Syria: Kerry’s Peace Plan A Formula for Permanent War

Syria and Munich 2016
By Michael Jabara Carley

Strategic Culture Foundation
Posted on Quemado Institute
February 16, 2016

Sergei Lavrov, John Kerry (–Sputnik/AFP/Christof Stache)

On Thursday, 12 February, US Secretary of State John Kerry met his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Munich. Kerry announced that a ceasefire agreement could be implemented «within days». Lavrov replied that «the main result of meeting in Munich was a confirmation of the UN resolution on Syria».

Many media sources say that «the West», largely represented by the United States and its British amanuensis, are in a panic because Russian military assistance to Syria has turned the tide of battle in the proxy, not civil, war against the Syrian government in Damascus. Kerry is in a hurry now to stave off disaster and a remarkable Russian «victory».

In fact, the Syrian Arab Army is encircling Jihadist terrorists in Aleppo and moving toward the Turkish border to cut off their supply routes. What sweet irony, the Jihadists who encircled government-held Aleppo, now themselves risk encirclement. Turn-about is fair play everywhere except for the western Mainstream Media (MSM).

The US role in the proxy war against Syria is well known – except in the United States apparently. The Obama administration has directly or indirectly supported ISIS and various iterations of Al-Qaeda in Syria and is now rushing to save them through a ceasefire agreement that would let them survive and replenish themselves.

US policy is redolent of another Munich agreement in September 1938 when Britain and France sold out Czechoslovakia to get on better terms with Nazi Germany. Then as now, the Russians played a positive role, seeking to organise resistance against an aggressor. The aggressor in 1938 was Nazi Germany; in 2016, the aggressor is a «western» coalition led by the United States, and including various NATO and regional vassal states, amongst them, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. All these desperados would be appropriate candidates for a police lineup in The Hague. In 1938, the idea was to break up Czechoslovakia; in 2016, the idea is to breakup Syria, by overthrowing the legal government in Damascus. In 1938 the Czechoslovak government chose to capitulate; in 2011 the Syrian government chose to fight. Whereas the USSR did not intervene militarily in 1938, the Russian government took a big risk in 2015 and intervened at the request of Damascus to fight the foreign backed, foreign Jihadist armed forces entrenched in Syria.

You would think that Kerry would have chosen another place to meet with Lavrov to avoid the odium of association with another western evil deed done in Munich almost eighty years ago. This time it’s the United States and its vassals waging war against Syria. In fact, as I write these lines, Turkey is bombarding Kurdish and Syrian Arab Army positions in northern Syria. The United States is reported to be pleading with its Turkish NATO ally to stop attacking US Kurdish allies who are fighting against Jihadists who are also US allies.

It’s «illegal», some western commentators like to say about the war against Syria, but that’s just a politically correct euphemism for aggression. There’s no other way to put it unless you believe western fairy stories about spreading «democracy». But who gave the West the right to spread «democracy» at the point of a gun, allied with Arab absolute monarchies?

Syria. Click to enlarge. (–pinterest.com)

Yet suddenly the United States has become a humanitarian and wants to stop the fighting it has brokered and nurtured for five years. We have to help refugees leaving Aleppo, the Americans say, to escape Russian bombing, to save children and innocents being threatened by that «barrel-bombing» tyrant, President Bashar al Assad. Trouble is refugees from Aleppo headed for safety in Turkey are reported to be Jihadists on the run from the advancing Syrian Arab Army.

Oh, how the West hates those «others» who do not bow to western hegemony. We have to provide «humanitarian aid» to help starving Syrians. «This is what the world wants,» say US shills, «Global opinion is clear… We are seeing a lot of people killed… The Russians are bombing hospitals, murdering civilians…» Here we go again. Will Pot ever stop calling Kettle black? Will the West ever stop thinking it represents «global opinion»? Will the US and its vassals ever be shamed by their preposterous hypocrisy and double standards? Clearly not.

