Syria Support Movement solidarity with the Syrian people
Jun 3, 2014, Press TV
The rebels have already been voting, early and often…with hot steel ballots. Shelling has continued on the outside of the city all day, mostly the morning wake-up call kind to remind people that they are still there, and then again at twilight…commonly done in past wars. We have the window open in the business office as the Dama Rose Hotel so we can hear the man-made thunder.
I am with a group of ten Western observers who have come to not only to watch the Syrian people vote , but to record their feelings about the Western powers who are inflicting such wanton destruction upon the with no mercy. In our meeting with the Speaker of the Parliament this afternoon he told us that they expect no change in the US long-term strategy against Syria.
They are geared up here of a long haul, and the country is drawn together into a tight fist. Yes there were significant political divisions in the first year. But when one country after another joined in the attack it became obvious to all but the dead that Syria is in the cross-hairs of those who want to make it a vassal state. The Speaker told us that Syria was now holding prisoners from eighty- five different countries.
For some reason they seem to object to one of the least sectarian countries in the Mideast, one that has basically free medical care, free cancer drugs…something Americans don’t have and probably never will. Young Syrians can go all the way through college, graduate school, even become a doctor and not pay a dime or owe one. This has all been possible by having the country’s oil and other resources having been used for the benefit for the people rather than being looted by banksters and gangsters like we had happen in the US. The destruction of Syria is already in the range of $140 billion. A generation of wealth has been destroyed and the war train rolls on. Extrapolating this for the American population it would come in at $2 trillion. Are you beginning to get a better picture? Can you hear me now?
For any last doubters, the deployment of the terrorist brigades, first in the north and then filtering throughout the country, showed that we in the West had lost our moral compass…completely. State sponsored terrorism is now the unwritten official foreign policy in the pursuit of ‘our interests’, the term that Obama mentioned early in his recent West Point graduation speech.
Allow me to color in the ugly details in a way that might possibly reach more Americans who woke up in great numbers to protest and prevent the impeding bombing campaign, which to his credit, Obama called off at literally the last minute.
The scale of a war is measured at the end of the day in death and wounded, and property destruction. We all have heard about the Attila the Hun style pile of bodies the US has been helping pile up in Syria…150,000.
Comparing the two populations that would work out to two million dead in the US, and at an estimate of five wounded for every KIA, another ten million casualties for a total of twelve million. I won’t run the numbers on the numbers of widows, orphans, devastated parents and siblings but we would be talking tens of millions more “touched by” someone’s foreign policy that was “pursuing their interests.”
What would the American reaction to that carnage be? We all know they would be screaming for blood. The Neocons and Israeli Lobby crowd would be pushing for nuclear strikes with Dick Cheney and John Bolton selling lottery tickets for their satellite hookup home movie showing. There would be no talk of a negotiated settlement.
But Americans are not putting themselves in the shoes of the Syria people, to their great shame, because whatever exceptionalism is left in America is being frittered away by our Noble Peace Prize president. This is an irony that will live through the ages.
We spent almost ninety minutes with the Syrian election commission this morning, grilling them about all the details of their new job. This is the first election under their new constitution where this independent judicial commission has the final say on all aspects of the election, with much more transparency that would be expected in war time.
Shamefully, the invitations to Western Parliaments to send observers were declined as part of the West’s plan to delegitimize this election. Syrians expect nothing less from those who have been trying to kill them and their country. Even worse, some countries have closed their Syrian embassies so that expats could not vote; another taste of what real Western democracy is like when you take the wrapping paper off.
To no one’s surprise the coverage of this ongoing horror story has been abysmal by Western media. It wears its shame quite openly, with no concern whatsoever. When many EU countries opened themselves up for Christian immigration, most all of them chose to remain in Syria. I had never heard of this today.
The US plans to have the Army topple Assad failed early so the Plan B with the terror brigades was deployed. The Army has rock solid support from the Syria people, and they have paid dearly for it having suffered the most casualties. I would bet on the Syria people standing by them until the last bullet, or the last militant, whichever comes first.
There is not whiff of defeat in the air here, and I have a good nose for fear, having seen so much of it in my lifetime. These people have pulled together (oops, another shell landing) into a tight fist. They know they are fighting for it all, their cradle of civilization, and ours, which we are so honorably defiling, down to the systemic looting of World Heritage Site treasures.
We need to save Syria to save ourselves, for those who require a selfish reason to do the right thing. If we can do it somehow we can save a bit of American honor and then punish those here who are responsible for their crimes against humanity against Syria. I will be discussing in future columns our need to take away diplomatic immunity for state sponsored terrorism. It is way past time we had an open discussion on it as it is a threat to us all.
I am flying up to Homs or Latakia (oops, another shell landing) early in the morning to my polling station assignment. If I get a bad roll of the dice and some dirt bag militant nails me with a MANPAD or an IED I would ask to be buried here in Syria in a soldiers’ cemetery for the good company.
To my mother who has already lost two husbands and a son, all soldiers, I ask her forgiveness but would remind her it was she who taught me to see right from wrong. She did a good job, and I would have no regrets to lay my head down in the cradle of civilization.
If my luck is good I will be bringing you a post-election report from the Syrian people, as one way or another, they will have their say tomorrow. And I will be there to shoot 32 gigs of HD video for the archives.
