Another massacre has allegedly taken place in Syria that is being compared to the recent massacre in Houla. There are indeed striking similarities. As with the Houla massacre, claims that Syrian government forces or pro-regime militias carried out the atrocity are being parroted by the Western media despite the fact that such claims made by opposition groups and rebel forces remain unverified.
In the case of Houla, there are numerous indications, including eyewitness testimony, that the massacre was actually carried out by rebel forces or allied terrorist groups—with the U.S. and its allies actively supporting the opposition, including by funding and arming the rebels. The allegations of government-backed massacres of civilians are predictably being used as a pretext by the U.S. to implement a policy of regime change in Syria.
The latest massacre was alleged to have occurred on June 6, the same day Secretary of State Hillary Clinton headed to Turkey to “talk strategy with America’s allies,” as the Associated Press put it, “and look for a way to win Russia’s support for a transition plan ending the Assad regime.”
“It’s time for all of us to turn our attention to an orderly transition of power in Syria that would pave the way for democratic, tolerant, pluralistic future,” Clinton told reporters in Azerbaijan before leaving for Istanbul.
Clinton made clear that the U.S. was not supportive of the peace plan brokered by U.N. special envoy and former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, which seeks a diplomatic solution to Syria’s civil war.
“We think it is important for us to give Kofi Annan and his plan the last amount of support that we can muster,” she obliquely declared, “because, in order to bring others into a frame of mind to take action in the Security Council, there has to be a final recognition that it’s not working.”
A State Department official briefed reporters on Clinton’s meeting in Turkey by saying she had set forth “essential elements and principles that we believe should guide that post Assad transition strategy, including Assad’s full transfer of power.”
Also on June 6, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner stated, “We the United States hope that all responsible countries will soon join in taking appropriate actions against the Syrian regime, including, if necessary, Chapter VII action in the U.N. Security Council, as called for by the Arab League last weekend.”
The reference to Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter is an allusion to Security Council authorization for the use of force. However, the Charter would also forbid any use of force for the purpose of regime change.
NATO’s regime change operations in Libya, for example, exceeded the U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing a no-fly zone to protect civilians in violation of the U.N. Charter prohibition against “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”.
On June 7, following reports of the alleged massacre in Hama coinciding with her visit, Clinton declared that the regime was responsible for this killing of civilians.
“The regime-sponsored violence that we witnessed again in Hama yesterday is simply unconscionable,” she stated. “Assad has doubled down on his brutality and duplicity, and Syria will not, cannot be peaceful, stable or certainly democratic until Assad goes.”
She added, “We have to do more to help organize and focus the opposition.”
It is unlikely that the U.S. would gain cover for another illegal military intervention to overthrow the Syrian regime in the form of another U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force, since Russia and China, both permanent members with veto power, have made it clear that they will not permit a repeat of what occurred in Libya.
“China and Russia strongly oppose any attempt to address the Syria crisis with military interference from the outside or forcefully impose a regime change in the insurgency-ridden country,” both nations expressed in a joint statement.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) also called for a “peaceful resolution of the Syrian problem through political dialogue”. The SCO said in a statement, “Member states are against military intervention into this region’s affairs, forcing a ‘handover of power’ or using unilateral sanctions.”
Russia has proposed to host a meeting of 15 nations and organizations to attempt to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Russian foreign minister said that the goal would be to “agree with a circle of outside players, without the Syrians, about how we should use our influence on each Syrian group” to pave the way to ending “all military excesses”.
Russia proposed to include Iran in the discussions, which the U.S. immediately rejected, with the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, telling reporters, “There is no question that it is actively engaged in supporting the government in perpetrating the violence on the ground”.
The hypocrisy is difficult to ignore, given the fact that the U.S. is admittedly actively engaged in supporting rebel forces in perpetrating violence on the ground. But Washington, as ever, holds itself to one standard and the rest of the world to another.
An apparent reference to the U.S. policy of seeking regime change in Syria, Kofi Annan urged that “Individual actions or interventions will not resolve the crisis.”
At the same time, he seemed to imply that pro-regime militiamen were responsible for the Houla massacre and alleged killings in Hama by saying, “The first responsibility lies with the government…. The government-backed militia seems to have a free rein, with appalling consequences.”
“The trail of blood leads back to those responsible,” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, using similarly vague language. “Any regime or leader that tolerates such killing of innocents has lost its fundamental humanity.”
The Syrian government denied responsibility. “What a few media have reported on what happened in Al-Kubeir, in the Hama region, is completely false,” the government said in a statement. “A terrorist group committed a heinous crime in the Hama region which claimed nine victims. The reports by the media are contributing to spilling the blood of Syrians.”
