Some Reflections Since 2011 About US Policy Toward Syria

                                Code Pink

(Reposted April 7, 2017)

After promising improved relations with Russia and avoiding military involvement in Syria, the new Trump Administration has joined its predecessors in launching additional violence on the Middle East; bombing targets in Syria, irrespective of the consequences for improving relations with Russia and reducing the pain and suffering of the Syrian people. Since the original post below, it is estimated, some eleven million Syrians have been forced to migrate from their homes, six million of whom have desperately fled to other countries in the region, European countries, and even the United States (although former Indiana Governor Mike Pence, tried to restrict the settlement of Syrian refugees in his home state). The United States bombing of an airfield in Syria is designed, the Administration said, to send a message to the Syrian government that its own bombing of Syrian targets allegedly using chemical weapons is unacceptable. Members of the international community might ask what consequences the United States should suffer for its own bombings two weeks ago, with over 200 deaths of innocent civilians, of targets in West Mosul, Iraq. The only rational United States policy to reduce the extraordinary pain and suffering in the Middle East is to withdrew military forces and to work with others, even competitors such as Russia, Iran, and Syria, to stop the violence against the Syrian people. However, there is no evidence now that the new administration will do anything other than has been done before; bombings, drone strikes, funding competing military factions in the civil war, sending U.S. troops, all which promote more death and destruction. (HT. April 7, 2017) **********************************************************************

One more time: Waist deep in the Big Muddy

June 20, 2013

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.

In 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 Movement 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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.

U.S. 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:

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.

Support for various rebel factions, diplomatic and presumably covert, has encouraged the escalation of opposition violence which has been matched by state violence.

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.

Violence and political instability have begun to spread to Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan, and have drawn Israel and Iran closer into regional war.

As the Syrian civil war has escalated it has become a “proxy” war between the United States and Russia and Sunni and Shia Muslims.

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.

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.

Saturday, December 31, 2016

OBAMA'S FAILED STRUGGLE AGAINST THE HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONISTS AND THE NEOCONSERVATIVES

Harry Targ

Richard Cohen is one of the Washington Post columnists who is published in small town, conservative newspapers. His December 30, 2016 column which appeared in the Lafayette Journal and Courier entitled “Syria, a Stain on Obama’s Presidency,” lays out a critique from the foreign policy establishment of the president’s foreign policy. Cohen starkly argues that Obama’s Syria policy is second only in its disastrous consequences to “the day of infamy” when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Why? Because...“Turkey, Iran and Russia met in Moscow to settle matters in the Middle East. The United States wasn’t even asked to the meeting.”

Cohen complains about the fact that the United States never engaged in the Syrian civil war. As to Aleppo, “the preeminent power of the region did virtually nothing.” Cohen indicated that Obama could have installed a “no-fly zone,” “established safe zones for refugees,” and demanded that Russia and Iran get out of Syria. But, alas, “Obama did not care enough.”

And, in the end, for Cohen, the cool, sometimes tempered President Obama was too dispassionate about foreign policy. Part of the Clinton presidential defeat resulted from the fact that she had to defend an Obama administration “that was cold to the touch.” The President “waved a droopy flag. He did not want to make America great again. It was great enough for him already.” As to Syria, “he threw in the towel.”

And Cohen repeated the mantra often articulated by Post editorial writers and columnists: “Since the end of World War II, American leadership has been essential to maintain world peace. Whether we liked it or not, we were the world’s policeman. There was no other cop on the beat. Now that leadership is gone. So, increasingly, will be peace.”

Cohen is wrong in virtually everything he wrote in this column. First, for the brutalized people of Syria any ceasefire and resolution of their civil war should be applauded. If the agreement between Turkey, Russia, and Syria holds it would be an extraordinary change from the relentless violence Syrians have suffered, from multiple parties.

In addition, the United States has been involved in the civil war since it grew out of Arab Spring protests in Syria in 2011. Most of the weapons various rebel groups have used since violence escalated have been provided by the United States, Saudi Arabia, or other partners. The U.S. hope was that the Assad regime would fall in a fashion similar to the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya.

