France and Britain have begun to circle Syria like
vultures (my apologies to vultures, who politely wait
for their prey to die). They plan to save Syria from
chemical bombs – a surreal replay of Suez 1956, where
France and Britain cooked up a pretext to invade Egypt
with the US posing as the more restrained gang member,
not to mention Iraq 2003, when they reversed their
roles.
Meanwhile, Canada sings on demand for its US-Israeli
sponsors. The Canadian government solemnly announced
this week it is ready -- if asked by NATO -- to deploy
the Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit, which
handles chemical, biological and radioactive attacks.
Canada will also send a Disaster Assistance Response
Team to provide clean water in Syrians, as well as
engineers and staff who can help set up a field
hospital. A friendly navy frigate is already offshore.
Once again Prime Minister Stephen Harper plays his
supporting role in the NATO-scripted drama unfolding
in the Middle East. He takes "the threat of chemical
weapons in Syria very seriously", but demurs on
whether Canada will send CF-18 fighter jets over
Syria, as it did in Libya to enforce a no-fly zone, or
put combat troops on the ground. He has not yet given
the current opposition coalition, the Syrian National
Coalition (SNC), his blessing, although US Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton formally recognized the
opposition at a Friends of Syria summit in Morocco on
Wednesday, joining the Euro crowd.
The Canadian government has no foreign policy anymore,
doing exactly as it is told by its Israeli advisers,
so the reason for Harper's coyness must be found
there. Israel itself is in a quandary about Syria.
Israeli policy during the past three decades has
following the divide-and-conquer Yinon Doctrine,
playing various forces among its Arab neighbors
against each other -- Maronite and Orthodox Christian,
Sunni and Shia Muslim, Druze, etc -- in order to keep
the Middle East weak and unstable.
In Syria, that even meant quietly supporting the
Muslim Brotherhood during its ill-fated uprising in
1981, not because Israel wanted an Islamist Syria, but
to keep the Syrian government off-balance. The secular
and nationalist Baathist regime, together with Egypt,
fought a war with Israel in 1967. These secular
governments were the big threat, and it was only
natural to try and cripple the regimes of Egypt and
Syria, even if that meant working with Islamists.
Today, the West is eagerly arming the SNC, where
Islamists predominate, even as Israel and Canada
dawdle. How can this be?
The explanation is simple. As Kissinger said of Iraq
and Iran during their war in the 1980s, "A pity they
both can't lose." Or Truman when the Germans invaded
Russia 22 June 1941: "If we see that Germany is
winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is
winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let
them kill as many as possible." Not only is Egypt now
rediscovering its Islamic, very anti-Zionist roots,
making Egyptian Islamists the main enemy, but there is
no guarantee the SNC will defeat the Syrian army, and
unlike far away France, Britain and the US, Israel
must live chock-a-block with whoever is in Damascus --
and Cairo -- when the mustard gas clears.
Ha, ha. Only joking. What about the chemical weapons
threat? Syria is one of the few countries that has not
signed the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
(Israel has signed but not ratified it.) But Assad has
made it clear he will not approve their use on
civilians. Saddam Hussein's example is proof enough of
the madness of that. The real worry over WMDs is that
whatever supplies the Syrian government has could soon
fall into the hands of the western-backed rebels, in
particular, al-Nusrah Front (aka, al-Qaeda in Iraq).
However, who can blame Assad if he drops a few on
invading Brits, French, and yes Americans? It would be
a perfect way to ‘celebrate' the centenary of WWI,
where holier-than-thou Germany, Britain and France
pioneered their use, despite having signed the Hague
Conventions of 1899 and 1907 banning them. Britain
used chlorine against the Germans in 1915 but the wind
blew back on the British trenches -- a case of
‘friendly gas'. The US took their use to new heights
in Vietnam with Agent Orange. Only the one-time US
ally Saddam Hussein was ever brought to justice for
using them. The US and Russia still have stockpiles
(not to mention nuclear and biological weapons),
despite their obligation under the CWC to destroy them
all.
The Syrians would get special satisfaction from
gassing the French, who carved up and invaded Syria in
1920. Syria was promised France by Britain as its
reward for the 1.7 million French who died in the WWI
bloodbath that killed 16 million (Britain lost ‘less
than' a million). The only ‘positive' outcome for the
Allies was the destruction and occupation of the
Ottoman Caliphate and the creation of a Jewish state
there.
This was an outrageous betrayal of the Arabs, who had
arguably tipped the balance in WWI -- at great loss --
in Britain's favor, on the promise of post-war
independence. But, as the Spanish say, ‘You don't
dance with the devil; he dances with you." Britain
wanted Iraq for its oil and Palestine for a Jewish
state, "the hill citadel of Jerusalem" according to
geopolitical theorist Halford Mackinder -- the last
link in the British empire. With a wink and a nod from
Britain, France invaded Syria in 1920 and crushed a
heroic uprising in 1925--1927, killing thousands.
Greater Syria was divided into southern Turkey,
French-occupied Lebanon/ Syria, and British-occupied
Jordan/ Palestine.
It was not till 1946 that the French were finally
booted out -- kicking and screaming. Post-WWII Syrian
politics is a litany of coups, egged on by the US,
until the army and socialist Baathists finally settled
on Hafiz al-Assad in 1971. Trying to pick up the
pieces after the brutal French occupation and living
next door to permanent nightmare Israel are not
conducive to the charade of western-style pluralism,
so the subsequent harsh dictatorship of Assad I and
the new-improved Assad II are not surprising. The SNC
alternative has no prospects for ruling a united
Syria. Syria's future under the SNC is already being
played out in Iraq, though Assad is far more popular
and sensible than Saddam Hussein, and his demise will
take down much of the Syria social order with him.
This is fine from an Israeli point of view as long as
the Islamists are kept busy fighting their coalition
‘allies' within the SNC. But if the Islamists dominate
in the SNC, and if the power vacuum allows al-Qaeda to
take root (it already has), this could be a problem
for Israel. Look what happened to the Islamists in
Gaza, where they surged and triumphed in elections in
2006 and remain strong. Israel has only to look south
to Egypt to see how a revolutionary coalition can turn
into an Islamic government which is not nearly as
pliable as the secular dictatorship it replaced. This
is what keeps many Israelis rooting for Assad.
When France was colonizing Syria a century ago, Canada
was already the great colonial success story as a
‘white dominion', and was allowed to join the ranks of
the imperial rich, unlike Syria et al. (Lawrence ‘of
Arabia' lobbied Churchill to create a united Arab
British mandate as the first ‘brown dominion', with no
success.)
As a former colony of both France and Britain, the
loyal ‘white dominion' of yesteryear, Canada may look
like the perfect intermediary today: ‘Be nice and you
too can graduate from colony to dominion.' However,
the flip side of white dominion status is that, like
Israel or South Africa, you have built your society on
the bones of the ‘brown' natives. So it is not
surprising that this week, even as Harper was toying
with recognizing the SNC (who cares?), he faces
ongoing protests over government neglect of Canada's
First Nations.
Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence began a hunger
strike in Ottawa charging the government with
"marginalizing our political leadership, along with
the enforced segregation of our people so that our
rich heritage can be wiped out and the great bounty
contained in our traditional lands be made available
for exploitation by large multi-national companies."
But Canada's First Nations -- what's left of them --
can thank their lucky stars they weren't born in the
‘brown colonies' of the Middle East.
*** Eric Walberg is author of Postmodern Imperialism:
Geopolitics and the Great Games http://claritypress.com/Walberg.html
You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com/
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