Syria: Washington's Latest War Crime

by Paul Craig Roberts

PaulCraigRoberts.org

One wonders what Syrians are thinking as “rebels” vowing to “free Syria” take the country down the same road to destruction as “rebels” in Libya. Libya, under Gaddafi a well run country whose oil revenues were shared with the Libyan people instead of monopolized by a princely class as in Saudi Arabia, now has no government and is in disarray with contending factions vying for power.

Just as no one knew who the Libyan “rebels” were, with elements of al Qaeda reportedly among them, no one knows who the Syrian “rebels” are, or indeed if they are even rebels (Antiwar.com). Some “rebels” appear to be bandit groups who seize the opportunity to loot and to rape and set themselves up as the governments of villages and towns. Others appear to be al Qaeda. (Antiwar.com)

The fact that the “rebels” are armed is an indication of interference from outside. There have been reports that Washington has ordered its Saudi and Bahrain puppet governments to supply the “rebels” with military weaponry. Some suspect that the explosion that killed the Syrian Defense Minister and the head of the government’s crisis operations was not the work of a suicide bomber but the work of a US drone or missile reminiscent of Washington’s failed attempts to murder Saddam Hussein. Regardless, Washington regarded the terror attack as a success, declaring that it showed the rebels were gaining “real momentum” and called on the Syrian government to respond to the attack by resigning. (reuters.com)

The following is from a leaked intelligence document describing a previous Western terrorist intervention in Syria just in case any reader is so naive as to think that “our government would never do that.”

“In order to facilitate the action of liberative (sic) forces, …a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals. …[to] be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention, …

Once a political decision has been reached to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria, CIA is prepared, and SIS (MI6) will attempt to mount minor sabotage and coup de main (sic) incidents within Syria, working through contacts with individuals. …Incidents should not be concentrated in Damascus …

Further: a “necessary degree of fear .. frontier incidents and (staged) border clashes”, would “provide a pretext for intervention… the CIA and SIS [MI6] should use … capabilities in both psychological and action fields to augment tension.” (Joint US-UK leaked Intelligence Document, London and Washington, 1957) (globalreasearch.ca)

Obama has not said why his government is so desperate to overthrow the Syrian government. The current president was an eye doctor in London who was brought back to Syria to replace his father, who had passed away, as president of the country. Washington is reticent about its real motives, which it masks with high-sounding humanitarian rhetoric, but Washington’s motives are transparent.

One motive is to get rid of the Russian naval base in Syria, thus depriving Russia of its only Mediterranean base.

A second motive is to eliminate Syria as a source of arms and support to Hizbullah in order that Israel can succeed in its attempts to occupy southern Lebanon and acquire its water resources. Hizbullah’s fighters have twice defeated the Israeli military’s attempts to invade and to occupy southern Lebanon.

A third motive is to destroy the unity of Syria with sectarian conflict, as Washington destroyed Libya and Iraq, and leave Syria to waring factions to dismember the country, thus removing another obstacle to Washington’s hegemony.

Syria, a secular Arab state, like Iraq was, is ruled by a political party composed of Alawis, more or less Shia Muslims. The Alawis comprise about 12% of the Syrian population and are regarded as heretics by the Sunni Muslims who comprise about 74% of the Syrian population. Thus the orchestrated “uprising” appeals to many Sunnis who see the opportunity to take over. (In Iraq it was a Sunni minority that ruled a Shia majority, and in Syria it is the opposite.)

The divisions among Arabs make Arabs vulnerable to Western interference and rule. The Sunni-Shia split makes it impossible for an Arab country to unite against an invader or for one Arab country to come to the aid of another. In 1990 the Shia Syrian government lined up with the US against the Sunni Iraq government in the First Iraq War. Neither Lawrence of Arabia, Nasser, nor Gaddafi succeeded in creating an Arab consciousness.

Washington’s cover for its violent overthrow of other governments is always moralistic verbiage. First the target is demonized, and then Washington’s naked aggression is described as “bringing freedom and democracy,” “overthrowing a brutal dictator,” “protecting women’s rights.” Any assortment of cant words and phrases seems to work.

