Russia Lances the Poison in Syria
By Finian Cunningham
February 18,
2016 "Information
Clearing House"
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"SCF"
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Less than five months after Russian
President Vladimir Putin ordered military
intervention in Syria, the five-year war has been
completely transformed. Peace is far from certain as
a tentative truce this week will attest. The
conflict may even escalate. But what Russia’s
intervention has certainly achieved is to squeeze
out into the open the poisonous forces of regime
change that have brought Syria to its dire
condition.
Not only is the Syrian state pulled
back from the brink of collapse into a terrorist-run
failed entity, as befell «NATO liberated» Libya, but
the Russian air strikes like a surgical operation
have lanced the noxious inflammation festering in
Syria. All sorts of poisons are now oozing and being
exposed, primarily the nefarious roles played by
Western powers, their regional allies, and the toxic
lies propounded by the Western news media to cover
for crimes against peace.
If it were not for the gravity of
human suffering, the situation could be seen as
almost comical, owing to the Western contortions to
hide reality. Western governments and their servile
media are falling over themselves with ever-changing
stories and spin, accusing Russian military
operations of all sorts of crimes: killing
civilians, hitting hospitals, exacerbating the
refugee crisis, targeting «moderate rebels», or
«propping up a dictator».
This week, the Western media rushed
to implicate Russia or the allied Syrian army in
striking hospitals and schools in Azaz and Maarat
al-Numan near the Turkish border. Some 11 people
were killed at the latter facility, which is
supported by the French medical group Doctors
Without Borders (DWB). No evidence was presented to
support the high-flown claims in the Western media
accusing Russia. Russia denied any involvement,
while the Syrian government said that the US-led
forces carried out the attacks. Meanwhile, all week
Turkish military were launching hundreds of
artillery volleys across the border into the very
area around Azaz where the hospitals were hit. But
Western media did not question Turkey about its
violation of Syrian sovereignty or the possibility
that the errant strikes could have been inflicted by
Turkish forces, perhaps even as a false flag to
impute Russia.
Last week, the US military spokesman
Colonel Steve Warren blamed Russia for air strikes
on two hospitals in Aleppo City. Russian defense
ministry spokesman General Igor Konashenkov
responded by saying that
Russian aircraft were not active in the city that
day, Wednesday, and that Russian surveillance data
in fact showed that two US warplanes had bombed
Aleppo.
It is not clear who did strike the
DWB-supported hospital in this week. But one
established relevant fact is that it was the
Americans who bombed a
DWB hospital in Afghanistan last October, killing
some 30 staff and patients. Also, in Yemen, the
US-backed Saudi bombing coalition striking that
country have routinely
hit DWB and other hospitals on numerous dates
over recent months, as even confirmed by DWB.
One other feat of
narrative-contortion was given by
US envoy to Syria Brett McGurk, who told
Congressional lawmakers last week that Russia was
«directly helping Islamic State terrorists» from its
military intervention in Syria. Another warped spiel
was that of US government-owned outlet Voice of
America which claimed that
Russia’s air strikes were pushing moderate rebels to
join the ranks of extremist militia.
Any and all narratives are hastily
churned out, it seems, to avoid the obvious, real
story: Russia has saved Syria from a covert war of
aggression waged by foreign powers who have been
using terrorist proxies for the objective of regime
change.
That’s it in a nutshell. Russia
should be commended, if objective analysis were to
prevail. But objective analysis must not prevail in
Western media narratives because that would expose
the toxic role of their governments and their own
criminal complicity in distorting the conflict in
Syria.
In a recent «backgrounder» on the
Syrian war, here is how the
British state-owned BBC «explained» what’s
happening: «More than
250,000 Syrians have lost their lives in
four-and-a-half years of armed conflict, which began
with anti-government protests before escalating into
a full-scale civil war. More than 11 million others
have been forced from their homes as forces loyal to
President Bashar al-Assad and those opposed to his
rule battle each other – as well as jihadist
militants from so-called Islamic State».
The BBC tells it like a guileless
fairytale, which in its simplistic telling is itself
guileful. Note how in the BBC narrative the
«jihadist militants» appear from nowhere as if they
are an accidental walk-on sideshow; and how, as if
by magic, «anti-government protests escalated into a
full-scale civil war».
This is the kind of toxic nonsense
that Western governments and their evidently dutiful
news media have been pumping into the consciousness
of their public’s minds for the past five years.
But now that Russia has entered the
fray, the poison is oozing out from the Syrian
wound.
