Syria: will the West attack?
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According to Stars and Stripes the Americans knew there would be a chemical attack 3 days before but chose to stay silent about it. http://www.stripes.com/us-had-intel-on-chemical-strike-before-it-was-launched-1.238764
I notice that the war-mongers in favour of Britain bombing Syria have shifted their ground. Forgotten is all the sob stuff about "humanitarian" intervention. The justification now is the British capitalist state's "credibility". They are complaining that the No vote in Parliament means that Britain has slipped from a second-rate power to a third-rate one and are calling for a re-vote to reverse this.The Tory, Liberal and Labour politicians who are arguing this have exposed themselves as advocates of adding to the killing and destruction just to try to restore Britain's "prestige". They do have a point from a capitalist point of view as, in negotiations between states over trade and other economic matters, "might is right" and the threat of "might" and a record of it being used is taken into account. The sufferings of the people in Syria don't come into. That's just a pretext.
While we have distanced ourselves from the US/UK/French militarism and question their interpretation of the evidence, there is also no reason to accept the Syrian government version as a true account either. Whether it was the rebels (deliberately or accidentally) or Assad (or some army officer) who launched the chemical attack , it is no justification for upping the war and it served only as a pretext for already existing agendas. Our anti-war position re-Iraq would be no different if they had actually found WMDs.Some reports say that the battle in Damascus suburbs was not going at all well for the government troops and there was a possibility of being defeated there. But this report by the commentator Juan Cole describes how Iran too is now divided over the war with Iran's ex-president accusing Assad of complicity in the attackhttp://www.juancole.com/2013/09/president-gassing-divisions.html
alanjjohnstone wrote:Our anti-war position re-Iraq would be no different if they had actually found WMDs.Good point. Our anti-war position re Syria would be no different either if the UN backed bombing Syria. I see the famous Noam Chomsky is going around saying that any bombing of Syria without UN backing would be "illegal". So that means he thinks it would be ok if the UN Security Council voted for it? Probably not, but, as a supporter of the rebels, his position on the matter is ambiguous, as this extract from an interview he gave in July shows:
Quote:Yet there’s concern that the continued failure to arm the opposition in an organized manner and within clear frameworks means the continued control of certain individuals and religious authorities in the Gulf over the provision of weapons to limited groups—the more extremist elements—within the ranks of the armed opposition. This would entail the continued marginalization of the moderate opposition fighters.Your question deals with extremely narrow tactical options. We all want to force Assad to the negotiating table and from there, to resign, but the question is how to achieve this? The first way to do this is to supply the opposition with arms. This step would most likely produce an escalation of the military conflict and open the door to further military upgrading and expansion on the part of the regime, leading to increased destruction and the regime staying in place for longer. The second approach is to go to Geneva with the cooperation of the major powers, including Russia, and force the regime to accept a truce. These are the options we have.But do you believe that you will be able to make the regime accept change through negotiations?Honestly and objectively I reckon that both options offer only a slim chance of success. But you have to make a choice. Which path will you take? Neither option is ideal, but once again, you have to think about what you have. I believe you should choose the negotiating track first, and should you fail, then moving to the second option becomes more acceptable.He didn't say who, in the event of a failure of diplomatic negotiations, would be given the contract "to supply the opposition with arms".Personally, I've always thought that Chomsky had feet of clay.
I hadn't realised it till now that a large section of Trotskyist and Trotskyoid opinion supports the rebels in the Syrian Civil War (they seem to think it's a re-run of the Spanish Civil War). This requires considerable rhetorical and dialectical skill as Western imperialism supports the rebels too.Here's an extract from statement signed by various British trot groups including Workers Power and Socialist Resistance:
Quote:We believe that the people of Syria should be enabled to free themselves from the Assad dictatorship. For their struggle to be successful, they should receive all the necessary material aid, including arms and humanitarian assistance, without conditions imposed by the West.Who from, then? Trotskyist gun runners? Is a international Trotskyist brigade being formed to fight alongside the Jihadists and Western secret agents already on the ground?But the prize goes to an Australian leftwinger cxalled Michael Karadjis:
Quote:Socialists have no business demanding our imperialist governments send arms or do anything in particular, as we know their agendas; but neither should we protest if they do send some arms.But, if it would weaken the government side (as it would), why not also turn a blind eye to them bombing government installations and positions?
