Implosion of Syria Myths a 'Nervous Breakdown' for US, Allies

Daniel McAdams
lewrockwell.com
October 18, 2012

The New York Times has finally reported what many watching the Syria insurgency have noticed all along: US-facilitated weapons shipments are ending up in the hands of radical jihadists. Of course while getting those facts right, the NYT, blinded as it is by ideology, gets the conclusion wrong. The Times has for some time been pushing the line that the US must act fast militarily in Syria lest the mythical “people’s uprising” be hikacked by radicals. In short, they have been — surprise — distorting facts to propagandize for war. The NYT line is that US “inaction” on Syria is leading to the radicalization of the rebels. Earlier this month the Times reported/opined that:

“Many Saudi and Qatari officials now fear that the fighting in Syria is awakening deep sectarian animosities and, barring such intervention, could turn into an uncontrollable popular jihad with consequences far more threatening to Arab governments than the Afghan war of the 1980s.”

Now we get the news from the Times that:

“‘The opposition groups that are receiving the most of the lethal aid are exactly the ones we don’t want to have it,’ said one American official familiar with the outlines of those findings, commenting on an operation that in American eyes has increasingly gone awry.”

Then the Times pushes its propagandistic conclusion to color the facts according to its own ideology:

“That conclusion, of which President Obama and other senior officials are aware from classified assessments…casts into doubt whether the White House’s strategy of minimal and indirect intervention in the Syrian conflict is accomplishing its intended purpose of helping a democratic-minded opposition topple an oppressive government, or is instead sowing the seeds of future insurgencies hostile to the United States.” (emphasis added)

Ah yes, the fault is all with the “minimal and indirect” intervention of the US in the conflict. Surely a Libya-type operation would already be reaping US foreign policy the same kinds of rewards we are getting in Libya!

So what is the truth? The truth is hard to swallow for the propagandizing media and the propagandized public: Assad was telling the truth when he told Barbara Walters in an interview earlier this year:

“Not everybody in the street was fighting for freedom. You have different components, you have extremists, religious extremists…like-minded people of Al Qaeda… [F]rom the very first few weeks we had those terrorists they are getting more and more aggressive, they have been killing. We have 1,000– over 1,100 soldiers and policeman killed, who killed them? peaceful demonstrators? This is not logical.”

Of course no one wanted to listen to him because he, like Saddam, Milosevic, Gaddafi, etc before him, had been branded a “madman” in the media. Who could listen to a madman? Who could possibly negotiate with a madman? They only understand one thing, force. We have all heard this interventionist neo-con garbage for decades but for some reason it still seems to work.

Likewise, Mother Agnes Miriam of the Cross, a Melkite Greek Catholic nun, was telling the truth earlier this summer when she told the Irish Times that the rebels were targeting Christians in Syria. She continued:

“The West and Gulf states must not give finance to armed insurrectionists who are sectarian terrorists, most of whom are from al-Qaeda, according to a report presented to the German parliament. … They bring terror, destruction, fear and nobody protects the civilians. [There were] very few Syrians among the rebels. …Mercenaries should go home.”

The reason that the weapons being funneled to the Syrian rebels are ending up in the hands of radical Islamists is because the rebels are radical Islamists. The founder of Doctors Without Borders noticed it after working with the wounded in Syria. German intelligence noticed it after an investigation suggested that up to 95 percent of the Syrian rebels are not Syrian.

It is a myth that the initial peaceful protests only turned violent reluctantly after they were met with force by the regime. In fact we see plans early on to turn events in Syria toward regime change. We saw it early in the 1996 US neo-conservative “Clean Break” study for then-Prime Minister Netanyahu, which urged him to “contain, destabilize, and roll-back” Syria and other countries in the region. We saw it more recently in numerous influential think tank studies like that of Brookings’ Saban Center’s oft-cited report early this year tellingly titled, “Saving Syria: Assessing Options for Regime Change.” Like the authors of the “Clean Break” paper, the Saban Center is heavily neo-conservative and pro-Likud.

