<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
(from the UFPJ-activist list -- twitches in Congress against making
war in Syria!)<br>
<div class="moz-forward-container"><br>
<br>
-------- Original Message --------
<table class="moz-email-headers-table" border="0" cellpadding="0"
cellspacing="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE">Subject:
</th>
<td>[ufpj-activist] JONES INTRODUCES RESOLUTION TO DECLARE
THE USE OF MILITARY FORCE IN SYRIA WITHOUT CONGRESSIONAL
APPROVAL AN IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE; Four U.S. senators seek
to bar military aid to Syrian rebels; Syria, The View from
the Other Side</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE">Date: </th>
<td>Sun, 23 Jun 2013 18:39:28 -0500</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE">From: </th>
<td><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:m_eisenscher@uslaboragainstwar.org">m_eisenscher@uslaboragainstwar.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:m_eisenscher@uslaboragainstwar.org"><m_eisenscher@uslaboragainstwar.org></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE">To: </th>
<td><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:ufpj-activist@lists.mayfirst.org">ufpj-activist@lists.mayfirst.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:ufpj-activist@lists.mayfirst.org"><ufpj-activist@lists.mayfirst.org></a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br>
<br>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=windows-1252">
<font size="5">JONES INTRODUCES RESOLUTION TO DECLARE THE USE OF
MILITARY FORCE IN SYRIA WITHOUT CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL AN
IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE<br>
<br>
</font><font size="3">Jun 21, 2013 Issues: <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://jones.house.gov/issue/budget-spending-taxes">
Budget Spending and Taxes</a>, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://jones.house.gov/issue/values">Values</a>,
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://jones.house.gov/issue/armed-services">Armed
Services</a><br>
<br>
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, Congressman Walter B. Jones (NC-3)
introduced a resolution to prohibit the use of war power against
Syria without congressional authorization. H. Con. Res 40
emphasizes that declaring and appropriating funds for war is a
power of the legislative – not executive – branch. Should the
president choose to implement military force against Syria
without congressional approval, that decision would constitute
an impeachable offense under Article 2, Section 4 of the
Constitution.
<br>
<br>
“We cannot continue to spend American money and risk American
lives overseas without a vote of approval from Congress,” said
Jones. “For too long, the legislature’s responsibility to
authorize military force has been overlooked. It is time that
we uphold the Constitution, which makes it clear in Article 1,
Section 8 that Congress alone holds the power to declare war. A
breach of that principle by the president would unquestionably
be considered an impeachable offense.”<br>
<br>
See the full text of the resolution at the link below.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
</font>
<h4><b>Downloads</b></h4>
<font size="3"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fjones.house.gov%2Fsites%2Fjones.house.gov%2Ffiles%2FH.%2520Con.%2520Res.%252040.pdf">H.
Con. Res. 40.pdf</a>
<br>
<hr>
</font><font size="5">Four U.S. senators seek to bar military aid
to Syrian rebels<br>
<br>
</font><font size="3"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/21/uk-syria-crisis-usa-congress-idUKBRE95J1B120130621">http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/21/uk-syria-crisis-usa-congress-idUKBRE95J1B120130621</a>
<br>
Fri, Jun 21 2013<br>
<img moz-do-not-send="true"
src="http://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20130620&t=2&i=743288083&w=460&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&r=CBRE95J1SGN00"
alt="A member of the Free Syrian Army aims his RPG through a
hole as">
<br>
<br>
By Patricia Zengerle<br>
<br>
WASHINGTON | Fri Jun 21, 2013 1:07am BST<br>
<br>
(Reuters) - Four senators introduced legislation on Thursday
that would bar President Barack Obama from providing military
aid to
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://uk.reuters.com/places/syria">Syria</a>'s rebels,
saying the administration has provided too little information
about what they see as a risky intervention.<br>
<br>
The bill would prevent the Department of Defense and U.S.