The leftist are already using the old concept used during the Iraq war, of legal or illegal war, and instead of blaming the causes of the war on George Bush, they are already blaming on Obama, and they are asking for the resignation of Obama, and that the Peace Nobel Prize must be taken from him, and they still continue with the tactic of the less evil. As always the leftist never know the real causes of wars, whom they must provide support to, and at the end they will finish supporting one sector of the capitalist class. Old news is not new news. The Socialist Party is the only political and socialist organization that has taken the correct stand in all wars . The Trotskyite during the Iraq war they made a call to provide support to Saddam Hussein because he was an anti-imperialist, and they supported many of the conspiracies theories that were spread in that period of time. The Bolivarian in Latin America which were one time glorifying Trotsky including Celia Hart ( Curiously a Trotskyist member and theoretician of a Stalinist Party like the Communist Party of Cuba ) at the present time they are supporting the leadership of Syria, it is going to require a lot of rhetorical and dialectic to explain that also. What stand would she have taken if she were alive when the government of Cuba supports the leadership of Syria ?
mcolome1 wrote:The Trotskyite during the Iraq war they made a call to provide support to Saddam Hussein because he was an anti-imperialist,But during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war they supported Iran as the "anti-imperialists" because the West was supporting Iraq, despite Iraq's use of chemical weapons:
Quote:Author Barry M. Lando says, by 1987, the U.S. military was so invested in the correct outcome, that "officers from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency dispatched to Baghdad were actually planning day-by-day strategic bombing strikes for the Iraqi Air Force." Iraq used this data to target Iranian positions with chemical weapons, says ambassador Galbraith.According to retired Army Colonel W. Patrick Lang, senior defense intelligence officer for the United States Defense Intelligence Agency at the time, "the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern" to Reagan and his aides, because they "were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose." Lang disclosed that more than 60 officers of the Defense Intelligence Agency were secretly providing detailed information on Iranian deployments. He cautioned that the DIA "would have never accepted the use of chemical weapons against civilians, but the use against military objectives was seen as inevitable in the Iraqi struggle for survival." Despite this claim, the Reagan administration did not stop aiding Iraq after receiving reports affirming the use of poison gas on Kurdish civilians.Joost R. Hiltermann says that when the Iraqi military turned its chemical weapons on the Kurds during the war, killing approximately 5,000 people in the town of Halabja and injuring thousands more, the Reagan administration actually sought to obscure Iraqi leadership culpability by suggesting, inaccurately, that the Iranians may have carried out the attack.It seems that the US ruling class is a bit selective in its condemnation of the use of chemical weapons. That's ok as long as the side they want to win uses them, despite the "international community" drawing a so-called "red line" in 1925 against their use.It's clear that the use of chemical weapons in Syria is just a pretext for taking action to weaken the government side in the civil war to aid the rebels with a view to bringing about "regime change".
For a bit of black humour i found this raised a chuckle Barack Obama = George Zimmerman http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/09/is-barack-obama-pulling-a-george-zimmerman/ The irony, the tragedy…
The selective nature of our war propaganda is what is deemed quotable informed sources. Apparently if France, UK and US intelligence says something based on opinion and interpretation not actual evidence, it qualifies to be be included in the news. If discredited ex-politicians like Blair or Ashdown or Owen comment, it deserves to be given air-time. However if Russia declares a finding , it is not reported or perhaps at best given a less prominent place in the news. Russia released its 100 page report on the Aleppo chemical attack and you will find it difficult to find a reference to it on the MSM news.http://rt.com/news/chemical-aleppo-findings-russia-417/The findings of the report are “extremely specific,” as they mostly consist of scientific and technical data from probes’ analysis, the ministry stressed.I have not yet heard a politican explain what the red line means and its implications if it is found that the rebels have used chemical weapons. …you bad bad naughty boys…don't you ever ever do that sort of things ever again or we will be very cross with you and stop your pocket-money until you promise to be good little boys for mommy and daddy…
ALB wrote:But during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war they supported Iran as the "anti-imperialists" because the West was supporting Iraq, despite Iraq's use of chemical weapons: (….)It's clear that the use of chemical weapons in Syria is just a pretext for taking action to weaken the government side in the civil war to aid the rebels with a view to bringing about "regime change".By coincidence there's a letter in today's Times from Tory grandee Norman Lamont making the same point:
Quote:Sir, Your leading article (Sept 3) about Syria and chemical weapons refers to the need "to uphold international norms and legal prohibitions that have held since 1925 on the use of chemical weapons". Your editorial memory is curiously selective. The West has in the past turned a blind eye to the use of chemical weapons. In 1988 Saddam Hussein used mustard gas and sarin against Iranian'troops, killing 20,000 and leaving 100,000 wounded. A recent article in the US magazine Foreign Policy claimed that US officials who gave Iraq intelligence about Iranian troop movements, did so in the knowledge that the Iraqis would use chemical weapons. The Iranians even flew some victims to British hospitals and tried to raise the issue in the UN. The West was indifferent. You are right: the use of chemical weapons is, indeed, horrific and unacceptable. But if you wish to carry conviction with your arguments, should you not at least acknowledge the West's position in the past has been woefully far from consistent?LORD LAMONT House of LordsAs the Times is read by "top people" the elite policy-makers and their mouthpieces in the media who want to bomb Syria know full well what cynical hypocrites they are.