The Syrian ambassador to the U.N., Bashar Jaafari, said that government troops intervened to try to save civilian lives and that four were wounded in the attempt.
“Mr Jaafari also accused news organizations, including the BBC, of broadcasting images of bodies from an entirely different location”, The Telegraph reported, declining to inform readers that this “accusation” was true—the BBC had earlier posted an image of dead bodies purporting to be of the massacre in Houla that had actually been taken in Iraq in 2003. When the photographer who took the photo learned of this, he criticized the BBC for its “propaganda”.
The mainstream corporate media reports on the latest alleged massacre have apparently relied exclusively on claims from the Syrian opposition that pro-regime forces were responsible. The Guardian reported, “On the face of it, the circumstances of the apparent massacre at al-Qubair, a tiny village near Hama, look grimly familiar: tank or shellfire followed by an assault by the feared shabiha, paramilitary thugs drawn from the minority Alawite community of President Bashar al-Assad.”
The Guardian thus reported the account given by the opposition as fact before providing the government’s version: “The regime blamed ‘armed terrorists’ for killing nine people and accused ‘media backing Syria’s bloodletting’ of spreading lies. Opposition activists have listed 56 named victims and claim 78 died.”
Of course, if the victims of the alleged massacre—described here as “apparent” even though there had yet been no independent confirmation that a massacre even occurred, apart from the Syrian government’s own claim of nine dead—were in fact killed not by pro-regime militias but by rebel forces or allied terrorist elements, then the charge against the media of “spreading lies” would be perfectly accurate.
Another Guardian report by the same author, Ian Black, noted that the Syrian government stands accused of carrying out the massacre, the source of that accusation being “an opposition group”.
“We have 100 deaths in the village of al-Qubair, among them 20 women and 20 children,” Black quoted Mohammed Sermini, a spokesman for the Syrian National Council, as saying.
Another opposition group, the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, was a second source cited by Black as accusing the regime of committing the massacre.
“Quibair was stormed with very heavy and random gunfire, houses were broken into and the residents were killed, some with knives,” Black quotes a third “Hama-based source” as saying. “There are also burnt bodies.” He didn’t disclose whether his anonymous source is also member of the opposition.
Black acknowledged that reports and images of the alleged massacre “spread rapidly on Twitter and other social networks but were impossible to verify independently given the lack of media access to much of Syria.”
This raises the question of why, if Black had not verified the information he had received, he reported as fact that the regime was responsible in his other article.
Another Guardian reporter, Martin Chulov, quoted people claiming to be eyewitnesses and identifying the murderers as belonging to a pro-regime militia. “I knew some of them from school,” said one. “I know their names. I know their villages. I know exactly who they are. They are Shabiha, no doubt. They passed by here with the regime army.” The individual is named as Abu Hisham al-Hamawi and described as “a resident of the Mazraat area, whose home is on the outskirts of al-Qubair”.
Chulov cited a second witness who wished to remain anonymous, and a third named as Laith al-Hamawi who offered a similar story: “I saw the tanks enter the village and I knew some of the Shabiha personally.”
But did Chulov verify these individual’s identities? Were they also members of the opposition? Did he meet with him or merely speak with him on the phone? Was Chulov even in Syria? After all, as Chulov’s colleague Ian Black had acknowledged, the opposition’s claims “were impossible to verify independently” due to lack of media access, and Chulov filed another report published the next day—repeating the same claims from the same sources—not from Syria, but from Beirut, Lebanon.
The London Telegraph prefaced an article on the alleged massacre in Mazraat al-Qabeer by stating as fact that it came “less than two weeks after a massacre in the town of Houla, in which security forces and pro-Assad militia men known as ‘Shabiha’ killed 108 people, nearly half of them children.”
But, again, the claims that pro-regime elements were responsible for the Houla massacre similarly originate from rebel sources, the truth being that we do not yet know who was responsible and that there are plenty of reasons to believe that the massacre was carried out by rebel forces or allied terrorists.
An individual named as Mohammed Abu Bilal was quoted as saying, “Today the regime troops started to shell the village. Under this cover the shabiha entered the village while people were hiding in their homes. They killed everyone they found in the houses or streets by knives.” This individual “claimed to have spoken to a survivor”, the Telegraph remarked.
Neither of the article’s two authors were actually reporting from Syria, however, but were rather based in Beirut and Cairo, respectively.
