Middle East interventionists’ entrenched wrong hyped as “right”

With “friends” like these freedom-democracy humanitarians

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

From Jeremy Salt’s “Straight Talking: The Syrian Cauldron”

Jeremy Salt is author of the 2008 work, The Unmaking of the Middle East: A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands. This is some of what he had to say a June 3 article posted at Palestine Chronicle.

Western media and governments’ “unbalanced narrative,” Salt says, “feeds into war strategies being framed by the ‘Friends of Syria.’”

What/who are these “friends?”

They are what might be fairly called a renegade group operating, as similarly named groups did in Libya and Iraq and other places in the Middle East and Africa, counter and in opposition to United Nations principles and advice; and in the case of U.S. officials, acting also against constitutional declarations of the federal lawmaking body of the United States of America.

Initiated by former French president Nicolas Sarkozy (now under investigation for campaign funding improprieties), the Group of Friends of the Syrian People —variously called ‘Friends of Syria Group’ or ‘Friends of the Syrian People Group’ or ‘Friends of Democratic Syria’ or simply ‘Friends of Syria’—is an international organization of countries and bodies operating outside the UN Security Council, after Russia and China vetoed a resolution on Syria within the UNSC. 

The first meeting of this renegade group took place on February 24 in Tunisia, the second on April 1 in Istanbul, Turkey, and the third this month in Paris. Wikipedia note

Against a sovereign people’s choice of nonviolent solution

Salt continues: These ‘friends’ insist that the armed campaign they are sponsoring is directed against the government and not the people. 

What ‘the people’ – by any measure the majority of Syrians – want is difficult to gauge amidst such chaos but evidence suggests [Syrians] see these ‘friends’ as their enemies. 

 The referendum in February and elections in May were hardly perfect,” he writes, “but they remain the clearest indications yet of general support amongst Syrians for a political solution to the crisis gripping their country. 

 Outside the enclaves dominated by the armed groups, the people are strongly opposed to these groups and their external backers—knowing that but for the obstruction of Russia and China, NATO warplanes would have been bombing their country long ago.

 

Foreigners fasten on Syria with “tenacity of leeches”

The “‘Arab spring’ created the opportunity to reshape the Middle East at its political and geographical center, Salt says, and they (the foreigners) have seized it.

“Although paying lip service to [UN envoy] Kofi Annan’s ceasefire plan, they are prolonging the violence in the hope that the army will eventually disintegrate and the government will implode. While the destruction of the government in Damascus is an end in itself, Syria must also be seen as a way station on the road to Iran”

Bad veiled as good

REGIME CHANGE agents, leeches

(U.S. ally) TURKEY

“For the first time in Turkey’s republican history, a government had committed itself to ‘regime change’ in a neighboring country; for the first time a government had sponsored an armed group operating across its border to kill the citizens of a neighboring country. Even now the moral and legal implications of this policy have scarcely been touched upon in Turkish media.” 

For a country with a long history of other governments meddling in its affairs [Greek rebels in the 1820s, Bulgarian rebels in the 1870s, Macedonian and Armenian rebels in the 1890s), the position taken by Turkey, Salt describes as “almost surreal.

“In a paradoxical play on history,” he says, “Turkey is now intervening in Syria as the imperial powers once intervened in the Ottoman Empire and as they are still intervening in the affairs of other countries.” 

Nineteenth century “intervention in the name of civilization” morphed into twentieth century “intervention in the name of democracy and freedom” and twenty-first century (now) “intervention in the name of humanitarian concern” continues a theme of mendacious “’responsibility to protect.’”

(U.S. ally) SAUDI ARABIA

The princes have long wanted regime change. During the George W. Bush presidency, “Saudi Arabia wanted the United States to attack Iran, to ‘cut the head off the snake,’” Salt writes.

“[Saudi] interests are partly ideological, directed against Shiism in general and Iran in particular, and also rising from a traditional Saudi fear of its large northern neighbor.

In 1979, “the United States put the Syrian government on its list of states that support terrorism.” Since the introduction in 2003 of the Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Act (SALSA), “the United States has gradually tightened economic sanctions in an effort to bring the [Syrian] government to its knees.”

(U.S. ally) ISRAEL

“Turmoil in the Arab world suits Israel down to the ground, literally,” Salt says, and “what Israel wants, any U.S. administration does its best to deliver.”

Syria has always been Israel’s “visceral Arab enemy.”

  

FOREIGN MISSION of domination

“What is being played out is one of the greatest power games since the end of the First World War,” Salt concludes.

U.S. against these people 
Kuwait

U.S. against these people 
Yemen

World War I (1914-1918) pitted the Central Powers (mainly Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey) against the Allies (mainly France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and, from 1917, the United States).

