Syria.

In contemporary America, a president can with impunity send special forces into Syria uninvited and drop bombs too on Syrian territory while no established social or political institution challenges the constitutionality of it. The next president, whether Clinton or Trump. can be expected to expand the U.S. participation in this war. This is one reason why the Assad coalition forces are seeking to win as much as possible now. Voices are also being raised again in favor of a partition of Syria.

The U.S. has sought in vain to locate or train or build up moderate forces. If Assad had resigned or been driven from power, who would have taken his place? The U.S. strategists continually have pipe dreams of installing a viable puppet government supported by a force that will maintain order. But do these so-called experts expect the jihadists who have definite ideas about an Islamic government and who do the fighting to lay down their arms or otherwise turn into a docile force loyal to an American-inspired and assisted government? This didn’t work in Vietnam. It didn’t work in Iraq. It failed in Iran, although it took several decades to fail. It hasn’t worked in Afghanistan.

The actual moderate forces in Syria are those of the government, of Assad. He has been a strong man. That’s what has suited the Syrian society, which is divided, even if it was unpopular to many and had elements that the U.S. State Department found objectionable. Various groups in Syria had scope to live together even though the political system didn’t allow serious dissent or political association that threatened the stability of the arrangement. The repression of the population was preferable to what has been going on now for 5 years, which is an internationalized war whose aim is to get rid of Assad and balkanize the country. Partition of Syria is the objective of both Israel and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. supports it as one of the several possible outcomes because it plays into the U.S. animus against Iran and its support of both Israel and Saudi Arabia.

U.S. support of Israel and Saudi Arabia has never had a reasonable basis in terms of American interests. Such support has brought us nothing but grief, death and trouble, including 9/11, the U.S.S. Cole, war dead, war disabled, veteran suicides, enormous debts, wasted taxes, a loss of freedoms at home, loss of privacy, homegrown terrorism, increased fear, increased inconveniences, the growth of jihadist radicalism, perpetual war and serious inroads of an American police state.

Now this same support of Israel and Saudi Arabia has brought us into a confrontation with Russia in a country (Syria) where we have no interests. We have Kerry lambasting Russia for things that are a consequence of what the U.S. itself has done. We have sanctions on Russia. We have a notable deterioration in U.S.- Russian Federation relations including the nuclear area and plutonium destruction. What positive do we and the world get out of this? Really we get nothing positive. It’s all negative.

America is asleep, paying little or no attention to the mayhem and negatives of the unquestioning support of Israel by the U.S. government. What attention that is paid is to criticize any notable voice that points to the negatives associated with supporting Israel so blindly and so fully. People in high positions or public figures who might be critical or make trenchant criticisms of the U.S.-Israel connection do not do so for fear of being labeled as anti-Semitic or otherwise harming their livelihood. Anti-Semitism exists but it is hardly such an important or widespread factor that it is to be found in every person who criticizes the Israeli government under Netanyahu or who criticizes U.S. policies with respect to Israel. In my opinion, the suppression of open debate about U.S. support of Israel and about Israel’s domestic policies and about its treatment of Palestinians actually increases irrational and hateful anti-Jewish sentiments. The virulence actually may rise among groups already disposed to it when it appears that the U.S. government is the servant of Israeli interests and not American interests.

For a sample of how the U.S. serves Israel and Saudi Arabia, see this document of the U.S. State Department. Click on the link that appears to see the short memorandum. I will not analyze this document in the detail it deserves. As a sample of how the State Department or components thereof think, it shows that we are in very big trouble. The thinking contained in this is very poor. It is so wrong in so much of what it says that it would take another long blog to lay this out clearly.

For example, it says “Libya was an easier case. But other than the laudable purpose of saving Libyan civilians from likely attacks by Qaddafi’s regime, the Libyan operation had no long-lasting consequences for the region.” This is simply an incredible statement. The purpose (or purposes in the case of France) was anything but laudable. The aims were not to save anything Libyan, civilians or material. The consequences have been bad for that entire region of Africa, for Libya and for Syria to as arms were shipped from Libya to Syria.

The memo paints a picture of how to intervene and win, i.e., displace Assad. It opines “The resulting regime in Syria will see the United States as a friend, not an enemy.” This idea is downright ridiculous. It imagines a democratic core within Syria ready, able and willing to take over once Assad is gone. It takes no recognition of what might transpire instead. It doesn’t acknowledge the social equilibrium that produced a strongman ruling system in the first place. It doesn’t recognize the society’s divisions, the aspirations of certain groups within and how they conflict. It doesn’t recognize how order has been maintained. This kind of statement is a naive pipe dream.

It goes on to argue that “Hezbollah in Lebanon would be cut off from its Iranian sponsor since Syria would no longer be a transit point for Iranian training, assistance, and missiles.” This is part of the support for Israel that motivates the document’s approval for removing Assad. But whoever wrote this is clueless, not realizing that any new government in Syria would very likely establish relations with Iran on a friendly basis and even allow accommodation for Hezbollah. The fact of being neighbors and having many ties makes this likely. It is very unlikely that a new regime will do the bidding of the U.S. and turn Iran into an antagonist, or alternatively suddenly become a friend and supporter of Israel.

More directly on Israel, Iran is painted as the feared enemy that’s aspiring to a nuclear bomb capacity: “Bringing down Assad would not only be a massive boon to Israel’s security, it would also ease Israel’s understandable fear of losing its nuclear monopoly. Then, Israel and the United States might be able to develop a common view of when the Iranian program is so dangerous that military action could be warranted.”

This document begins with “The best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad.” Right off the bat, it identifies the aim as being for Israel to maintain a nuclear monopoly. Overthrowing Assad is the suggested means of attaining this objective.

Where are American interests in this memo? Where are the interests of the peoples of the countries affected, the Libyans and the Syrians? Where are the interests of Palestinians?

A new broom sweeps clean. We Americans need a new broom to sweep Washington clean. It needs to be a very big broom. The place is filthy, benighted, corrupt, devilish, incompetent, and blind. It’s working from extremely slanted premises and worldviews. The results are moronic. The thinking in one area after another is stale and unimaginative, bureaucratic, uninspiring, phony, and tired. These views have been iterated and reiterated across this land and become the conventional views of the media and the silent masses occupied with their daily lives. What does inspire some emotion is the very thing that shouldn’t, which is demonizing Putin and Russia. Anti-Russian editorials everywhere mimic Obama’s own anti-Russian rhetoric. Trump is not that broom. Clinton is not that broom. The current Pope is not that broom. No human being is that broom.

The Best of Michael S. Rozeff

 

Michael S. Rozeff [send him mail] is a retired Professor of Finance living in East Amherst, New York. He is the author of the free e-book Essays on American Empire: Liberty vs. Domination and the free e-book The U.S. Constitution and Money: Corruption and Decline.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/10/michael-s-rozeff/kerrys-anger-assad-poised-win/