Hillary Clinton has been especially strident in advocating the overthrow of the Syrian government. The silly woman even issued threats to Russia and China for daring to block Washington’s attempt to use a UN resolution as cover for invading Syria. Washington misrepresents the Syrian government’s resistance to being overthrown as a government conducting terror against its own people. But Washington had no condemnation for the terror attack, whether its own or that of a suicide bomber, that killed high-level Syrian government officials. Washington’s double standard prompted the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, to accuse Washington of having “a sinister position.”

Indeed, Washington does. But what is surprising about Washington’s sinister position after Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan? Undoubtedly, after Syria is overthrown, Washington will move on to Iran. Russia itself is already being surrounded by US missile bases, and the Russian government has a disloyal and traitorous political opposition financed by American money. China is confronting a rapid buildup of US air, naval, and troop bases in the Pacific. How long before China’s government has a disloyal opposition financed by Washington?

The hegemon is on the march, but what Syrian Sunnis see is a chance to overthrow the Alawite Shia. The Syrian Sunnis will ally with Washington despite the fact that Washington overthrew the Iraqi Sunnis. Few Arabs, it seems, mind being puppets of a foreign regime that hands out billions of dollars.

Washington loosely refers to Syrian President Assad as a “dictator” or “brutal dictator,” but obviously if Assad is a dictator he is not very effective in that role. Normally, dictators don’t permit an opposition to rise, much less arm itself. It would be more accurate to say that the ruling party is authoritarian, but the ruling party has introduced elements of democracy with the new constitution.

As Iraq has proved, Arab governments have to be authoritarian if their Sunni and Shia populations are not to be constantly engaged in civil war. Both Bush and Obama claim that Washington brought “freedom and democracy” to Iraq. However, the ongoing violence in Iraq is as intense or more intense than under the American occupation. Here are the reports for the last three days:

July 23: “A wave of bomb attacks and shootings in Baghdad and north of the capital has killed at least 107 people. At least 216 were wounded.”

July 24: “A second day of intensified attacks left at least 145 Iraqis killed and 379 more wounded.”

July 25: “Attacks continue across Iraq: 17 killed, 60 wounded.”

This is what Washington did for Iraq. Far from bringing “freedom and democracy,” Washington brought endless mayhem and death. And this is precisely what Washington is in the process of bringing to Syria.

Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House. Visit his website.

Saudi Arabia - America's Favorite Dictatorship

Saudi textbooks are calling Jews and Christians “apes and pigs.”

If you ask wiki.answers.com "Saudi Arabia is not run by Dictatorship, it is an autocratic monarchy, with all ministries led by a single family (The Sauds) Political parties are banned, but all Wahabi Islamic adult men can stand for and vote in municipal elections.  The Saudi people have no peaceful and constitutional means of changing their government. The king has absolute powers and is accountable to nobody. He passes on power to members of his family. So yes, Saudi Arabia is indeed a dictatorship".

/source

As a proxy of Washington, the Saudi regime has spread its extreme Wahhabi doctrine all over the Muslim world by financing mosques and religious schools. The doctrine fuels hateful sectarianism and killings of other Muslims, which serves the U.S. objective of weakening Muslims through divide-and-rule tactics. Fanning such fanaticism also helps the U.S. manufacture Muslim enemies to justify its endless wars and huge military budgets. The greatest service the Saudi regime has provided to Washington has been its pledge to trade oil in U.S. dollars. During the 1970s, oil became the most important traded resource, and U.S. President Richard Nixon linked the dollar to oil, making a deal with Saudi Arabia (the biggest OPEC oil producer) in 1974 that stipulated that oil could only be bought and sold in U.S. dollars. In return, the U.S. agreed to militarily protect the Saudi royal family. As long as oil was traded in dollars, so would other goods, and the dollar would remain the world's reserve currency. This arrangement gave the U.S. the economic power to continue its dominant imperial role despite its crucial weakness in manufacturing.