Further, as Robert Kennedy Jr. points out (“Why the Arabs Don’t Want Us in Syria,” Politico Magazine, February 22, 2016), the United States has been interfering in Syrian affairs since the 1940s. Instability in the whole region-the Persian Gulf and the Middle East-has resulted from United States imperial policies since the end of World War II. What Cohen calls “American leadership” has included the 1945 oil for arms deal with Saudi Arabia; the creation of the state of Israel; growing involvement in the internal affairs of Syria, Iran, and Lebanon; opposition to the Arab socialism of Egypt and Syria; the Eisenhower Doctrine declaring the U.S. right and responsibility to protect the region from communism; to wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain in the contemporary period. Contrary to Cohen, the United States has done more than any other country to destabilize the region and destroy peace.

In terms of the general character of United States foreign policy, President Obama’s biggest failure has been his wavering from the pragmatic path he proposed in 2008 campaign speeches. Candidate Obama articulated the view that diplomacy should be the first tool any administration uses in foreign affairs. Diplomacy involves bilateral and multilateral negotiations, using various institutional venues such as the United Nations, regional organizations, and international economic institutions. And the use of diplomacy is particularly important in relations with countries that are enemies or potential enemies. The United States needs to have channels of communications with those nations who may not share its values or interests.

In addition, the Obama election was greeted with elation all across the globe because he presented the view that the United States needs to respect other countries, cannot be the world’s policeman, and must not act unilaterally has had been done in Afghanistan, Iraq, and in numerous other countries since the last World War. Perhaps Obama’s greatest foreign policy achievements have involved diplomacy with Iran, Cuba, and even sometime cooperation with Russia. Early in his first term he attended a meeting of the G20 countries and seemed to endorse a greater international decision-making role for the countries of the Global South.

But President Obama was subjected to the pressures, the advice, and the sabotage of his pragmatic approach to the U.S. role in the world by a confluence of “humanitarian interventionists,” those who justify intervention on the grounds of promoting human rights, democratization, and markets. Richard Cohen and The Washington Post are exemplars of this perspective.

And also Obama could not withstand the equally powerful pressures of the neoconservatives who take the view that as the most powerful country militarily the United States should intervene everywhere to remake the world in its image. For the neocons, world affairs are ultimately about power. The neoconservatives populate Washington D.C. in think tanks and other institutions. Some were foreign policy advisers in the Bush administration and some hold positions of influence within the Obama administration.

Whether inspired by humanitarian interventionists or neoconservatives, the dark side of Obama’s foreign policy has been illustrated by expanding a military presence in Afghanistan, returning to Iraq, working with NATO to overthrow the regime in Libya, collaborating with Saudi Arabia to crush rebels in Bahrain and Yemen, dramatically increasing drone warfare on a multitude of “enemy” targets, participating in the destabilization of the government of Ukraine, launching a new cold war against Russia, pivoting U.S. military resources to Asia against China, and funding rebels in Syria.

In sum, the track record of President Obama has been tragically flawed not because he “threw in the towel” but because he did not adequately pursue the pragmatic foreign policy agenda he promised his supporters in 2008. Mike Lofgren, (The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government, Penguin Books, 2015), writes about a “deep state,” a set of non-transparent institutions, think tanks, and long-time political influentials who determine most of United States foreign policy without any semblance of visibility to the public. As Andrew Bacevich once wrote, the role of the public is to be compliant and supportive of whatever foreign policy decisions are made by these less than transparent influentials.

Occasionally, the President and key spokespersons and publicists are called upon to explain ongoing foreign policies to the public and/or to criticize deviations from the direction of policy a President might initiate. The Washington Post and its pundits explain what the U.S. role in the world should be, “the world policeman,” and call into question any efforts, such as Obama’s pragmatism, when they deviate from what the wise men and women and the deep state institutions demand.

Finally, what Richard Cohen, and other humanitarian interventionists and their neoconservative colleagues, does not realize is that the United States is no longer the hegemonic power in the world. United States foreign policy is going to have to adjust to a multipolar world and a world mobilized for radical economic, as well as political change. The supporters of Obama’s foreign policy vision were inspired by an approach to international relations that while still based on big power muscle was at least tailored for a more complicated world. The alternative might be World War III.

