This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
It is a state of affairs that confirms Washington's continuing attachment to the vast experiment in democracy it has been conducting in the region since 9/11, an experiment responsible for the destruction of Iraq, Libya, and wider region's destabilization.
The human cost is neither here nor there in the eyes of US hawks, Republican and Democrat. All that matters is that any state or government that dare refuse to bow to America's writ is toppled as it stumbles around the region like an out of control juggernaut laying waste to everything it comes into contact with.
The United States and its allies have no place in Syria, never has had any place in Syria, and never will have any place in a country whose people have over the past five years heroically resisted a determined attempt to destroy one of the few surviving secular and non-sectarian states in the Arab world.
It would not be the first time that the US has lined up on the same side as barbarism in its history.
In Central America, Cambodia, and Afghanistan it has funded and armed groups and ideologies whose brutality and inhumanity has been medieval, even primeval, in its extremism. The Contras, the previously mentioned Khmer Rouge, and the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, which late morphed into al-Qaeda, each have benefited from US largess.
No Alternative
In Syria, the government -- led by President Bashar al-Assad -- retains the support of the majority of Syrians, who understand that his government is all that stands between the country's survival and destruction. There is no mature democratic alternative waiting in the wings to take his place. The reality is that if he stood down as Syrian President at this juncture, Syria's state institutions would collapse, the army would fall apart, as demoralization and anarchy obtained.
The result would be the massacre of the nation's minority communities without restraint. The result would be a refugee crisis to make the status quo seem like child's play by comparison.
The Real Enemy
If the Americans genuinely and sincerely held the well-being of the Syrian people as a priority in this conflict, they would have already joined with Russia, the Syrian government, and its allies in defeating Daesh, Nusra, and the various other groups of religious and sectarian fanatics.
This they would have understood was necessary not only for Syria, not only for the region, but for their own people, who find themselves a full 15 years after 9/11 more vulnerable to terrorism than they have ever been. The enemy of the American people is not Russia, Syria or Iran. The enemy of the American people is the hypocrisy of their own government.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
4
2
2
