I always marvel at people on web forums who claim that the 100,000 people who have died in Iraq are "caused" by the US. There's an infantile clinging to the "big revelation" that the Bush Administration lied, and there weren't weapons of mass destruction there.
So there wasn't a good reason to invade the country? There were very real enemies there who didn't appear merely because the US showed up to topple Saddam. The terrorists supported by Al Qaeda; the militants supported by Iran and Syria -- these are realities for which the "progressives" claiming the untruth about the 100,000 never have an answer. One of the reasons I ran a news clipping site "Not Killed by American Troops" for awhile was to keep reporting and archiving the news that most of the killings in these wars were not being done by American troops.
That doesn't mean we don't criticize these invasions or we don't condemn American soldiers when they do kill civilians, which of course they have, at times in grisly and horrifying fashion. But the overwhelming number of civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were killed by terrorists and militants such as the Taliban.
By the same token, I see little awareness among those spouting on forums, that Russia is propping up the Assad regime in Syria, and has given Syria $1 billion in weapons. An appalling massacre has occurred in Syria of more than 90 people, 32 of them children. Even now, despite this horror, a Russian ship is on its way delivering more arms to the Assad regime. Even Amnesty International had to concede that most of the world's killings of civilians are done with Russian weapons -- not American weapons. That was a bitter truth for the left to swallow, and the protests are shrill on AI's website. But it is the truth.
People like Robert MacKay at the New York Times profess surprise on Twitter at WikiLeaks trying to spin the Syrian massacre today. Why the surprise? Long ago WikiLeaks revealed itself to be a pro-Kremlin operation seeking sustenance for its largely anti-American agenda from what they rightly identify as America's enemy ("the enemy of my enemy is my friend"). More than that, the anarcho-Leninism that WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange and others espouse sees the world in a dichotomy where America is always evil and Russia is always misunderstood or victimized, if not good.
The terrorists and insurgents in Iraq were supported by Iran and Syria all this time; these are Russia's allies and never stopped being their allies from the Soviet era.
So when I see an article like this in the New York Times, US Seeks Russia's Help in Removing Assad, I have to conclude: what are you smoking, guys? Why these fantasies?
Russia has never helped on Syria and is highly unlikely to do anything different than it has already done for the entire latest round of the mass crimes against humanity -- which is nothing. Russia is busy at the UN complaining about the less than 100 civilians killed not deliberately by NATO during the fight with Qadaffi for Libya. Russia is not helping on Syria. While Russia may have technically supported Kofi Annan's mission, or the notion of monitors, it could indicate external assent while practicing internal dissent because its ships keep steaming to Syria with arms and it keeps excusing Iran.
Russia does not like how either Iraq or Libya turned out, hates the idea of humanitarian interventions (in part with good reason), and does not want to remove Assad and precipitate what it sees as a messy civil war with Al Qaeda in the wings to help the opposition. It may lie about this actual danger, we can't know. But it does not want to help. If it waits long enough, Syria might turn out to be like the huge crimes against humanity in Africa in places like Sudan or the DRC -- that is, the world will turn away and stop caring, and become preoccupied again with even just one death in Israel/Palestine.
Why does Prime Minister Medvedev hate the idea of Mubarak in a cage, as the Times reports? Because he does not want to envision either Putin or himself in cages -- and cages are what the Russian criminal justice system puts people in -- as they did Mikhail Khodorkovsky. As the Times reports:
“The Russians now consider President Assad a liability,” said Dimitri K. Simes, a Russia expert and president of the Center for the National Interest in Washington. “But Putin doesn’t like having his clients removed one after another by the United States, and he considers Assad his client.”
Frankly, I don't think the Russians consider Assad anything of the kind. That is, sure, he's a problem and a challenge, but so is the Syrian opposition, and they have the stamina to wait out things like this and they have the brutal and grim determination to keep allies like Assad. We don't. Very, very few people are demonstrating in Russia against Moscow's relationship with Assad; and very, very few people are demonstrating in the US against Moscow's relationship with Assad, either. The fairly small turnout of protesters from Occupy Wall Street that turned up at the NATO summit wanted to denounce NATO for Libya and prevent NATO from ever exercising force anywhere in the world again -- they weren't concerned about massacres in Homs. They line up perfectly with the Kremlin in that regard.
What's more imporant is the second half of what Simes said -- indeed, Putin hates the US, doesn't want to be seen to be taking dictation from the US, and will cling to Assad for that reason alone -- with the help of WikiLeaks stirring up the massages, claiming we must "guard against spin" on the Syrian massacre. As if there was a "spin" involved in pictures of 32 bloodied little children. OWS keeping up such pressure as they can muster on having any kind of international military response.
Helen Cooper and Mark Landler at least reported accurately that in fact Russia didn't sign on to a "Yemensky Variant" for Syria.
Human Rights Watch has also apparently been in quiet talks with the Russians -- more and more, this large and wealthy organization behaves like a foreign embassy. I don't see any call on Russia to do something about this latest Syrian massacre on HRW's website, but it's a holiday weekend and that's not their policy with Russia, despite some open protests -- they believe Russia can be influenced better by dialogue than by confrontation (I think they're absolutely wrong about this, and shouldn't even have an office in Moscow, which is constraining their statements.)
“There’s a deep strain of anti-Americanism at the heart of Putin’s Kremlin,” said Carroll Bogert, a deputy executive director of Human Rights Watch, who has also discussed the Yemen option with Russian officials. “When a proposal is perceived as something the Americans want, it can automatically become less desirable to the Russians.”
Still, she and other human rights activists said the plan was worth trying, even if the odds are against winning wholehearted Russian backing, much less the acquiescence of Mr. Assad.
The plan will fail, and human rights activists had better have a plan B, if they are advising governments quietly on what they should do. Of course, it isn't direct military action in Syria that's the issue for the Kremlin, but another NATO action via Turkey on the border of Syria in quest of the bad idea of safe zones.
Here's why it will fail, as the Times explains:
In Syria, by contrast, Mr. Assad oversees a security state in which his minority Alawite sect fears that if his family is ousted, it will face annihilation at the hands of the Sunni majority.
Everybody wants to do something about Syria. Pronouncing an idea like the "Yemensky Variant" or the latest peace venture as failures in advance make it seem like you are hopelessly pragmatic.
Oh, but there *is* something to do, and I want everyone to do a lot more of it: gang up on Russia. Nobody should be pretending Russia is helping; nobody should pretend that Russia is going to help bridge the violent situation and lead it to "talks". Everybody should apply unrelenting, prolonged, and principled pressure on Russia until it stops shipping arms to Syria and enabling mass crimes against humanity. Anything less than that risks being part of the problem, not part of the solution.
