“Funny Things” Keep Happening on the Way to the War On Syria.
The Whole World is on a Dangerously Slippery Slope
By Jooneed Khan
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!
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