intelligence agencies from using any funds to support military,
paramilitary or covert operations in Syria, directly or
indirectly.<br>
<br>
The bill's sponsors - Democrats Tom Udall of New Mexico and
Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Republicans Mike Lee of Utah and
Rand Paul of Kentucky - expressed doubts about Washington's
ability to ensure weapons will not fall into the wrong hands,
and called for debate in Congress before the United States
becomes more involved in Syria's civil war.<br>
<br>
"The president's unilateral decision to arm Syrian rebels is
incredibly disturbing, considering what little we know about
whom we are arming," Paul said in a statement.<br>
<br>
Other lawmakers argued it was in the U.S. national security
interest to get more involved in Syria.<br>
<br>
"This is about looking at the possibility of a failed state in
which terrorist actors already present within Syria in this
fight can launch attacks against our allies, and potentially
against the United States," Democrat Robert Menendez of New
Jersey, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told
reporters.<br>
<br>
After months of equivocating, Obama decided a week ago to
provide military aid to rebels trying to overthrow Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad, citing Assad's government's use
chemical weapons in the two-year-long conflict.<br>
<br>
The administration has since been working to win more support in
Congress for the plan. Secretary of State John Kerry, a former
senator, has been on Capitol Hill at least twice this week to
make the administration's case to lawmakers.<br>
<br>
On Tuesday he had a classified briefing for House of
Representatives leaders from both parties and committee
chairmen.<br>
<br>
On Thursday Kerry conducted at least three briefings: one for
the House Intelligence Committee, a second for the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee and a third for other senators.<br>
<br>
Many members of Congress, particularly in the
Republican-controlled House, remain deeply sceptical about plans
to arm the rebels, questioning the cost when other programs are
being cut and worrying that U.S. weapons could fall into the
wrong hands.<br>
<br>
Others have been pushing for military aid for months, with some
senators in particular denouncing Obama for his failure to
intervene in a conflict in which more than 90,000 people have
been killed.<br>
<br>
Last month the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 15-3 in
favour of a bill to provide lethal aid to the Syrian opposition.
That measure has not yet gone to the full Senate for a vote.<br>
<br>
Paul, Murphy and Udall were the three members of the foreign
relations panel who voted against that bill.<br>
<br>
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Stacey Joyce and
Xavier Briand)<br>
<hr>
<br>
</font>
<h2><b>Syria, The View From The Other Side</b></h2>
<font size="3"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://gowans.wordpress.com/2013/06/22/syria-the-view-from-the-other-side/">http://gowans.wordpress.com/2013/06/22/syria-the-view-from-the-other-side/</a>
<br>
Posted in <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://gowans.wordpress.com/category/syria/">Syria</a>
by what's left on June 22, 2013<br>
<br>
By Stephen Gowans<br>
<br>
His security forces used live ammunition to mow down peaceful
pro-democracy protesters, forcing them to take up arms to try to
topple his brutal dictatorship. He has killed tens of thousands
of his own people, using tanks, heavy artillery and even
chemical weapons. He’s a blood-thirsty tyrant whose rule has
lost its legitimacy and must step down to make way for a
peaceful democratic transition.<br>
<br>
That’s the view of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, cultivated
by Western politicians and their media stenographers. If there’s
another side to the story, you’re unlikely to hear it. Western
mass media are not keen on presenting the world from the point
of view of governments that find themselves the target of
Western regime change operations. On the contrary, their concern
is to present the point of view of the big business interests
that own them and the Western imperialism that defends and
promotes big business interests. They accept as beyond dispute
all pronouncements by Western leaders on matters of foreign
affairs, and accept without qualification that the official
enemies of US imperialism are as nasty as the US president and
secretary of state say they are.<br>
<br>
What follows is the largely hidden story from the other side,
based on two interviews with Assad, the first conducted by
Clarin newspaper and Telam news agency on May 19, 2013, and the
second carried out on June 17, 2013 by Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung. Both were translated into English by the Syrian Arab
News Agency.<br>
<br>
<b>Peaceful protests?<br>
<br>
</b>Ba’athist Syria is no stranger to civil unrest, having
experienced wave after wave of uprisings by Sunni religious
fanatics embittered by their country being ruled by a secular
state whose highest offices are occupied by Alawite ‘heretics’.
[1] The latest round of uprisings, the opening salvos in another
chapter of what Glen E. Robinson calls “Syria’s Long Civil War,”
began in March, 2011. The first press reports were of a few
small protests, dwarfed by the far more numerous and substantial
protests that erupt every day in the United States, Britain and
France. A March 16, 2011 New York Times report noted that “In
Syria, demonstrations are few and brief.” These early
demonstrationsa few quixotic young men declaring that “the
revolution has started!”, relatives of prisoners protesting
outside the Interior Ministryseem disconnected from the radical
Islamist rebellion that would soon develop.<br>
<br>
Within days, larger demonstrations were underway in Dara, where
citizens were said to have been “outraged by the arrest of more
than a dozen schoolchildren.” Contrary to a myth that has since
taken hold, these demonstrations were hardly peaceful.
