The prime minister had said he would hold a vote in the next weeks. But he has apparently been forced to retreat due to fears that he is unable to secure a majority, especially following a report by parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee highly critical of British involvement.
The United States, I suggest, is hostile to the Syrian government for the same reason it has been hostile to Cuba for more than half a century; and hostile to Venezuela for the past 15 years; and earlier to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; and to Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Chile; and so on continuing through the world atlas and history books.
What these governments have had in common can be summarized in a single word – independence … independence from American foreign policy; the refusal to be a client state of Washington; the refusal to be continuously hostile to Washington’s Officially Designated Enemies; insufficient respect and zeal for the capitalist way of life.
Putin has shown a remarkable ability to anticipate Washington’s moves and take preemptive steps to minimize their impact. Even so, it’s going to be tough sledding if Obama is able to create a sanctuary on the Turkish border where jihadis can enter and exit Syria at will keeping the country in a permanent state of turmoil. In that case, Putin would face his worse nightmare, the prospect of staying in Syria forever.
The twin seductions of money and Washington “group think” have led our Wise Men into one disaster after another in both domestic and foreign policy. In view of their lamentable record over the last decade and a half, their advice and counsel is probably no better than that of a snake-handling shaman in the remotest hollow of West Virginia, and certainly a good deal more expensive.
The future of President Assad must be decided by the Syrian people. Now, I do not want to interfere in the process of Vienna, but I think it is totally unfair and unreasonable that the fate of a person [diplomatese here for: U.S. President Barack Obama’s demand that Assad be removed from the Presidency of Syria] to paralyze all this political negotiation. This is not acceptable. It’s not fair.
British-based academic Sharmine Narwani, reporting from Syria, has compiled how the initial protests were infiltrated by armed agents who shot down protesters and Syrian state forces – thus sparking what the Western media mendaciously refer to as a “civil war” and “pro-democracy uprising”. There was no such thing. It was a US-led subversion from the outset, the kind of black ops that the Western imperialist powers specialise in.
The US and its allies already have boots on ground inside Syria. It’s not official, it’s a so-called “covert operation” which everybody knows about.
The Pentagon together with NATO, Turkey and Israel, et al, have routinely dispatched their military advisers, special forces and intelligence operatives to the Syrian war theater. These foreign forces have operated within rebel ranks from the outset of the war on Syria in March 2011.
The lion’s share of Islamic State illegal oil exports is conducted through Turkey and Kurdish areas. Although Washington could curb the illegal traffic, it has chosen to focus on other issues, a former CIA officer told the Sputnik news agency. “It’s a question of priorities. They have never allocated enough resources to do so. Other goals and missions have been […]
If the world, including Europe, seeks to prevent the spread of ISIS and the expansion of an already growing migrant crisis, stopping the United States and its partners before they create another “Libya” in the Levant must become top priority. And while it is unlikely that Europe will show any resolve in doing so, it would be hoped that Syria and its allies realize the consequences of failing now, at this juncture, and to whom’s borders the chaos will attempt to cross over into next.
The presence of any sort of US troops in Syria was not authorized by either the elected government in Damascus or by the United Nations.
Though Earnest did not say specifically which forces the US advisers will be aiding, he did refer to a group 45 kilometers outside the IS capital of Raqqa, which the media has been calling ‘Syrian Democratic Forces’ [newspeak for those fighting against the democratically elected government of Syria]
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.
So the US would be bolstering the militiamen in Iraq with Apache gunship support and then firing on those exact same militiamen across the border in Syria in support of the “moderate” rebels battling to oust the Assad regime.
It’s beyond absurd.