Going further back in time to the Kosovo war , the late disreputable Alan Clark wrote this. "The assertion that human rights within the boundaries of a sovereign nation are best defended by a sustained bombardment of its own civilian population is, to put it most kindly, Orwellian. The notion that because a war is 'just' (by the aggressor's definition) it can be prosecuted immediately, and without deference to international opinion is highly dangerous. It is to prevent exactly this that the UN's Security Council mechanism came into being. Nato was conceived as a defensive alliance, its terms of engagement narrowly drawn; not as a 'policeman' surrogate for the UN; never as an apparatus for intervention in a civil war. What amazes me about the Yugoslav crisis is the credulity of the Left, and of progressive thinkers, who seem to get a vicarious thrill from seeing B52s taking off from Fairford. I address them: How have you swallowed whole the CIA-funded propaganda that demonises the Serbs? Are you not familiar with the duplicity and intimidation of United States foreign policy? That Ambassador Walker, in charge of monitoring forces in Bosnia, was financing the Contras? Have you no recall of that 'Free World' crap that embraced Battista, Noriega, Syngman Rhee, Bao Dai, Lee Van Thieu and Sukarno? If you read Michael Rose's Despatch you will see that the Bosnians mortared their own bread queue for a horror shot. If you talked to British soldiers you would learn that the KLA are gangsters indistinguishable (my analogy) from any warlord in Mogadishu. In Yugoslavia there is a civil war. British soldiers are not mercenaries for one side or another where there is no threat to our citizens. The safest rule in such circumstances is, stick to humanitarian aid. What do you imagine so far is the cost? How much aid might this have funded?……..This is a US-driven operation and the US never intervenes objectively. It may be that the pressures of domestic politics oblige the President, as a distraction, to order the obliteration of a pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan. Or it may be that considerations of oil brokerage, the 'Seven Sisters' and projected pipeline routes, prevent attention being paid to, or even mention made, of the genocidal Turkish campaign against the PPK. … There are risks as well as humiliations in Britain doing always what the US instructs…." http://www.lalkar.org/issues/contents/may1999/yugo3.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/video/2013/09/05/multimedia/100000002421671/syrian-rebels-execute-7-soldiers.html Since the UK/US place so much trust in social media video in their Syrian intelligence sources , i await the issue of an international arrest warrant for the Syrian rebel commander clearly identified committing a war crime in this video. I await the rendition of him and his unlimited detention in an off-shore prison without trial. Fat Chance Along with those who executed priests and bishops on video , who eat human flesh on video, no repercussions.
The questions the BBC, Guardian, Independent should be asking raised by http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/09/05/322265/kucinich-10-unproven-prosyria-war-claims/ I am also reminded that Press TV was removed from satellite and cable television for being a state sponsored bias source!!
A delusional psycho-path in denial "…when people talk about the shadow of Iraq lying over this debate it's not really, in this case, an issue to do with what happened before we took military action in Iraq or in Afghanistan. It's not really a trust issue,… It's an issue to do with the difficulty we encountered afterwards…if we'd intervened in Iraq, got rid of Saddam and the whole thing had calmed down, we wouldn't be having this debate today."…….IF….IF … http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/sep/06/tony-blair-iraq-vote-syria The Bliar's weasel words to ecsape his criminal culpability.
Why if they do attack , they will not bomb the poison gas dumps. U.S. bombings of Iraqi munitions factories in January 1991 released a plume of sarin gas that travelled more than 300 miles to affect American troops in Saudi Arabia, a study shows. The Jan. 18, 1991, bombings of the munitions plants in Nasiriyah and Khamisiya blew a plume of sarin gas high above a layer of cold, still air — also called the boundary level — and into a swift wind stream that carried the gas to Saudi Arabia, said the study conducted by researchers Robert Haley and James Tuite and published in the journal Neuroepidemiology. Since no troops died at the time from exposure to the gas, and the munitions factories were so far away, U.S. forces and their commanders assumed something else had set off the chemical alarms. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2012/12/13/sarin-gas-gulf-war-veterans/1766835/
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