PATRICK LAWRENCE: Bidens Inhumanity on Syria
April 6, 2021
The U.S. hypocrisy to come will be even greater than anything tried by the
Trump administration.
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
For a time after Joe Biden took office not quite three months ago, among the
questions raised was how the new administration would address the Syria
question.
I do not think we will have to wonder about this much longer. It is early
days yet, but one now detects the Bidens administrations Syria policy in
faint outline. From what one can make out, it is bleak, it is vicious, it is
unconscionably cruel to the Syrian people.
And it may prove yet worse than anything the Trump administration came up
with, the Bible-banging Mike Pompeo in the lead as secretary of state.
Will Bidens national security people drop the covert coup operation Barack
Obama set it in motion nine years ago, its failure long evident? Or will
they reinvigorate American support for savage jihadists in the name of
regime changing the secular government in Damascus? What about the
American troops still operating illegally on Syrian soil? What about the
oilfields the Trump administration took to protecting from the nation that
owns them? What about the brazen theft of crude from those fields?
And what, of course, about the murderous sanctions that various executive
orders have escalated on numerous occasions since the Bush II administration
imposed the first of them 17 long years ago?
What will Biden and his people do, in short, about the godawful mess the
U.S. has made of the Syrian Arab Republic since it bastardized legitimate
demonstrations against the Assad government in early 2012 (at the latest) by
perverting them with Sunni extremists and hundreds of millions of dollars
worth of weapons?
These were the questions. Answers now begin to arrive.
February Bombing
The first suggestion of things to come came in late February, when U.S.
warplanes bombed sites inside Syrias border with Iraq said to have been
used by militias backed by Iran. This action coincided roughly with talks in
Washington with senior Israeli intelligence and military officials, convened
to determine whether and how the administration would re-enter the accord
governing Irans nuclear programs. Those talks merely confirmed what was
already evident: The Biden administration will make no move in Irans
direction without Israels approval. Ditto in the Syrian case.
As a long record shows, Israel wants to destabilize Syria as long as it is
not governed by a pliant Western client; it continues to bomb Syrian
targets, including Damascus, on a regular basis. With these realities in
view, we can confidently surmise that the Biden administration does not
actually have a Syria policy, just as it does not actually have an Iran
policy. Apartheid Israel has a Syria policy it dictates to the professedly
Zionist Biden administration.
When I think of the suffering of the Syrian people, including Syrian
children, I think of my own two children, Antony Blinken tweeted last week.
How could we not take action to help them? Our common humanity demands it.
Shame on us if we dont.
One already grows accustomed to our new secretary of states wildly
disconnected remarks on social media and elsewhere. This guy has a troubled
relationship with reality, we must begin to conclude. As The Grayzones Max
Blumenthal replied to this morbid hypocrisy, If you treated your children
like you treat the Syrian people you would be jailed for child abuse.
But let us set aside the preposterous assertion that, while starving Syrians
of bread, fuel, medicines and reconstruction funding other nations would
otherwise provide, Blinken thinks of suffering Syrians as he does his
children. As boilerplate propaganda this offensive stuff may seem trivial
and worthy of no note. But in this case we are left with a question worth
posing.
Why Common Humanity Now?
Why would Blinken broadcast these things on social media at this moment? Why
would he summon our common humanity when there is no shred of evidence
that he or anyone else among Bidens national security crew gives a tinkers
damn about those human beings commonly known as Syrians?
I have two answers, of equal importance.
One, the Biden administration appears to be preparing Americans for a round
of Washingtons morally bankrupt, grossly illegal campaign to bring down the
government of a sovereign nation because it does not conform to Americas
imperial diktat (and because, as noted, this will please the Israelis).
Liberal and progressive consciences must be eased. And among others a
state of slumber must be maintained.
Two, Blinken has in all likelihood begun the work of keeping Washingtons
coalition partners, notably the French and British, in the Syrian
subversion game by providing cover for the savagery that is to come. Reading
straight from the Vietnam-era script, Blinken wants Americas allies and
partners a favorite phrase of his to be confident that when they bomb
Syrian children the world will understand it is in order to save them.
Never go to Tony if you are in search of an original thought.
