Morning Star.png British Minister's Syria Nonsense Editorial, The Morning Star, London, 17 December 2015 British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond's address to Parliament yesterday on Syria consisted of disingenuous nonsense. "The majority of Russian air strikes continue to target Syrian opposition forces," he complains. This is of course true, in that Isis is an "opposition force" in Syria - and by far the strongest and most influential player in the anti-Assad revolt. Russia's military intervention in Syria is at the behest of the Syrian government and is co-ordinated with the Syrian army with the goal of defeating Isis and other organisations fighting to unseat that government. Expert observers of the war have no doubt that Isis has suffered severely from Russian bombing raids combined with Syrian ground offensives. This was the reason for the bomb that killed 224 people on a Russian airliner on October 31. Western politicians tend to deny any link between foreign policy and terrorist attacks, preferring to argue they are solely motivated by hatred of our way of life. Presumably Hammond will now argue that Isis brought down the plane as a protest against the freedom and democracy the Putin regime represents? In fact, there are reams of evidence that Russia has targeted Isis, having taken out hundreds of tankers delivering oil from Isis-held areas to other countries - most notably NATO member and British ally Turkey - for sale. Advances against Isis by the Syrian army have been reported in Homs and Aleppo - two areas in which Hammond claims Russia is targeting "people who we believe need to be part of the solution in Syria." Real agenda is regime change These words expose the real agenda behind Cameron's illegal war. It is not about defeating Isis - it is about regime change. In that cause, the Tories have jumped on the idea that we have 70,000 moderate rebels just waiting to work with us to defeat both Isis and the regime - a fiction, comprehensively debunked by the Independent's Patrick Cockburn in his briefing to MPs on the war. There are hundreds of armed groups operating in Syria, but moderates they are not. Some, such as the al-Qaida affiliate the Nusra Front or Ahrar al-Sham, are Wahhabi extremist butchers hard to distinguish from Isis in political terms and who pose no less of a threat to the Syrians unfortunate enough to live under their rule. Others, such as the Syrian Turkmen Army, are acting as proxies for foreign powers - in its case Turkey - fighting against Kurdish forces and thereby effectively assisting Isis. Murderer was a Turkish fascist As the Morning Star revealed following Turkey's downing of a Russian bomber, such groups have been heavily infiltrated by far-right militants - with the man who claimed the grisly credit for the murder of a Russian pilot turning out to be a member of the Grey Wolves. These are not exceptions to the rule of a largely moderate opposition. The Syrian opposition is made up of such groups. All have the primary aim of overthrowing the Syrian state, most are religious extremists who openly advocate the slaughter of Shi'ite Muslims, Alawites and Christians and many have actively collaborated with Isis, al-Qaida or both. Armed groups not democrats Syria would undoubtedly benefit from democratic and socialist reform. But the armed groups fighting to overthrow the Syrian state have no interest in either. Progressive organisations in Syria, including both of the country's Communist Parties, accept that the defeat of what Turkey admiringly calls the "Islamic revolution" - but is in reality an explosion of sectarian hatred and terrorism - is a prerequisite for successful reform. The actions of Britain and its NATO allies in aiding and abetting the "opposition" can only lengthen the war - and, paradoxically, can only strengthen Isis. From: http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-b269-Hammonds-haul-of-hokum#.VnI_dfl960 0 -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