The other sources used for the article are instructive: “Mousab al-Hamedee from the opposition Local Coordination Committee”, “Opposition activists from the nearby city of Hama”, “Sammy, and activist form [sic, ‘an activist from’] the opposition Hama news agency”, “activists”, and “Lieutenant Khaled Ali, a spokesperson for the rebel Military Council in Hama”.
The following day, The Telegraph ran an article implying throughout that the Syrian government was responsible for a massacre in Hama and not until paragraph 25 of the 30 paragraph article acknowledged that “it is difficult to assign blame for much of the bloodshed. The government restricts journalists from moving freely, making it nearly impossible to independently verify accounts from either side.”
The Independent quoted “Mousab Al Hamadee, who said he was a local activist”, claiming that pro-regime militia were responsible for the massacre.
The article added, “Others claiming to be from the village backed this version of events, describing indiscriminate killing” (emphasis added).
It quoted “an activist giving his name as Laith Al Hamawi” saying, “They murdered children and women and the bodies were burnt by those thugs.” This was presumably the same “Laith al-Hamawi” cited by Martin Chulov in the Guardian, raising the question of whether “Laith” is really running public relations for the opposition.
The Independent added, “It was impossible to verify the accuracy of these claims, although several people purporting to be from the area yesterday gave similar accounts of the atrocity” (emphasis added). But the only other sources given for the claim pro-government forces were responsible were “another opposition source, the Local Co-ordination Committee”, and “The Syrian National Council in Exile”.
An Agence France-Presse report began, “Syrian pro-government forces have killed at least 87 people in Hama province, many of them women and children, a watchdog said in allegations denied by Damascus.”
The so-called “watchdog” referred to is none other than the so-called “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights”, which is anti-regime activist Rami Abdel Rahman operating out of his home in London to relay information from anti-regime activists and rebel forces to the Western media.
AFP also cited the “exiled opposition Syrian National Council (SNC)” claiming that Assad loyalists carried out the massacre.
Another AFP report began: “‘Burned bodies of children and women and girls were on the ground,’ Laith, a young villager, told AFP news agency by telephone from near Al-Kubeir….”
AFP did’t give this individual’s last name, but it seems safe to presume this is the same Laith al-Hamawi who talked also to The Guardian and The Independent, which reinforces the conclusion that this individual has been tasked with peddling propaganda misinformation to the media for the rebel forces.
Laith also told AFP, “I saw something you cannot imagine. It was a horrifying massacre…. People were executed and burned. Bodies of young men were taken away…. I heard from people I know in that village that last night the shabiha militiamen drank and danced around their corpses, chanting songs praising Assad.” Laith also emphasized that there had not been “a single demonstration” against the regime in Al-Kubeir.
AFP quoted another anonymous source as saying, “People who do not take sides are a target, because the regime is running out of options on how to stop the revolt.”
A third source, “Another Hama-based activists, Mousab al-Hamadi”, told AFP that there was no presence of the Free Syrian Army (FSA)—the rebel military force supplied, funded, and trained by the U.S. and its allies—and that “The regime wants to create a sectarian clash in the country.”
The only other source cited was the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
That the victims had reportedly not joined the opposition is another similarity to the Houla massacre, where, according to the Syrian government, the victims “were killed because they refused to cooperate with these terrorist groups”. Included among the dead was the family of a member of parliament. One of the few reporters—if not the only one—who actually went to the area and interviewed local residents face to face, capturing testimony on camera, is Russian journalist Marat Musin. The eyewitness testimony he gathered corroborated the Syrian government’s version of events.
The BBC cited “activists” claiming pro-regime forces had carried out the alleged massacre, noting that the government had denied these claims and commenting that “Neither account could be confirmed.”
The other sources for the BBC report were “activists”, “activists”, and “one activist”, “One of Qubair’s residents”, and “The Local Co-ordination Committees, an activist network”.
Canada’s Globe and Mail followed the same script (emphasis added):
Wednesday’s massacre, in villages west of the central Syrian city of Hama, is believed to have been carried out by a gang of thugs known as the shabiha, and involved the killing of about 80 men, women and children, local activists said….
Activists said the community of Qubair was shelled for several hours by Syrian tanks and artillery, following which masked men entered the area and killed the reportedly unarmed civilians—the method of operation used two weeks ago in the massacre of 108 people in the Houla area west of Homs. Witnesses are reported to have said the men who carried out Wednesday’s attack were members of nearby Alawite villages supportive of Mr. al-Assad….
“All killings are now sectarian in character,” said Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian activist and fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. “The killers are Alawites; the victims Sunnis.”
