John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN SOUTHFRONT
“FRANCE’S PRESIDENT SAYS HE WANTS TO BUILD A “NEW SYRIA” WITH THE U.S.”
Don't you just love the profound dishonesty of that statement about wanting to help the U.S. "build" a new Syrian state?
It is positively Orwellian.
You build by warring. Well, Orwell did say, in 1984, “War is Peace.”
Does it ever occur that the Syrians might want to follow their own path? Why is it any more right to interfere in their affairs than it would be for third party to go to work on Corsica or Basque or Normandy?
Syria's current leader remains popular, is supported by major factions, including by almost all Christians who regard him as a protector of religious rights in the region, and by the army which has gone through five years of hell with him? He is as legitimate as it gets.
I suspect the actual percentage of total election votes for Macron or Theresa May likely would not match Assad’s support. Those countries, as for so many in the Western world, are ones where democratic institutions are carefully constructed and maintained to enable actual minorities to rule. The previous prime minister of Britain, David Cameron ruled with about 35% of votes.
What we have in Syria is Hell induced from the outside, by France along with the United States, Israel, Britain, Saudi Arabia, and, originally Turkey. Each with its own motives for picking the carcass.
500,000 killed to "build" a new Syria? Several million refugees sent fleeing for their lives to "build" a new Syria? Some of civilization's greatest ancient heritage destroyed to "build" a new Syria? Language just does not come falser, not in the most extreme advertising and not in outright propaganda.
Perhaps, a new state like Libya would be the model? A place once run for the benefit of its people and which remained at peace, but which is now reduced literally to chaos?
A new state like Iraq, occupied still by American military forces and heavy contingents of CIA, after a war killing a million people?
A new state like Afghanistan, where women and children and old men are still being bombed fifteen years after invasion?
Like Egypt's fresh spanking-new dictatorship?
Something resembling the merits of Saudi Arabia?
Macron has proved an even worse puke than I regarded him when he was elected. He has already demonstrated himself as America's official doormat in Europe. Even Trump doesn't say what he is saying, and it couldn't be more obvious whose words he is parroting.
Those words are from that wonderful government that now has shot thousands of unarmed Palestinians demonstrating for human dignity and rights near its border. The third massacre in not many years. This time the Israeli forces are using a form of dum-dum bullet, so that even the wounded get horrible injuries, as these expand and twirl going through an arm or leg or hip.
Of course, that wonderful government wants to hold on to the Golan Heights it stole from Syria. It also wants to enlarge that holding with another slice of Syria, “just a security perimeter.” With a strong leader like Assad out of the way and Syria cut up into weak Balkan-like regions, the world is Israel's oyster, as it were. That is, what the horrible war has always been about.
France used to give the world some great presidents, but in recent times, especially with Hollande and Macron, it has hit the very bottom for integrity and honor and independent thinking. It certainly is no longer true what Ben Franklin, as Ambassador to France, said, so long ago, about every man having two countries, his own and France.
