The Western governments’ and mainstream media’s narrative of a one-sided humanitarian crisis in Syria is rapidly unwinding to reveal a self-serving deception to justify a re-run of Libya-style NATO conquest. In reality, it is the Western powers and their Israeli and Arab henchmen who are fuelling a humanitarian crisis and creating the conditions for all-out war. All of which, it should be said, constitutes criminality comparable to Nazi Germany’s wars of aggression.
The latest crack in the Western façade over Syria comes in the form of leaked correspondence from Western private intelligence firm Stratfor, which reports that US-led NATO special forces have been operating inside Syria alongside armed opposition groups. Stratfor is closely aligned with Pentagon planners; indeed can be viewed as a private wing of the Pentagon. The document, disclosed by Wikileaks, cites US military sources discussing a campaign of destabilisation against the Syrian government of Bashir Al Assad, involving training opposition groups and deploying guerilla tactics, including assassinations. In other words, discussing a scenario that approximates to what is actually happening in Syria.
Given Straftor’s credentials as a reliable think-tank for the US military-industrial complex, the disclosure can be seen as a damning indictment of NATO criminality and Western mainstream media complicity.
Since political turmoil erupted in Syria a year ago, the monotonous “big lie” narrative from Western governments and the corporate-controlled news media has been one of “brutal state repression against a civilian population” committed by the Assad government.
This portrayal has, predictably, led to strident condemnation of the Syrian government by Western leaders and calls for “humanitarian intervention” by NATO powers and Western-backed Gulf Arab states – in a tested formula prescribed for Libya.
The Gulf Arab states led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been most prominent in doing the bidding of the Western powers in labelling the Syrian government as an international pariah – just as these Western client monarchies had done with regard to demonizing Libya. The ridiculous irony of unelected Gulf Arab despots, who have been brutally suppressing their own populations, denouncing anyone seems wholly lost on the mainstream media.
Ominously, the 22-member Arab League suspended Syria’s membership in a repeat of a similar sanction against Libya before the latter was subjected to a seven-month aerial blitzkrieg by NATO powers and eventual regime change, culminating in the roadside execution of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
No doubt the Syrian government has a case to answer, not only over recent human rights violations but also for decades of resistance to political reforms.
However, this is a far secondary issue to the immediate concern of criminal aggression by foreign powers. Over the past year, the Assad government has consistently maintained that a large measure of the violence assailing the civilian population is emanating from external forces. That is, the situation in Syria is more akin to a sponsored armed insurrection against the state. In that context, the Syrian government has a sovereign right to suppress such violent sedition, which furthermore appears to have little popular support and which is threatening the stability and security of the entire country.
This sovereign right is all the more founded given burgeoning evidence that the subversion is being fomented and furnished by foreign governments and their special forces. Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia have emerged as key backers of the self-styled armed opposition, the so-called Syrian Free Army. Most of the weaponry supplied to the oppositionists is reportedly emanating from Israel.
French and British special forces, such as Britain’s SAS and SBS, are believed to have been on the ground in Syria for several months directing the armed opposition. Michel Chossudovsky has reported British military sources admitting to such involvement. This systematic infringement by foreign powers can only be explained on the basis of a premeditated strategic plan.
Yet all the while, the Western governments and mainstream media studiously promote a deceptive fiction that the Syrian state is acting unilaterally, barbarically and criminally against its own people. The increasingly threadbare narrative maintains that Western governments and military are not involved in the Syrian conflict. Indeed, the Western mainstream media continue to report that Western governments are “opposed to arming Syrian rebels” and that they are anguishing over whether to intervene or not. This media also peddle the absurd claim that Arab states are “considering” supplying weapons to the supposed Syrian rebels when the latter are already armed to teeth by Arab Sunni monarchs who are salivating at the chance to take down a Shia/Alawite “enemy”.
Despite the mainstream media’s self-serving smokescreen, the fact is that the Western governments have been calculating for years on the subversion of Syria from within. For the past 12 months, their plans for regime change in Damascus have gone into overdrive with clandestine, criminal military action on the ground and using Arab and Israeli proxies as conduits for weapons. The latest leak from the Pentagon’s favourite private-sector think-tank, Stratfor, is just one more proof of an already established fact on the ground. But don’t expect the Western mainstream propaganda machine, or even some of the so-called progressive media, to alter the mood music of “humanitarian crisis” in its efforts to groom the Western public to accept yet another criminal war, even when it becomes patently clear that the narrative is nonsense.
There is too much at stake for truth to be allowed to interfere. Syria is a preordained piece on the chessboard that the Western powers want to take out in their grand scheme for bolstering dominance over the oil-rich Middle East – with Iran as the next piece. The Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria… Iran sequence stretches Western government and media credibility to well beyond breaking point. Believe the “responsibility to protect” or “weapons of mass destruction” fairytale if you want. Meanwhile, in the real world Prince Charming is shafting international law and human lives by the millions.
Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa Correspondent
