a Fort Russ exclusive -
Hillary Clinton spoke the words in the title in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations August 18, 2011, followed with "and it’s time for Assad to get out of the way."
Of course, as Fort Russ has noted earlier, US-spurred regime change requires, not an act of Congress, or even an AUMF, but just a monster, a monster and their exceptional R2P policy.
Does the monster come first, to inspire the need to overthrow him -- or does the will to overthrow precede the need to make him out as a monster, and thus engage the Responsibility-to-Protect, and to protect his own people from him?
Such an easy question, but there is a flat, firm, and plain answer. Hillary again:
"The best way to help Israel deal with Iran's growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad."
The R2P was adopted by the UN in 2005, in the wake of the Ruanda genocide and the likes of Pol Pot. Here is the expression of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan:
“It cannot be right, when the international community is faced with genocide or massive human rights abuses, for the United Nations to stand by and let them unfold to the end.”
There, then, is a succinct criterion for engaging in the "Responsibility to Protect:" genocide or massive human rights abuses. Succinct, yes. Also wide open.
The nose of the camel thus entered the tent. The US has grasped this tool and made it utterly American.
There was, of course, no UN resolution to bomb Serbia, but NATO did it anyway. Then came UN Resolution 1973, the No-Fly zone over Libya. Did "Genocide or Human Rights Abuses," the Annan criterion apply? French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe introduced the resolution, and asserted that the "will of the Libyan people has been trampled under the feet of the Libyan regime." And the violence, he said, was getting worse, as the regime reconquered areas that "had already been released" !
It was thus plain from the inception that the intent of the resolution was to take sides in a civil war. War is the ultimate human rights abuse, but taking sides in one is just joining a war. Yet the supporters of 1973 "stressed that the objective was solely to protect civilians from further harm."
It was not just NATO that intervened, led from behind by the US: Hillary herself intervened, as we can read in her "remarks on the deaths of American personnel in Benghazi, Libya" on the US State Department's site:
"In the early days of the Libyan revolution, I asked Chris to be our envoy to the rebel opposition. He arrived on a cargo ship in the port of Benghazi and began building our relationships with Libya’s revolutionaries. He risked his life to stop a tyrant, then gave his life trying to help build a better Libya. The world needs more Chris Stevenses."
"The early days"? How early? Was it like Eisenhower sending Kermit Roosevelt into Iran to start the coup that overthrew Mossadegh in 1953?
"Envoy to the Libyan opposition" ! Why not an envoy to both sides, to work toward peace? Because that was never the idea. And we had the monster, the "tyrant." And a foretaste of things to come: encourage the growth of, or even start, a jihadist uprising, and thus create a monster that turns on its founder. All under the R2P pretense of "Building a better Libya."
| “I am proud to stand here on the soil of a free Libya.” |
And the R2P in Syria was, as most FR readers already know, a fig-leaf for a CIA project begun long before.
And nowadays do we have "envoys" in Syria "to the rebel opposition," i.e. to Al-Nusra (or whatever that Al Qaeda affiliate is calling itself these days)? Absolutely we do. The Pentagon revealed June 22, 2015 that "rebel" recruits are being paid up to $400 a month, and they are being brought out of country for their training.
This means we have recruiters in country. They are (I change one word from Hillary's line) "building our relationships with Syria's revolutionaries." According to the Reuters report of that date, "the only document participants had to sign was one committing them to promote respect for human rights and the rule of law, a mandate issued by the U.S. Congress."
This writer has been beating his brains out trying to satirize this mandate of Congress, but there is no need, for it serves as its own satire. Another satire that cannot be written, and for the same reason: Hillary Clinton has admitted that her support for the Iraq war "was a huge mistake." What about Libya? We serious observers of the world's press haven't seen any admission of mistake, only that post-gaddafi Libya is a work in progress.
Progress and Democracy -- for Afghanistan, for Iraq, for Libya, and, heaven forfend, Syria. Once again, we think of the historian Tacitus, who has Calgacus, fighting against The Empire, saying of Rome: "They make a desert, and call it peace."
The transition to democracy in Syria has begun.
Follow us on Facebook!
Follow us on Twitter!
Donate!
from Fort Russ http://ift.tt/2d3DSlW
“The transition to democracy in Syria has begun” -- Hillary Clinton - Like This Article
0 Response to "“The transition to democracy in Syria has begun” -- Hillary Clinton - Like This Article"
Post a Comment