My first every diary. If you like this one, I have more politically incorrect perspectives to share! Please see below the fold for my first effort.
Boy, do I have to call B.S. on the news media and our politicians. I have yet to hear a single talking head call out a single pol or pundit on the current propaganda being pushed regarding Russia’s involvement in Syria.
I’m no fan of Putin or Obama. The former is an apparently psychopathic despot bent on returning Russia to the hegemony of the Soviet days, and the latter is a neoliberal whose policies have been nearly as damaging to America as those of his neoconservative predecessor.
With that said, all I hear on the news about the situation in Syria are old guard anti-communists and the White House using it to bash Putin, and the right wing using it to bash Obama’s foreign policy. While both criticisms are fair to a certain extent, neither touches on the crux of the matter, and it’s rather embarrassing that the Russians seem to be the only ones with a clue.
First let’s consider the duplicity. In the news today are reports that the Russians are conducting air strikes, but instead of targeting the IS, they are targeting Assad’s other enemies. These targets are constantly being described on the news as “CIA backed elements”.
But even the White House has had to admit to the sad fact that there are no such elements. Quoting from an article in the WSJ…
All sides now agree that the U.S.’s effort to aid moderate fighters battling the Assad regime has gone badly.
http://www.wsj.com/...
Entire CIA-backed rebel units, including fighters numbering in the “low hundreds” who went through the training program, have changed sides by joining forces with Islamist brigades, quit the fight or gone missing.
Moreover, these same accusations – that the Russians are using attacks against the IS as a cover to attack Assad’s enemies - could be leveled against our government for using the IS as cover to attack Al-Nusra in the western part of the country. They may be of a similar ilk as the IS and no friend to the U.S., but they’re not part of the same front threatening the region, at least not yet. They are, however, clearly more of a threat to Assad.
It may sound good to say that the Russians are attacking “our guys”, but it does the situation no good, and it’s incredible that no one is being called on it each time that they utter this little piece of propaganda.
Worst of all, it obscures the main point. There aren’t any of “our guys” left in Syria, and there were never that many to start. Sadly they are all dead or hopefully safely on their way to other countries.
As we’ve seen time and time again - from Iran to Iraq to Egypt to Libya – at the present there are really only two choices when it comes to governing in that part of the world – secular or theocratic, and you might not like what the former looks like in most cases, but the latter is always going to be much worse.
Most important, if like me your hope is that this part of the world will eventually come to enjoy the peace and liberty that we enjoy in the west, it should be obvious that the bridge to such a place is far shorter from a despotic secular regime than it is from theocracy.
I wonder how many Iraqis hated Saddam as much as a person could be hated yet now wish to return to the days of his secular rule? In Syria for now it’s either going to be Assad or his strong arm successor (no doubt the eventual goal of the Russians), or it’s going to be the Islamic State, and that should not be a hard choice at all from the western world’s point of view.
The Russians are only doing what the U.S. did for decades to maintain stability in the region. We’ve all seen the pictures of that scoundrel Dick Cheney, who in the 1990s described what would result from deposing Saddam as a “quagmire”, glad handing that very same despot in the 1980s. Sure, what the Russians are doing may indeed be serving to increase their stock in the region, but it’s also a bit of them doing our dirty work for us.
I feel compelled to leave you all with a little ditty that I penned, being prone to twisted verse, as it applies even here in the U.S.…
Arab Spring
All across the Middle East, an Arab Spring doth bloom,
and all the free world wonders if for liberty there's room.
Amidst the din of pundits, there's one truth that I know.
Without our First Amendment, freedom has no chance to grow!
Of all the tenets in our brilliant constitution,
the keystone without which all the others surely fall,
it's not redress, assembly, speech or publication,
it's separation of church from law that trumps them all!
Good government can't be had without a fair debate,
but discourse becomes fixed, if religion must abide.
One needn't be a prophet to see an argument's fate,
when one group makes the claim that God is on their side!