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Friday, March 29, 2013

France reneges on arming Syrian rebels: More empty promises from NATO


Two weeks ago, when the EU summit failed to lift the arms embargo for Assad's opposition, France declared its plans to go it alone and arm the Syria opposition anyway. Britain's Foreign Minister William Hague declared that France and the UK were "on the same page" and for a short while it seemed that France and the UK would be providing the badly needed heavy weapons to the rebels in spite of the EU & US resistance.

Then in an apparent contradiction, William Hague declared that while France and the UK were "on the same page" with regards to arming the opposition, Britain had no plans to do so.

Yesterday, this apparent contradiction was resolved when French President Francois Hollande said France wasn't going to be arming Assad's opposition either. After two year of violent suppression by the Assad government of the Syrian people that has cost more than 70,000 lives, Hollande has declared it's "too early" to arm the Syrian opposition. Al Jazeera English is reporting:
France backtracks on arming Syria's rebels

French President Francoise Hollande says 'no guarantee' weapons to Syria's rebels will end up in the wrong hands.
29 Mar 2013 02:18
France will uphold the EU embargo on weapon deliveries for Syrian rebels after all, changing course from just two weeks ago, according to comments by President Francois Hollande.

France would have to be convinced that the weapons would not fall into the hands of terrorists, Hollande said in an interview with France 2. More...
So the reality is that Hollande and British PM Cameron are on the "same page" as Obama with regards to Syria, namely flowery words of support, a little money for "humanitarian aid," but no military support for the opposition and nothing that will put an end to Assad's slaughter on the ground. Wednesday, Bloomberg had a good piece critiquing Obama's policy:
How Obama Is Failing Syria

Mar 27, 2013
By Fouad Ajami
In the matter of the Syrian rebellion, the U.S. hasn’t even “led from behind.” The Obama administration has pioneered a new role for a great power: We are now the traffic controllers, directing the flow of weapons to the rebels.

The money isn’t ours; it is Qatari and Saudi and Libyan. The planes hauling the weapons are Jordanian, Qatari and Saudi. And the risks are run by Syria’s neighbors, principally Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon.

Our officials have opinions on Syria, but no one in the Greater Middle East can divine them. We want Bashar al-Assad gone -- our president said so in August 2011 -- a full five months into a brutal war. Then again, through winks and nods, we suggest that the alternative to Assad might be worse than his despotism.

No sooner do we make one definitive statement against the dictator than we hedge it with an invitation to both the dictatorship and the opposition to come to the negotiating table. Great crimes are committed by the Syrian regime, but we are full of worries about the jihadis who have converged on that country. For American officials, the lengths of the fighters’ beards, one Syrian opposition leader lamented, are more important than the massacres. More...
From the beginning of the uprising, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has claimed that he was fighting Islamic terrorist gangs exclusively, and the choice was between supporting his continued rule or handing Syria over to these "armed terrorist gangs." This is a false choice but it is the view that has been adopted by the NATO countries to excuse their inaction while they allow Assad to continue the slaughter of his own people. The truth is that a democratic and independent Syria is not what they really want.

The arrest and charging yesterday of Eric Harroun, a US citizen and army veteran, as soon as he returned to the US, for fighting with the Syrian opposition, is yet one more practical example of which side the US is really on. To justify the charges that threaten him with life imprisonment, the US has stretched the definition of WMD to include the RPGs he used to shoot down one of Assad's "Death from Above" helicopters. Assad will applaud this arrest or any other US moves designed to curtain support for his opposition.

After two years of broken promises and faux support, the Syrian people have come to understand that the West would really like to see something like the Assad regime survive and they can expect no help from them. The Syrian people will have to defeat the dictatorship by their own efforts.

Meanwhile, in the US Left, such lunatic views as those of Stephen Lendman writing in OpEd News, 19 March 2013, are given credibility along with chemtrails and a variety of 9/11 conspiracy theories.
Syria is Washington's war. It was planned years ago. At issue is regime change. America tolerates no independent governments.
This is how certain elements on the Left give Assad, Russia and Iran a pass on the slaughter, dis the brave Syrians fighting for democracy as mercenaries, and preserve their own, warped US centric view of the world.

Of course these Leftist offer no proof of their claims beyond a 2007 interview with Wesley Clark. Even though after two years of war, NATO is still embargoing arms to the Syria rebels, people like Lendman claim that the US has been supply arms to the resistance from the beginning. They offer no proof, but if their claims are true, there should be ample proof.

Recently Eliot Higgins, who blogs as Brown Moses, showed how it can be done. He tracks the weapons being used by both sides in Syria through a careful examination of the many battlefield videos posted to YouTube everyday. From them he was able to show that the Syrian opposition had recently received a large supply of heavy weapons produced in Croaria via financing from Saudi Arabia and Qatar and transport through Jordan, most likely with a wink and a nod from Washington. Those that still claim that the West has been supplying the opposition with weapons from the beginning should subject those early battlefield videos to the same sort of analysis and make their case. They should do this or they should shut up because all they are doing is propagating the lies of a criminal regime.

Meanwhile, in spite of claims from the Left that "Syria is Washington's war", Assad's slaughter of civilians continues with the heavy weapons he is receiving from Russia:And in spite of the lack of support from the West, the Syrian people are winning their struggle to overthrow the dictatorship. Today they announced that they are in control of Daraa Province, which gives them access to the Jordanian border and cuts a key road to Damascus.

Also, two years in, the peaceful Friday mass protests that started the rebellion, continue:

Anti-Assad protests today in Yabroud, Damascus | 29 March 2013


Kobani| Kurdish friday protest against Assad regime


Assad's days are numbered and the Syrian people will win this revolution in spite to the back stabbing they continue to receive from the imperialist and their followers on the Left.

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

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