Protesters set fire to the local Ba’ath Party headquarters, as
well as to the town’s main courthouse and a branch of SyriaTel.
Some protesters shot at the police, who returned fire. [2] One
can imagine the reaction of the New York City Police to
protesters in Manhattan setting fire to the federal court
building, firebombing the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.surfcanyon.com/search?f=sls&q=Verizon&p=wtigck">
Verizon</a> building and opening fire on police. A foreign
broadcaster with an agenda to depict the United States in the
worst possible light might describe the protest as peaceful, and
the police response as brutal, but it’s doubtful anyone in the
United States would see it that way.<br>
<br>
From “the first weeks of the protests we had policemen killed,
so how could such protests have been peaceful?” asks Assad. “How
could those who claim that the protests were peaceful explain
the death of these policemen in the first week?” Assad doesn’t
deny that most protesters demonstrated peacefully, but notes
that “there were armed militants infiltrating protesters and
shooting at the police.”<br>
<br>
Was the reaction of Syrian security forces to the unrest
heavy-handed? Syria has a long history of Islamist uprisings
against its secular state. With anti-government revolts erupting
in surrounding countries, there was an acute danger that Syria’s
Muslim Brotherslong at war with the Syrian statewould be
inspired to return to jihad. What’s more, Syria is technically
at war with Israel. As other countries in similar circumstances,
Syria had an emergency law in place, restricting certain civil
liberties in the interest of defending national security. Among
the restrictions was a ban on unauthorized public assembly. The
demonstrations were a flagrant challenge to the law, at a time
of growing instability and danger to the survival of the Syrian
secular project. Moreover, to expect Syrian authorities to react
with restraint to gunfire from protesters is to hold Syria to a
higher standard than any other country.<br>
<br>
Meanwhile, as protesters in Syria were shooting at police and
setting fire to buildings, Bahrain’s royal dictatorship was
crushing a popular uprising with the assistance of Saudi tanks
and US equipment. New York Times’ columnist Nicholas D. Kristof
lamented that “America’s ally, Bahrain” was using “American
tanks, guns and tear gas as well as foreign mercenaries to crush
a pro-democracy movement” as Washington remained “mostly
silent.” [3] Kristof said he had “seen corpses of protesters who
were shot at close range, seen a teenage girl writhing in pain
after being clubbed, seen ambulance workers beaten for trying to
rescue protesters.” He didn’t explain why the United States
would have a dictator as an ally, much less one who crushed a
pro-democracy movement. All he could offer was the weak excuse
that the United States was “in a vicecaught between its allies
and its values,” as if Washington didn’t chose its allies, and
that they were a force of nature, like an earthquake or a
hurricane, that you had to live with and endure. The United
States was indeed in a vicethough not of the sort Kristof
described. It was caught between Washington’s empty rhetoric on
democracy and the profit-making interests of the country’s
weighty citizens, the true engine of US foreign policy. The
dilemma was readily resolved. Profits prevailed, as they always
do.<br>
<br>
Bahrain’s accommodating attitude to US imperialismit is home to
the US Fifth Fleetand its emphasis on indulging owners and
investors at the expense of wage- and salary-earners, are
unimpeachably friendly to US corporate and financial interests.
