Friday, August 31, 2012

Flying Under the Radar: Western War Powers Push for 'No-Fly' Designation over Syria

"No-Fly Zones inside Syria": West Scripting Scary Scenario

 by Finian Cunningham - Global Research


The Syrian crisis is a tragedy that is a montage of so many other recent Western-scripted tragedies: Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. The same lies and fabrications, the same horror and suffering, and the same Western criminals posing as heroes.

The conflict in Syria is unfolding like a predictable plot line - a script that appears to be a re-run of some Hollywood cliché movie - only the script is being written with outrageous cynicism in Washington along with its criminal co-stars, Britain and France.

Tugging on public heartstrings this week, the Western powers are emoting about the plight of hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring out of Syria into neighboring countries: Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. The United Nations fears that the number of refugees in Turkey alone may reach 200,000.

French President Francois Hollande says that the Western powers will have to set up No-Fly Zones inside Syria to act as buffer areas in order to relieve the humanitarian crisis. Hollande says that France is working closely with its American, British and Turkish partners on plans for this intrusion into Syrian sovereign territory - to address the very humanitarian crisis that these powers have instigated.

Hollande, and his American and British counterparts, Barack Obama and David Cameron, are portraying themselves as knights in shining armor, riding to the rescue of helpless victims. The ploy is no doubt aimed at whipping up a moral duty among the Western audience to give their governments the right to intervene directly in Syria.

Such a portrayal is a grotesque distortion of reality. The displacement of civilians from their homes across Syria, losing all their worldly possessions, is the result of the covert war of aggression that these villainous governments have unleashed on the suffering Syrian people over the past year.

Such cynical theatrics by the Western powers is a re-run of NATO’s intervention in Libya last year, which was carried out under the pretext of “responsibility to protect (R2P)” human rights. That intervention quickly turned into a criminal NATO bombing campaign, which destroyed many more civilian lives than it was supposedly aimed at protecting. This time around, Russia and China will not buy such a ruse at the UN Security Council. Hence the Western powers are aiming to go it alone, outside the remit of the UN, and are therefore making appeals to the Western public for a mandate to meddle in Syria.

If tugging on heartstrings doesn’t suffice, then terrifying the Western public is also being thrown into the script. President Obama once again cued the old bogey-man of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as a ‘red line’ that would trigger direct Western intervention in Syria’s 17-month violence.

Less than 10 years ago, this fear factor was hammed up by Obama’s predecessor, George W Bush, in an attempt to get the Western public gripping the edge of their seats over Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Bush along with his British side-kick, Tony Blair, claimed that Saddam had WMD that could be launched within minutes and that this peril justified a US-led military strike on that country. No such weapons were ever found in Iraq.

Now in a tired re-run of that script we have Obama and his British and French counterparts declaring that Syria’s alleged chemical weapons are a threat to the world.

It is astounding that the same powers that committed war crimes in Iraq on the basis of trumped-up lies - with over one million dead from an illegal military occupation that ended only last year - have now the audacity to play that “scary” scenario again.

What is all the more outrageous is the brazen predictable nature of the conflict in Syria. The US, Britain and France are acting out their own screenplay written by these same powers with self-fulfilling prophesies. Like a corny soap opera, each scene leads to the next. Only this is not a corny soap opera; it is a war of aggression that is causing massive suffering and could spark an all-out world war.

The Western powers allege that because of the deteriorating security situation in Syria, the state’s suspected arsenal of chemical weapons may “fall into the wrong hands”. In that event, Obama, Cameron and Hollande say they will have no choice but to move militarily into Syria’s conflict to safeguard those weapons.

But hold on a minute.  
The deteriorating security situation in Syria that the Western powers are apparently concerned about is the result of a Western-backed armed insurrection that they have been recklessly fuelling over the past year. Since the US-led powers unveiled a roadmap for regime change across the Middle East in 2001, these powers have been waiting for the opportunity to overthrow the government in Damascus. They got their chance during the Arab Spring of 2011 when the US, Britain and France were able to infiltrate that country under the guise of supporting a pro-democracy movement.
From March 2011, the conflict in Syria has escalated from confined skirmishes between Western-backed militia and the Syrian army to a country-wide guerrilla war. It is the Western powers and their regional allies of Turkey, Israel and the Persian Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar who are responsible for the violence that is raging across the Levant.

The greatly increased capacity for violence is a direct result of massive flows of higher-caliber weapons that the Western powers are funneling into Syria. The presence of special forces from the US, Britain and France have ensured that these weapons are being used to produce devastating carnage. This is the chaotic, bloody backdrop - created by the West - against which the Western governments are now voicing apprehensions about the alleged risk of chemical weapons. The mainstream media have dutifully obliged like the propaganda wing of their governments’ military.

And who are “the wrong hands” that Obama, Cameron and Hollande are apparently concerned may acquire these weapons. It the same mercenary groups that the Western governments and their regional allies have directed into Syria to do their dirty work. This proxy network goes by the name of the “Free Syrian Army” but is known to compromise Islamic extremist groups, such as Al-Qaeda and other Saudi-backed Salafists, which have gravitated from various countries to fight a supposed “holy war”.  
Given that these mercenary groups have committed whole-village massacres of women and children in Syria, have carried out no-warning car bombs in urban centers - the latest at a funeral in Damascus this week that killed some 30 people, and given that they have desecrated ancient Muslim and Christian religious sites with barbarous relish, it is indeed of deep concern if these fanatical militants were to somehow commandeer deadly chemical weapons.
The very real danger is that the Western powers will do their utmost to ensure that the Western-backed fanatics obtain these weapons of mass destruction. One scene leads to the next in this criminal Western production.

The Syrian crisis is a tragedy that is a montage of so many other recent Western-scripted tragedies: Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. The same lies and fabrications, the same horror and suffering, and the same Western criminals posing as heroes.
 


Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. Many of his recent articles appear on the renowned Canadian-based news website Globalresearch.ca. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He specialises in Middle East and East Africa issues and has also given several American radio interviews as well as TV interviews on Press TV and Russia Today. Previously, he was based in Bahrain and witnessed the political upheavals in the Persian Gulf kingdom during 2011 as well as the subsequent Saudi-led brutal crackdown against pro-democracy protests.

 Global Research Articles by Finian Cunningham