A war that embroiled most of the nations of Europe along with Russia, the United States, the Middle East, and other regions — and caused unprecedented slaughter, carnage, and destruction—ended with the defeat of the Central Powers

“Behind the cover of the ‘Arab spring,’” any “obstacles to renewed western domination in the region are being knocked down, one by one,” Salt writes.

U.S. against these people
Iran

“The destabilization of Syria brings the region close to a war with potentially catastrophic global repercussions. But the rewards are so great that the western coalition cannot help itself from pressing against all red lines.”

In his earlier work, The Unmaking of the Middle East: a History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands, Jeremy Salt is reviewed as having painted “a damning picture of a sustained campaign by Western powers to dominate the Middle East by whatever means necessary”; and having “emphasized the human costs” of policies implemented “in the name of bringing civilization, democracy, or freedom to the region” or “preserving ‘Western interests.’”

U.S. against these people
Bahrain

Sources and notes

“Straight Talking: The Syrian Cauldron” (By Jeremy Salt – Ankara), July 3, 2012, http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=19392

 Jeremy Salt is an associate professor of Middle Eastern history and politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=19392

Jeremy Salt is author of The Unmaking of the Middle East: a History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands (2008)

Note: The author writes for those who want to know more about the Middle East than mainstream media are willing or able to tell, chronicling the long and bloody history of Western intervention in Arab lands as essential background for understanding the Middle East today.

Salt paints a damning picture of a sustained campaign by Western powers to dominate the Middle East by whatever means necessary; and emphasizes the human cost of the policies put in place to preserve ‘Western interests’ or in the name of bringing civilization, democracy, or freedom to the region. The author uses extensive U.S. and British archival research showing what politicians were deciding behind closed doors.

Reviewers have said about The Unmaking of the Middle East: a History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands, the book is “devastating in its portrayal of the depths to which Western countries (France, Britain, and the United States especially) sank in conquering the Middle East.… Comprehensive, scholarly and highly readable, it focuses on the damaging role of western policy in the Middle East.… Salt makes abundantly clear the West’s “talk[ing] idealistically while act[ing] brutally” in the Middle East.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Unmaking-Middle-East-Disorder/dp/0520255518/ref=la_B001JS7X0M_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341767562&sr=1-1

Wikipedia: Friends of Syria: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_of_Syria_Group

Redline: (1952): a recommended safety limit: the fastest, farthest, or highest point or degree considered safe; also: the red line which marks this point on a gauge (Merriam-Webster)

World War I note, Britannica

Related (Press TV) Syria, July 8, 2012

“Syrian security forces arrest 11 foreign spies: Syrian security forces say they have arrested 11 foreign spies from different Arab countries in Damascus.

“The alleged operatives were detained in the Reef region of the capital.

“The arrests do not mark the first such case. In February, a Saudi Arabian intelligence agent was detained in Syria's western city of Homs.

“Syria has said certain foreign countries, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are supporting armed groups operating against Damascus and supplying them with weaponry and finances.” http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/07/08/249895/syrian-forces-arrest-foreign-spies/

Related (Press TV) Persian Gulf July 8, 2012

“The U.S. navy has added another warship to its Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, in an attempt to bolster America’s military presence in the Persian Gulf.

“A U.S. Senate report indicates that the United States has now nearly 15,000 troops in three bases across Kuwait - three times the average number of American forces in the Middle Eastern country before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.” July 8, 2012, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/07/08/249882/another-us-warship-enters-persian-gulf/

Related (Press TV) South Central Asia, July 8, 2012

AFGHANISTAN: “Two U.S.-led troops killed in Afghanistan: At least two U.S.-led foreign soldiers have been killed in separate Afghan attacks in the south of the war-ravaged country over the past two days, NATO sources say.”

“41 killed in Afghanistan violence: At least 41 people have been killed in various incidents of violence in different parts of Afghanistan.”

“Afghanistan will only see peace if foreign forces withdraw: Salehi: Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi says peace and stability will only be restored in Afghanistan, if foreign forces withdraw from this country.”

PAKISTAN: “Anti-NATO Pakistanis march in Lahore: Thousands of people have held massive demonstrations in the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore to protest against Islamabad’s decision to reopen NATO supply routes to Afghanistan.”

HEADLINES, http://www.presstv.ir/section/3510204.html

Related (Press TV) Africa, July 7, 2012

“U.S. uses al-Qaeda to foment crisis in Muslim world: In what has become a self-fulfilling prophecy by the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and various neo-conservative think tanks, the Pan-Sahel region of North Africa is rapidly falling under the control of extremist forces, most notably Ansar Dine in Mali, Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, and ‘al Qaeda’ in the Maghreb (AQIM).

“However, it has become apparent that the funding for these groups originates in the Wahhabist-ruled potentates of [U.S.-allied] Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates,” July 7, 2012, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/07/07/249791/extremism-in-the-pansahel-region/

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