Practically the entire stable of US allies in the Middle East is
comprised of royal dictators whose attitude to democracy is
unremittingly hostile, but whose attitude to helping US oil
companies and titans of finance rake in fabulous profits is
tremendously accommodating. And so the United States is on good
terms with them, despite their violent allergic reaction to
democracy. Aware of whose interests really matter in US foreign
policy, Kristof wrote of Bahrain, “We’re not going to pull out
our naval base.” Democracy is one thing, but a military base
half way around the world (i.e., imperialism) is quite another.<br>
<br>
That Bahrain’s version of the Arab Spring failed to grow into a
civil war has much to do with US tanks, guns and tear gas,
foreign mercenaries, and the silence of the US government. The
Bahraini authorities used the repressive apparatus of the state
more vigorously than Syrian authorities did, and yet virtually
escaped the negative attention of responsibility-to-protect
advocates, the US State Department, “serious” political
commentators, and anarchists and many (though not all) Trots
who, in line with their savaging of Gadhafi, preferred to vent
their spleen on another official enemy of Western imperialism,
rather than waste their bile execrating a US ally. What’s more,
the ‘international community’ did much to fan the flames of the
Syrian rebellion, linking up once again with their old friends
Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brothers to destabilize yet another left
nationalist secular regime, whose devotion to sovereignty and
self-management was an affront to Wall Street. [4] Without
naming him specifically, Assad says Khalifa is among the leaders
who stand in relation to the United States, France and Britain
as “puppets and dummies [who] do their bidding and serve their
interests without question.”<br>
<br>
<b>Anti-imperialism<br>
<br>
</b>If Khalifa is the model of the Arab dictator Washington
embraces, Assad fits the matrix of the Arab leader whose
insistence on independence rubs the US State Department the
wrong way. “The primary aim of the West,” Assad says, “is to
ensure that they have ‘loyal’ governments at their
disposal…which facilitate the exploitation and consumption of a
country’s national resources.” Khalifa comes to mind.<br>
<br>
In contrast, Assad insists that a “country like Syria is not by
any means a satellite state to the West.” It hasn’t turned over
its territory to US military bases, nor made over its economy to
accommodate Western investors, banks and corporations. “Syria,”
he says, “is an independent state working for the interests of
its people, rather than making the Syrian people work for the
interests of the West.”<br>
<br>
It’s not his attitude to multi-party democracy or the actions of
Syria’s security forces that have aroused Western enmity,
asserts Assad, but his insistence on steering an independent
course for Syria. “It is only normal that they would not want us
to play a role (in managing our own affairs), preferring instead
a puppet government serving their interests and creating
projects that would benefit their peoples and economies.” Normal
or not, the Syrian president says, “We have consistently
rejected this. We will always be independent and free,” adding
that the United States and its satellites are using the conflict
in Syria “to get rid of Syriathis insubordinate state, and
replace the president with a ‘yes’ man.”<br>
<br>
<b>Foreign agenda<br>
<br>
</b>Assad challenges the characterization of the conflict as a
civil war. The rebel side, he points out, is overwhelmingly
dominated by foreign jihadists and foreign-based opposition
elements (heavily dominated by the Muslim Brothers) backed by
hostile imperialist powers. Some of Assad’s opponents, he
observes, “are far from autonomous independent decision makers,”
receiving money, weapons, logistical support and intelligence
from foreign powers. “Their decisions,” he says, “are not
self-governing.”<br>
<br>
The conflict is more aptly characterized as a predatory war on
Syrian sovereignty carried out by Western powers and their
reactionary Arab satellite states using radical Islamists to
topple Assad’s government (but who will not be allowed to take
power) “to impose a puppet government loyal to them which (will)
ardently implement their policies.” These policies would almost
certainly involve Damascus endorsing the Zionist conquest of
Palestine as legitimate (i.e., recognizing Israel), as well as
opening the country to the US military and turning over Syrian
markets, labor and resources to exploitation by Western
investors, banks and corporations on terms favourable to Western
capital and unfavourable to Syrians.<br>
<br>
<b>Russia and Iran<br>
<br>
</b>Criticism of the intervention of a number of reactionary
Arab states in the conflict, and the participation of Western
imperialist powers, is often countered by pointing to Russia’s
and Iran’s role in furnishing Syria with weapons. Assad argues
that intervention of the side of the jihadists (‘terrorists’ in
his vocabulary) is unlawful and illegitimate. By furnishing
rebels with arms, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the United
States “meddle in Syria’s internal affairs” Assad says, “which
is a flagrant violation of international law and our national
sovereignty.” On the other hand, Russia and Iran, which have
supplied Syria with arms, have engaged in lawful trade with
Syria, and have not infringed its independence.<br>
<br>
<b>Hezbollah<br>
<br>
</b>According to Assad, Hezbollah has been active in towns on
the border with Lebanon, but its involvement in the Syrian
conflict has, otherwise, been limited. “There are no brigades
(of Hezbollah fighters in Syria.) They have sent fighters who
