Posted on August 28, 2013 by Alexandra Valiente
SYRIA: APPEAL AGAINST YET ANOTHER “HUMANITARIAN” WAR OF CONQUEST, LAUNCHED ON FALSE PRETENSES.Syria. Without knowing exactly what happened or who did what, and assigning guilt without proof and without taking into consideration the principle of cui bono, the NATO trio United States-Britain-France has claimed the right to attack Syria to punish the regime for its “moral obscenity”. In reality, the only moral obscenity is the war the trio wants to conduct.
This is why people all over the world should take to the streets in protest. It is intolerable that the trio thinks it can simply make accusations without offering proof of exactly who the authors were of the lethal gas attack in Damascus on August 21st, given that the international experts have yet to define what occurred.
Even General Camporini, former Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces and current vice president of the Institute of International Affairs, has concluded that the Syrian government could have had absolutely no interest in launching a gas attack now that it is winning the fight against the rebels using conventional weapons and, moreover, now that it has just permitted U.N. inspectors to enter the country. Given the readiness of certain world powers to jump into the fray at the first opportunity, it would be suicidal to give them that opportunity.
So if the government had no interest in launching the gas attack, who did? The answer is obvious. The rebel forces have an interest in creating an incident involving the use of lethal gas. This is because they are loosing their fight against the government forces. They have repeatedly asked, over the months, for military support by Western armed forces – but without success, since Russia and China have vetoed any foreign armed intervention in Syria. Thus it is entirely conceivable that the rebel forces, now desperate, could have used the lethal gas themselves against a Damascus suburb, in order to pin the blame on the government, declare that the “red line” has been crossed, and thus give the NATO trio an excuse to enter the fray, even without UN approval.
It is equally conceivable that the same rebel forces could have sought to alarm public opinion even more by staging and filming fake scenes of widespread gas poisoning and posting them on the Internet. This would allow the rebels to claim that not just a few hundred civilians in one suburb, but over 1,700 Syrian civilians, in and around Damascus, were gassed to death by the regime. And that is apparently what they did. With a slip up, however. They posted the videos to YouTube several hours before the mass gas attack was supposed to have taken place.
LET’S NOT FALL FOR IT ANOTHER TIME. Let us reject the war propaganda that mainstream media inundates us with. We have already been victims of quite enough pretexts used to start a war. Two recent examples are the test tube of supposedly poisonous gas that Colin Powell waved before the Security Council to win permission to attack Iraq, and the sensationalistic (but false) news stories of Gaddafi’s ruthlessness against unarmed civilian demonstrators to justify NATO bombing attacks “in defense of the civilians”: for example, the contrived video of so-called mass graves in Libya (they were ordinary graves existing before the revolt) and the supposed use of fighter jets to strafe demonstrators in the street (subsequent analysis of Russian satellite data showed that no planes had flown over Tripoli that day). Two older but similar examples of pretexts to start wars are the self-inflicted attack in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 (carried out by the U.S. to justify invading Vietnam) and the “bread line” incident in 1995 to justify the bombing of Jugolslavia by NATO (and Italian) aviation.
Now the leaders of a few NATO countries, looking for the pretext to bomb Syria and help the pro-NATO rebels defeat the government forces and take power, have denounced the use of lethal gas by the Syrian government – without furnishing any proof and before the on-site U.N. Inspectors have carried out their inspection. What is more, these NATO countries have totally disregarded the cui bono principle – and for a reason: the only party who might have an interest in creating an incident over the use of lethal gas are the rebel forces, who have promptly tried to put the blame on the government.
LET’S NOT GET DRAGGED INTO YET ANOTHER WAR LAUNCHED ON FALSE PRETENSES.
LET’S TAKE TO THE STREETS TO SAY “NO!” TO ANY WESTERN ARMED INTERVENTION IN SYRIA.
LET’S SAY “YES!” TO STOPPING ARMS DELIVERIES. “YES!” TO DIALOG AMONG THE PARTIES. “YES!” TO RECONCILIATION MOVEMENTS LIKE MUSSALAHA (AND OTHERS). “YES!” TO HELPING THE NON-VIOLENT SECTORS OF CIVIL SOCIETY EMERGE AND MAKE THEIR VOICES HEARD.
