As the Vienna talks proceed over the coming weeks, the Western media will no doubt carry out more laundry services for Washington and its allies. High on the list will be attempts to misrepresent Russia’s political position on Syria with a view to cajoling Moscow into cutting off Syria’s Assad.
Syria, Russia and Iran have the upper hand, legally, morally, politically and militarily. Why should they accede to any demands from Washington and its allies who refuse to abide by what is already agreed upon in the Geneva Communiqué from three years ago? These powers are merely demonstrating, cynically, the maxim of Prussian military theoretician Karl Von Clausewitz. War is a simply an extension of policy by other means, wrote Clausewitz. The same applies in reverse for Washington and its acolytes: politics is just another form of war against Syria.
Britain’s official war commemoration is certainly not a fitting tribute to victims of war. Because if it were then there would a commitment to stopping wars. But as history shows, Britain’s warmongering has proliferated over the years. That in turn is because the upper echelons of British class society use war commemorations as a cloak to hide their vile belligerence.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu are pressing home the opportunity presented by this crisis, by getting the EU to accept that it “needs Turkey” to halt the flow of refugees. That’s why Merkel and other high-ranking EU officials have in the last week showed a newfound attentiveness to the government in Ankara.
There was a time when Washington did have skills of diplomacy and intellectual honesty. One recalls in particular the presidency of John F Kennedy, who sought to go beyond the futile Cold War stereotypes of «us and them». In a groundbreaking speech to the American University in Washington on June 10, 1963, Kennedy made a plea for world peace and for “general and complete disarmament”.
Another reason for Western vexation over Russia’s intervention in Syria is that it is exposing the fraudulence and criminality of the Western powers and their regional client regimes. Russia is conducting operations that are lawful under international law with the full consent of the Syrian government – unlike the US-led coalition which is bombing the country illegally. Vladimir Putin has cogently delineated the all-important legal difference. From the Western viewpoint, this exposure of their depredations is intolerable.
US President Barack Obama and his top diplomat John Kerry have repeatedly insisted that Assad must stand down in any eventual political outcome. In other words, the Americans want regime change by hook or by crook against what is, as Putin has clearly stated, the “legitimate government of Syria” – and a long-time strategic ally of Russia to boot.
The question that the supine Western media should be asking the NATO chief and his Washington superiors is this: if you can so clearly quantify and delineate the IS and Al Qaeda bases, then why has the US-led coalition evidently been wasting 12 months bombing empty desert spaces instead of degrading and defeating these groups, as vowed by US President Barack Obama over a year ago?
Pope Francis may be a breath of fresh air compared with his predecessors from his humble embrace of the poor and socially marginalised. But he still retains the stench of sycophancy towards the world’s biggest criminal state-sponsor of war and terrorism. God Bless America indeed.
You have to hand it to Russia. In recent weeks, one move after another by Moscow over the Syrian crisis could be accompanied by the audible word “check”, leaving Washington and its minions grappling with disorientation about how to respond to the Russian moves.
Islamist groups are being activated and supplied by the Western-backed Saudi coalition to help prosecute the counterinsurgency war against the rebels. The rebel Popular Committees are calling for a pluralist democratic government in Yemen, which would mark a dramatic change from decades of Western and Saudi-backed dictatorships in the country.
It should be patently obvious that the murderous rampage against Syrian civilians that is entering its third year could not be sustained if it were not for the relentless Western government and media support. Now this Western remote-control killing machine is to be fitted with a higher murderous gear, thanks to the diplomatic engineering of Britain and France in removing the European arms embargo on Syria.
