The USA along with its allies has been engaged in countless wars in the Middle East, rather, Greater Middle East, on the pretext to combat Islamists (that Washington either created, trained or armed), to save the lives of civilians and to bring democracy in the region. The government in Washington, the champion of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, always speaks of ‘peace’ but wages endless wars and backs absolute monarchs and authoritarian regimes all over the world. For the ruling classes, war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is a strength.
Now Syria is once again the centre stage in the Middle East. The escalating rhetoric of Trump after the US missile attack following a tweet: ‘Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and smart’, seemed to be a declaration of war. The UK and the French governments also joined the attack. Reportedly the missile attack ‘failed’ to achieve desired results. However, this could have been a perilous moment for the world.
The most potent weapon in all the wars imposed so far by corporate imperialism has been the pseudo-information. ‘Chemical weapons used by Assad’ is an excuse for a direct attack on Syria. It is yet to be confirmed that a chemical weapon attack had taken place or not and if it took place, who was behind it. But the whole world knows that who (not UK) is the leading manufacturer country of such weapons, which country is buying and supplying such weapons to the terrorists, rebels and Islamists in the Greater Middle East and out of these illegal and immoral wars based on total lies and fabricated stories imposed on the innocent people of the Greater Middle East by Global Corporate Imperialism, which cartels (two cartels, in particular, the cartel of oil and weapons) are profiting trillions of dollars; who is capturing the important geopolitical strategic locations and looting the resources and who is pursuing the goal of global supremacy.
Although the objective of globalisation by implementing New World Order through illegal wars based on lies has been exposed and defeated, yet the US along with its allies is still pursuing its goal of global supremacy with the recent threats of starting direct military action in Syria. There seems to be a connection between Skripal and the Syria chemical attacks to get the public support for direct action against Syria and Russia.
It is on record that in 2013, the Syrian government provided the US and Russia what was supposed to have been a comprehensive listing of all the chemical weapons in its possession and their location. A letter from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad sent at the time to the United Nations’ then-Secretary General Ban Ki-moon promised that Syria would immediately comply with its CWC obligations. The following year, then-US Secretary of State John Kerry declared that the US had struck a deal with Syria “where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out.” So, Syria did not have the chemical weapons. How it happened and who did it is yet to be investigated. But warmongers are in ever hurry to attack Syria.
So far 190 nations have ratified the treaty (1997 Chemical Weapons Convention CWC) banning the production, storage and use of chemical weapons, whereas four nations have not: Egypt, Israel, North Korea and South Sudan. The US ratified the CWC, but as of December 2015, it had not yet destroyed about 10 percent of the 27,771 metric tons it declared, including sarin and mustard gas.
Although the objective of globalisation by implementing New World Order through illegal wars based on lies has been exposed, yet the US along with its allies is still pursuing its goal of global supremacy
We all know as to who invents and uses these nasty weapons. The first napalm bomb manufactured by the USA was dropped on Berlin by a US aircraft on 6 March 1944. On the night of 6 March 1945, 330 American bombers dropped 690,000 pounds of napalm within an hour on Tokyo killing over 100,000 people. Like most of us, I remember that the Napalm bombs manufactured by Dow Chemical Company, USA were employed in the Vietnam War in 1963 and 388,000 tons of napalm was dropped in Vietnam during 1963-1973.
Until recently, Napalm continued to be used in Iraq (1980-88, 1991), Angola (1993) and Yugoslavia (1991-1996), although it was banned by the United Nations in 1980. And who can forget 6 August 1945, when the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima killing millions of people. Three days later, the US dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki, again killing millions of people.
When I was in the middle of writing these notes, I got a shocking report cited by Fars News, reported by Al-Mayadeen news channel that a number of British troops have been captured during the Syrian Arab Army operation in Eastern Ghouta, Syria. They are believed to be a part of international military forces deployed in the region to launch a ground assault in Damascus in cooperation with the US. According to the report, the US and other NATO countries, Jordan and Israel, planned to launch attacks from several fronts, but the plot failed, and Syrian armed forces made a series of rapid advances in Eastern Ghouta in March. The plot allegedly involved massive airstrikes by the US and Israeli plans that were supposed to pave the way for ground forces.
‘After the plot was disclosed, the Syrian-Russian military commanders started operations in Eastern Ghouta to repel it’, the source cited by Al-Mayadeen and Fars said.
Since the plot has failed this new story of chemical weapon attack, which is flawed and simply emerged for direct military action against Syria and Russia. Despite Defence Secretary James Mattis admitting that the US does not yet have evidence of an illegal Syrian Chemical Weapons attack, he and the other US officials indicate that the US was readying to attack Syria.
There seemed to be a rush to get the war started. Prime Minister Theresa May seemed to have decided that the easiest way to act was without any parliamentary discussion/approval. French President Emmanuel Macron had also indicated that he would participate in the attack. Israel had already been attacking Syria without realising the security concerns of its own.
The situation turned serious. Jeremy Corbyn rightly said that “We do not want a bombardment which leads to escalation and leads to a hot war between Russia and America over the skies of Syria”. Thank God, this did not happen, and sanity prevailed as Russia did not respond in haste to the volatile situation. Now there are reports of American forces withdrawal and the Saudi Coalition Forces replacing it. This may lead to another disaster, which may have serious repercussion for the Middle East region.
The writer is the author of his political autobiography, journalist and analyst, and contested the elections for UK Parliament as a socialist anti-war candidate
Published in Daily Times, May 3rd 2018.