NO NEED FOR EXCUSES OVER SYRIA

Sep 01, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The government of Guyana should not be making excuses about its abstention on a UN General Assembly Resolution concerning the situation in Syria.
Guyana did the right thing by abstaining from that one-sided, pro-Western resolution which forms part of the game plan of the European and North American powers to shift China and Russia’s opposition to the use of international force to bring about a solution to the crisis in Syria.
The Russians are not going to allow a repeat of what took place in Libya, when the West aided and abetted rebels to topple the Gaddafi regime.
The war in Libya was presented in the same light as is today being portrayed about Syria: innocent civilians being bombed by the heartless and ruthless government.
The truth is different. What occurred in Libya was not innocent protesters being subject to aircraft and tank fire from the Gaddafi regime.
What took place in Libya was quite unlike what took place in Tunisia and Egypt, where people took to the streets in masses in order to topple a regime. The uprising in Libya was not an Arab Spring. It was an insurrection encouraged and later aided and abetted by the West through the supply of weapons, training, and later recognition by western countries and their proxies of the rebel army, and the territory they held before the fall of Tripoli.
The West wanted Gaddafi out because they were after his oil. As such they supported the insurrectionists. These insurrectionists were not peaceful protesters. They began their protests by storming a police station, obtaining weapons and the using these weapons to launch a mutiny against the State.
The Libyan government, faced with an insurrection, was obligated to take action to put down the mutiny. The Libyan government may have used disproportionate force against the insurrectionists, and this was clearly wrong, but these rebels were eventually openly supported by the West, to the extent that NATO effectively crippled the ability of Gaddafi to defend his people against the rebels, by creating a no-fly zone over Libya and by bombing Gaddafi’s military.
Unfortunately, China and Russia fell victim to the western propaganda and opted to not veto the UN Security Resolution which called for a no-fly zone and which allowed NATO planes to bomb government targets, including the compound of Gaddafi in Libya.
The same plot is being attempted in Syria. The West is trying to do the same thing against the Assad regime in Syria. They are projecting him as a dictator that has declared war against his own people, a tyrant that murders innocent civilians, including children. Each day the western media projects images of the bombing and shelling of civilian areas by Syrian government forces, but they carry very little of the destruction and death that is being caused by the actions of the rebels themselves. This is a rehash of Libya.
Syria is strategic to the Americans. Once Syria falls, Israel is the winner. Israel’s enemies will disappear once Syria falls. Iran will be next. The Palestinian cause will be undermined, because they will lack a formidable ally which has always resisted Israel. The Arab Spring is being used as a springboard to further Israel’s interest in the Middle East. This is what the war in Syria is about.
This is a trophy that the Americans are playing for. Syria is the trophy which is being sought for Israel. And the two nations that are resisting this imperial project are Russia and China. These nations made a huge mistake with Libya, but they have learnt from that mistake and they are not going to easily repeat that error by giving the West a licence to intervene militarily in Syria, as was done through NATO in Libya.
Having failed to get their own way in the Security Council, the West’s strategy was to force pressure on the Chinese and Russians by railroading the passage of yet another resolution – this one more one-sided than ever – through the General Assembly.
This resolution does not enhance the prospects of peace. It is a condemnation of all violence and the agents of such violence, but it is heavily slanted in favour of the rebels operating in Syria. How does such a resolution help the situation in Syria? How will it promote a resolution of the conflict when it is so one-sided?
On these grounds alone, Guyana was in order when it abstained on the resolution in the General Assembly. Guyana abstained; it did not vote against the resolution. In this way, Guyana was signaling that while it may not be opposed to the condemnation of the violence in Syria, the resolution did not go far enough in seeking a ceasefire or in furthering a negotiated end to the conflict.
Guyana therefore does not need to be disingenuous by claiming that its vote was based on changing situations on the ground. How more ridiculous can one get than to claim that the situation on the ground is changing? If it is, it is not changing for the better but for the worse.
Guyana should have simply said that they abstained because the resolution needed to be amended to be more balanced and to advance the prospects of peace.
Guyana could not have been expected to vote in favour of such a one-sided resolution. Neither could it have been insensitive to vote against the resolution which called attention to the terrible atrocities being committed in Syria.
It had no choice but to abstain in the circumstances.

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