In conclusion, here is the really bad news: As the US Syria policy falls apart, there is increasing danger that the built up tension in the region — particularly the disastrous decision of the Turkish government to support the rebels in Syria — is leading to a wider conflict that threatens to spin out of control. Turkey and Armenia are at each others throats, Armenia and Azerbaijan are preparing for war, Iraq warily watches chaos on its borders, Russia is installing its next-generation S-400 anti-aircraft missiles in its southern military region near Turkey, and so on. Backed into a corner by a failed policy, the US as usual is doubling down on a bad bet, feeding Turkey bogus intelligence about chemical arms shipments aboard Syrian passenger planes carrying Russian passengers, etc. Rebel mortars lobbed into Turkey give a desperate Erdogan government the pretext it needs to establish a buffer zone in Syria and hope for NATO reinforcements, which are not coming. French observer Thierry Meyssan writes that “Turkey [is] on the verge of a nervous breakdown” after NATO “packs it in” on Syria.

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Editor's Note: The above referenced document, "Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," can be found here. Additional information regarding the premeditated, US-engineered violence in Syria can be found here, "Syrian War: The Prequel."    

Color Revolution for Russia?

by Daniel McAdams
via lewrockwell.com
December 2, 2011

Reaction in the Western press to reports that Russian authorities have investigated the activities of the Russian NGO "Golos, the Regional Civic Organization in Defense of Democratic Rights and Liberties," was predictable: Putin was "trying to gag election monitors" and, as expected, we read that the "US condemns Russia's 'harassment' of monitor group".

The Russian electoral authorities found that Golos had violated Russia's election laws by publishing polls in the "quiet period" immediately preceding parliamentary elections and fined the organization just under $1,000 for the violation. Russian lawmakers have also accused Golos and several other political opposition friendly NGOs of receiving funding from foreign sources for their political activities, which would be against Russian law (as foreign funding of US elections would be against US law).

The organization, we read, was "the country's main non-government election watchdog," so of course it having been "gagged" on the eve of parliamentary elections was ominous and troubling to the Western press. US-regime friendly (and George Soros-funded) Human Rights Watch complained that Golos was the "victim of a smear campaign."

Major Western media outlets once again trotted out the old "Russia just cannot help its authoritarian tendencies" reporting on the event, with the Reuters report adding that "The complaint echoed Vladimir Putin's speech on Sunday at his United Russia party congress, where he accused foreigners of funding his political opponents in what reminded some of the anti-Western rhetoric that marked his 2000-08 presidency."

But what of the claims by politicians and voters' rights groups that foreign funded NGOs were inciting another "Orange Revolution" in Russia?

A perusal of Golos's own website (Google's translation features helps non-Russian speakers) lists its foreign partners being the US "regime change" specialists National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and National Democratic Institute (NDI), two of the major US sponsors of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Rose Revolution in Georgia, among other adventures.

USAID is also listed as a "partner" organization to Golos, with whom it "works to decrease the number of violations, especially administrative abuses, in election campaigns." Apparently violations committed by the organizations it funds are OK, however. To make an omelet, NGOs must break a few eggs.

The National Endowment for Democracy's own website advertises openly that it provided "independent" NGO Golos with a generous grant in the 2010–2011 cycle to:

"...carry out a detailed analysis of the autumn 2010 and spring 2011 election cycles in Russia, which will include press monitoring, monitoring of political agita­tion, activity of electoral commissions, and other aspects of the application of elec­toral legislation in the long-term run-up to the elections. GOLOS will hold local and national press conferences and publish reports on its findings, as well as pro­vide detailed methodological advice to its monitors and other monitoring agencies."

Not to be outdone, the US government-funded National Democratic Institute proudly admits that "since 2000, NDI has worked with GOLOS...[to] provide...ongoing consultation and training for the organization’s regional partners."

Are Russians "paranoid" to be wary of US government funding of domestic Russian NGOs through its most notorious "regime change" and "color revolution" specialists? Would Americans be similarly "paranoid" if they found out that a Russian or Chinese government-funded "NGO" with a track record of internal subversion and fomenting revolutions was funding political organizations in the United States? Why is it OK if the US does it to others, but outrageous and threatening if it is done to us?

Destroying the concept of national sovereignty in the rest of the world will come back to haunt the United States. Interventionism is a virus that we cannot hope to spread worldwide yet quarantine just outside our own shores.

UPDATE: Could US criticisms of Russia on the eve of elections somehow be related to Russia's surprisingly firm stance in favor of its ally Syria as NATO and its corrupt puppets in the Arab League prepare a Libya-style "liberation"?