[From our foreign affairs section]
Recently Australia apparently had a formal request from Washington for us to expand our military involvement in the Middle East to bombing Islamic State (Daesh) targets in Syria. Note that the request has not come from the United Nations, or the Arab League, and it certainly hasn’t come from the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.
Not surprisingly, the Liberal government has agreed, and Australia will now breach international law and fly our warplanes over Syria, supposedly to bomb Islamic State targets.
Australia has just six warplanes operating against Islamic State in Iraq. Blind Freddie can see that they aren’t needed against Islamic State in Syria. Clearly the US government wants Australia’s moral support rather than needing our tactical support. The question is why? It’s been suggested that Tony Abbott prompted the request because “Australia taking a lead” will prompt the Americans to take Islamic State “more seriously”.
However, it should be pointed out that the dastardly Islamic State movement, that seems to revel in committing atrocities, is also being grossly overhyped by the Western media. And again the question is why? Whilst the Islamic State Jihadists hold vast territory in the West of Iraq and the east of Syria, and successfully hide amongst the general population in these areas, most of the deaths in the region are not being caused by Islamic State.
The President of Syria is the dictator Bashar al-Assad, and he and his long-established secular regime are from the Alawite Shi’ite minority group in Syria and the ruling Baath Party. Being both a Shi’ite and a Baathist will score you quite a few rivals and enemies in the Middle East (especially from Sunni Islamist nutters). But Assad is allied with Russia and Iran, and thus has powerful friends.
In the Syrian civil war, the Assad regime is being opposed by a ragtag collection of opposition forces, including the Free Syrian Army, and such lovelies as Al Qaeda, Islamic State and other radical Salafist Islamists, many of them basically Rent-a-Mob foreign Jihadists; armed, funded and trained by the Americans, Saudis, Qataris and the United Arab Emirates. All indications are that hardline Islamists have come to the fore as the dominant opposition forces. This civil war has been going on for a few years now, with many thousands killed and both sides being accused of commiting atrocities.
Conspiracy theories abound as to why the American government is seemingly so keen to see the Assad regime deposed. And it should be remembered that truth is always the first casualty of war. Maybe the neo-conservative idiots who dominate American foreign policy just like creating wars and stirring up trouble. They certainly seem to think they have a right to topple every foreign government they consider to be unfriendly, and then replace it with a US-friendly regime.
The problem with creating chaos is that a lot of innocent people get killed and brutalised, women and girls get raped by savages, unique historical monuments get destroyed, minorities become horrendously persecuted, and European-based countries end up with swarms of unwanted refugees.
The USA already got it substantially wrong with the “Arab Spring” — they backed the wrong horse in Egypt and in Libya. It should be pretty obvious that if Assad’s regime was to be deposed, Islamic State would likely be strengthened, and Syria would likely end up with exactly the kind of chaos that now exists in Libya. And this would be bad for the Middle East, Europe and Australia.
Like any Middle Eastern regime, Assad’s is undoubtedly not without sin, but the fact is, it’s SECULAR and they DID protect and respect Syria’s minority Christians, Yazidis, and Shi’ites from Sunni extremists. Indications are that most Syrians, especially the moderates, are supporting their government in the face of attack from mostly foreign Islamists.
Australia previously had cordial relations with the Assad government of Syria, but when it became clear that the USA wanted Assad gone, former Foreign Minister Bob Carr found an excuse to impose trade sanctions on Syria and throw their ambassador out of Australia.
But Middle Eastern politics is frequently a murky, muddled mess, and different powers have different priorities. Turkey is much more concerned with hammering Leftist Kurdish rebels than dealing with ISIS. And there’s plenty to suggest that Turkey is helping ISIS, despite claiming to be against them. Assad is more concerned with hammering those Syrian rebels who represent the biggest threat to his regime. The Gulf States (and probably the USA as well) are more concerned with deposing Assad than dealing with the ISIS monster that they effectively created.
Reports of British warplanes delivering arms to ISIS being shot down by the Iraqi army, and an Israeli warplane shot down by the Assad regime flying over Syrian airspace, would appear to demonstrate that there’s clearly more to the conflict in Syria than meets the eye, and there’s a lot more going on than the public is being told. When you have the Americans backing one side and the Russians backing the other side, there is potentially a great deal at stake, not just for the Middle East, but for the world.
In such a volatile and unpredictable part of the world, there is a danger that the conflict could escalate in various ways. The effectiveness of airstrikes against Islamic State is also questioned.