This bogus western script is redolent of «Responsibility to Protect» (R2P), the spurious US justification for aggression against Iraq and Libya. It is now a returning refrain, this time, to protect foreign supplied, foreign Jihadists. The Western Mainstream Media has become hysterical about the Russian bombing of «moderate» Jihadists, though there are no «moderate» Jihadists.

And have you noticed? There is virtually no mentioning now in the MSM about the composition of ISIS and Al-Qaeda forces fighting in Syria, about the foreign Jihadists estimated to come from at least forty countries, and numbering several tens of thousands. In fact, the MSM talks about Saudi Arabia and Turkey committing more resources to fighting ISIS. Who does the MSM think it’s fooling? In fact, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are the principal arms purveyors and quartermasters of ISIS and their Al-Qaeda allies. The former is an intimate US vassal, the latter a NATO member. An American report indicates that «US allies have [just] delivered a massive shipment of ground-to-ground ‘Grad’ missiles to rebels in Syria». That was one day after the conclusion of the «ceasefire agreement». One wonders how ordinary Europeans and Canadians feel about NATO members backing a Jihadist proxy war against Syria and risking a confrontation with Russia in defence of their faltering «moderate» Jihadist allies.

Syrian hostilities, February 3, 2016 (–bbc.com)

Of course the «moderate opposition» is an imaginary cover to justify R2P. A German intelligence source estimates that 95% of combatants fighting against the Damascus government are not Syrian. As one commentator puts it, the «moderates» are only to be found «in fancy suits in Western hotel lobbies». The «four or five» moderates armed by the United States at a cost of $500 million are all that existed as a military force on the ground in Syria. What a fiasco. US armed «moderates» are long gone, either ran away or gone over to Al-Qaeda. «If you want to ask why Assad is still the president of Syria», says the above mentioned commentator, «the answer is not simply Russia or Iran, but the fact that his army remains resilient and pluralistic, representing a Syria in which religion alone does not determine who rises to the top».

Can you imagine anything more despicable than the West’s role in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East? Now we have Munich 2016 where the West is again on the wrong side. Of course, a ceasefire would save the Jihadists from defeat, allow them to resupply and refit from Turkey, Jordan, and apartheid Israel, and enable them to fight another day. The US is still talking about an «interim government» without Assad. So are Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Humanitarian aid would eventually be delivered not by airdrops but by US and other western military forces on the ground, allied with «moderate» Al-Qaeda derivatives, which would then attack the lawful government in Damascus. It is reported that Britain is sending 1600 troops to Jordan to train for action against Russia. Who are they kidding? And to be sure it’s just a coincidence that the MSM is talking up humanitarian aid to the Syrian people in need thanks to western military aggression against them. Kerry’s proposal for a ceasefire has nothing to do with «humanitarian aid» and everything to do with giving new life to the Jihadist proxy war against Syria. It has everything to do too with saving face. Can you imagine the humiliation in Washington, and the US cartoonists’ field day with the Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama, portrayed as a cowardly pipsqueak who cannot stand up to Russia?

Kerry’s ceasefire proposal is a formula for permanent war in Syria and the Middle East. During a ceasefire, will Turkey stop supplying ISIS and Al-Qaeda across its borders? Will Saudi Arabia and Qatar stop funding Salafi Jihadist forces in Syria? Of course, they will not. And what about Iraq? Who will stop ISIS in Iraq from strengthening itself and gaining strength from ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Syria? One American dissident group says the Munich ceasefire is not worth the paper it’s written on, incidentally, the same metaphor used for the Munich accords in 1938.

Lavrov insists that there will be no ceasefire against ISIS and the al-Nusra Front. That’s all to the good. But what about the other Jihadist groups, backed by the US and its vassals? Minister Lavrov undoubtedly knows that Kerry is trying to finesse Russia into stopping its support of the Syrian Arab Army, so that the US can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Time will tell whether Kerry succeeds or not. Will Russia sell out its friends to buy off its enemies, as the West did at Munich in 1938? Not this time. Once burnt, twice shy. I hope that Lavrov will be not be fooled again by his double-dealing, Russophobic western «partners».