EXPANSION OF A POSTED
RESPONSE TO AN INTERVIEW WITH SYRIA’S PRESIDENT ASSAD IN INTIFADA PALESTINE
I am no great defender of unelected leaders like Syria’s Bashar
al-Assad, but in the case of Syria’s current troubles I support him and wish
him success against the forces responsible for murder and destruction on a
large scale in his country.
The great writer, Graham Greene, said:
“…the writer should always be ready to change
sides at the drop of a hat. He stands for the victims, and the victims change.”
Syria is the victim in this case, and the bloody bullies
attacking Syria are the United States and Israel, both too cowardly to attack directly
and both dishonestly claiming that the Free Syrian Army represents a genuine
popular revolt.
The aim of the United States and Israel in all this violence
is to wipe Syria off the Middle East chessboard, leaving it a divided society
with no central direction.
Their efforts are designed to serve Israel’s drive to
dominate the Middle East, just as America’s invasion of Iraq served the same
drive. Israel aspires to be a miniature replica in the Middle East of what the
United States has become globally, and the United States’ government,
compromised by its corrupt election financing system and the central role of
special interests in that system, is more than willing to grant Israel the
role.
The brutality and hypocrisy involved in creating a
pseudo-popular uprising and putting millions of innocent people at risk are
breathtaking. The United States and Israel have gathered, armed, and supported
a gang of thugs and injected them (through Syria’s border with Turkey, Turkey
also offering refuge and re-supply) into what was a peaceful country, the very
kind of cut-throats neither the U.S. nor Israel would allow to cross their own borders.
The recent death of an American ambassador in Libya at
Benghazi, an event which no American official will discuss honestly, was part
of the same dark scheme and involved the ambassador working with the CIA to
gather killers and arms for export to Syria. The operation badly backfired when
some of the thugs being dealt with turned on the Americans, something American
officials will not acknowledge out of embarrassment and the desire to hide the
dirty business in which they are engaged.
The world is not the simple place of angels and devils as
America’s propaganda efforts ceaselessly proclaim it – great camps of goodness
and evil ready to do battle for the soul of humanity. No matter whether a government is democratic
in origin or not - and given the utter corruption of America’s politics, its
claims to authentic democracy are tenuous - powerful insiders are fully capable
of bloody, ruthless behavior in secret, destroying the lives of others.
While the United States loves hearing itself talk about
being a bastion of freedom and rights, the fact is that over the last 40 or so
years, it has been, quite simply, the most murderous nation on earth, killing 3
million in Vietnam plus a host of victims in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq,
Somalia, and in many, many other places either invaded or toppled in bloody
coups. It still runs an international torture gulag, of which Guantanamo is
only a part.
The world can support a bloody global dictator even less
than an individual country can support a local one. So, in Syria we see a stark
choice, and the ethical balance favors for once a local dictator.
If you want the rule of law, you must abide by the rule of
law, a principle which neither the United States nor Israel makes even a
pretense of embracing although they sure like talking about it between bombing
runs and terrorist activities.