have aided the Syrian <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.surfcanyon.com/search?f=sls&q=army&p=wtigck">army</a>
in cleaning areas on the Lebanese borders that were infiltrated
with terrorists.”<br>
<br>
Assad points out that if Hezbollah’s assistance was needed, he
would have asked for deployment of the resistance organization’s
fighters to Damascus and Aleppo which are “more important than
al-Quseir,” the border town that was cleared of rebel fighters
with Hezbollah’s help.<br>
<br>
Stories about Hezbollah fighters pouring over the border to prop
up the Syrian government are a “frenzy…to reflect an image of
Hezbollah as the main fighting force” in order “to provoke
Western and international public opinion,” Assad says. The aim,
he continues, is to create “this notion that Hezbollah and Iran
are also fighting in Syria as a counterweight” to the “presence
of foreign jihadists” in Syria.<br>
<br>
<b>Democracy?<br>
<br>
</b>The Assad government has implemented a number of reforms in
response to the uprising.<br>
<br>
First, it cancelled the long-standing abridgment of civil
liberties that had been authorized by the emergency law. This
law, invoked because Syria is in a technical state of war with
Israel, gave Damascus powers it needed to safeguard the security
of the state in wartime. Many Syrians, however, chaffed at the
law, and regarded it as unduly restrictive. Bowing to popular
pressure, the security measures were suspended.<br>
<br>
Second, the government proposed a new constitution to
accommodate protesters’ demands to strip the Ba’ath Party of its
lead role in Syrian society. The constitution was put to a
referendum and ratified. Additionally, the presidency would be
open to anyone meeting basic residency, age and citizenship
requirements. Presidential elections would be held by secret
vote every seven years under a system of universal suffrage,
with the next election scheduled for 2014. “I don’t know if (US
secretary of state) Kerry or others like him have a mandate from
the Syrian people to speak on their behalf as to who stays and
who leaves,” Assad observes, noting that Syrians themselves can
decide whether he stays or leaves when they go to the polls next
year.<br>
<br>
Despite Assad’s lifting the emergency law and amending the
constitution to accommodate demands for a multi-party electoral
democracy, the conflict continues. Instead of accepting these
changes, the rebels summarily rejected them. Washington, London
and Paris also dismissed Assad’s concessions, denigrating them
as “meaningless,” without explanation. [5] Given the immediate
and total rejection of the reforms, Assad can hardly be blamed
for concluding that “democracy was not the driving force of the
revolt.”<br>
<br>
Elaborating, he notes:<br>
<br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>It was seemingly apparent at the beginning that demands were
for reforms. It was utilized to appear as if the crisis was a
matter of political reform. Indeed, we pursued a policy of
wide scale reforms from changing the constitution to many of
the legislations and laws, including lifting the state of
emergency law, and embarking on a national dialogue with all
political opposition groups. It was striking that with every
step we took in the reform process, the level of terrorism
escalated.<br>
<br>
</dd>
</dl>
The reality that the armed rebellion is dominated by Islamists [6]
also militates against the conclusion that thirst for democracy
lies at its core. Many radical Islamists reject democracy because
they see it as a system for creating man-made laws and, as a
corollary, for rejecting God’s law. Reportedly hundreds of
jihadists [7]members of a sort of Islamist Internationalhave
travelled from abroad to fight for a Levantine society in which
God’s law, and not that of men and women, rules. Assad asks, “What
interest does an internationally listed terrorist from Chechnya or
Afghanistan have with the internal political reform process in
Syria?” Or in democracy?<br>
<br>
Good terrorists and bad terrorists<br>
<br>
Syria’s jihadists have resorted to terrorist tactics, and appear
to have little fear that they will ever be held to account for
these or other war crimes. They are not mistaken. Their summary
executions of prisoners, indiscriminate shelling of civilian
areas, terrorist car bombings, rapes, torture, hostage taking and
pillagedocumented by the UN human rights commission [8]will very
likely be swept into a dark, murky corner, to be forgotten and
never acted upon, while imperialist powers use their sway over
international courts to shine a bright line upon war crimes
committed by Syrian forces. While their ranks include the
Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra front, the jihadists have been depicted
as heroes by Western governments and their media stenographers, a
“good Al-Qaeda,” says Assad. Cat’s paws of the West, radical
Islamists are good terrorists when they fight to bring down
independent governments, like the leftist pro-Soviet government in
Afghanistan, and the anti-imperialist governments in Libya and
Syria, but are bad terrorists when they attack the US homeland and
threaten to take power in Mali.<br>
<br>
Chemical weapons<br>
<br>
Ben Rhodes, the US deputy national security advisor, announced
that Syrian forces have “used chemical weapons, including the
nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition
multiple times in the last year” killing “100 to 150 people.” [9]<br>
<br>
Assad says the White House’s claim doesn’t <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.surfcanyon.com/search?f=sls&q=add&p=wtigck">
add</a> up. The point of using nerve gas, a weapon of mass
destruction, is to kill “thousands of people at one given time.”
