“Funny
Things” Keep Happening on the Way to the War On Syria. The Whole World is on a
Dangerously Slippery Slope
Global Research, September 10, 2013
Funny things on the way to the War ON Syria
have been happening ever since the war IN Syria began two and a half years ago,
and they just keep piling on.
A recent one was US President Barack Obama’s
announcement that he will hit Syria unilaterally, without a UN mandate and
without waiting for the conclusions of UN inspectors on the issue of poison gas
– but with a yes vote from Congress.
Then, as the debate opened in the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, he made it known that he would strike Syria “even if
Congress votes No” to his war!
Yet at the same time, veteran Middle East reporter Dale
Gaviak was posting, on Minnesota-based Mint Press, the results of his own
investigations with Syrian rebels and their families in the
chemical-weapons-hit Damascus suburb of Ghouta.
His findings: Saudi-paid rebels and their parents told
him they received “tubes and bottles” from the Saudis “without knowing they
contained poison gas”, and “an accident happened” as a result of “mishandling”,
killing scores of civilians and fighters.
This is not the first time Syrian “rebels” have pleaded
“accidents” in the face of evidence that they killed civilians.
The shock of the double Russia-China veto
And while US legislators were self-absorbedly busy with
their tiresome moral grand-standing as Global-Cops, oblivious to US serial mass
violations of Human rights for more than 60 years around the world, the UN’s
Ban Ki-moon reminded them that “No attack on Syria can be carried out without a
UN mandate”.
Funny things on the way to the War ON Syria started as
early as October 2011 when Russia and China stunned the NATO/OECD Triad in the
UN Security Council (US, UK and France) by opposing a double veto to a
resolution aimed at opening the door to a Libya-2 in Syria.
The Libyan “rebels” had just triumphed over the Kadhafi
régime and were installing their own brand of murderous chaos in Tripoli, after
lynching and murdering the confused and confusing founder of the Jamahiriya
himself, on camera.
NATO/OECD military intervention on the side of the
“rebels” had made the difference in Libya. With Russia and China abstaining,
the Triad had managed to pass resolutions in the Security Council imposing
sanctions on the Kadhafi régime, a “No Fly Zone” over Libya (rendering the
Libyan Air Force useless), and omnibus provisions for “further necessary
measures”.
Triumphant NATO hits a solid wall
Africom, the US/NATO command for Africa, was deployed on
African soil for the first time since its creation by George W. Bush in 2007.
Long-time CIA collaborators from Libya, military and civilian, some of them Al
Qaeda jihadists, began operating on the ground, alongside “special forces” from
NATO countries.
Syria’s own “Arab Spring” quickly morphed into a civil
war involving Western- and Oil-kingdoms-armed and paid jihadi mercenaries from
dozens of countries. Arms from Libya were transferred to Syria by CIA
operatives.
So when Syria came up for a Libya-type scenario in the UN
Security Council, Russia and China put their veto, saying they did not want a
Libya-2 in Syria, and calling for a negotiated, political settlement. This was
the first time since the end of the Cold War that the triumphant global march
of the apparent NATO/OECD victors hit a wall, and a solid one.
The Triad had manoeuvred for 22 years within the UN, and
often around it, to push its one-sided global military agenda – expansion of
NATO, even into Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia after 9/11, two Iraq
Wars, the “Silent Genocide” in the killing fields of the African Great Lakes
region (Burundi-Rwanda-Congo), the dismemberment of Yugoslavia...
Cameron’s defeat and Obama’s appeal to
Congress
Russia and China vetoed two further attempts by the NATO
Triad in the Security Council, in February and July 2012, arguing the draft
texts blamed the Assad régime and made no mention of the so-called “rebels” the
authors of the resolutions were themselves funding, arming and assisting on the
ground. Other attempts this year, after allegations of chemical weapons use,
got no further than the consultation stage, for the same reasons. At some point
Russia and China even refused to participate.
Things got so bad recently that, according to a Press TV
report, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called his Chinese counterpart, Gen.
Chang Wanquan, and he was told the minister was not available. The minister’s
aide who answered the phone went on to reiterate that China would ”never” allow
adoption of any war resolution against Syria in the UN Security Council and
that China stuck by its call for a negotiated political settlement.
Then came the amazing debate in the British House of
Commons, where Prime minister David Cameron was revving up to attack Syria.
Cameron lost the Syria War vote, with MPS from all parties, including his own,
uniting against him. That huge setback alerted Barack Obama to the risks of
staking his Presidency, and his Nobel Peace Prize, on a W Bush, “Chief
Executive” type of military assault on Syria. His inside polls had been telling
him what we now know: that more than 60% of Americans don’t want another war.
The BRICS, NAM and SCO convergence on
multi-polarity
The debate in Congress hardly matched the level of
diplomacy and the oratorical skills of the British MPs, but it highlighted a
major strategic shift of the US away from the UN, and towards a full-spectrum,
Congress-approved, Lone-ranger militarized global diplomacy.
John Kerry repeated at will the Russian and Chinese
vetoes had rendered the UN Security Council unworkable – and nobody mentioned
all the US vetoes that keep sheltering Israeli war and occupation crimes
against the Palestinians, including the use of chemical weapons as recently as
2009 on civilians in Gaza.
The pivotal Russia-China vetoes on Syria in October 2011
were no flukes. As partners within the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization,
founded in June 2001, three months before 9/11), both countries, with four
Central Asian partners, have been calling for a multi-polar world system to
replace the uni-polar, US/NATO dominated one resulting from the end of the Cold
War in 1989.