The writer, Patrick Martin, asserted without evidence or further explanation that “the most likely culprits are the freelance gangs of thugs sympathetic to the regime of Mr. al-Assad”. The apparent logic behind that statement is since the opposition claims pro-regime thugs were responsible, therefore it is “most likely” true.
Al Jazeera also stuck to the script, quoting “Mohammed, a 20-year-old from a small village in Hama province”—the same Mohammed Sermini cited by Ian Black in The Guardian running public relations for the rebel army?
“Mohammed and opposition activists blamed government-backed militia,” Al Jazeera stated, offering in addition the following second-hand account: “Mohammed’s grandfather, who was transferred to [a] nearby hospital, told him that supporters of President Bashar al-Assad from the nearby towns of Tal Sikkeen and Aseelah had attacked him.”
Apart from “Mohammed”, the story’s other sources were “opposition activists”, “activists”, and “activists”.
Another aspect of the propaganda campaign to garner support for intervention to overthrow the Assad regime is exemplified by the New York Times, which reported that “government troops and their civilian supporters blocked unarmed United Nations monitors from investigating a massacre”.
The Times claimed that “The monitors were thwarted from reaching the tiny hamlet of Qubeir, just west of Hama, to check on what activists say was the slaying of as many as 78 people, half of them women and children, who were shot, garroted and in some cases burned alive.”
It added that, “The monitors themselves were fired upon, United Nations officials said”—thus implying, given the context, that it had been government troops that had fired at U.N. monitors.
The Times article was compiled from reporting from four different journalists—in Turkey, the U.S., Russia, and the U.K., respectively.
This propaganda narrative has been repeated in other mainstream sources. “As well as being shot at, the observers were blocked from reaching the scene of the killings by the Syrian army,” The Telegraph reported, for example.
Yet this is not at all an accurate retelling of the information that was actually provided by the U.N.
Immediately after learning of the failure of the U.N. mission to gain access to the site of the alleged massacre, Secretary Ban said that while trying to enter, “the U.N. monitors were shot at with small arms”—he did not suggest that the fire came from government troops.
A U.N. press release stated that “while trying to reach the village, they were also shot at with small arms”—again with no suggestion whatsoever as to who was responsible for firing on the U.N. officials.
U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said that “The patrol was forced to withdraw to a nearby government checkpoint” (emphasis added)—there being a not insignificant difference between this and the media narrative that the monitors were forced away from a government military post. That the monitors were forced away from the scene by gunfire to the safety of a government military post is the actual story that is inferred from this account. “They will try again tomorrow,” Haq added.
The head of the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS), General Robert Mood, issued a statement that did say that observers were unable to investigate the scene at Mazraat al-Qubeir because “They are being stopped at Syrian Army checkpoints and in some cases turned back.” But the explanation for this could simply be that there is a legitimate concern for the safety of the mission, and Mood also gave two other reasons for their failure to access the area.
“Some of our patrols are being stopped by civilians in the area,” he said—offering no indication that these “civilians” were regime “supporters” as dishonestly elaborated upon by the New York Times.
Finally, said Mood, “We are receiving information from residents of the area that the safety of our observers is at risk if we enter [the] village of Mazraat al-Qubeir.”
UNSMIS observers were finally permitted through to Mazraat al-Qubeir mid-afternoon on June 8.
“We found the village empty of its local inhabitants, bmp [tank] tracks on the road, a house damaged from shelling, with a wide range of caliber types and grenades,” said UNSMIS spokesperson Sausan Ghosheh. “We found burned homes, and at least one burnt with bodies inside—there was a heavy stench of burned flesh.”
Whether the stench was of human or animal flesh remains unclear. BBC reporter Paul Danahar, who accompanied U.N. observers to the scene, relayed that “The U.N. have not found any people yet.” He posted to Twitter, “Butchering the people”—none of whose bodies had yet been found—“didn’t satisfy the blood lust of the attackers so they killed the live stock too. Their carcasses rotting in the sun.”
Danahar reported on “a remarkably appalling scene” in the village. “There are pieces of human flesh lying around the room. There is a big pile of congealed blood in the corner. There’s a tablecloth that still has pieces of someone’s brain attached to the side of it.”
“There is no one alive in this village to tell us what happened, at the moment,” Danahar attested. “We’ve been led up here by some nearby villagers. They say it was shabiha, militia from another village, that have come and done this. Men here told us that after the killing had taken place, a pickup truck arrived with men in civilian clothes and took the bodies away.”
“We don’t know where the bodies are,” he said. “There are all kind of rumors and people are getting the numbers of people who were killed, they’re changing the numbers that they think were killed. No one really knows.”