It should be pretty obvious that the Assad government is the lesser of the evils in the Syrian conflict, and that their victory represents the best outcome for peace and stability in Syria. If the Abbott government had any morality and any backbone, they would immediately restore full diplomatic relations with the Assad government and end the trade sanctions, that inevitably hurt ordinary Syrians.
And if they had any common sense, they would seek to provide humanitarian relief only to the victims of Islamic State’s extreme brutality, whilst leaving any fighting to those more capable and more responsible for the creation of the monster in the first place.
An “all-the-way-with-the-USA” approach is certainly NOT the way Australia should be conducting its foreign policy, especially when the American government continues to get it wrong in the Middle East, and continues to act with such highly questionable conduct and motives.
References:
“The “New Thirty Years War” in the Middle East: A Western Policy of Chaos?”, Global Research, 15 August 2015 (Steven MacMillan)
“Israeli War Jet Shot Down Over Syria”, Sputnik, 22 August 2015
“RAAF strikes on Syria within a week”, Sky News, 9 September 2015
“The Case Against Qatar”, Foreign Policy, 30 September 2014 (Elizabeth Dickinson)
“Assad’s overthrow essential for a ‘lasting peace’”, The Australian, 10 September 2015 (Sharri Markson)
“Exclusive: Russian troops join combat in Syria – sources”, Yahoo News, 9 September 2015 (Reuters: Gabriela Baczynska, Tom Perry, Laila Bassam and Phil Stewart)
“David Cameron: Rid Syria of Bashar al-Assad and Isis with ‘hard military force’”, International Business Times, 9 September 2015 (Ian Silvera)
“Bashar al-Assad”, Wikipedia
“Media Blacks Out Pentagon Report Exposing U.S. Role In ISIS Creation”, MintPress News, 3 June 2015 (Jay Syrmopoulos)
“Australian bombs won’t bring peace to Syria, so why do it?”, The Conversation, 31 August 2015
“Russia urges US coordination over Syria”, Sky News, 11 September 2015
“The myth of Assad, ISIL and extremism”, RT, 7 October 2014
“Is Noam Chomsky right that the US doesn’t want regime change in Syria?”, Ian Sinclair journalism, 12 March 2014 (Huffington Post: Ian Sinclair)
“Obama Admits ISIS Strategy About Deposing Assad – Administration Blames Al-Assad for Rise of Islamic State”, Global Research, 13 November 2014 (Kurt Nimmo)
“Did Prime Minister Tony Abbott push the US for invitation to expand IS air strikes to Syria?”, News.com.au, 26 August 2015 (AAP: Lanai Scarr,)
“We should welcome Australian air strikes in Syria”, The Drum (ABC), 10 September 2015 (Jim Molan)
“Iraqi army downs two UK planes carrying weapons for ISIL”, Australian National Review, 26 February 2015
“Bob Carr expels Syria’s man”, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 May 2012 (Judith Ireland)
“Are air strikes against IS in Syria lawful?”, The Drum (ABC), 24 August 2015 (Alison Pert)
I wish Australia would stop doing whatever USA wants! Aren’t we an independent country? We learned nothing from the recent history…
Though, a few political clowns will score brownie points for deciding to accept more refugees and resettling them in someone else’s suburb.
It’s easy to see why Russia wanted the Crimea, it gives them free access to the Med and to the Middle East. All part of the old game played out from the mid 19th century.
My fear is that once again American foreign policy is doomed to failure, as have so many dumb mistakes that they have made in the recent past. What the West needs is a capable strategist, and what we definitely don’t want or need someone like Kerry.
The world is becoming a very dangerous and scary place. We desperately need a capable leader and not another Clinton, Obama or Bush. It’s more likely only a miracle can turn things around from where they are and there’s very little chance of that even if you do believe in miracles.
The Yanks should never have got involved in the first place, just like Iraq. They are sovereign states and they should be able to run them as they like. Democracy is a lot of rubbish, it’s like communism its all controlled,what gives them the right to say what other countries do or don’t do. Taking that moral high ground that they love to take, while bombing the crap out of anybody or everybody they see fit. We said 2 years ago, leave it alone, if it’s not broken don’t fix it. They should have learnt that from Iraq. What gives them the right to say that “DEMOCRACY ” and if this is Democracy I don’t want a bar of it ,who are they to say what is right. Those puffed up crows cocks. No Russia is doing the right thing and supporting the Assad Regime. What about the atrocities in China or North Korea or Russia, bloody cowards, all to hard. We will just end up with more refugees and that’s a fact. We can’t even look after our own embarrassing country, it’s all a joke. I won’t even get started on that subject.
Eddy.