The Turkish state of Recep Tayyip
Erdogan this week is shelling Syrian
territory in what any fair-minded person would
describe as an act of aggression towards a sovereign
country. Ankara is claiming it is attacking
«terrorist» Syrian Kurdish militia, the YPG. Not
unrelated is the fact that the YPG last week
inflicted heavy losses on the jihadist mercenaries
that Ankara has been supporting, when the Kurds took
over Menagh airbase.
NATO member Turkey has reportedly hit
Kurdish villages in Aleppo Province causing civilian
casualties, as well as Syrian army positions and
Russia’s airbase in Latakia, whom the Kurdish YPG
have been liaising with.
Saudi Arabia is sending fighter
jets to the NATO airbase at Incirlik in Turkey’s
Adana Province, allegedly to begin combat operations
against the Islamic State terror group in Syria.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia are readying a
ground invasion of Syria, with the approval of the
Pentagon.
If we step back from the commotion,
it is patent that what is unfolding here is flagrant
aggression, which the Syrian government has
protested to the United Nations Security Council.
But with the US, Britain and France – executive
powers in the regime-change war on Syria – the UNSC
will simply bury the legitimate protests from
Damascus.
The unavoidable conclusion is that
NATO – the US-led military alliance supposedly
maintaining global security – has openly become a
belligerent in the Syrian war. The obvious factor is
that Russia’s intervention has cut off the
Turkish-Saudi-NATO channels to the regime-change
terrorist brigades inside Syria. Turkey’s murderous
shoot-down of a Russian bomber jet last November –
with apologetics from Washington and other NATO
members – was the initial, desperate response to
Russian success in thwarting the covert war.
The severance of the NATO mercenaries
in Aleppo from their lifeline in Turkey is further
evidence of Russia’s deep incision into the poison.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia’s war mobilization and their
tortuous pretexts is straining credulity and
straining Western media efforts at trying to
sanitize what is going on.
US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter
may have publicly endorsed the
plan for Saudi and Turkish military intervention in
Syria under the laughable guise of «fighting
terrorism». But it is also clear that Washington has
become unnerved by the runaway train wreck it is
riding with these two rogue states. France and
Germany are also calling for Turkey to cease its
cross-border shelling of Syria.
US Vice President Joe Biden, who only
weeks ago was in Ankara chumming it up with the
Erdogan regime, reportedly phoned
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu last weekend
urging him to call off the artillery fire into
Syria.
Voice of America reported: «US
officials say there is little to be done to counter
militarily the Russian-backed Assad offensive and
they argue the vicious five-year-long Syrian civil
war that has left upwards of 250,000 dead won’t be
resolved by the clash of arms but through a
negotiated political settlement».
US Secretary of State John Kerry
desperately wants «peace talks» in Geneva because he
knows the covert war is on a losing streak. Peace
talk is just a cover for political wrangling for
regime change. But the Russians are having none of
it. Moscow is going to wipe out the foreign-backed
mercenaries and stick to the principle of Syrian
sovereignty for mapping the country’s political
future. The US State Department is in a bind. It has
backed a loser, but the impetuous, irrational
Erdogan and Saudi clients are not giving up on their
regime change fantasies.
Washington is being ensnared in its
own toxic contradictions. It has led the criminal
scheme for regime change in Syria, instrumented by
Turkey and Saudi Arabia in weaponizing radical
jihadist mercenaries. As the New York
Times recently admitted: «The
Russians have cut off may of the pathways the CIA
has been using for a not-very-secret effort to arm
rebel [that is, terrorist] groups».
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry
Medvedev told the
Munich Security Conference last weekend that Syria
was in danger of escalating into all-out
international war. His warnings were scoffed by
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir as being
alarmist – this from an advocate of foreign
aggression on Syria!
Medvedev’s warnings are not at all
alarmist. They are realist. Frighteningly realist.
Russia’s intervention in Syria is demonstrating the
complete lawlessness of Washington and its NATO and
regional allies. Syria is not in the grip of a
«civil war» as the Western media fabricate. Syria is
in the crosshairs of foreign powers and their
criminal project to destroy a country for their
twisted geopolitical ambitions.
Before Russia’s operation, Syria was
a shackled patient being amputated upon, injected
with all kinds of poisons and generally being
violated. The Western media were the orderlies who
pulled a screen across this obscenity so that the
public would not know. This vile charade can no
longer be concealed. The US-led NATO, Arab,
terrorist covert war on Syria is there for all to
see, and it is largely down to Russia for exposing
the despicable crime.
The truth is no guarantee of peace.
But in order to eventually arrive at a peace, we at
least need to learn of truth.
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