The Bloody Road
to Damascus
The Triple Alliance's War on a Sovereign
State
By James Petras
March 10, 2012 "Information
Clearing House" --- There 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. Because of 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 government of Colonel
Gaddafi, along with having him murdered and mutilated by its mercenaries. Nato
oversaw the wounding, imprisonment, torture, and elimination of tens of
thousands of civilian Gaddafi 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 Gaddafi'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
Tehran
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 über-Zionist US Senator Joseph Lieberman demanded days after
the 'Al Qaeda' 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.
James Petras, a
former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50-year
membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in
Brazil and Argentina, and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked(Zed Books).
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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