On Feb. 4, a U.N. Security Council resolution to promote regime change in Syria was vetoed by Russia and China. After the vote, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced, “We have to increase diplomatic pressure on the Assad regime and work to convince those people around President Assad that he must go.”
Dispensing with customary diplomatic language, Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., attacked the position of China and Russia as “disgusting.” She also accused them of holding the Security Council “hostage,” a laughable accusation from the representative of the country that on 42 occasions cast the single vote (and thus veto) against resolutions critical of the State of Israel.
Rice is a leading advocate of the so-called “Right to Protect” doctrine, which calls for the “right” of imperialist powers to engage in armed intervention for “humanitarian” purposes.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who owes his position to the U.S., showed his loyalty to Washington, calling the defeat of the resolution, “a great disappointment.” U.N. secretary-generals do not generally take public positions on Security Council decisions.
Russian U.N. Ambassador Sergei Lavrov responded that passage of the resolution would have meant “taking sides in a civil war” and support for “regime change”—which was clearly the intent of the proposal.
Among the sponsors of the resolution were seven U.S.-dependent Arab regimes, all of them hereditary monarchies including Saudi Arabia, where there has never been an election, unions are outlawed and women’s rights are virtually non-existent.
After the vote, Syria’s U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari, asked, “Is it rational that states that co-sponsor this resolution are states that prevent women from attending a soccer match?” He continued, “Those countries are telling Syria to be democratic?”
Li Baodong, the Chinese permanent representative to the United Nations, said: “Like many council members, China maintains that, under the current circumstances, to put undue emphasis on pressing the Syrian government, prejudge the result of the dialogue or impose any solution will not help resolve the Syrian issue, but instead may further complicate the situation.”
In true imperial fashion, President Obama proclaimed that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “had no right to rule Syria.”
The administration’s anger over the veto is that it undermines Washington’s line of “the world versus Assad.”
Following the vote, U.S. officials announced that they will now seek to form an “international coalition” to support the opposition in Syria.
The drive for regime change
In Syria, yet another independent government is in danger of being overthrown with the help of the U.S. government. The question must be asked: Is Syria’s situation somehow different from Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, where U.S. wars were justified on the basis of lies and racist demonization campaigns against those country’s leaders?
When the people of the United States are being mobilized to support war and economic sanctions against a targeted country, Washington, the Pentagon and the mainstream media—all a part of the Wall Street-dominated power structure—will lie whenever it is in their interest to do so.
US also threatening Iran
What is the truth about the conflict between the U.S. and Syria and Iran? Are the governments of Iran and Syria really the greatest threats ever to democracy and peace?
In the press and even in activist circles, the new movement in the Arab world is most commonly portrayed as being the same in every country: The people are organizing to topple dictatorships that “kill their people.” This works only if you rip away any and all political analysis of the struggle and believe every lie about the targeted governments.
The Obama administration, on the other hand, has drawn very sharp distinctions between movements in different countries in the Middle East.
On the one hand, in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Tunisia the U.S. took or continues to take the side of the dictator or monarch. They are currently working night and day in Egypt to confine the revolution to the narrowest possible reforms.
In Libya, they propped up the anti-government fighters, waged war, bombed whole cities into the ground and overthrew the government. In Syria, the imperialists are clearly on the side of the anti-government fighters. Meanwhile, the Iranian government has been a target of imperialism since its formation following the 1979 revolution.
U.S. officials would have us believe that Iran is a grave threat to world peace even though it has no nuclear weapons, its military is one-fortieth the size of the U.S. military and its military budget is 1 percent that of the Pentagon. Iran has never started a war. Today it is completely surrounded by U.S. bases and warships, including nuclear-armed aircraft carriers and Trident submarines.
The phony battle lines drawn by our oppressors in Washington are not our battle lines and do not even match the facts.
The simple truth is that the overwhelming majority of the people of Syria and Iran, as they did in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, oppose foreign intervention.
Western media covers up massive anti-intervention protests
The corporate media depicts the situation in Syria as “the people against the regime.” And while there are significant and diverse forces in rebellion against the government, the biggest protests in Syria over the past several months have been anti-intervention, pro-government demonstrations held in the capital, Damascus.
In January, a poll funded by the Qatar Foundation found that 55 percent of Syrians favored President Assad staying in power. This is an amazing number considering the intense international campaign of isolation and demonization that has been taking place.
For the sake of argument, let us say that the poll is incorrect and that it really is the “people versus Assad” in Syria, (although if the poll were in fact skewed it would most likely be in favor of imperialism, as the government of Qatar is part of the anti-Assad campaign).
Let us also imagine for a minute that everything that Washington, their lackeys in the Arab League and pro-imperialist Gulf monarchies say about Syria is correct.
It is true that the Syrian military, with orders from the government, is killing people. It is also true that the anti-government fighters are indiscriminately killing civilians, ambushing army patrols and committing acts of terrorism. A civil armed conflict is taking place in Syria. The Western powers and regional allies are supporting the anti-government fighters, not to bring democracy to Syria but to bring Syria to its knees and to further isolate Iran.
Under these circumstances, would it not still be completely understandable for a Syrian worker to march against imperialist intervention in a pro-Assad demonstration on the streets of Damascus or to volunteer to take up arms and defend government buildings, as many regular Syrians are doing right now, at a time when elements inside and outside of the country are working together to subordinate the country to the geo-strategic interests of Western countries?
In what conceivable scenario could the victory of a U.S./NATO-backed armed insurrection in Syria not favor imperialism? How could the overthrow of the Assad government at this time possibly lead to progress?
The worldwide anti-Assad campaign is the core argument of the pro-intervention campaign and must be resisted. The truth: The widespread opposition among Syrians to foreign intervention and the support for the Assad government in Syria in the face of imperialist attacks are the main reasons that the U.S. has not been able to carry out regime change.
In its drive to subordinate the entire Middle East, Washington is using a well-tested divide-and-conquer strategy. In order to drive a wedge between workers in the United States and those in Syria who wish to defend Syrian sovereignty, they are demonizing Syria’s government and lionizing the anti-government fighters. In the region, they are encouraging civil war and state-against-state conflict when and where it is in their interests.
The people of the world can stop U.S. aggression against our sisters and brothers in the Middle East. But the starting point for bringing a halt to the U.S. campaign against Syria and a possible war on Iran, must be a firm opposition to imperialism and all the manipulated political and media campaigns that coincide with their divide-and-conquer strategy.
Why we defend Syrian and Iranian sovereignty
The governments of Syria and Iran are not socialist governments. Both are capitalist countries. But to draw an abstract equal sign between the Syrian or Iranian governments and elites and the imperialist camp of the U.S., Britain and France, does great violence to the truth.
The Syrian and Iranian governments, because they represent both the interests of their respective national capitalist classes and the national interests of all Iranians and Syrians in relation to imperialism, have many contradictions. At different times, the two governments have both colluded with and opposed imperialism. But neither is a client state.
What the Obama administration is seeking today is what U.S. imperialism has been seeking since the end of World War II in 1945: global supremacy. A key element in achieving this objective is domination of the oil-rich and strategic Middle East by eliminating all progressive movements and independent states, regardless of their class character. This is what is really driving the U.S. campaigns to bring about regime change in Damascus and Teheran, as well as the destruction of the resistance movements in Palestine, Lebanon and elsewhere in the region.
Hands off Syria and Iran!
