SSM Statement on the Third Anniversary of the War

Since the collapse of the Geneva 2 talks, US President Obama has asked his Secretary of Defence, Chuck Hegel, to come up with “further options” on Syria. The results of Obama’s request are now becoming clearer. They include the establishment of a 25-mile-deep, no-fly zone along Syrian borders (probably based on the Patriot missile batteries stationed two years ago inside Turkey and manned by US troops); the deployment of unmanned drones for pinpoint strikes on targets farther into the Syrian interior; and the equipping of the US-supported, foreign mercenaries, linked to Al-Qaeda, with the latest anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons just in time for a spring offensive – and partly to upset plans for a Syrian presidential election in April 2014.

The talks collapsed because, from his very first speech there, US Secretary of State John Kerry called for the removal of Syrian President Assad before negotiations on a transitional government for Syria take place. Kerry went so far as to lie: he said he was just repeating the conclusions of the Geneva Communiqué of June 30, 2012 (from the Geneva Conference #1). Nothing could have been further from the truth. The Communiqué calls for negotiations without pre-conditions concerning a transitional government for Syria. In other words, President Assad, whom various studies have shown commands about 70% of support among Syrians, might very well stand for office and be part of a Syrian transitional government.

The political cover for the likely acts of aggression (mentioned above), orchestrated by the USA against the sovereign state of Syria, will be the latest form of “humanitarian interventionism”, known as Responsibility to Protect, or R2P. R2P is defined as a doctrine “which maintains that when sovereign states are unable or unwilling to fulfill their responsibility to protect their own populations from genocide and other mass atrocities, the international community has the responsibility to do so.” Even before R2P was formally adopted in 2005 by the United Nations World Summit, similar wording was used in 2004 to launch what was described as a “humanitarian” intervention by Canada, France, and the USA to overthrow the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the first democratically-elected president of Haiti. Between 2004 and 2013, R2P, which some describe as the modern version of “the white man’s burden”, was invoked to justify western military interventions in Darfur (2006), Côte d’Ivoire (2011), Yemen (2011), Mali (2012, 2013), Central African Republic (2013, 2014), and Sudan and South Sudan (2011, 2013).

According to the Canadian governmental promoters of R2P, the most successful test of R2P took place at the United Nations in 2011 when the Security Council, under false pretenses, authorized a no-fly zone over Libya. The government of Libya was neither unwilling nor unable to protect its own population against attacks by the western-backed “rebels” based in Benghazi. It also didn’t challenge the no-fly zone. Yet, the air forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) quickly transformed the no-fly zone into a 226-day bombing campaign (with 26,500 air sorties) for regime change in Libya, the results of which were an estimated 50,000 deaths, the wholesale destruction of Libya’s military and civilian infrastructure, a pogrom by the “rebel” forces against black people in Libya, and the dismemberment of Libya into chaotic, warring, balkanized enclaves. In Syria, the pretext for the no-fly zone will likely be United Nations Security Council resolution 2139 (February 22, 2014). This resolution, among other points, condemns both the Syrian government and armed opposition for violations of international law in regards to the treatment of civilians and demands, among other things, “that all parties allow the delivery of humanitarian assistance, including medical assistance.”

March 15, 2014, marks the third anniversary of the covert war of aggression against Syria launched by western and regional powers through the so-called “Friends of Syria” Group. The result of three years of war against Syria is over 100,000 deaths (of which about half are accounted for among Syrian police and soldiers), over two million external Syrian refugees, and at least four million internally displaced persons. No figures are available for numbers of wounded or children psychologically traumatized. Nearly half of the Syrian civilian infrastructure has been destroyed, including hospitals, schools, power facilities, and housing. Due to the war and economic sanctions, nearly 70% of Syrians are now unemployed. With friends such as the “Friends of Syria” Group, the Syrian people don’t need enemies.

However, President Obama is impatient. His advisors had predicted in March 2011 that the government of Syria would fall within weeks. Instead, virtually every sector of Syrian society as well as minority & majority nationalities and religious communities within Syria have rallied to save the country from being balkanized into hostile statelets à la Libya, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. Russia, China, and Iran have remained firm allies.

But the US empire is on the warpath. Fresh from a disastrous regime-change operation, utilizing extreme right wing and fascist forces, against the elected government in Ukraine, and an on-going destabilization campaign against the elected government in Venezuela, Washington policy makers are demanding some results against the elected government in Syria.

It behooves the peace/anti-war movement to deny Washington a victory in Syria in the spring of 2014, just as we helped mobilize world public opinion against the U.S. threat of immediate war in August 2013. At that time, Obama failed to secure congressional approval for an attack on Syria. Public opinion polls in the USA were running overwhelmingly against an overt US military intervention. At that time as well, massive popular opposition prevented UK PM Cameron from getting parliamentary approval for war, something that hadn’t happened in Britain since 1784. And a number of European and Middle Eastern states also made it clear that they wouldn’t be part of a “coalition of the willing” to bomb Syria. Instead, Russian President Putin defused the situation by correctly referring the matter of Syria’s chemical weapons to international diplomacy for a peaceful solution.

What the peace movement needs to do now is to mobilize its base to contact elected officials and tell them, just as we did in August 2013, that the people of the world will not accept a ratcheting up of the war on Syria. Instead, what we demand now of our governments are the following:

1. ) Quit the Friends of Syria Group now – end the illegal aggression against the sovereign state of Syria;

2. ) Drop the economic sanctions against Syria – they are outside the mandate of the UN Security Council and are, therefore illegal and unjust;

3. ) Re-establish full diplomatic relations with Syria – open the door for a political, not military, settlement of the Syrian crisis;

4. ) Cease and desist from providing any direct financial, material, and political support to foreign mercenaries in Syria, whether linked formally to Al Qaeda or not;

5. ) Stop the campaign of disinformation, demonization, and delegitimation against the government of Syria.

In short, the peace movement in every country needs to tell its own domestic political leaders to keep their HANDS OFF SYRIA!