United States of America supports Saudi Dictatorship but King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is not the only one to recieve U.S. backing. There is also Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, The Sultan Quaboos bin Said Al-Said of Oman (since 1970), Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan and others... 

On December 29, the White House announced that it was sending nearly $30 billion worth of F-15 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, part of a $60 billion package—the largest arms deal in history. 

The Saudi royal family rules the country with an iron fist, suppressing all democratic aspirations and even banning women from driving cars. The family belongs to the extreme fundamentalist Wahhabi sect of Islam, which, according to British-Pakistani writer Tariq Ali, combines “religious fanaticism, military ruthlessness, and political villainy.” Wahhabism is hostile to other Muslims (especially Shias), considering them heretics, and wants a return to its vision of an eighth-century Islam which never actually existed. America has never supported human rights in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia participated in the violent repression of popular revolts in Bahrain, an issue which was largely ignored by the Western mainstream media. The Sunni fundamentalist Saudi dictatorship felt it was threatened by a spreading revolution in Bahrein, prompting it to send troops into that country on March 15. Two thousand troops from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) entered Bahrein on that day to put down an uprising by the country's Shia majority against Sunni royalist dictator King Hamad bin Issa Al-Khalifa. No Arab Spring for people of Bahrein. 1,200 of the troops sent into Bahrain were Saudi. Behind the Saudi invasion of Bahrain and the repression there is the United States government, the main international backer of both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. While Washington has led the attack on Libya, claiming it is necessary to stop Gaddafi from killing his people, and is denouncing and sanctioning President Assad of Syria for doing the same, no such censure is being exercised against Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. These two countries – long-time minions of the U.S. -- are instead being aided and encouraged to crush their citizens’ democratic protests with impunity. Why? Bahrain hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet and has also provided facilities and forces for the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. military sales to Bahrain jumped massively in 2010, to $200 million from $88 million in 2009. The 2010 sales included exports of rifles, shotguns, and assault weapons. Since the start of protests in February 2011, Bahraini security forces have been firing live ammunition at demonstrators. The Saudi invasion of Bahrain was followed by the imposition of martial law and a brutal crackdown on protesters by a combined GCC-Bahraini force, which killed scores of civilians, injured hundreds, and jailed 1,600 people.

The Saudi monarchy was set up by the British Empire after World War I so that the U.K. could control the vast oil resources in that country. The imperial plan was to put the maximum amount of oil (which rightfully belongs to the Arab people) in the hands of a few easily controlled puppet families. Britain imposed this regime in the U.A.E. and Iraq, as well as Saudi Arabia. After the Second World War, the U.S. empire took over from the British.

Not only is Saudi Arabia the world’s leading oil exporter and the main source of cheap oil for the U.S., but it is now also the principal Arab political and military bulwark for Washington’s interests in the Middle East. There is no other country in the world that can take Saudi Arabia’s place in terms of oil exports. The Saudi military is also weak and so of very limited use to the United States. Saudi forces can invade a small state like Bahrain, but are no match for other Middle Eastern armies such as those of Egypt, Syria, and Iran. The Saudi military consists of mercenary soldiers from Pakistan and Jordan, and the regime is dependent on U.S. protection for its survival. It is believed that the massive $60 billion U.S. arms deal with Saudi Arabia is directed against Iran. After all, Israel did not object to the deal.That deal includes up to 84 new F-15s, upgrading of Riyadh's current force of 70 F-15s, and up to 1,000 so-called "bunker buster" bombs and190 helicopters. These include 70 Apache Longbows, an upgraded version of the U.S. Army's highly successful attack helicopter which carries, among other weapons, a powerful 30 MM gun and anti-tank missiles. Riyadh is also purchasing 36 AH-6i "Little Bird" light helicopters, which are often used by Special Forces. Finally, the Saudis are buying 72 UH-60 Blackhawks, which are ideal for moving troops into and around combat zones. Now, with the U.S. and its Western allies refocusing on the Persian Gulf and the threat of Western military action against Syria and Iran mounting, it is clearly NATO's intention to recruit Saudi Arabia for the Persian Gulf partnership. Of all EU member states, France comes first with Euro2168.6 million of exports in 2010. Italy is in second place with Euro435.3 million, before Great Britain, with Euro328.8 million.By arming the Saudi kingdom, the member states of the European Union are breaking prevailing EU rules regulating the exports of weapons. It is worth noting, in this regard, that a large quantity of the weapons sold to Saudi Arabia by EU member states has ended up in the hands of Libyan and Syrian "rebels", thus largely contributing to fuelling international aggression and regional instability.