“I stand where I am now, I can see another building in front of me. It’s completely burnt out, and there is a pile of something. I don’t think it’s bodies. Whatever it is, it’s a big pile of ash, and it’s still smoldering. Next to that, there is a donkey that has been shot on the side of the road. I mean, this has basically been a scorched earth policy by whomever’s done this. They’ve killed the people. They’ve killed the livestock. They’ve left nothing in the village alive.”
On Twitter, Danahar said, “The only clue to where the bodies of the people may have gone are etched into the road. UN said they were tracks made by military vehicles.”
The tank tracks do not necessarily indicate that government forces cleansed the area of evidence. The Free Syrian Army has been documented using captured BMPs in battle. In fact, opposition activists have uploaded videos bragging of this achievement to YouTube.
Credible eyewitness accounts of what occurred have yet to be documented. “Residents from neighboring villages came to speak to us,” Ms. Ghosheh said. “The circumstances surrounding this incident are yet not clear and we have not yet been able to verify the numbers.”
After arriving in the village, Danahar posted to Twitter:
A man called Ahmed has come up from the village who says he witnessed the killings. He has says dozens were killed. #syria
He has a badly bruised face but his story is conflicted & the UN say they are not sure he’s honest as they think he followed the convoy.
Illustrates how [hard] it is to get the truth here in #Syria and how tough the UN mission is.
In one last footnote, an article on the alleged massacre at the BBC website published on June 7 included a sidebar analysis from Danahar, who reported the following update on what has since been learned about the Houla massacre:
Members of the international community in Damascus say that, contrary to initial reports, most of the people in Houla were killed by gunfire spraying the rooms, not by execution-style killings with a gun placed to the back of the head. Also people’s throats were not cut, although one person did have an eye gouged out.
Of course, the sources for those false claims were rebel forces or anti-regime “activists”. The fact that such exaggerated claims from “eyewitness” testimony offered by the rebels—parroted uncritically by media outlets around the world—have proven to be lies won’t stop mainstream news sources from continuing to rely exclusively on members of the opposition in further reports as the situation continues to descend into chaos and the violence escalates.
Dutiful and highly self-disciplined so-called “journalists” will continue to parrot the narrative preferred by Western government officials and to propagate pretexts in order to manufacture consent for yet another U.S.-managed regime change operation.
It’s unclear to me what the rebel forces would have to gain by carrying out these civilian massacres. The embattled regime, on the other hand, seems a more likely perpetrator — terror being a well-known method of suppressing civilian resistance. If Houla and the other places where massacres supposedly took place could be shown to be areas loyal to Assad, then the case for rebel involvement would be strengthened. But so far as I can tell, the massacres seem to have occurred in what amounts to rebel territory.
Tbe picture remains murky, I admit. Gievn the chaos, it could hardly be otherwise. On the other hand, the main “evidence” for rebel involvement at Houla comes from an Abkhazian journalist who is obviously parroting the Russian line. Surely we can admit that pro-regime countries like Russia are at least as likely as Westerners to file slanted stories from the scene. Russian and other pro-regime reporting constitutes pseudo-journalism to an even greater extent than the stuff put out by the BBC and American outlets.
Personally, my greatest concern is avoiding U.S. involvement on the ground in Syria. That said, I wouldn’t spend time trying to, in effect, defend the Assad regime. That’s not likely to influence the debate, to say the least.
Cui bono? Obviously not the regime, given the circumstances. Commit massacres giving the West a pretext to intervene to overthrow the regime? The US-backed rebel/terrorist forces, however, have a clear motive: to create a pretext for Western intervention to overthrow the regime. As for sources, yes, we should treat all sources with equal skepticism and weigh reports on their merits. That is what I set out to do for this report.
Jeremy, in asking who profits you appear to assume that rationality prevails among the Syrian regime and its supporters. Terror as a weapon has been used time and time again by regimes and others who either are or feel threatened with destruction. The examples are countless, from the 16th and 17th century wars of religion to both sides in the Russian civil war to the Nazis to the Phoenix program in Vietnam to . . . and on and on. Sometimes the terror is openly acknowledged by the perpetrators; but sometimes (and Syria would seem to be a case in point) the murderers seek to blind international eyes for fear of having to appear one day before an international tribunal.
I have no doubt that US/Western policy in Syria is motivated first and foremost by perceived interests. And I acknowledge that these same actors are quite capable of ginning up atrocity stories to further their policy goals. Moreover, I don’t say that you’re wrong in believing that the Syrian rebels may have have perpetrated Houla or other massacres. After all, neither one of us is in touch with the facts on the ground. That said, there appears to be a prima facie case for the regime or its supporters being behind the massacres, while on the evidence we’ve seen so far any attempt to indict the rebels would have to returned as “no true bill.”
