Wednesday, June 19, 2013
WAIST DEEP IN THE BIG MUDDY, AGAIN!
Harry TargIn 2011 the grassroots revolts that spread all across the Middle East caught the traditional imperial powers in the region--the United States, Great Britain, and France-- by surprise. Even more so, the Middle East theocracies and dictatorships--Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and others--were threatened by those young people, workers, unemployed, and women, who took to the streets motivated by the vision of another world. The United States watched the street protests hoping against hope that the authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt would weather the storm. The Obama administration did not move publicly to aid these regimes to crush the protest but withheld its endorsement of the grassroots democracy movement. The idea of popular revolt spread to places all across the globe including Madison, Wisconsin; Santiago, Chile; Athens, Greece; Madrid, Spain; and Quebec, Canada. The Occupy Movements in the United States expanded.
Globally, movements for a 21st century democratization seemed to be replicating 1968.
In this historic context, the
imperial powers needed to transform the Middle East narrative from demands for
jobs, worker rights, women’s rights, and democratization to the more
traditional religious and ethnic conflict model of Middle East politics. The
United States organized a United Nations/NATO coalition to intervene to
encourage rebellion in Libya coupled with a game-changing air war against the
Libyan military. The result was the overthrow of the government of Muammar
Gaddafi and its replacement by a quarrelsome ungovernable regime rife with
ethnic strife. The UN/NATO war on Libya was billed as the next phase of Arab
Spring, while actually it imposed religious and ethnic conflict on a relatively
stable but authoritarian regime.
The anger over the US encouragement
and military intervention in the Libyan civil war was reflected in the killings
by Libyan terrorists of CIA operatives in Benghazi, Libya in September, 2012.
What intervention in Libya did was to destabilize that society and eliminate
its former dictator who was opposed to the growing US military expansion in
North Africa. Most important, it took off the front pages and the hearts and
minds of youth, the poor, women, and trade unionists the hope of mass movements
to bring about democratic change in the region.
US covert and military intervention
has shifted now from Libya to Syria.
Mobilization against the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship in Syria was
applauded by the United States. As the protest escalated into civil war in that
country with contestants including secular and religious groups fighting
against Assad’s army, the United States, Sunni countries of the Arab League,
and NATO countries escalated their support to the rebels. Another Libya-style
UN/NATO military operation was thwarted by strong opposition from Russia and
China and the threat of growing military support for the Syrian regime by Iran.
Part of the ongoing story of Syria
is the following:
1.The United States launched its
diplomatic involvement in the Syrian civil war by insisting that Bashar
al-Assad must step down. This precluded any possibility of a diplomatic
settlement of the civil war and the eventual dismantling of the Assad regime.
Most important, the United States non-negotiable demand made diplomatic
collaboration between the United States and Russia all but impossible.
2.Support for various rebel
factions, diplomatic and presumably covert, has encouraged the escalation of
opposition violence which was matched by state violence.
3.Rebel factions, ironically, have
included groups with profiles that resemble the terrorists who were responsible
for the 9/11 murders in the United States and terrorist attacks on various
targets in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
4.Violence and political instability
have begun to spread to Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan, and have drawn Israel and
Iran closer into regional war.
5.As the Syrian civil war has
escalated it has become a “proxy” war between the United States and Russia and Sunni and Shia Muslims.
6.In the United States, the civil
war in Syria has rekindled the war factions. These include the
“neoconservatives” who were responsible for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Using 9/11 and lies about weapons of mass destruction the neoconservatives
influenced the Bush administration to pursue their agenda to use United States
power to transform the globe in its interests.
The neoconservatives, advocates of United States military intervention in Syria, are now joined by the “humanitarian interventionists” who in the Clinton Administration supported bombing campaigns in Iraq, Serbia, and Bosnia and live by the ideology that the United States must use its military power to promote human rights around the world.
It is important to note that recent
polling data suggests that only a small percentage of the American people,
about 20 percent, give any support to United States involvement in Syria. Most
Americans are suffering from declining jobs, income, and social safety nets,
and reject the war economy and militarism that has characterized the U.S. role
in the world since 1945.
7.The escalation of the civil war,
the growing military role of the United States, Russia, Iran, Turkey, NATO,
Hezbollah from Lebanon, and Israel has led to nearly 100,000 Syrian deaths and more
than a million refugees. As in most international wars, innocent people suffer
and die as military decisions are made in government capitals.
The case is clear that increasing
the United States military involvement in Syria has negative consequences for
the Middle East, international relations, the inspiration of Arab Spring,
American politics, and the people of Syria. The hope for a more just and
peaceful future requires support for the resumption of the spirit and vision of
the original Arab Spring that began in Tunisia and Egypt and spread all across
the globe. Otherwise the United States will once again be “waist deep in the
big muddy” as in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.www.heartlandradical.blogspot.com
