After over two decades of being in Western crosshairs Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad declared to his new
cabinet “We live in a real state of war from all angles.” He couldn’t be more right as virtually
the entire
northern hemisphere in one way or another converges on this ancient plot of
land in the eastern Mediterranean.
No doubt due to the Turkish warplane shot down last week Tukey has
moved from passive facilitator of the foreign insurrection in Syria to
active aggressor and is mobilizing its military for war. On Tuesday the
Times of Israel reported:
"Large numbers of Turkish troops — including at least 15
long-range artillery pieces and tanks – moved to the Syrian frontier
from the eastern city of Diyarbakir. A video published by the Turkish
Cihan News Agency showed Turkish tanks being transported by carrier
trucks toward the frontier."
While the circumstances surrounding the downed fighter are hotly
contested we must remember that truth is the first casualty of war. Who
did what and when is irrelevant. To risk the peace of the entire
region over one fighter jet shows the motives for war rest with NATO and
its front line ally Turkey as they are obviously not in the interests
of Syria or the embattled administration of al-Assad.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that
the “rules of engagement have changed” since the shoot-down and in caustic
eloquence declared “As awe-inspiring as Turkey’s friendship is, Turkey’s wrath
is equally awe-inspiring.” Erdogan
alludes to a friendship with Syria, however, it would be quite disingenuous to
claim that friendship ended only after last week’s incident.
Erdogan admonished Syrian authorities: “"Every military
element approaching Turkey from the Syrian border and representing a security
risk and danger will be assessed as a military threat and will be treated as a
military target." This is
quite ironic since for over a year the Syrian National Council (SNC) and Free
Syrian Army (FSA) rebels, peppered
with foreign back terrorists, have been using the safety of the Turkish
border to coordinate and launch sorties into against the Assad regime.
This was of course the plan all along. Considering Tukey’s problem with the PKK and their
own brutal crack down on Kurdish separatist “terrorists” they could not
very well attack Syria for justly attempting to restore order. As any fight begins with knocking the
chip off the others shoulder Turkey has in effect placed it forcefully upon
Syria. How is that for friendship? But why have they turned their back?
Two reasons come to mind. The first is the US government and the rest of NATO has a long standing commitment
to use the lowest cost means for its designs in the Middle East, which
is to say, they prefer staying out of the fight choosing to directly
fund and train terrorists or coordinate its Gulf Cooperation Council
(GCC) proxy states to do so. Turkey, after reviewing the deep bench of
NATO backed secessionist militias including Al Qaeda affiliate Libyan
Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) currently consulting the FSA, Iranian MEK
trained in the Nevada desert, and among others their PKK antagonists
with whom they've been fighting since the 80s, Ankara is more than
willing to lend a helping hand to avoid any “uprisings” of their own.
The second (probably the
most compelling) motive among the Turkish elite to aid the West is to become
part of the neoliberal “New Middle East,” in other words, to be a good soldier
in the New World Order. Similar to
jumping in a prospective gangster or taking a “young blood” out for his first
drive by Syria is going to oust for the Anglo-European Empire their first
Middle East dictator. Rather than pursuing
economic prospects with the BRICS as priority the new and improved
US-Turkish relations may bring forward the carrot of an otherwise nonexistent
US-Tukey free trade zone paved in the blood of one Syrian tyrant.
The immediate feeling from new more brazen attacks on Assad's elite guards
only miles away from the center of Damascus shows an increasingly
emboldened rebellion and foreign insurgency. Save a decisive effort on
the part of Russia, China and or Iran Syria will increasingly bear all
the hallmarks of Libya. Assad's days appear numbered. Whether Libya's
dystopian post-revolution will resemble Syria's is almost assured.
The massacre in Srebrenica was the last best piece of
propaganda of the 20th century. Syria’s Houla massacre, if swallowed
whole, will produce the same deceit.
In 1995, after the Dayton Peace Accords were signed in Ohio,
purportedly 8,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) were massacred during a
summer in Srebrenica. It was referred to as the worst mass murder since
World War II and the blame was quickly laid at the feet of the usual
suspects – Serbian forces. The result was NATO’s aerial bombardment and
the invasion of 60,000 troops under United Nations command.
