For to really address the problem of conflict in Syria and the explosion of terrorism in that country over the past four years requires a fundamental accounting of Western policies and the alliances that Washington, Paris and London have been working covertly in the Middle East.
The whole US-led covert criminal enterprise of regime change in Syria will have to be reckoned with. This has been the policy of Washington, Paris and London going back several years before the Syrian conflict erupted in March 2011. And not just Syria. Add Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, among others.
France's Hollande is on record admitting, from as early as 2012, that his government has funnelled weapons into Syria to arm unknown rebel groups. He may claim that the munitions were delivered to the elusive moderate rebels of the so-called Free Syrian Army, but even the Western media has reported that foreign-supplied weapons have mainly ended up in the hands of the jihadist networks, like Al Qaeda-linked IS and Al Nusra Front.
The bitter, painful truth is that France along with its Western allies have created a terrorist Frankenstein monster which they cannot control. The slaughter in Paris last week is one horrific consequence of this criminal policy paid with the blood of innocent French civilians.
It is also well documented that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have funded, armed and facilitated the jihadist mercenary armies. Even US vice president Joe Biden admitted this in an off-guard moment, as well as former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in secret memos published by Wikileaks. One such group Jaish al Islam, which grew out of Liwa al Islam, recently made the news from holding women and children in cages as human shields. The same group is also implicated in the East Ghouta chemical weapons atrocity back in August 2013. Turkey and the Gulf Arab oil states are linked inextricably with these jihadists and many others besides, as investigative American journalist Seymour Hersh revealed.
In the whole heinous division of labor, Washington, Paris and London have colluded with NATO member Turkey and the Arab regimes to orchestrate the mercenaries in the criminal enterprise for regime change in Syria. Those mercenaries include the IS brigades, as former head of the US Defence Intelligence Agency, Lt General Michael Flynn, admitted in an Al Jazeera interview earlier this year.
France and other powers may have been jolted by the savage horror on the streets of Paris into finally waking up to the horrendous nature of terrorism in and out of Syria. But there must a proper accounting of why and how this terrorism was spawned and activated.
As Russian leader Vladimir Putin said in his September address to the United Nations General Assembly, speaking about the corruption of international law: Do you see now what you have done? Putin also highlighted at the G20 summit last weekend that the financing of the terror groups has been instrumented by member states of the G20.
This is why forming a grand anti-terror coalition is going to be so much more complicated than even the New York Times can imagine. For a genuine solution will necessarily have to address the core criminality of Western governments, including the French. They are up to their necks in sponsoring the very the kind of terror that is rebounding in Western societies.
This year alone, France and the United States sealed arms deals with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf states worth billions of dollars. Only a few months ago, Hollande inked deals to sell dozens of Rafale fighter jets. The massive arms trade with these oil states is vital to French economic interests, as it is for the US.
If a real war on terror, as opposed to the fake one that the West has been conducting up to now, were to get underway in earnest, sooner or later the Western powers are going to have to face up to the Gulf Arab and Turk lynchpins who help run their Murder Inc in the Middle East. It is extremely doubtful that these powers will forego their economic and other strategic interests. That goes especially for Washington. Its decades-old client-relationship with the Gulf oil sheikhdoms is vital for maintaining the petrodollar system that perpetuates the bankrupt American economy and its gargantuan indebtedness.
So, for the moment, giving Hollande the benefit of the doubt that he has come partially to his senses about France's covert war in Syria, the French president appears to have bona fide intentions of setting up a grand anti-terror coalition involving the US and Russia.
However, such an initiative seems woefully naive and vacuous. Russia is right to welcome a long-overdue apparent redirection. It proves that Russia is correct in its intervention in Syria. But how credible is such a move?
In the coming weeks we will see priorities being tested. Already Obama is under fire for his lack of leadership on Syria policy from Republicans in Congress. Many of them are accusing him of allowing Russia to seize the initiative . Calls are mounting in Washington for a full-scale military intervention with ground troops to overthrow Assad. Hawkish think tanks like the Brookings Institute are more than ever calling for regime change in Syria.
Underlying the superficial US media debate about forming a coalition with Russia is the imminent, far more powerful tensions of safeguarding American ruling class strategic interests. Those interests are dependent on maintaining the Gulf oil sheikhdoms intact and inline, which is what the regime-change project in Syria was always about. A thorough anti-terror intervention in Syria aligned with Russia and its ally in Damascus, as well as in Tehran, is a fundamental contradiction to the strategic interests of US capital and its Western minions.
In which case, the Hollande initiative of a grand coalition will be rebuffed by Washington and its trusty British lieutenant. Hollande will be told to get back into line, as he was when his American masters told him to breach the Mistral helicopter ship contract with Russia over the trumped-up Ukraine crisis.
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