PressTV: American arms in Syria: Will the good terrorists please stand up

By Yuram Abdullah Weiler
Another, perhaps
overriding reason for targeting Syria now is the Zionist entity’s desire for
revenge after the humiliating defeat in 2006 by Hezbollah, which reportedly
receives support from President al-Assad. In addition, Tel Aviv sees Damascus
as a strong ally of Tehran, but does not possess sufficient military might to
take on both countries without U.S. aid.”
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Once again, the United States
is arming extremists with rifles and anti-tank weapons in hopes of replacing an
allegedly anti-American dictatorial despot with a pliable, pro-western
democratic regime that would provide “liberty and justice for all,” to borrow a
phrase from the American pledge of allegiance, or at least one that is in
“transition toward democracy,” as is said about most U.S. “partners” in the
Middle East. White house spokesman Jay Carney is adamant that “there is no way
out of this that doesn’t include a transition to a post-Assad Syria.” Yet in
view of the historical record, how is it possible that American leaders could
believe such a scheme would succeed? Perhaps it is simply as Distinguished
Professor of History, Ervand Abrahamian writes, “One should never underestimate
the role of stupidity in history.”
Syria is awash with
diverse insurgent groups all competing for arms and money, and among some of
them, sharp conflict exists threatening a civil war within a civil war. Such is
the case between the Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the notorious
al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, which reportedly has shot and killed
senior FSA commander Kamal Hamami, threatened to kill all members of the FSA
Supreme Military Council, kidnapped others for ransom, and even sent suicide
bombers into FSA command posts. “This is a disaster for us, a disaster for the
revolution,” lamented one female activist while conceding that the popularity
of the Salafi groups has increased because of corruption within the FSA. Others
say the revolution has itself become corrupt and has slid into a tyranny of
“crime, kidnapping, and gangsterism.”
Besides Jabhat al-Nusra,
there are numerous other Salafist groups active there, eleven of which comprise
the so-called “moderate” Syrian Islamic Front (SIF). So despite the Western
powers’ claim to back only “soft-Islamic” foreign insurgents, given the
competition, conflict and corruption among factions, there is no way to
guarantee into whose hands their donated weapons will fall. Moreover, arms are
often used as currency: a “good” rebel faction in need of fuel or medical
supplies may sell its U.S.-supplied arms to a “bad” faction, or may be taken
over by a stronger “bad” group and forced to relinquish its weapons. Another
possibility is that a “good” group, or individuals within it, may switch their
affiliation and wind up under the command of a “bad” group. Hence, it borders
on stupidity to imagine that there could be a foolproof way to even know, much
less control, who would ultimately be the users of U.S.-donated weaponry.
Nevertheless, the hawkish
U.S. Republican senator from Arizona, John McCain, insists, “We can identify
who these [good] people are. We can help the right people.” Expressing concern
over the potential to spill “precious” American blood and acknowledging the end
user uncertainty, Republican Rep. Rich Nugent of Florida candidly remarked, “We
want to make sure that we don’t put our sons or daughters in any jeopardy
particularly as it relates to arming those that we have no idea who they are.”
Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California on the House
Intelligence Committee, appears even less optimistic over who could wind up
with American armaments. Disagreeing with the idea of arming the foreign-backed
insurgents, he correctly notes, “I think we also have to expect that some of
the weapons we provide are going to get into the hands of those who would use
them against us.”
Exactly how McCain will
identify the “good” insurgents from the “bad” ones remains unclear. Perhaps he
will use the length of the men’s beards as his criterion, but even this is
subject to deception. One experienced ex-Libyan rebel commander, after
suggesting to a group of bewildered bearded insurgents that they shave,
explained, “To the Americans, a beard means Islamist and terrorist.” In any
event, even if McCain has discovered some infallible way of identifying the
“good guys” and assuring that they will be the initial recipient of the
firearms, can he guarantee that the weapons will remain there?
Expounding on this fatal
flaw in the McCain arms control process, Journalist Robert Fisk writes:
“The nice rebels could be
given anti-aircraft missiles (shoulder-fired variety preferred) to use against
Assad’s helicopters and Migs. Thank you – ‘shukran’ – the nice rebels will say.
But once over the border, the horrid rebel Nusra chaps will make an offer the
nice rebels can’t refuse: either many thousands of dollars or a threat to seize
the munitions (head-chopping optional), or a mixture of both … In the Lebanese civil
war, not a single gun I ever saw was actually donated to the men who carried
them.”
Of course, the United
States has taken this approach before many times with disastrous undesired
consequences. One example is Afghanistan, where the U.S. armed extremists
recruited from Saudi Arabia in an effort to install a “democratic,”
Western-friendly regime in Kabul and prevent the Soviet Union from moving
closer to accessing a warm water port on the Arabian Sea. However after over
thirty years of continuous carnage, and the sea of arms created thereby that
still manages to flow to every U.S.-sponsored conflict as needed, Afghanistan
is a far cry from the original stated goal of a peaceful democratic state. And
one must not forget the “blowback” of attacks carried out by the former
“freedom fighters” on the New York World Trade Center in 1993, Khobar Towers in
Saudi Arabia in 1996, American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the
U.S.S. Cole in 2000, and the New York World Trade Center again and the Pentagon
in 2001.