It is unclear what the direction of U.S. foreign policy will be in a Trump administration but most signs point to greater militarism and interventionism. A first response from the peace movement might be to rearticulate the vision of a foreign policy pragmatism that was promised but not delivered by President Obama when he first ran for the presidency.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

SYRIAN POLICY LOOKS FAMILIAR TO CUBANS

Harry Targ

The United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution Friday, August 3, 2012, that The New York Times said, “severely criticized the Syrian government, blaming it almost exclusively for the killings and other atrocities that have come to shape the 17-month uprising there.”

The resolution condemning Syria ironically implied that it was that country that refused to carry out the peace plan that was proposed four months earlier by Kofi Annan. No mention was made in the resolution that the United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, among others had been feeding supplies to anti-government militias that encouraged them to violence rather than negotiation. While 133 Western and Arab League allies voted for the resolution, 33 countries abstained, and 12 voted “no.” These were portrayed as Syria’s “slim group of backers, which include Russia, China, and Iran.”

Syria is a dictatorship that in the recent civil war has leveled brutal violence against its own people. But the Syrian Ambassador was correct in asserting that those who sponsored the resolution condemning violence were the same nations that had “played a major role in the militarization of the situation in Syria, by providing weapons to the terrorist groups.”

It is not surprising that The New York Times failed to mention that Cuba has been one of the longstanding critics of U.S. inspired wars on weak countries such as Libya and now Syria. The Cuban Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Pedro Nunez Mosquera, warned that the resolution which was adopted would encourage more violence from the opposition and retaliation by the state. With growing instability, he asserted, foreign intervention would become legitimized the way it was in the Libyan case.

In an article in Prensa Latina, the Cuban diplomat’s position was summarized: “Cuba considers that all acts of violence, massacres and terrorist acts that claim innocent lives in Syria should cease” but this will require that the anti-Syrian coalition “must put an end to arms smuggling and money to insurgent groups and their training.” Nunez also criticized the major Western media’s one-sided reporting on the violence in Syria.

It is clear that Cuba’s criticisms of the wars on Libya and Syria and the Western economic blockade and military threats toward Iran are motivated by self-interest as well as principle. Cuba, as a country that has suffered an economic blockade by the United States for over fifty years and a U.S. policy designed to diplomatically isolate it, sees similarities between its experiences and U.S. policies toward Syria and Libya.

Despite some U.S. liberalization of travel to the island nation, government agencies and counter-revolutionary organizations in Miami continue to funnel funds, technology, and propaganda to create an opposition that, they hope, will lead to an armed resistance against the Cuban government. If the Cuban government responds to terrorist acts, a U.S orchestrated coalition of dependent allies can justify the transfer of arms, propaganda campaigns, and escalating calls for revolution.

What may be called today “The Libyan Model of Destabilization” is not new to Cubans and as a result they see the necessity of continued vigilance. Alan Gross, hired by the United States Agency for International Development, was caught distributing computer technology to selected communities on the island. A global propaganda campaign was raised about a recent car accident in which two well-known opponents of the regime who were traveling with rightwing Europeans in the countryside were killed. No evidence of foul play was provided concerning the accident although charges by Miami Cubans of government violence have been broadly distributed. Also a recent Miami scholarly conference was organized with presentations by counter-revolutionaries who argued that the recent economic reforms on the island will never work. And repeatedly U.S. and British media highlight alleged growing disenchantment with the regime.

The Libyan Model of Destabilization, which has its roots in the years of economic blockade of Cuba, terrorist acts and assassination plots, the creation of counter-revolutionary groups in Florida and New Jersey, and even an armed invasion, is not likely to work in the Cuban case. First, the Cuban regime has broad popular support. Second, Cuba’s first priority remains social and economic justice. Third, Cuban health care and education is among the best in the Global South.

And, finally, Cuba remains an inspiration to those countries throughout the Western Hemisphere (such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Argentina, Brazil, and El Salvador) who seek to create political and economic autonomy in the twenty-first century. As evidenced in positions taken at the recent Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, Latin American countries defended Cuban national sovereignty and are demanding that the latter be included in future meetings of Hemisphere nations.

But as the Libyan model and now the Syria crisis suggest, weak countries everywhere in the world must remain vigilant. Imperialism still survives.