{"id":17492,"date":"2012-02-20T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2012-02-20T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=17492"},"modified":"2013-05-30T13:32:51","modified_gmt":"2013-05-30T12:32:51","slug":"human-rights-warriors-for-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/02\/human-rights-warriors-for-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cHuman Rights\u201d Warriors for Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cNATO wants desperately to identify some sliver of Syrian soil on which to plant the \u2018humanitarian\u2019 flag of intervention.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The largest imperial offensive since the Iraq invasion of March, 2003, is in full swing, under the banner of \u201chumanitarian\u201d intervention \u2013 Barack Obama\u2019s fiendishly clever upgrade of George Bush\u2019s \u201cdumb\u201d wars. Having failed to obtain a Libyan-style United Nations Security Council fig leaf for a \u201chumanitarian\u201d military strike against Syria, the United States shifts effortlessly to a global campaign \u201coutside the U.N. system<\/a><\/span>\u201d to expand its NATO\/Persian Gulf royalty\/Jihadi coalition. Next stop: Tunisia, where Washington\u2019s allies will assemble on February 24 to sharpen their knives as \u201cFriends of Syria.\u201d The U.S. State Department has mobilized to shape the \u201cFriends\u201d membership and their \u201cmandate\u201d \u2013 which is warlord-speak for refining an ad hoc alliance for the piratical assault on Syria\u2019s sovereignty.<\/p>\n

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are swigging the ale with their fellow buccaneers. These \u201chuman rights\u201d warriors, headquartered in the bellies of empires past and present, their chests shiny with medals of propagandistic service to superpower aggression in Libya, contribute \u201cleft\u201d legitimacy to the imperial project. London-based Amnesty International held a global \u201cday of action\u201d to rail against Syria for \u201ccrimes against humanity\u201d and to accuse Russia and China of using their Security Council vetoes to \u201cbetray\u201d the Syrian people \u2013 echoing the war hysteria out of Washington, Paris, London and the royal pigsties of Riyadh and Doha. New York-based Human Rights Watch denounced Moscow and Beijing\u2019s actions as \u201cincendiary<\/a><\/span>\u201d \u2013 as if it were not the empire and its allies who were setting the Middle East and Africa on fire, arming and financing jihadis \u2013 including hundreds of veteran Libyan Salafists<\/a><\/span> now operating in Syria.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmnesty International and Human Rights Watch contribute \u2018left\u2019 legitimacy to the imperial project.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Under Obama\u2019s \u201cintelligent\u201d (as opposed to \u201cdumb\u201d) imperial tutelage, colonial genocidaires<\/em> like France now propose creation of \u201chumanitarian corridors<\/a><\/span>\u201d inside Syria \u201cto allow NGOs to reach the zones where there are scandalous massacres.\u201d NATO flatly rejected such a corridor in Libya when sub-Saharan Africans and black Libyans were being massacred by militias armed and financed by the same \u201cFriends\u201d that now besiege Syria.<\/p>\n

Turkey claims it has rejected, for now, the idea of setting up humanitarian \u201cbuffer zones<\/a><\/span>\u201d along its border with Syria \u2013 inside<\/em> Syrian territory \u2013 while giving arms, training and sanctuary to Syrian military deserters. In reality, it is Syrian Army troop and armor concentrations on the border that have thwarted the establishment of such a \u201cbuffer\u201d \u2013 a bald euphemism for creating a \u201cliberated zone\u201d that must be \u201cprotected\u201d by NATO or some agglomeration of U.S.-backed forces.<\/p>\n

NATO, which bombed Libya non-stop for six months, inflicting tens of thousands of casualties while refusing to count a single body, wants desperately to identify some sliver of Syrian soil on which to plant the \u201chumanitarian\u201d flag of intervention. They are transparently searching for a Benghazi, to justify a replay of the Libyan operation \u2013 the transparent fact that prompted the Russian and Chinese vetoes.<\/p>\n

Faced with the certainty of superpower-backed attack under the guise of \u201cprotecting\u201d civilians in \u201cliberated\u201d territory, Syria cannot afford to cede even one neighborhood of a single city \u2013 not one block! \u2013 or of any rural or border enclave, to armed rebels and foreign jihadis. That road leads directly to loss of sovereignty and possible dissection of Syria \u2013 which western pundits are already calling a \u201chodge-podge\u201d nation that could be a \u201cfailed state.\u201d Certainly, the French and British are experts at carving up other people\u2019s territories, having drawn the national boundaries of the region after World War One. It is an understatement to say that Israel would be pleased.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the Libya formula, and might as well have come straight from Barack Obama\u2019s mouth.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