Succinctly illustrating
the long term hazards of arming extremists, Fisk writes:
“Back in the Eighties, the
US handed out missiles and other goodies to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the
super-freedom fighters trying to kill lots of Russians in Afghanistan. But Mr.
Hekmatyar then became a super-terrorist and decided to kill lots of post-2001
American occupiers of his country – using the same weapons donated to him by
those grand arms dealers Messrs. Carter and Reagan Inc.”
The arming of rebels in
Libya has not worked out well for the West, either, since the country has now
become a prime source of illicit arms that are finding their way into other
conflicts in North Africa and the Middle East. After the fall of Colonel
Gaddafi, rebels seized government weapons caches, much of which still remains
in the hands of militias. These arms, which include man-portable air defense
systems, small arms, ammunition, explosives and mines, are being exported to
various non-state actors in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Mali in Africa, and Syria
in the Levant, fueling conflicts throughout the entire region.
One must also ask, why is
the U.S. targeting Syria? After all, not only was Syria a Westernized country
with a secular government, but partnered with the CIA after the 9/11 attacks to
provide much valuable intelligence information to Washington for the latter’s
“war on terror.” Historically, President Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez
al-Assad, was a member of George H.W. Bush’s coalition in the first Persian
Gulf War in 1991. Former U.S. President Clinton even visited Hafez al-Assad in
Damascus in 1994, the first visit by a U.S. president in twenty years, in an
effort to stimulate peace talks between Syria and the Zionist regime. Syria has
pursued peace negotiations with Israel since the early 1990s and almost
finalized an agreement in 2000. However since that time, all Zionist leaders
have taken a hardline approach to relations with the Syrian government.
Syria reportedly even
foiled an al-Qaeda plot to fly an explosive-filled plane into the U.S. Navy’s
Fifth Fleet headquarters building in Bahrain. So what went wrong? Initially,
Washington refused to reassess the tone of its relationship with Damascus,
which remained on the former’s list of state sponsors of terrorism despite no evidence
of involvement in any such act since 1986. Then Bush Junior demanded that
President al-Assad side with the U.S. in his illegal preemptive war on Iraq
and, taking the higher moral ground, the Syrian leader said no.
Another, perhaps
overriding reason for targeting Syria now is the Zionist entity’s desire for
revenge after the humiliating defeat in 2006 by Hezbollah, which reportedly
receives support from President al-Assad. In addition, Tel Aviv sees Damascus
as a strong ally of Tehran, but does not possess sufficient military might to
take on both countries without U.S. aid. Therefore, luring Washington into
providing weapons to foreign-backed insurgents helps advance the Zionist agenda
by weakening an Iranian ally, and allowing Israel to hold on illegally-seized
Syrian water resources of the Golan Heights. However, by marching lockstep into
the fray at Israel’s beckoning, the U.S. is clearly not acting in its own best
interests, as former state department official Aaron Miller observed, “There is
a danger in a policy in which there is no daylight whatsoever between the
government of ‘Israel’ and the government of the United States.” Yet, Tel Aviv
seems to be acting with stupidity as well, for if the Assad government does
fall to foreign-backed Salafi insurgents, what will prevent these extremists
from turning their western-furnished weapons on the Zionist entity next?
In analyzing the
rationality, or dare one say sanity, of the American policymakers who, once
again are treading on this perilous path, one is forced to ask a difficult and
embarrassing question: Do the U.S. leaders have a firm grasp on what they are
doing, or are their actions perhaps a result of a lack of – realizing the
potential ambiguity in using the word -intelligence? Over the years, U.S.
analysts have a stunning record of failing to predict pivotal global events:
the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the demise of the Soviet Union, and the
so-called Arab Spring just to mention a few. On the collapse of the Soviet
Union, the late Professor Chalmers Johnson wrote, “The American leadership did
not have either the information or the imagination to grasp what was
happening.” Perhaps this is also the case in Syria, or perhaps it is simply
war-obsessed leaders driven by the Pentagon and the CIA, intent on spreading
violence and strife.
The arming of
foreign-backed extremists in Syria is just one of many signs that the United
States government is completely out of control. “A revolution would be required
to bring the Pentagon back under democratic control, or to abolish the CIA,”
wrote Chalmers Johnson. According to the United States own Declaration of
Independence, whenever a government fails to protect “unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” then “it is the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” In view of the persistent
failure by the United States to honor these rights for its own citizens, the
time has arrived for them to rise up and abolish this belligerent, parasitic
and oppressive government.
YW/HSN

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