The EU member states are the main weapons providers of the Al Saud Monarchy, one of the World's most repressive regimes

Saudi Arabia responded with unflinching repression to demands by citizens for greater democracy in the wake of the pro-democracy Arab Spring movements. New laws introduced or proposed in 2011 criminalize the exercise of basic human rights such as freedom of expression, assembly, and association. Authorities continue to suppress or fail to protect the rights of 9 million Saudi women and girls, 8 million foreign workers, and some 2 million Shia citizens. Each year thousands of people receive unfair trials or are subject to arbitrary detention. The Saudi guardianship system continues to treat women as minors. Under this discriminatory system, girls and women of all ages are forbidden from traveling, studying, or working without permission from their male guardians. Over 8 million migrant workers fill manual, clerical, and service jobs, constituting more than half the national workforce. Many suffer multiple abuses and labor exploitation, sometimes amounting to slavery-like conditions. The kafala (sponsorship) system ties migrant workers' residency permits to their “sponsoring” employers, whose written consent is required for workers to change employers or exit the country. Employers abuse this power to confiscate passports, withhold wages, and force migrants to work against their will. Some 1.5 million migrant domestic workers remain excluded from the 2005 Labor Law. As in years past, Asian embassies reported thousands of complaints from domestic workers forced to work 15 to 20 hours a day, seven days a week, and denied their salaries. Domestic workers, most of whom are women, frequently endure forced confinement, food deprivation, and severe psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. Detainees, including children, commonly face systematic violations of due process and fair trial rights, including arbitrary arrest and torture and ill-treatment in detention. Saudi judges routinely sentence defendants to thousands of lashes.  Lawyers do not assist suspects during interrogation and face difficulty examining witnesses or presenting evidence at trial. Secret police detained without trial or access to lawyers, in many cases for years, thousands of persons suspected of sympathies for or involvement with armed groups, or for their peaceful political views. Saudi Arabia does not tolerate public worship by adherents of religions other than Islam and systematically discriminates against its religious minorities, in particular Shia and Ismailis (a distinct branch of Shiism). Official discrimination against Shia encompasses religious practices, education, and the justice system. Government officials exclude Shia from certain public jobs and policy questions and publicly disparage their faith...

Human Rights Watch 2012 report on Saudi Arabia

International Observatory for Gulf State Despotism

Wesley Clark The Businessman

General Wesley Clark (Rhodes Scholar - MA, BSc)

Wesley K. Clark is a businessman, educator, writer and commentator.

General Clark serves as Chairman and CEO of Wesley K. Clark & Associates, a strategic consulting firm; Chairman of investment bank Rodman & Renshaw; Co-Chairman of Growth Energy; senior fellow at UCLA's Burkle Center for International Relations; Chairman of Clean Terra, Inc.; Director of International Crisis Group; Chairman of City Year Little Rock; as well as numerous corporate boards. General Clark has authored three books and serves as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative's Energy & Climate Change Advisory Board, and ACORE's Advisory Board.

Clark retired as a four star general after 38 years in the United States Army. He graduated first in his class at West Point (BSc) and completed degrees in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University (MA) as a Rhodes Scholar. While serving in Vietnam, he commanded an infantry company in combat, where he was severely wounded and evacuated home on a stretcher. He later commanded at the battalion, brigade and division level, and served in a number of significant staff positions, including service as the Director Strategic Plans and Policy (J-5). In his last assignment as Supreme Allied Commander Europe he led NATO forces to victory in Operation Allied Force, "saving 1.5 million Albanians from ethnic cleansing". 

