Opinion: 'Assad Must Go' Is the Wrong Solution

[Purveyor]

By Susanne Koelbl

The Syrian people are fighting desperately for freedom against a dictator. The war has cost nearly 70,000 lives. At least a million have fled their homes and face an uncertain future.

But that is only half the truth.

World powers are also fighting over who is to have influence in the region. It's the West and its allies against the old allies of the regime. No one is openly getting involved in the conflict, and no one is sending soldiers to Damascus -- the West appears to have had enough of an all-out policy of invasion. Still, the United States, Europe, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have interests in Syria.

What do the West and its partners want? They want to decrease the influence of Syria's allies Iran and Hezbollah for their own security, but above all for the sake of protecting Israel. Meanwhile, the Turks and the Saudis are interested in strengthening the regional influence of Sunnis, who also make up a majority of their own populations. What France accomplished with their NATO bombing campaign in Libya -- the downfall of the dictator -- is to be achieved this time with the aid of money for weapons and guidance alone.

Sunni Gulf States Supporting Islamists

The roles are clearly divided. America says it's about defending democracy and human rights. US diplomats are negotiating abroad with opposition leaders, while others are providing resources to the rebels. The Qataris are giving money, while the Saudi secret service is coordinating the resistance to the Assad regime on Syrian soil.

MORE...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/opinion-western-demands-for-assad-resignation-prolong-war-in-syria-a-889773.html

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1. As in Iraq and elsewhere, when the U.S. uses hard line fundamentalist allies...

the entire region becomes destabilized. As sectarian violence spreads and economies collapse, civil society become a distant memory and we really don't hear about it. How's that democracy in Libya working out? When's the last time any major media reported or discussed anything but the killing of Americans? Who succeeded Gaddafi and what's been going on there?

http://www.opednews.com/articles/What-happens-when-they-sta-by-Michael-Collins-120827-751.html

On December 11, 2011, Pepe Escobar reported that 600 troops and weapons were shipped from Libya to help topple the Syrian government. This was just part of the NATO-Saudi-Qatari sponsored flow of foreign fighters into Syria. This was well before Hillary Clinton's February warning that arming FSA rebels would risk arming terrorist elements among the rebels.

Regrettably, Clinton's statement was dripping with the cynicism of realpolitic. She and the president knew that the core commanders of the NATO supported Libyan rebels sent to Syria consisted of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIGF). LIGF was a declared ally of al Qaeda well before the Arab Spring movement started in 2011 (Al Qa'ida's Foreign Fighters in Iraq, U.S. Military Academy). She also knew that Saudis and Qatar were sponsoring Wahhabi fighters, the most extreme of the anti-Christian Muslim religious zealots.

Defending democracy and human rights?

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/dumb_wars_now_and_forever_20130319/

...Lyndon Johnson hyped the nonexistent second Gulf of Tonkin attack on American ships to justify the U.S. war in Vietnam, and George W. Bush hyped the fraudulent WMD issue when his fabrication of a connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attack was proven factually absurd.

Even though Iraq never threatened the security of life in the United States, the Bush administration launched a genocidal civil war replete with a systemic policy of torture directed by U.S. officials at the highest level.

Just weeks ago, a devastating documentary produced by The Guardian newspaper and the BBC provided all the evidence needed for any decent person to demand trials for the perpetrators of an extensive system of Iraqi torture centers, operated and financed by the U.S. government. It was part of a policy of stoking a genocidal war of Shiite extremists against Sunnis that was directed by U.S. government veterans of similar efforts in Latin America and elsewhere. As the lead on The Guardian story put it:


“The Pentagon sent a US veteran of the ‘dirty wars’ in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units in Iraq that set up secret detention and torture centres to get information from insurgents. These units conducted some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and accelerated the country’s descent into full-scale civil war.”