The Bosnian invasion was predicated on the idea that Srebrenica was a
result of “ethnic cleansing” the endgame of course to stymie if not
eradicate the Bosniak bloodline. The only problem was women and
children were evidently put on buses and allowed to flee. When the
graves were exhumed and the bodies examined mostly men of fighting age
were found. It took over a decade for the Hague to exonerate Serbia in
the action and place it squarely on a Croat, but by 2007 the damage was
irreparable in more ways than one. So goes the fog of war and
propaganda.
Syria over the Memorial Day weekend suffered a microcosm of that
massacre when 108 civilians (32 children under 10-years-old) in Hula,
outside Homs, were summarily dispatched without mercy. Initial reports
suspected the Syrian army, if not, the Alawite Shabiha militia, loyal to
the Assad regime. A Syrian investigation, however, found the culprits
to be an 800-man death squad.
Thus far the trial of the Houla Massacre has taken place in the court
of public opinion, which has been severely biased in favor of the
opposition since the beginning of the Arab Spring, imbued with
democratic legitimacy. In reality the Free Syrian Army (FSA) based
from behind NATO lines in Turkey and under the direction of the Syrian
National Council (SNC) is supplemented by a dubious international
coalition of Islamic fundamentalists from all over the Middle East.
Rather than merely appealing for democratic reforms this sordid sum
has created an environment of rampant sectarian violence not scene since
Iraq in 2007. Unfortunately like in Afghanistan and Iraq the grand
irony is that the West’s “crusade” as it is often referred to has
actually displaced hundreds of thousands of Christians. According to French Bishop Philip Tournyol Clos:
“…the picture for us is utter desolation: the church of
Mar Elian is half destroyed and that of Our Lady of Peace is still
occupied by the rebels. Christian homes are severely damaged due to the
fighting and completely emptied of their inhabitants, who fled without
taking anything. The area of Hamidieh is still shelter to armed groups
independent of each other, heavily armed and bankrolled by Qatar and
Saudi Arabia. All Christians (138,000) have fled to Damascus and
Lebanon, while others took refuge in the surrounding countryside.”
Continuing…
“the enemies of Syria have enlisted some of the Muslim
Brotherhood in order to destroy the brotherly relations that
traditionally existed between Muslims and Christians: Yet, to date,they
are not able to: they have provoked a contrary reaction and the two
communities are more united than before. The Syrian soldiers in fact,
continue to face foreign fighters, mercenaries Libyans, Lebanese
militants from the Gulf, Afghans, Turks”
This heartfelt testimony reflects what we have known for the better
part of a year, that the “protestors” and “activists” in Syria are very
much part of a larger proxy war which pulls support from a vast cross
section of the NATO-Sunni alliance. Funding of groups like the Muslim
Brotherhood has been in the pipeline since at least 2007 when it was reported in the New Yorker
that Israel and the US were funneling support through Saudi Arabia so
as not to compromise the “credibility” of the ostensibly “Islamic”
movement. A similar tactic was utilized through Pakistan in creation of
Al’ Qaeda in 1980s during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (we all
know how that worked out). As members of the Muslim Brotherhood are now
honored guests at the White House, one must wonder if “credibility” is any longer an issue.
To continue with the Srebrenica analogy, while there has been no
peace accord as there was in Bosnia former UN secretary general, Kofi
Annan, has been attempting to monitor a ceasefire (part of his six point
plan) as he did in Rwanda and Bosnia, which has by all accounts
demonstrably failed as it did twice before. To be sure, as the Washington Post’s distorted, but still revealing op-ed detailed, wherever Kofi goes killings follow.
The common narrative parroted throughout the MSM (here and here)
is that these UN monitors are naively providing “cover” for the Assad
regime’s reprisals and add credibility to the Syrian government under
the idea that diplomatic solutions are being ardently pursued. Given
what we know about the composition of the insurgency, however, it is
much more likely the opposite is true. UN monitors legitimize the
conflict itself as a wholly indigenous uprising that requires diplomacy
and time rather than expose it for what it is – a foreign invasion aimed
at dismantling a key ally of Iran and Russia.