YOU DON’T COMBAT VIOLENCE WITH VIOLENCE. THE ONLY WAY OUT IS THROUGH PEACE.
WHAT CAN ITALY DO, THEN, TO PROMOTE PEACE IN SYRIA?
- ITALY CAN FORBID THE USE OF ITALIAN AIR SPACE BY U.S. OR NATO MISSIONS IN SYRIA. This may be only a symbolic gesture, since the announced missile attack is to come by sea; but it sends, nonetheless, an important signal. Just like the decision by the government, announced on August 27th, to prohibit using NATO air-naval stations in Italy for operations in Syria, without U.N. Approval.
- ITALY CAN THUS REFUSE TO CONTINUE TO BE AN ALLIED AIRCRAFT CARRIER, USED FOR ATTACKS AGAINST NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES, AND INSIST ON BEING A BRIDGE OVER THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA, ONE THAT PEACEFULLY UNITES COUNTRIES;
- ITALY CAN INVITE THE SYRIAN MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT (BOTH THOSE FOR AND THOSE AGAINST ASSAD) WHO WERE REFUSED ENTRY INTO ITALY UNDER THE MONTI GOVERNMENT, TO COME AND DISCUSS A POLITICAL SOLUTION TO THE CURRENT CRISIS;
- ITALY CAN THUS RECUPERATE THE GLORIOUS TRADITION OF INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMACY THAT IT EXERCISED WITH SUCCESS THROUGHOUT THE RENAISSANCE.
A few facts to back up what has been asserted…
- In May of 2013, Carla Del Ponte, member of the U.N. Enquiry into Syrian war crimes, declared: We have been able to gather a few testimonials of the use of chemical weapons and, in particular, of nerve gas. But they have not been used by the government forces. They have been used by the rebel forces, i.e., by the opposition. When Del Ponte made this statement, the countries who now are rushing into Syria to protect the population, did absolutely nothing. They let the news item grow stale and forgotten. Another fact: on May 30th the Turkish police found an arms cache created by the rebel al-Nusra Front. Same reaction, i.e. no reaction.
- On August 21st Médecins sans frontières received phone calls from clandestine, improvised medical clinics in the Damascus area, run by the opposition (and in which MSF personnel is not present). These phone calls denounced the arrival of thousands of patients with symptoms of gas poisoning, of which three hundred died. The opposition furnished no proof. Bart Janssens, Operations Chief for MSF, declared: “MSF cannot confirm scientifically the cause of the alleged symptoms nor establish responsibilities for the alleged attack.” Afterward the opposition called attention to videos on YouTube as proof but…
- …the videos were uploaded to YouTube on August 20 through the account of a certain Majler Rif. Yet the opposition has stated that the gas attack took place on August 21 at 3 am. Even taking into consideration the differences in time zones, the videos were uploaded well BEFORE the attack. In addition, experts have stated that several scenes seem clearly staged; moreover, the symptoms that the apparent victims were shown to suffer did not closely resemble the symptoms of a sarin gas attack, the gas claimed to have been used. Finally and perhaps most tellingly, the media of the NATO powers who are beating the war drums, have patently misrepresented the statement issued by Médecins sans Frontières to make it seem as though MSF has accredited their claims. Clearly, there is a campaign being mounted for armed intervention, not to “protect civilians” but to give a hand to the rebel forces who are loosing on the ground to government troops.
- To conclude, it seems clear the the real cause of the Syrian tragedy is the outside military intervention that has already taken place (militias have been sent into Syria from Libya, Saudi Arabia, etc.) which have increased the bloodshed dramatically. These militias, supposedly sent to protect innocent demonstrators in the streets, in reality have been sent to grab power for the sponsoring foreign states. “If only the foreign militias fighting in Syria would leave, peace would return within 48 hours”, said Monsignor Nazzaro, former Bishop of Aleppo. The Times has reported the presence of over ten thousand foreign troops in Syria. For months rumors have circulated concerning training camps run by the United States in Jordan, where the armed forces of these two countries have been preparing anti-Assad rebel militias. The French newspaper Le Figaro has written: “According to our sources, rebel forces, supervised by Jordanian, American and Israeli commanders, have been sent to Damascus. Their number is approximately 550, reports the Israeli source Debka File. Can that be so? Are more foreign troops really what Syria needs?