Resolutions calling on Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to step down, the West and its allies have gone ballistic in their desire of regime change.
After February’s veto, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov asked US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, "What's the endgame?", to which she replied: "The endgame in the absence of us acting together as the international community, I fear, is civil war." She wasn’t kidding either, because the US and its allies are doing exactly that: promoting civil war as official policy towards Syria. Foreign Policy (a Washington Post publication) reports on 28th March that Senators John McCain (Republican from Arizona) and “five like-minded lawmakers” submitted a new resolution on Syria before Congress, calling for Congressional “support for arming the opposition against the regime of Bashar al Assad”. The resolution stops short of calling for direct US military intervention, which McCain openly and fully supports, as does Senator Joe Lieberman from Connecticut. Their goal is to create a consensus on increasing US support for the Syrian opposition, around which US lawmakers can rally. So far, in addition to McCain and Lieberman, the resolution is backed by Republican Senators Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), Jon Kyl (Arizona), Kelly Ayotte (New Hampshire) and John Hoeven (North Dakota). The very powerful pro-Israel lobby AIPAC – American Israeli Public Affairs Committee – couldn’t be happier… The resolution "supports calls by Arab leaders to provide the people of Syria with the means to defend themselves against Bashar al-Assad and his forces, including through the provision of weapons and other material support, and calls on President Obama to work closely with regional partners to implement these efforts effectively." It also urges Obama to support the so-called "Friends of the Syrian People" contact group of Arab states which agreed in a meeting in Istanbul on Sunday to provide monthly funding worth several million dollars to pay a "salary" to opposition fighters in Syria and encourage more defections from President Bashar Assad's army.As reported by the Associated Press, “This money is the first formal international support for the rebels, and officials attending the "Friends of Syria" conference said the substantial funds would also probably be used to purchase weapons on the black market for the rebel Free Syria Army.”The message is therefore quite clear for all to understand: once again, as in the case of Libya last year, the US and its client states in the Middle East are paying huge amounts of money to mercenary armies – including “buying weapons on the black market for the rebel Free Syria army” – in order to overthrow the legal government of a sovereign country, this time, Syria. Using Orwellian newspeak, Hilary Clinton referred to these millions of dollars as “humanitarian aid to Syria”. So far, Syrian “freedom fighters” have received an official total of $25 million in such “humanitarian aid”, and only God knows how many millions more in black money are being funneled to local criminals, thugs and mercenaries inside Syria from secret CIA, MI6 and Mossad organized crime coffers, to be used for such black market arms purchases.Clearly, in war and in peace, under today’s global power system, money talks… and it does so very loudly! “Mr. Money is indeed a powerful Lord!” 16th Century Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo once said. Five centuries later, nothing new under the sun… The foreign ministers and top officials from more than 80 nations and international organizations gathered in Istanbul for the “Friends of Syria” meeting warned Assad that “he has little time left to comply with demands he stop his yearlong slaughter of his own citizens”. Naturally, these same “Friends of…” know full well that even worse violence has been raging for a longer period of time in Egypt, Bahrain and other US-UK client states, but they and the Western mainstream media prefer not to unduly disturb global public opinion with that… With their accustomed hypocrisy, the US, UK and their allies are the ones who get to decide who are the “bad guys” – Syria and Iran today, Iraq and Libya yesterday – and who are the “good guys” in the region, either because they are nicely pro-Israel, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, or because they house the US Fifth Fleet like Bahrain and are thus allowed to continue torturing and beating their own people, while Obama, Clinton, Cameron and Sarkozy look the other way.A front-page editorial in the official Al-Baath newspaper described the Istanbul meeting as a "regional and international scramble to search for ways to kill more Syrians, sabotage their society and state, and move toward the broad objective of weakening Syria."Under the money game, together with US “aid”, funds are also being contributed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait for distribution to “good guy terrorists” through the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC). In today’s upside-down world, we see the US, UK, France, Israel, UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia all claiming to be waging a “global war on terror”, the roots of which can to a great extent be directly or indirectly traced back to these very countries, whilst at the same time they openly and blatantly admit to using the grossest and vilest State-sponsored terrorism tactics by financing, training, arming and supporting mercenary armies inside those very same enemy countries.Such is US and Allied hypocrisy that they feel it’s OK to use exactly the same tactics against Syria, Libya and Iran that they accuse the “terrorists” of using against them. Alas! An old adage says that when a civilized man captures a primitive cannibal, he may punish him in any way he pleases except…he may not eat him!
Adrian Salbuchi for RT
Adrian Salbuchi is a political analyst, author, speaker and radio/TV commentator in Argentina. www.asalbuchi.com.ar
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in the story are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.