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Excellent commentary on the situation
MK
Three Monsters
http://pulsemedia.org/2014/09/23/three-monsters/
September 23, 2014 § Leave a comment
Part of me, of course, is happy to see bombs fall on the heads of the
international jihad-fascists tormenting the Syrian people (I refer to
ISIS, not the Shia jihad-fascists fighting for Assad, who I’d love to
see bombed too). Mostly, I’m just disgusted. In the name of
disengagement the West not only refused to arm and supply the democratic
Syrian opposition – even as Assad launched a genocide against the
people – the United States actually prevented other states from
providing the heavy weapons and anti-aircraft weaponry the Free Army so
desperately needed. It was obvious what would happen next. The Free
Army – and the Syrian people – were increasingly squeezed between Assad
and the ISIS monster. And now the Americans are bombing both Iraq and
Syria. This is where ‘disengagement’ and ‘realism’ has brought us.
ISIS, like Assad, can be hurt from the air but defeated only on the
ground. Obama and the Congress have just agreed to spend $500 million on
training 5000 vetted members of the Free Syrian Army – the same people
that Obama mocked as irrelevant “pharmacists, farmers and students” a
few months ago. The training won’t be finished for eight months, and
anyway will be of little use. The Free Army now houses some of the best,
most battle-hardened fighters in the world. They don’t need training;
they need weapons. In the present balance of forces, in any case, the
wounds inflicted by America’s photogenic bombing run may not translate
into any improvement on the ground. Only Syrians can improve things on
the ground.
The West was not moved to act by 200,000 (at least) slaughtered, or nine
million homeless, or by barrel bombs, rape campaigns, starvation sieges
or sarin gas. It was only moved when an American was beheaded. The
inconsistency is noted well by Syrians. In some quarters, an assault on
ISIS which is not accompanied by strikes on Assad and aid to the Free
Army will be perceived as a Western-Shia-Assadist alliance against
persecuted Sunnis. This could increase the appeal of ISIS and successor
Sunni extremist groups.
ISIS has many parents, but the first of these, in Syria at least, is
Assad. He released extremists from prison while he was assassinating
unarmed democrats. He sectarianised the conflict by setting up sectarian
death squads and by bringing in Iran-backed Shia militias from Iraq and
Lebanon. His scorched earth policy made normal life impossible in the
liberated areas, creating the vacuum in which organisations like ISIS
thrived. And until this June, he had an effective non-aggression pact
with ISIS, not fighting it, buying oil from it. From January, on the
other hand, all opposition militias – the Free Army groups and the
Islamic Front groups – have been fighting ISIS (and losing thousands of
men in the struggle). These fighters are not about to become an
on-the-ground anti-ISIS militia, as the Americans seem to want. They
know the truth – that both states, the Assadist and the
psychotic-Islamist, are absolute enemies. There’s no destroying one
without the other. And both must be destroyed by Syrian hands, not by
foreign planes.
Worth reading Yassin al-Haj’s comment, from here:
I am ambivalent about a Western attack against ISIS.
On the one hand, I would like to see this thuggish gang wiped from
the face of the earth. ISIS is a criminal organization that has killed
thousands of Syrians and Iraqis while leaving intact another criminal
organization—the Assad regime—that is responsible for the deaths of
close to 200,000 people. ISIS has destroyed the cause of the Syrian
revolution as much as the Assad regime has destroyed our country and
society.
On the other hand, an attack against ISIS will send a message to
many Syrians (and Iraqis and other Arabs) that this intervention isn’t
about seeking justice for heinous crimes, but is rather an attack
against those who challenged Western powers. This will lead to more
resentment against and suspicion of the outside world, which is the very
nihilist mood on which ISIS capitalizes and profits.
Western powers could have avoided this had they helped the Syrian
resistance in its battle against the fascist Assad regime. The right
thing to do, ethically and politically, is to build a coalition against
both ISIS and the Assad regime, and to help Syrians bring about
significant changes in their country’s political environment.
Let me finally say that I am very skeptical of the plans and
intentions of the American administration. ISIS is the terrible outcome
of our monstrous regimes and the West’s role in the region for decades,
as much as it is the result of grave illnesses within Islam. Three
monsters are treading on Syria’s exhausted body.
—Yassin al-Haj Saleh, one of the leading writers and intellectual
figures of the Syrian uprising, imprisoned from 1980 to 1996 for
left-wing activities, now living in exile in Istanbul
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