The 150 people Washington says Syrian forces took 365 days to kill
with chemical weapons could have been easily killed in one day
using conventional weapons.<br>
<br>
Why, then, wonders Assad, would the Syrian army use a weapon of
mass destruction sub-optimally to kill a limited number of rebels
when in a year it could kill hundreds of times more with rifles,
tanks and artillery? “It is counterintuitive,” says the Syrian
president, “to use chemical weapons to create a death toll that
you could potentially reach by using conventional weapons.”<br>
<br>
There is some evidence pointing to the use of chemical weapons by
the rebels. Carla Del Ponte, a member of the United Nations
Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syriaa body created by the
UN Human Rights Council to investigate alleged violations of human
rights law in Syriasays that the commission has “concrete
suspicions” of the use of sarin gas by the rebels” but no evidence
government forces have used them. [10]<br>
<br>
Assad says he asked the United Nations to launch a formal
investigation into suspected use of chemical weapons by rebel
forces in Aleppo, but that the UN demanded unconditional access to
the country. If Assad acceded to the demand, the inspection regime
could be used as a cover to gather military intelligence for use
against Syrian forces. “We are a sovereign state; we have an army
and all matters considered classified will never be accessible
neither to the UN, nor Britain, nor France,” says Assad. If he
rejected the demand, it could be saidas it indeed it was by the
White House [11]that the ‘international community’ had been
prevented by Damascus from undertaking a comprehensive
investigation, thereby releasing the UN from any obligation to
investigate the use of chemical weapons by the jihadists. At the
same time, by rejecting the UN’s demand, the Syrian government
would create the impression it had something to hide. This could
be countered by Damascus explaining its reasons for turning down
the UN conditions, but the Western media give little time to the
Syrian perspective, preferring saturation coverage of the
pronouncements of Western officials. In terms of Western public
opinion, whatever US officials say about Syria is decisive.
Whatever Syrian officials say is drowned out, if presented at all.<br>
<br>
It should be noted that no permanent member of the UN Security
Council, including the United States and Britainindeed, no
country of any standingwould willingly grant an outside
organization or country unrestricted access to its military and
government facilities. The reasons for denying UN inspectors
untrammelled access to Syria are all the stronger in Syria’s case,
given that major players on the Security Council are overtly
backing the rebels, and could be expected to try to use UN
inspectorsas indeed the US did in Iraqto gather military
intelligence to be used against the host country.<br>
<br>
It would also do well to remember that the United States evinced
no interest in investigating the use of chemical weapons by the
rebels, immediately dismissing the allegations as unfounded.
Following up on the allegations wasn’t an option.<br>
<br>
Finally, Assad points out that the chemical weapons charges call
to mind the ‘sexed up’ WMD evidence used by the United States and
Britain as a pretext to invade and conquer Iraq: “It is common
knowledge” he says, “that Western administrations lie continuously
and manufacture stories as a pretext for war.”<br>
<br>
Conclusion<br>
<br>
The purpose of the foregoing is to offer a glimpse into the
conflict in Syria from the other side, a side which the Western
media are institutionally incapable of presenting, except in
passing, and only if overwhelmed by the competing imperialist
narrative.<br>
<br>
Assad’s analysis and values are very much in the anti-imperialist
vein. He speaks of Western powers seeking “dummies” and “yes men”
who will pursue policies that are favourable to the West. The
United States does indeed maintain a collection of “yes men” in
the Middle East. Khalifa, the royal dictator of Bahrain, who used
US tanks, guns, tear gas and Saudi mercenaries to crush a popular
rebellion, is a model Arab “yes man” and a dictator, as many of
Washington’s “yes men” are, and have always been.<br>
<br>
Assad, in contrast, has none of Khalifa’s readiness to kowtow to
an imperialist master. Instead, his government’s insistence on
working for the interests of Syrians, rather than making Syrians
work for the interests of the West, has provoked the hostility of
the United States, France and Britain, and their determination to
