On September 30th, Russian bombs began falling on Syria. Russian jets targeted Islamic State bases as well as militant groups backed by the CIA to oppose the Islamic State. This makes Russia the thirteenth country to bomb Syria in the past few years. These bombs and missiles are launched by countries set on maintaining their material interests in the Middle East. Since 2011, the war has killed more than 300,000 people and caused eleven million to flee their homes fearing death at the hands of the bombs raining down or the fighting raging all around them.
The U.S. government has criticized Russia for beginning to bomb Syria. What a joke! The U.S. has been bombing Syria since last year. The U.K., France, Turkey, Israel, Canada, Australia, and Saudi Arabia have all bombed Syria as well. It is a murderous coalition led by the United States, which, in the name of protecting the Syrian people is dropping death from the skies.
U.S. bombs are falling on many countries. The U.S. is using drones and missiles against targets in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Syria, Libya, and many other countries. Every week, the Obama administration holds a meeting to authorize American drones to carry out targeted assassinations worldwide. In the last five years, the U.S. military has carried out 2,400 drone strikes.
Who could believe that the U.S. and its allies are fighting on behalf of the Syrian people? The United States has engineered a crisis in the whole Middle East, a crisis, which has gotten much worse since the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The Islamic State is a creation of the U.S. wars. The U.S. war against Iraq devastated that country. Over a million people have died since 2003 from violence or disease and malnutrition. The Iraqi infrastructure was destroyed, and the Iraqi government was reconstructed, by corrupt politicians from ultra-religious political parties.
The results have been catastrophic for the Iraqi population, but not for the profits of U.S. oil companies.
ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and other oil companies essentially wrote the laws in 2004, which sold Iraq’s oil to these developers. Likewise, military contractors have made billions selling the tools to do the killing.
In the chaos created by the U.S. in Iraq, the so-called Islamic State began to organize and gather its forces. Known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq, it remained small, and had little impact until the war in Syria created an opening for its forces.
The war in Syria began with an attempt by the Syrian people to overthrow their corrupt government, inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia, and Egypt, known as the Arab Spring. While the uprising in Syria began as a popular outpouring of anger and protest, it rapidly became a civil war driven by international forces each pursuing their own interests in the region.
Now Russia has begun to move its forces into action and recent reports indicate that Iran may send troops too. And all of a sudden the U.S. government has decided that it is wrong to bomb and invade a foreign country? Obviously the rule only applies when it isn’t the U.S. that is behind the bombing.
Behind the complicated political motives of states and politicians lies a simple fact. None of these forces are acting in the interests of the people of Syria, Iraq, or the rest of the Middle East. And these governments aren’t acting on behalf of their own people either. The Middle East is being ripped apart by violence so that the wealthy elite can prosper and profit from the rich resources of the region. Whether it is U.S. bombs or Russian bombs dropping death from above, the only difference is which companies will profit from the slaughter.
The Obama administration will use Russia’s attack on Syria to criticize Russia and defend U.S. policies. No doubt, the issue will become part of the election circus as Republican candidates accuse Obama of being “soft on Russia”. We should say without hesitation that these are lies and excuses. We say ‘NO” to military attacks on Syria whether it is from Russia, the U.S., or any other state.