Why do you presume members of the regime and its supporters are less rational than its opposition, Jon? This does not seem to me to be a reasonable presumption, but a prejudicial one. Yes, regimes use terror. But in case you haven’t noticed, regime opponents also have used terror time and time again as well. The examples are also countless. You are not offering a valid logical argument.
I’m not presuming that the regime is less rational than the opposition. I tried to make plain that we don’t know for sure what happeneded in Houla and at the other massacre sites. Neither one of us is on the ground in Syria. However, in your piece I think you’re saying, or at least strongly implying, that opponents of the regime quite possibly carried out the Houla killings. My objection to stating that is that the evidence for it is extremely thin. The impression I get is that because you don’t like Western policy in Syria specifically, and don’t like Western interventions around the world generally, you seek to blacken the West whenever an opportunity presents itself. In other words, it appears to me that you’re looking at Houla through ideological spectacles.
Let me stress that this is my IMPRESSION from reading the piece; perhaps I’m wrong. In any case I believe the author has the right to the last word, and I look forward to any reply you may care to make.
Ok. If you weren’t arguing that the regime and its supporters are irrational, then I don’t understand what your point was. You are being very confusing and contradictory. You say, “I tried to make plain that we don’t know for sure what happeneded in Houla and at the other massacre sites.” That is exactly the point my articles have emphasized.
Yet then you say: “However, in your piece I think you’re saying, or at least strongly implying, that opponents of the regime quite possibly carried out the Houla killings. My objection to stating that is that the evidence for it is extremely thin.” So you reject the possibility that regime opponents carried out the massacre? Doesn’t it follow that you think that pro-regime forces carried it out, even though the evidence for that is equally thin or thinner? Isn’t that really the same thing as saying, then, that we know for sure what happened in Houla? I mean, if you reject the only alternative possibility, how are you not contradicting yourself here? So if I am saying we should wait for the evidence and examine the facts objectively, and you are really saying, as best as I can tell, that it must have been the regime, then which one of us is “looking at Houla through ideological spectacles”?
Jon, you appear to be that rare American that thinks about situations rather than just accept the US political line. That said your opinions will have been “conditioned”, to some effect,over years of a US anti Arab stance. There was an example in last Sundays UK newspaper “The Mail on Sunday”, in which the correspondent Peter Hitchens wrote about a group of western women, living in Syria, who contacted him objecting to the western distortion of events in Syria. They were critical of the Syrian regime, but pointed out the unreported involvement of armed “activists” who are Salafis, ultra puritan Muslems who are influenced by Saudi teachings, who loath and threaten Syria`s minority Christian and Alawites. Many of these “activists” are armed from abroad (unreported in the UN). These Western ladies gave examples of BBC televised reports purporting to be “opposition” rallies but were in fact pro-Government rallies and reports supposedly from the green and fertile north which showed desert conditions that simply don`t exist in the north at that time of the year. When I went on line to The Mail on Sunday, there was no evidence of the Peter Hitchens story, I wonder why, but it`s not at all unusual. There also seems to be little western reporting of “unrest” in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia, or of the very recent Human Rights Watch report of Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, I wonder why? It`s very difficult for any thinking person to reach a truly balanced opinion, but you have my admiration for trying.
Thank you for your work. This is an excellent article to present the facts on the ground, not propaganda that spread by the war criminals in Washington for ‘regime change’.
Unfortunately, the “progressives” are working with the war criminals again with Washington against Syria like they did in the case of Libya. Cockburn, Richard Falk, Robert Fisk and many more are few to mention here. Some sites, wrongly, present Russia and China as ‘victims’ and against ‘regime change’. This is not TRUE. Both countries similar to Libya case are working hand in hand with Washington. First they say NO to fool the public and negotiate for better concessions but always they stab these countries on their back.
Russians, according to their officials, say THEY HAVE AN EXCELLENT RELATIONS WITH ISRAEL. So, The Russians always have sided with Israel agenda against Muslims and Iran. The criminal Russia and China already sold Syria when Russia announced that they can agree with a model like ‘Yemen’. China never presented any objection to anything. We have already seen the BETRAYAL OF CHINA AND RUSSIA AGAINST LIBYA AND IRAN. The criminal China and Russia have voted at least 4 times against legal enrichment program of Iran and have collected many concessions and they have enriched themselves on Iranian people dead bodies.