His awards include the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Defense Distinguished Service Medal (five awards), Silver star, bronze star, purple heart, honorary knighthoods from the British and Dutch governments, and numerous other awards from other governments, including award of Commander of the Legion of Honor (France). (source)

Kosovo for the general
Igor Siletsky and Timur Blokhin

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Kosovo’s economy is overfilled with investments.

True, the majority of investors are Americans who bore a relation to the “democratization” of Yugoslavia that was carried out at the end of the 90s of the last century. Among them is the former commander of NATO forces in Kosovo retired general Wesley Clark, who is determined to invest more than 5.5 billion dollars in the former Yugoslav republic. Experts say that Washington’s strategy could be characterized by the following slogan: “Conquer and plunder”.

His closest supporters say that Wesley Clark is a great strategist. He wrote the book “Winning Modern Wars” that was published in 2001. In his fundamental survey the author mentions the Pentagon’s list of countries that can be regarded as candidates for a quick change of leadership. On that list are Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, and Somalia. Yugoslavia was not mentioned there because by that time the undesirable regime of Slobodan Milosevic had been overthrown with the help of precision and carpet bombings.

By the way, shortly after the Kosovo operation the tired general – Wesley Clark – retired and immediately got involved in the banking business. As it appears, he invested all his savings that he had accumulated as general, receiving from 150 to 200,000 dollars annually, in the banking business. Because of that he had to earn additional money, working as a military analyst on U.S. TV channels. However, he did not lose his contacts with Kosovo, where, following the previously mentioned democratization, entrepreneurship, especially, in the field of medicine, was on the rise. And now the Envidity Company that is in Clark’s ownership has filed a request for coal mining to the Kosovo authorities. Serbia, which does not recognize Kosovo’s independence, says that it is determined to demand protection for the natural resources belonging to it. Nobody wants to ask for Belgrade’s permission though as was the case many times before.

Wesley Clark always had good contacts with the Kosovo “government” and its “prime minister” – the former militant Hashim Thaci. There is even a street in Pristina named after Wesley Clark. By the way, a Russian political analyst and retired colonel-general Leonid Ivashov at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic mentioned the allied character of relations between the NATO troops and the militants of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). As we can see, this cooperation has borne fruit, including both political and economic benefits, a Serbian journalist, Nikola Vrzic, says.

“It is clear that during their ‘cooperation’ that started in 1998, they concluded business agreements. Now it is absolutely clear that the bombings of Kosovo pursued both political and economic objectives: they were aimed not only at separating Kosovo from Serbia, but also at depriving Kosovo of its extensive natural resources. As it appears, coal is Kosovo’s main resource. Geologists say that there are other minerals there too. More prospecting for natural resources is needed there.”

Against the background of instability on the oil market, experts talk more and more often about good prospects for the development of synthetic fuel, including obtaining synthetic fuel from coal. Clark’s firm believes that it is possible to produce up to 100,000 barrels of the new source of energy daily.

The economic motives of NATO’s military games are actually not a secret. Of interest here is the fact that in the middle of the 1990s, at the very height of the fratricidal war in Yugoslavia, NATO countries’ citizens bought property in the Balkan republic. Buyers were making preparations for a new “post-Yugoslav” reality. And Kosovo was a good training ground, an expert with the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Pavel Kandel, said in an interview with the Voice of Russia.

“Kosovo created a precedent. It was the first link in the strategy of the ‘humanitarian’ interventions of the NATO countries led by the USA. Shortly before the Kosovo operation, at the urgent request of Washington, NATO adopted a new doctrine, which set a number of tasks beyond defence limits before the member-states of the formerly defensive bloc. To be more exact, the possibility of interference in other regions of the world under this or that pretext became possible.”

The strategy that was used earlier can be used again. Coal mining is very good but oil still has a good price. So everything continued, following the former format: Iraq, Somalia, and Libya. Something has gone wrong with Syria though. Damascus wants to develop democracy without humanitarian aid from the West. There are problems with Iran too. But economic strategists have enough patience: investor-generals are ready for investing at any time.

Srebrenica - Izdani grad (A town betrayed)