With the Syrian military\u2019s apparent successes in securing most of Homs and other centers of rebellion, the armed opposition has stepped up its terror tactics \u2013 a campaign noted with great alarm by the Arab League\u2019s own Observer Mission to Syria, leading Saudi Arabia and Qatar to suppress the Mission\u2019s report. Instead, the Gulf States are pressing the Arab League to openly \u201cprovide all kinds of political and material support\u201d to the opposition, meaning arms and, undoubtedly, more Salafist fighters. Aleppo, Syria\u2019s main commercial and industrial city, which had seen virtually no unrest, was struck by two deadly car bombs last week \u2013 signature work of the al-Qaida affiliate in neighboring Iraq.<\/p>\n

The various \u201cFriends of Syria,\u201d all nestled in the U.S.\/NATO\/Saudi\/Qatar cocoon, now openly speak of all-out civil war in Syria \u2013 by which they mean stepped up armed conflict financed and directed by themselves \u2013 as the preferred alternative to the protracted struggle that the regime appears to be winning. There is one caveat: no \u201cWestern boots on the ground in any form,\u201d as phrased by British Foreign Secretary William Hague. It is the Libya formula, and might as well have come straight from Barack Obama\u2019s mouth.<\/p>\n

Syria is fighting for its national existence against an umbrella of forces mobilized by the United States and NATO. Of the 6,000 or so people that have died in the past 11 months, about a third have been Syrian soldiers and police \u2013 statistical proof positive that this is an armed assault on the state. There is no question of massive foreign involvement, or that the aim of U.S. policy is regime change, as stated repeatedly by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (\u201cAssad must go<\/a><\/span>,\u201d she told reporters in Bulgaria).<\/p>\n

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have chosen sides in the Washington-backed belligerency \u2013 the side of Empire. As groups most often associated with (what passes for) the Left in their headquarters countries, they are invaluable allies of the current imperial offensive. They have many fellow travelers in (again, what passes for) anti-war circles in the colonizing and neo-colonizing nations. The French \u201cLeft\u201d lifted hardly a finger while a million Algerians died in the struggle for independence, and have not proved effective allies of formerly colonized people in the 50 years, since. Among the European imperial powers, only Portugal\u2019s so-called Carnation Revolution<\/a><\/span> of 1974, a coup by young officers, resulted in substantial relief for the subjects of empire: the withdrawal of troops from Portugal\u2019s African colonies.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf the 6,000 or so people that have died in the past 11 months, about a third have been Syrian soldiers and police \u2013 statistical proof positive that this is an armed assault on the state.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The U.S. anti-war movement lost its mass character as soon as the threat of a draft was removed, in the early Seventies, while the United States continued to bomb Vietnam (and test new and exotic weapons on its people) until the fall of Saigon, in 1975. All that many U.S. lefties seemed to want was to get the Republicans off their<\/em> backs, in 2008, and to Hell with the rest of the world. Democrat Barack Obama has cranked the imperial war machine back into high gear, with scarcely a peep from the \u201cLeft.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was great ambivalence \u2013 the most polite word I can muster \u2013 among purported leftists in the United States and Europe to NATO\u2019s bombardment and subjugation of Libya. Here we are again, in the face of existential imperial threats to Syria and Iran, as leftists temporize about human rights while the \u201cgreatest purveyor of violence in the world today\u201d blazes new warpaths.<\/p>\n

There is no such thing as an anti-war activist who is not an anti-imperialist. And the only job of an anti-imperialist in the belly of the beast is to disarm the beast. Absent that, s\/he is useless to humanity.<\/p>\n

As we used to say: You are part of the solution \u2013 or you are part of the problem. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are part of the problem.<\/p>\n

__________________________<\/p>\n

Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at <\/em>Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com<\/em><\/a><\/span>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 blackagendareport.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAmnesty International and Human Rights Watch have chosen sides in the Washington-backed belligerency \u2013 the side of Empire.\u201d Syria has no choice but to secure every square foot of its territory. \u201cFaced with the certainty of superpower-backed attack under the guise of \u2018protecting\u2019 civilians in \u201cliberated\u201d territory, Syria cannot afford to cede even one neighborhood of a single city \u2013 not one block! \u2013 or of any rural or border enclave, to armed rebels and foreign jihadis.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle-east-north-africa","category-syria-in-context"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}