Also thanks for exposing the media that is complicit in Washington’s crimes against humanity, but you didn’t expose Richard Falk, supporter of ‘world government’ who hold Assad responsible without any evidence like Cockburn and other agents. No one trust Richard Falk, a front for US government among “the progressives”. He is member of the council on foreign relations.
Richard Falk is also working with Payam Akhavan, the empire’s lawyer and a Zionist working closely with CIA (NED) and Rights and democracy in Canada and Freedom House.
He has established a document center along with other CIA agents, against Iran where is funded by the CIA $$$$ to convict Iran on phony charge of “crimes against humanity” but Payam Akhavan has not objections against United States and Israel where they have wrongfully framed Muslims and have killed millions of Muslims and continue to kill more Muslims with drone. Akhavan has said no word about all these killings where his country, CANADA, is involved in, but he dares to go after Iran and Richard Falk from Council on foreign relations gives him a helping hand.
Shame on both, hypocrite, when they claim they are working for justices.
I forgot to say that Payam Akhavan connected Bashar Assad to Al Huola genocide without any credible evidence, like the war criminals in Washington. However, Mr. Payam Akhavan has never accused the real war criminals in Washington, Canada, Britain, Tel Aviv, and Saudi Arabia of ‘crimes against humanity.
Payam Akhavan who received funding from the CIA, was involved with ‘Save Darfur’, Israel front
,
http://blackagendareport.com/content/save-dafur%E2%80%99s-miing-million-israeli-connection
against Al Bashir to indict him with phony charge of ‘genocide in Darfur’ through a brothel house, ICC, to partition Sudan for the interest of Zionism and imperialism.
Mahmud Mamdani, Columbia University Professor
used state department’s data to show that Payam Akhavan is a LIAR when he says there was ‘genocide’. The charge was fabricated to bring down the government of Al Bashir and ICC based on this fabricated charge indict Al Bashir and issued a warrant for his arrest, but all the western war criminals still at large and Payam Akhavan HAS NO ISSUE WITH IT.
http://www.david-kilgour.com/2007/Aug_23_2007_04.htm
Now, to indict Iran with the fabricated charge ‘crimes against humanity’, these lawyers including Richard Falk who have never sit in a committee to convict the war criminals in Washington, Tel Aviv, London, France or Saudi Arabia and even Turkey for their repeated ‘crimes against humanity’ want to do it in case of Iran for ‘regime change’. Both Richard Falk and Payam Akhavan spread the 2009 Iranian election ‘fraud’ HOAX for regime change to serve the empire.
Akhavan with Shirin Ebadi who like Obama has been awarded, a ‘Nobel Peace Prize’, in “the globe and mail” on June 5, 2012 wrote:
{The massacre of 108 civilians in Houla on May 25 is but one instance of a wider Syrian policy of terror that has claimed more than 10,000 innocent lives. It is the tragic but predictable response of a tyrannical regime that will stop at nothing to stay in power. For Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, any compromise is a sign of weakness. Instead, his reply to the legitimate demands of Syrian citizens is systematic violence.}
This hypocrite was involved against Al Bashir, like in the case against Malevich in Yugoslavia, on behalf of the US/Israel/Canada.
“Personally, my greatest concern is avoiding U.S. involvement on the ground in Syria. That said, I wouldn’t spend time trying to, in effect, defend the Assad regime. That’s not likely to influence the debate, to say the least.”
Of course the US is also trying to avoid (or hide) involvement on the ground. The alternative is to back rebel groups, the down side of which is that they tend to commit atrocities.
No one in their right mind wants to defend the Assad regime, any more than anyone in their right mind wanted to defend the Ghaddafi regime. And that of course is the Manichean dynamic the US/NATO is using to advance its program.
Of course the Russians have interests and a propaganda arm of their own – though I don’t think it could be claimed that it’s having a lot of success lately. But at least the Russians are insisting on some kind of negotiation, whereas the US is openly insisting on “regime change”, exactly as it did in Libya and exactly as it did in Iraq, and of course as it intends to do in Iran.
If there is a truth behind all of this that we can rely on, it is that the West has been intervening, whether on the ground or via other means, in this part of the world since at least the end of WW II, and that the West must take some of the responsibility for what is going on there now. Then we need to look at the reasons for that intervention, and decide whether the interests at stake are really those of the majority of Western citizens. Another thing that is certain is that they are not those of the people of the region.
I’m replying to myself in order to correct my e-mail. Apologies.