The emergent BRICS countries, with India, Brazil and
South Africa demanding permanent membership and veto power in the UN Security
Council, have converged with the multi-polar agenda of the SCO. So has the
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), energized at its August 2012 Summit in Tehran, with
members like Nigeria, Indonesia, Egypt, Mexico, Pakistan, also claiming
membership of the UN Security Council – as do Germany, Japan and Italy, losers
of WWII on the ashes of which the victors built the UN.
Syria, the SCO “Red line”, and the NATO
response
Demands for reform of the UN have been on the table since
the early 1990s, but the Triad has dragged its feet for two decades, looking
instead to the WTO, to NATO, to an expanded G20 (from G8) to globalize its
reach, and fiddling with the IFIs (International Financial Institutions like
the World Bank and the IMF) to upgrade the voting power of countries like India
and China, in a bid to co-opt them.
For Russia and China, for the SCO, as well as for the
BRICS and NAM countries, Syria became a “Red line” to put a stop to
US/NATO/OECD global military unilateralism aimed at opening NATO to countries
as far-flung as South Korea, Australia and Colombia! And Syria became the “Test
case” for returning global governance to the rule of international law and the
UN Charter.
Judging from the Congress debates, the US and NATO have
been framing their response to this major challenge. That response is now
clear: the US, the UK and France will act on their own, and outside the UN if
necessary, to further their interests and prolong their hegemony – while
couching such unilateralism as selective “humanitarian imperative” to “protect
civilians”.
France was the former colonial master of Syria, and
(socialist) President François Hollande does not plan to ask the National
Assembly for a vote. He is ready to attack – just waiting for the US Congress
vote! The National Assembly had its own debate nonetheless, with oratory
matching that of the British Parliament. It now seems if Obama wins in Congress
(which is not certain, in the Republican-dominated House of Representatives
especially), Cameron may bring the issue for a second vote in the House of
Commons!
The first cracks within NATO since 1989
So much for the Triad. As for the rest of NATO, it does
not seem as united as before. In fact, the funniest thing on the way to the War
ON Syria has been the first major cracks within NATO ranks since it proclaimed
victory with the collapse of the Soviet Empire and went on to dismember
Yugoslavia, occupy Afghanistan and deploy on African soil.
Anders Fogh Rasmusen, the harmless-looking but steely
hawk of the NATO establishment, faced the media in Brussels last week to say
NATO would not take part in the US attack on Syria. The European members are
very divided on the issue, he said. In fact Europeans too do not want another
war either, as they extricate themselves from 12 years of war,war with NATO in
Afghanistan.
No doubt the mega-flap about the US National Security
Agency (NSA) surveillance and electronic spying on European “allies” and on individual
European leaders has severely damaged the Trans-Atlantic Partnership, and
European resentment towards the US is still intense and raw.
This affair has also soured US-Russia relations, and it
was surely a calculated move for Vladimir Putin to offer asylum to young Edward
Snowden, the technical employee who leaked the voluminous NSA spying files to
Wikileaks and to the media. US retaliation was swift as Obama called off his
planned meeting with Putin at the G20 Summit last week in St Petersburg, and loud
US demands for him to boycott the G20 altogether and to call for a boycott of
the Winter Olympics in Sotchi, five months from now.
The Snowden Effect and the “New Cold War”
For some time now, a new Cold War of sorts has been
settling on US-Russia relations. The coming Syria showdown will surely heat
things up – with unpredictable consequences. Outnumbered in St. Petersburg, the
White House managed to extract from 11 of the G20 members a statement of
“strong aupport” for a “firm reply” to the alleged use of chemical weapons by
Syria.
Yet, back from St Petersburg, German chancellor Angela
Merkel criticized her European colleagues for signing on to that text – with US
allies like Saudi Arabia and South Korea, both members of the G20, while
Venezuela is not! In France, opposition leaders were saying the US should have
shown to the British House of Commons and to Congress the “solid” evidence it
says it has on the use of chemical weapons by Syrian government forces.
But then, funniest of all twists, White House Chief of
staff Denis McDonough, doing the Sunday rounds of US television networks,
dropped a bombshell:
Evidence “not irrefutable”, the White House
says!
The administration, he said, does not have “irrefutable,
beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence” that the Syrian régime used poison gas on
its people. “This is not a court of law, he said. Intelligence does not work
that way.”
But, he added, the proof the US has “stands the
common-sense test” – sufficient, in his view, to pass and execute the death and
destruction sentences on countless Syrian civilians!
And this is where the fun stops: both the US and Russia
have deployed huge fleets in the Eastern Mediterranean, with Putin saying
Russia plans to react to the bombing of Syria. Obama’s men repeat the strikes
will be electronic and remote-controlled, targeted, limited, with no boots on
the ground in Syria. But any strike will precipitate the whole world on a
dangerously slippery slope – and no one knows where that will lead.
Although, in light of the setbacks, inconsistencies and
vacillations in the warmongers’ camp, some useful idiots have begun spinning
the ultimate “funny thing” : they are now saying that Obama’s strategy from the
beginning may have been not to attack Syria at all, the (common sense?) “proof”
being that he is doing everything to undermine support for his War on Syria
policy!
Topping that, State Secretary John Kerry seemed to say
Syria could avoid being attacked if it turned over its chemical weapons to “the
international community”! He did not say he would ask Israel too to hand over
its WMDs, including its nuclear arsenal, to open the way for a peaceful Middle
East!
Jooneed Khan is a Montreal-based
journalist, writer and human rights activist. He wrote on international affairs
for the French-language daily La Presse for 35 years. ([email protected])
Copyright © 2013 Global Research
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