Srebrenica “claimed 8,000 lives”, however, it later turned out those
numbers were grossly exaggerated (more like 700) and the motive – ethnic
cleansing – proved tenuous at best. In reality it was another horror
of war propagandized as the international version of a hate crime – a
crime against humanity – ostensibly far worse and deserving of
invasion. In Houla, while the scene has changed the goal is very much
the same: demonize a vulnerable target government, intervene with force and with overwhelming humanitarian legitimacy post-haste.
The massacre, however, retains all the hallmarks
of a shake and bake propaganda piece: the group was nearly 1/3
children, the fatalities purportedly as a result of “tank shells” and
while many victims were in fact “mutilated and killed by knives.”
Indeed, the footage was “released by the rebels” for Western
consumption, that much is undeniable. Thing is, the Syrian army
doesn’t enjoy a monopoly on that type of ordinance since the FSA has
been reported to have captured Syrian army tanks as well as receiving even more tanks from defectors.
What was true in Srebrenica (see the Srebrenica fact sheet) is most likely true in Houla, both parties are were responsible
for the death and destruction rather than one fail swoop of merciless
destruction at the hands of an all-powerful Assad hell bent on crushing
the moral of his people and their wishes for democracy.
Tempered with the aforementioned facts, the understandable and
demonstrable desire of the media to sensationalize the events,
geopolitical interests and the thin evidence (lies of satellite photos showing pro Assad forces “at the time of the attack” were in fact a day old, testimony of defected “air force officer” with “super human” hearing and sight,
and testimony from a child in shock and impressionable) an objective
analysis may come forth. Until that time beware the sirens call.
What is Qud’s Force Doing in Syria, Re-balancing or Massacring?
It has been reported that Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Ismail
Qa’ani, second-in-command of Iranian Special Forces – Quds Force – has
been training Assad’s soldiers since before the Syrian uprising. This
from the International Business Times:
“The Quds, named for the Farsi word for Jerusalem, are
Iran’s special forces unit — in American equivalents, a mix between
black-ops and the CIA. As the Revolutionary Guard’s external force, the
Quds support and facilitate Islamic movements in other nations on
Teheran’s behalf, movements that allegedly include terrorist
organizations.”
OMG, so like terrorist organizations like NATO backed Libyan Islamic
Fighting Group (LIFG) or Nevada trained MEK both listed on the US State
Department’s “Don’t Feed the Terrorists” list, those types of
terrorists? Looks like two can play at this game.
The state department attempted to connect the dots for us in the wake
of the Houla massacre neglecting to brief us on the opposition’s
questionable allegiances and design. Its spokesperson, according to IBT:
"Victoria Nuland said that the Shabiha militia, accused of
carrying out the Houla massacre, has been modeled after Iran’s
paramilitary Basij force, suggesting that the Iranian military could
have trained the Syrian civilian soldiers."
This could be true, but it doesn’t explain the inconsistencies and
gaps in the favored fiction of Houla, rather it supplies a red hearing.
In reality the official narrative is fraying. The IEDs, reports of
wahabbists, displaced Christians and clandestine support are piling upon
a delicate ruse. The idea that the opposition’s “demonstrators” and
“activists” are a homogenous, indigenous and innocuous bunch of freedom
loving non-state actors has been so undermined that Sec. of State
Hillary Clinton revealed the true mastermind behind the Houla massacre
claiming in Copenhagen that Quds “are coaching the Syrian military …
helping them set up these sectarian militias.” She effectively, in one line, used up her lifetime supply of irony.
It is evident, according to defectors, the Quds Force was needed
because Syria’s Army wasn’t up to task in crucial engagements with the
foreign backed FSA and its fundamentalist friends. Hm, odd. In the
end, the Syrian government (backed by Iran, Russia and China) faces a
foreign backed insurgency (under the aegis of Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
Libya, Turkey, NATO). We are in effect seeing World War III in a
fishbowl, perhaps a peak into the future and its only going to get
uglier from here.