Reading into these matters, text and subtext, we can begin to brace
ourselves for what is probably on the way in Syria. The coup operation is
again on. American troops will remain on the ground, almost certainly to
increase in number over time. The U.S., in concert with the same fanatics it
has to date bankrolled, trained and supplied, will continue to sequester
Syrias oilfields and the fertile wheat fields that ought to be feeding the
population.
The hypocrisy to come will be yet greater than anything the Trump
administration tried on a forecast I offer confidently. Here comes the
bankruptcy of the responsibility to protect at its very worst. This will
be liberal righteousness with a genteel veneer worthy of your grandmothers
mahogany dining table.
PBS Report
Another piece of the puzzle arrived just before Easter (of all times), when
PBS broadcast an interview with Abu Mohammad alJolani, the head of Hayat
Tahir alShalam, HTS, the latest among the name-changing cutthroats our
mainstream press still refers to as Syrias moderate opposition. Martin
Smiths exchange with Jolani is a piece of a full-dress documentary on
Jolani that Frontline plans to air in the not-distant future. Herein lies a
tale.
Alert readers will recall that Jolani was once an Islamic State commander
who went on to found Jabhat alNusra, the worst of the worst among
alQaedas shape-shifting affiliates operating in Syria. The State
Department declared Jolani a specially designated global terrorist in
2013. This designation still stands.
Jolani now runs what he calls a salvation government in Idlib, the
remaining retreat of Islamist extremists in northwestern Syria. Yes, he
remains an Islamist theocrat determined to impose Sharia law on secular
Syria. But (the big but) is that he is committed to fighting Assad and so
shares common interests with the United States and the West, as PBS
delicately puts it.
Human rights NGOs have implicated Jolani and HTS videos, witness
testimonies, interviews with victims in numerous cases of torture,
violence, sexual abuse, arbitrary arrests, disappearances and the rest of
the inexcusable stuff these groups get up to. Jolani denies it all in his
encounter with Smith: There is no torture, I completely reject this, he
says on camera.
To be fair to Smith and Frontline, they have covered themselves carefully by
laying out the record of Jolanis and HTSs crimes against innocent Syrians.
But Smith also wants us to know of Jolanis emergence as a leading Islamist
militant note the Islamist remains and his efforts, despite his
history with alQaeda and allegations of human rights abuses, to position
himself as an influential force in Syrias future.
As if to certify this judgment, PBS cites the noted remark recently of James
Jeffrey, the self-confessed liar who served as President Donald Trumps
special envoy to Syria, to the effect that HTS is an asset to Americas
strategy in Idlib.
What are we looking at here? There are two ways to consider this question.
One, PBSs generous reporting on Jolanis past is at bottom part of a
rehabilitation job. It is once again a case of text and subtext. Read the
PBS report accompanying the video of Smiths interview. The list of HTSs
sins is a lengthy apologia, the intent of which appears to be to preclude
the criticisms sure to arise along with Jolanis emergence as an
influential force in Syrias future.
My conclusion: Syria may shortly get its version of Juan Guaidó and Alexey
Navlany, the two Dummköpfe Washington has ridiculously elevated to some
status of saintly democrats in Venezuela and the Russian Federation
respectively. My verb is may because the Jolani project could prove so
preposterous as to fail before it gets airborne.
Two, we watch the redeployment of a tried-and-disastrous strategy Zbigniew
Brzezinski sold to President Jimmy Carter in late 1979. Paranoiacally
antiSoviet, Carters national security adviser persuaded the peanut farmer
from Plains the best way to snooker the Soviets in Afghanistan was to
finance and arm its adversaries. Osama bin Laden, alQaeda indeed, the
fundamentalist freak show that has unfolded in Syria for nearly a decade:
Need one say more about the consequences of Zbigs idiocy?
One would think the policy cliques in Washington would learn something once
in a while, but no. They cannot learn because they cannot quite get to
thinking.
This column concerns early signs of another foreign policy disaster that may
be impending. Should these signs prove out, we will watch as an empire
already on its back foot makes another desperate attempt to defend its
fading hegemony. Let us, once again, bitterly hope for failure.
America could knock over whoever it wished long ago, and it could send men
to the moon. No longer does it seem able to do either.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the
International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer.
His most recent book is Time No Longer: Americans After the American
Century. Follow him on Twitter @thefloutist. His web site is Patrick
Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site.
