One of the main reasons Assad propagandists have confused so many is the lack of a coherent elaboration of what the US is doing in Syria. The deliberate obfuscation of the purpose & role the US Pentagon is playing there serves the US, the Assad regime, Russia & all the other countries involved.
The obfuscation weakens opposition by allowing Assadists to use their simple-minded US regime-change scenario. It allows social democratic opponents of Assad to look to the US for assistance in taking Assad down by calling for a No Fly Zone, more US bombing intervention, & for the US to supply arms to anti-Assad militias.
What is left out of both views is the power of the Syrian revolution against Assad’s dictatorship which requires the counter-revolutionary intervention of Russia, US, Iran, Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia, Israel, & other foreign militaries, mercenaries, covert operatives to defeat. All of the regimes involved in the Middle East have long lived with dictatorship. What they cannot tolerate is democracy.
It is not a principled antiwar position nor astute military strategy to call on the US to support the Syrian revolution when it is bombing the hell out of the revolution in Yemen, bankrolling the military junta in Egypt & the monarchy in Bahrain precisely to destroy those revolutions against dictatorship & oppression. Not to mention that it has long bankrolled Israeli colonialism against Palestinians.
For the international antiwar movement that must be rebuilt, the only principled position with any kind of political moxie is to demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia. Assad’s regime won’t stand a chance against the revolution without the counter-revolutionary military alliance. If it did, those bombers, special forces, mercenaries, militias wouldn’t be there in the first place.
Photo is two US special forces near Raqqa, Syria. This is not what freedom fighters look like anywhere in the world. This is what occupying armies look like.
(Photo by Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images)