Let me just add that I agree that countering the _cui bono_ argument by saying that the Assad regime is simply insane just won’t stand up. Of course we heard the same argument used against Saddam and Ghaddafi, and we’re hearing it used against the Mullahs. Its logical conclusion is that anyone who counters the US/NATO’s stated goal of “full-spectrum domination” has to be insane, and there is no chance that they might actually have the interests of their countries’ people as one of their motivations. In the case of Ghaddafi, at least, that argument simply does not hold up. It’s like arguing that because Bush, Jr. was a certifiable nincompoop, all of the US’s domestic and foreign policy under him was wrong…
“No one in their right mind wants to defend the Assad regime, any more than anyone in their right mind wanted to defend the Ghaddafi regime.”
They have represented the legitimate governments of their countries for decades. You’re obviously not in a fit state of mind to make rational decisions.
Would you prefer to let the US and its allies make the decisions?
I don’t disagree with what you say. There’s no question that US/Western policy since 1945, and especially the events of 1948 and 1953, have warped the Middle East and done bad things to everyone concerned, including the American people. The United States is an empire and its imperial ways do more harm than good. As an American I wish we had never gone the route of replacing the British Empire with one of our own, for the selfish reason that it has harmed my country in every way. I do what I can (admittedly, it’s not much) to combat US interventionism around the world, and especially in the Middle East.
I didn’t say that the Assad regime is insane. In any case, that has little or nothing to do with the point I actually raised — which was that there is very little evidence for rebel involvement at Houla or the other massacre sites. I will say again that I don’t know, any more than any of you do, who perpetrated these massacres. But the evidence for rebel involvement is, so far at least, tissue-thin. What I at least found in Jeremy’s piece was a strong presumption of rebel/Western involvement in the massacres. All I’m saying is that as of now the evidence for that is almost non-existent.
I’m going to add one further point to my reply above. It’s a general observation. The views I hold on US foreign policy are out of the mainstream. That also applies, for the most part, to the other writers and commenters who publish and post at FPJ. The question for each of us is: do we express our views in extreme form, sometimes going beyond known facts, because we believe strongly in them, or because we find it emotionally satisfying to lash out at our opponents? In other words, do you want to try to effect the debate, or do you just want read your own words and feel self-satisfied? If the latter, well, fine. But if you want to try to make a difference, to try to effect the debate, you have to establish some boundaries. For example, don’t take your advocacy beyond the known facts. When you do this, the only thing you accomplish is the marginalization of your argument, and indeed yourself. And by marginalizing yourself you make it virtually impossible for anyone except those who already agree with you to even consider your arguments.
Who is taking their “advocacy beyond the known facts”, Jon? What are you talking about and to whom are you referring?
“I didn’t say that the Assad regime is insane.” But that is the corollary of your apparent criticism that I presume the regime is not so. It’s really not clear what, exactly, you are saying when you contradict yourself so. I don’t know how carefully you read my article, but I don’t presume anti-regime forces were responsible. I just don’t presume pro-regime forces were like just about every so-called “journalist” in the mainstream media who writes on it is doing. The point here is that we do not know and should wait for and consider all of the available evidence. If you read my previous writings on this (find the links in the first two paragraphs), you’ll find the same theme. Nowhere in any report I’ve written do I state as fact that the rebels did it, unlike the mainstream media which constantly reports as fact that the regime did it.
This article has not been written based on Ideological make up rather is based on facts on the ground and the history of US foreign policy in the region. People who think otherwise are better to read Introduction to history of the middle east and US foreign policy 101.
The propagandists are trying to present the US government innocent in Syria and blame the ‘dictator’, like what they did in Libya or Iraq.
The regime change project is well and in progress for many years now and Syria is one of the targeted countries. Why are people trying to ignore the facts to protect their own ideological make up that present the United States as savior and innocent war crimes charges where the opposite of that is true according to historical facts?
The world knows that The US government has committed crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Bahrain, Iran, Syria, and Libya….
I am sorry I am running out of ink. I will be back with more countries subjected to US war crime activities that left millions of victims behind. The victims are waiting to see the war criminals to be arrested and put on trial like African leaders who were framed with fabricated charges, and put them in jail for life. The ICC Jail is BLACK.
Majority of the people around the world think ICC is another tool of the West to use against weaker states and has nothing to do with punishing the real war criminals.
Fact the media keeps parroting that the Bashar is fanning sectarian violence when it is not in the interest of Bashar (belonging to the Alawite minority) to do so. The Salafist ideology comes from Saudi Arabia a nation that has no interest or allegiance to Democracy. The entire thing is media driven and is ACT II to Libya …the play being Illiberal Democracies aiding and abetting Islamo-fascists.
Very good piece of analysis. Thank you.