Oppose U.S. Aggression Against Syria [Chicago, Fri. 8-14, Adams & Dearborn, 4:30 pm]

[ckaihatsu]

The Responsibility of Americans:
OPPOSE THE ESCALATION OF U.S. AGGRESSION AGAINST SYRIA!

The U.S. military just several days ago bombed inside Syria to defend the anti-Syrian government forces the U.S. recently trained and placed inside Syria (See Los Angeles Times, 8.3.15). And the U.S. government has announced it will continue to defend them with bombing if they are attacked again (See Military Times, 8.3.15).

The U.S.’s recent training and placement of anti-government forces inside Syria and the bombing on July 31 to defend them are serious violations of international law. The U.S. is trampling on Syria's sovereignty.

The background is this: The long-standing aim of the U.S. is to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Syria and replace it with a pro-U.S. government---no matter how many hundreds of thousands are killed and how much chaos and destruction this means for Syrian society.

But, the anti-government forces which the U.S. previously recruited, armed and funded failed to defeat the Syrian army. So the U.S. decided to set up camps outside Syria to train selected forces-- called the “New Syrian Forces.” Recently the U.S. put some of them into Syria hoping they will be able to carry out its aims.

The ruthless character of the U.S. was displayed when a U.S. State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, said, without embarrassment, that he doesn't know if the U.S. bombing action and plans for more such bombing are legal or not. (See RT.com 8.5.13)

Why has the U.S. government been carrying out this illegal and immoral war? As in the cases of Libya and Iran, the U.S. government wants to destroy any government that acts independently and stands in the way of U.S. attempts to control the Middle East-- its resources, its strategic position, etc. As in previous cases, President Obama has said repeatedly that the aim is to eliminate the present government in Syria and put in forces that will support U.S. aims in the region.

All Americans of good conscience must take a forceful public stand. We cannot allow the government of the rich and their corporations to carry out such crimes in the name of the American people. We cannot allow the 1% --through their political representatives--to seize our tax money to carry out their agenda of gaining maximum profits and power.

In Chicago, the March 19th Anti-War Coalition and the Emergency Response Network in Opposition to U.S. Military Attack on Iran or Syria have previously spoken out and organized forums and demonstrations to oppose U.S. aggression against Syria.

It is time once again to sound the alarm and alert as many others as possible about what is going on. We must mobilize maximum numbers of people to take a stand against U.S. imperialism.

Please let us know if you agree. Spread the word, and urge others to oppose this escalation of crimes against the Syrian people.

This leaflet is from the March 19th Anti-War Coalition, 773.250.3335, [email protected] and endorsed by Evanston Neighbors for Peace.

[Armchair Partisan]

The background is this: The long-standing aim of the U.S. is to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Syria and replace it with a pro-U.S. government---no matter how many hundreds of thousands are killed and how much chaos and destruction this means for Syrian society.

Out of curiosity: what "democratically-elected government" is that supposed to be?

I mean, sure, let's oppose aggression against Syria for all the good it will do - but please, not in the defense of the Ba'athists.

[ckaihatsu]

Out of curiosity: what "democratically-elected government" is that supposed to be?

I mean, sure, let's oppose aggression against Syria for all the good it will do - but please, not in the defense of the Ba'athists.


All I can say is 'Welcome to geopolitics'.

There shouldn't be any *external* threats to Syria -- its people can handle any problems of their own *internally*, all other things being equal.

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-russia-us-syria-rebels-20150803-story.html

Russia says U.S. support for Syrian rebels portends wider Mideast chaos

http://www.trbimg.com/img-55bfa4f0/turbine/la-fg-russia-us-syria-rebels-20150803-001/850/850x478
This photo made available Monday by the opposition group Ariha Today shows the town of Ariha, in Idlib province, where at least 23 people were reported killed during aerial bombing in which a Syrian warplane is said to have crashed into the town. (Ariha Today / European Pressphoto Agency)

By CAROL J. WILLIAMS contact the reporter Syria Middle East Europe Russia Islamic State Bashar Assad

August 3, 2015, 11:31 AM

Russian officials warned Monday that the U.S. decision to back allied Syrian rebels with airstrikes threatens to unleash wider chaos and instability in Syria, now in its fifth year of civil war.

Moscow has "repeatedly underlined that help to the Syrian opposition, moreover financial and technical assistance, leads to further destabilization of the situation in the country,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

Russia is the only European ally of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad, and has staunchly opposed foreign involvement in the splintered, multi-front war to oust him that began in March 2011. The opposition forces are now fractured, with some Syrian militias fighting alongside Al Qaeda-aligned forces and others against religious extremists of the Islamic State that control nearly a third of the war-ravaged country.

President Obama announced Monday that U.S. air power had been authorized to protect Syrian rebel fighters who have been specially trained and equipped for the battle to degrade the Islamic State militants. The training program launched in May was envisioned to prepare 5,400 Syrians for the anti-Islamic State mission, but a dearth of volunteers free of extremist links has kept the number of recruits to a meager 60.

An editorial carried by the official Tass news agency quoted Russian political analysts as accusing Obama of authorizing air support for Syrian rebels to cover up the failure of the training mission, whose chief recruiter in Syria has reportedly been captured by Islamic State.

"Obama said the United States would provide defensive fire to support the Syrian opposition for the sole reason he would like to save face in the wake of the utter failure of the program for training Syrian rebels and the arrest of the recruiter," Middle East Institute chief Yevgeny Satanovsky told Tass.

Related Turkey and the U.S. join forces in fight for 'Islamic State-free zone' in Syria

Alexei Malashenko, an analyst with the Moscow State Institute of International Affairs, echoed the Kremlin view that U.S. involvement in the Syrian civil war portends a widening and intensifying of the conflict that the United Nations estimates has killed 250,000 Syrians.