overthrow his government. That Assad’s commitment to local
interests goes beyond rhetoric is clear in the character of
Syria’s economic policy. It features the state-owned
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.surfcanyon.com/search?f=sls&q=enterprises&p=wtigck">enterprises</a>,
tariffs, subsidies to domestic firms, and restrictions on foreign
investment that Wall Street and its State Department handmaiden
vehemently oppose for restricting the profit-making opportunities
of wealthy US investors, bankers and corporations [12]. On foreign
policy, Syria has steered a course sensitive to local interests,
refusing to abandon the Arab national project, whose success would
threaten US domination of the Middle East, while allying with Iran
and Hezbollah in a resistance (to US imperialism) front.<br>
<br>
For his refusal to become their “puppet,” the United States and
its imperialist allies intend to topple Assad through accustomed
means: an opportunistic alliance with radical Islamists who hate
Assad as much as Washington does, though for reasons of religion
rather than economics and imperialism.<br>
<br>
1. Syria’s post-colonial history is punctuated by Islamist
uprisings. The Muslim Brotherhood organized riots against the
government in 1964, 1965, 1967 and 1969. It called for a Jihad
against then president Hafiz al-Assad, the current president’s
father, denigrating him as “the enemy of Allah.” By 1977, the
Mujahedeen were engaged in a guerrilla struggle against the Syrian
army and its Soviet advisers, culminating in the 1982 occupation
of the city of Hama. The Syrian army quelled the occupation,
killing 20,000 to 30,000. Islamists have since remained a
perennial source of instability in Syria and the government has
been on continual guard against “a resurgence of Sunni Islamic
fundamentalists,” according to the US Library of Congress Country
Study of Syria.<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/sytoc.html">
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/sytoc.html</a><br>
2. “Officers fire on crowd as Syria protests grow,” The New York
Times, March 20, 2011.<br>
3. Nicholas D. Kristof, “Bahrain pulls a Qaddafi”, The New York
Times, March 16, 2011.<br>
4. For the West’s opportunistic alliances with political Islam see
Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical
Islam, Serpent’s Tail, 2011.<br>
5. David M. Herszenhorn, “For Syria, Reliant on Russia for weapons
and food, old bonds run deep”, The New York Times, February 18,
2012.<br>
6. Adam Entous, “White House readies new aid for Syrian rebels”,
The Wall Street Journal, April 10, 2013; Anne Barnard, “Syria
campaigns to persuade U.S. to change sides”, The New York Times,
April 24, 2013; 3. Gerald F. Seib, “The risks holding back Obama
on Syria”, The Wall Street journal, May 6, 2013.<br>
7. According to Russian president Vladimir Putin “at least 600
Russians and Europeans are fighting alongside the opposition.”
“Putin: President al-Assad confronts foreign gunmen, not Syrian
people,” Syrian Arab News Agency, June 22, 2013.<br>
8. Damien Mcelroy, “Syrian rebels face war crime accusation”, The
Ottawa Citizen, August 11, 2012; Sam Dagher and Nour Malas,
“Lebanon militia kidnaps Syrians”, The Wall Street Journal, August
15, 2012; Hwaida Saad and Nick Cumming-Bruce, “Civilian attacks
rise in Syria, U.N. says”, The New York Times, September 17, 2012;
Stacy Meichtry, “Sarin detected in samples from Syria, France
says”, The Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2013; Sam Dagher,
“Violence spirals as Assad gains”, The Wall Street Journal, June
10, 2013.<br>
9. Statement by Ben Rhodes, the US deputy national security
advisor for strategic communications, on chemical weapons. The
Guardian (UK), June 13, 2013.<br>
10. “UN: ‘Strong suspicions’ that Syrian rebels have used sarin
nerve gas,” Euronews, May 6, 2013; “UN’s Del Ponte says evidence
Syria rebels ‘used sarin’”,
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.surfcanyon.com/search?f=sls&q=BBC&p=wtigck">BBC</a>
News, May 6, 2013.<br>
11. Rhodes.<br>
12. For Syria’s economic policies and the US ruling class reaction
to them see the Syria sections of the Heritage Foundation’s Index
of Economic Freedom
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.heritage.org/index/country/syria">http://www.heritage.org/index/country/syria</a>
and the CIA Factbook<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sy.html">
https</a>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sy.html">://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sy.html</a>
.<br>
<br>
</div>
<br>
</body>
</html>