The Anti-Empire Report
The Holy Triumvirate — The United States, NATO, and the European
Union — or an approved segment thereof, can usually get what they want.
They wanted Saddam Hussein out, and soon he was swinging from a rope.
They wanted the Taliban ousted from power, and, using overwhelming
force, that was achieved rather quickly. They wanted Moammar Gaddafi's
rule to come to an end, and before very long he suffered a horrible
death. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was democratically elected, but this
black man who didn't know his place was sent into distant exile by the
United States and France in 2004. Iraq and Libya were the two most
modern, educated and secular states in the Middle East; now all four of
these countries could qualify as failed states.
These are some of the examples from the past decade of how the Holy
Triumvirate recognizes no higher power and believes, literally, that
they can do whatever they want in the world, to whomever they want, for
as long as they want, and call it whatever they want, like "humanitarian
intervention". The 19th- and 20th-century colonialist-imperialist
mentality is alive and well in the West.
Next on their agenda: the removal of Bashar al-Assad of Syria. As
with Gaddafi, the ground is being laid with continual news reports —
from CNN to al Jazeera — of Assad's alleged barbarity,
presented as both uncompromising and unprovoked. After months of this
media onslaught who can doubt that what's happening in Syria is yet
another of those cherished Arab Spring "popular uprisings" against a
"brutal dictator" who must be overthrown? And that the Assad government
is overwhelmingly the cause of the violence.
Assad actually appears to have a large measure of popularity, not
only in Syria, but elsewhere in the Middle East. This includes not just
fellow Alawites, but Syria's two million Christians and no small number
of Sunnis. Gaddafi had at least as much support in Libya and elsewhere
in Africa. The difference between the two cases, at least so far, is
that the Holy Triumvirate bombed and machine-gunned Libya daily for
seven months, unceasingly, crushing the pro-government forces, as well
as Gaddafi himself, and effecting the Triumvirate's treasured "regime
change". Now, rampant chaos, anarchy, looting and shooting, revenge
murders, tribal war, militia war, religious war, civil war, the most
awful racism against the black population, loss of their cherished
welfare state, and possible dismemberment of the country into several
mini-states are the new daily life for the Libyan people. The capital
city of Tripoli is "wallowing in four months of uncollected garbage"
because the landfill is controlled by a faction that doesn't want the
trash of another faction.1
Just imagine what has happened to the country's infrastructure. This
may be what Syria has to look forward to if the Triumvirate gets its
way, although the Masters of the Universe undoubtedly believe that the
people of Libya should be grateful to them for their "liberation".
As to the current violence in Syria, we must consider the numerous
reports of forces providing military support to the Syrian rebels — the
UK, France, the US, Turkey, Israel, Qatar, the Gulf states, and
everyone's favorite champion of freedom and democracy, Saudi Arabia;
with Syria claiming to have captured some 14 French soldiers; plus
individual jihadists and mercenaries from Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Libya,
et al, joining the anti-government forces, their number including
al-Qaeda veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who are likely behind the car
bombs in an attempt to create chaos and destabilize the country. This
may mark the third time the United States has been on the same side as
al-Qaeda, adding to Afghanistan and Libya.
Stratfor, the private and conservative American intelligence firm
with high-level connections, reported that "most of the opposition's
more serious claims have turned out to be grossly exaggerated or simply
untrue." Opposition groups including the Syrian National Council, the
Free Syrian Army and the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights began disseminating "claims that regime forces besieged Homs and
imposed a 72-hour deadline for Syrian defectors to surrender themselves
and their weapons or face a potential massacre." That news made
international headlines. Stratfor's investigation, however, found "no
signs of a massacre," and declared that "opposition forces have an
interest in portraying an impending massacre, hoping to mimic the
conditions that propelled a foreign military intervention in Libya."
Stratfor added that any suggestions of massacres are unlikely because
the Syrian "regime has calibrated its crackdowns to avoid just such a
scenario. Regime forces have been careful to avoid the high casualty
numbers that could lead to an intervention based on humanitarian
grounds."2
Reva Bhalla, Stratfor's Director of Analysis, reported in a December
2011 email on a meeting she attended at the Pentagon about Syria: "After
a couple hours of talking, they said without saying that SOF [Special
Operation Forces] teams (presumably from US, UK, France, Jordan, Turkey)
are already on the ground focused on recce [reconnaissance] missions
and training opposition forces." We know of Bhalla's comments thanks to
the 5 million Stratfor emails obtained by the Internet hacker group
Anonymous in December and passed on to Wikileaks.3
Human Rights Watch has reported that both Syrian government security
forces and Syria's armed rebels have committed serious human rights
abuses, including kidnapings, torture, and executions. But only the
Holy Triumvirate can get away with the sanctions they love to impose.
Assad's wife is now banned from traveling to EU countries and any assets
she may have there are frozen. Same for Assad's mother, sister and
sister-in-law, as well as eight of his government ministers. Assad
himself received the same treatment last May.4 Because the Triumvirate can.
On March 25, the US and Turkish governments announced that they were
discussing sending non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition, implying
quite clearly that until then they had not been engaged in such
activity.5
But according to a US embassy cable, revealed by Wikileaks, since at
least 2006 the United States has been funding political opposition
groups in Syria as well as the London-based satellite TV channel, Barada
TV, run by Syrian exiles, that beams anti-government programming into
the country. The cable further stated that Syrian authorities "would
undoubtedly view any U.S. funds going to illegal political groups as
tantamount to supporting regime change."
Regime change in Syria has been on the neo-conservative wish list
since at least 2002 when John Bolton, Undersecretary of State under
George W. Bush, came up with a project to simultaneously break up Libya
and Syria. He called the two states along with Cuba "The Axis Of Evil".
On a FOX News appearance in 2011 Bolton said that the United States
should have overthrown the Syrian government right after they overthrew
Saddam Hussein. Amongst Syria's crimes have been their close relations
with Iran, Hezbollah (in Lebanon), the Palestinian resistance, and
Russia, and their failure to conclude a peace treaty with Israel, unlike
Jordan and Egypt; all this constituting evidence to the Holy
Triumvirate of Syria, like Aristide, being "uppity".
The clinical megalomania of the Holy Triumvirate can scarcely be exaggerated. And never prosecuted.
A closing word from Cui Tiankai, Chinese vice foreign minister for United States affairs:
The US has the strongest military in the world and spends more than
any other country. But the US always feels unsafe or insecure about
other countries. ... I suggest the United States spend more time
thinking about how to make other countries feel less worried about the
United States.6
Notes
- Washington Post, April 1, 2012 ↩
- Huffington Post, December 19, 2011↩
- See the document on WikiLeaks ↩
- Washington Post, March 24, 2012↩
- Ibid., March 26, 2012 ↩
- Ibid., January 10, 2012 ↩
Source: killinghope.org
For further thoughts on U.S. involvement in the so-called 'Arab Spring' uprisings, go to The Useful Idiot by Tony Cartalucci.
Originally, in The 4th Media, entitled: 2011: One Year into the “Arab Spring,” One Step Closer to Global Hegemony