"Instead of adopting constructive decisions to counter the threats the expansion of the Islamic State entails, the U.S. president has expressed a poorly hidden intention to send U.S. warplanes to bomb Bashar Assad’s supporters," Malashenko said.

Nobody knows whether the U.S.-allied Syrian rebels would be able to take control in the country if Assad were to be ousted, the academic said, raising the likelihood that fulfillment of the U.S. aim to defeat the Assad government would result in an even "more ferocious" struggle for power in Damascus.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Saudi Foreign Minister Adil Ahmad Jubayr in Doha, Qatar, on Monday in an effort to draft a joint strategy among the most powerful allies of parties to the Syrian conflict.

Malashenko expressed the hope that the senior diplomats meeting in Doha would be successful in identifying "a coordinated approach to suppressing the Islamic State, which is a common adversary for Moscow, Washington and Riyadh," the Saudi Arabian capital.

http://www.trbimg.com/img-55bfa5e7/turbine/la-fg-russia-us-syria-rebels-20150803-002/600/600x338
Syrian rescue workers try to pull a body from the rubble after a Syrian government missile hit a residential area of Aleppo on Sunday. Once Syria's economic powerhouse, Aleppo has been ravaged by fighting and divided between government and rebel control for three years. (Zein al-Rifai / AFP/Getty Images)

The United States had refrained from direct involvement in the Syrian conflict until its recently disclosed plan to partner with Turkey to clear Islamic State fighters from a strategic border area of northern Syria, then protect it with air power and allied Syrian rebel forces on the ground.

That plan has drawn criticism from Moscow as a thinly veiled mission to neutralize Assad's air force and air defenses in the hope of enabling the rebels to both contain Islamic State and drive Assad from power.

There are also critics within the U.S.-led coalition, which is waging airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Syria and Iraq. The militants have proclaimed a transnational "caliphate" in portions of the two countries and imposed a medieval form of Islamic law.

Those opposed to more direct involvement of U.S. and other Western forces in Syria fear that U.S. warplanes that engage Syrian government forces could be shot down or their pilots captured, ratcheting up pressure on the administration to plunge deeper into the conflict.

Russia has been a key supplier of air defense weapons to Syria, raising the prospect of further damage to the former superpowers' strained relations in the event Russian military equipment is used against U.S. forces attacking Syrian targets.

Follow @cjwilliamslat for the latest international news 24/7

Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times

[ChangeAndChance]

Honestly, this is one aspect of the general radical left position that I can't support. This is the same shit pulled by people who say "Hands off North Korea" as if the liberation of a massively brainwashed people should only be done by themselves. You know what? As much as it sucks going against ideological purity, sometimes pragmatism needs to prevail. The Kurds would not be nearly as victorious against ISIL as they've been without American-led airstrikes on ISIL targets. Sometime the enemy of my enemy has to be my friend for the sake of time and lives.

I couldn't give less of a crap what Russia thinks - the right wing nationalist state that is the Russian Federation is certainly no better than the US on the repression and imperialist scale.

[ckaihatsu]

Honestly, this is one aspect of the general radical left position that I can't support. This is the same shit pulled by people who say "Hands off North Korea" as if the liberation of a massively brainwashed people should only be done by themselves.


In the instance of Korea, the point is *unification*, to overcome the U.S. partition. What else you got?





You know what? As much as it sucks going against ideological purity, sometimes pragmatism needs to prevail. The Kurds would not be nearly as victorious against ISIL as they've been without American-led airstrikes on ISIL targets.


In this case I happen to agree with you 100% on your empirical point -- the Kurds are a local force, they're anti-fundamentalism, and so the U.S. action is actually legitimate in this instance because of those existing factors.

( Note, though, that the U.S. *wants* to go after Assad but is wary of taking on the Syrian military directly, due to larger-scale geopolitical implications, as the article points out: )





Those opposed to more direct involvement of U.S. and other Western forces in Syria fear that U.S. warplanes that engage Syrian government forces could be shot down or their pilots captured, ratcheting up pressure on the administration to plunge deeper into the conflict.

Russia has been a key supplier of air defense weapons to Syria, raising the prospect of further damage to the former superpowers' strained relations in the event Russian military equipment is used against U.S. forces attacking Syrian targets.


---





Sometime the enemy of my enemy has to be my friend for the sake of time and lives.


This cliche is too linear in composition -- what's missing is the real-world factor of *scale*, as included in the cases above.





I couldn't give less of a crap what Russia thinks - the right wing nationalist state that is the Russian Federation is certainly no better than the US on the repression and imperialist scale.


You're looking at this part *moralistically* -- not that I agree with it, either.

One might begin with geopolitics by looking at any given situation in terms of 'realpolitik' -- in the *neutral* sense of the term.

[Hatshepsut]

I have no idea which faction would best serve the interests of ordinary Syrians. I'm also a bit suspicious of the notion that any Western Leftists know the answer to that question. Politics in Muslim countries have always been extremely unpredictable and the guy who's nice today isn't tomorrow. The Kurds won't help anyone who's not a Kurd; the Alawites won't help anyone who's not an Alawite except in the context of Baath rule, when doing so keeps one of their own in power. Anything beats IS with crucifixions and knifing off heads on TV. The Assad regime, brutal as it has been, did bring stability for quite a while, making it possible to conduct daily life rather than struggle for survival in moonscapes as goes on now. But his days may be numbered unless Russia sends him full-scale troops.

Real change with respect to U.S. manipulations abroad remains unlikely until that rubble scene gets replicated in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. The fruits of war must come home to roost, as they did for Germany and Japan.