War won't serve Australia's cause

Date
    August 31, 2013

Julian Assange



The horrors witnessed in Damascus last week are a painful reminder of the abuses that take place when the flow of information is shut down. Both the Assad regime and the anti-Assad forces have made Syria a hostile environment for journalists. As a result there is still no clarity about why this toxic chemical release happened.

Going to war is a very serious business with very serious repercussions, and must not be undertaken until the facts are in. Australia's federal election must not be used as a cover for taking our country into war.   

The prospect of regime change in Damascus has long appealed to the US. For the Americans to be able to assert effective influence over Syria would serve US geopolitical interests in at least three ways. It would push back the last extended limb of Russian hard power and cement US victory in its long-term cold-war project to isolate Russian influence globally. It would strengthen Israel's hand by removing one of Hezbollah's main sources of support in Lebanon. And it would complete the encirclement of Iran, whose Shiite Islamist government US hawks have long been looking to overthrow.


The only thing holding the US back in its goal of regime change in Syria has been the difficulty in identifying a sufficiently strong and ''reliable'' partner in this endeavour. The Syrian opposition is kaleidoscopic. It includes extremist Sunni militant groups such as al-Nusra, which is affiliated to al-Qaeda, and has been reported to be in possession of sarin gas. As this civil war has progressed, it has increasingly become a Sunni-Shiite proxy war, which threatens to embroil the entire Middle East region, with all the major players aligning themselves with one side or another.

Meanwhile, Syria's traditional No. 1 foe Israel is ever at the ready with its own powerful arsenal of missiles.

In 2011, the Obama administration laid down its ''red line'' for intervention - any use of any chemical weapons. There is no doubt that there was a large-scale toxic chemical release in Damascus last week. And there is no denying the horror this has inflicted on innocents. It remains far from clear, however, who used it, and with what motivation. Was this an authorised deployment of chemical weapons by the Syrian government or something else? In whose strategic interest would such an attack be? The Syrian government, which has gained the upper hand in the conflict in recent months, stands to gain nothing by the use of chemical weapons.

Internal documents from the US intelligence contractor Stratfor, which were released by WikiLeaks, reveal that US-led military intervention in Syria has been on the US military agenda since at least December 2011. The document describes how special operations forces were ''already on the ground'' at that time, and were focused on ''training opposition forces''. The document states: ''They [the Pentagon] don't believe air intervention would happen unless there was enough media attention on a massacre, like the Gaddafi move against Benghazi.''

In May 2012, the English-speaking media fell over themselves to attribute the Houla massacre to the Assad government. WikiLeaks cautioned at that time that the reality might be more complex. We were right. The UN commission of inquiry into the massacre was inconclusive. It also showed that there had been significant misreporting in the Western press, and that semi-autonomous militias were likely responsible for many of the deaths.

In an eerie reminder of the lead-up to the disastrous Iraq war, the US government is once again pre-empting the findings of the UN fact-finding mission, declaring that its mind is already made up and that the Assad government is responsible. And the Australian Labor government, personified by the pro-Washington Bob Carr, is dutifully toeing the line, saying a UN mandate is not necessary for legitimate intervention.

But look again. The humanitarian case is weak. Despite the misleading euphemistic rhetoric of the US ''striking across the bow'', it is a dead certainty that missile strikes will kill innocent civilians. It is no less certain that any kind of intervention will intensify the conflict and create even greater refugee flows. More than 1.2 million refugees have already fled the conflict and these migrations are destabilising the whole region.

We must remember the lessons of Iraq - when Australia was led into war by the US/British war machine masquerading its propaganda as ''intelligence''. Then, as now, we were fed on a diet of fear mongering about chemical weapons. And then, as now, the war machine is pre-empting the fact-finding missions of the UN, rendering its job impossible.

What Australian interests are served by going along with a US-led intervention in Syria? The answer is none. The case for intervention has not been made.

Julian Assange is the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks and a candidate for the Senate.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/war-wont-serve-australias-cause-20130830-2swb2.html#ixzz2dbyeS1BT

Peter Freedman wrote on Sep 1^st, 2013 at 2:30pm:


I guess Hitler wishes there were more like you in 1939.  The only thing evil needs to succeed is for good men to do nothing.

Hlongweekend58 wrote on Sep 1^st, 2013 at 4:12pm:


As usual, longy, total rubbish. This is a civil conflict not a World War.

You learn nothing, do you? What do you want, another Iraq?

I believe the American public is sick of giving up it's young men to silly foreign conflicts. America will never go into Syria like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Big Dave wrote on Sep 1^st, 2013 at 5:33pm:



Of course America will go into Syria, exactly like it did with Iraq and Afghanistan.

The American people have no say in it, just like the Australian people will have no say when Abbott drags us in.

People all over the world are sick of American led invasions, that won't stop them because they simply don't care. They have an agenda and nothing will get in the way.

Big Dave wrote on Sep 1^st, 2013 at 5:33pm:




SO poison gassing is silly now........ 1500 gassed....but none of our business

Peter Freedman wrote on Sep 1^st, 2013 at 5:42pm:




so what is the answer pete????????

who knows maybe this bastard has done this just to get the outside world INVOLVED....nothing b rings them out like WMD....


I btw am looking and waiting for the UN to have the answer.... why they do not have immediate action in a case like this ....dumbfounds me...

they sit there like crows on a fence... impotent/paralyzed.

waiting for the US to make the call... pathetic

Crook,
Quote:


There is a high tech war going on with Russia supplying
military technology to countries that the USA is fighting.
Already the Syrians have been supplied with S-300 missiles
but what other items that may have been secretly supplied?

What about anti-ship missiles?

I'd be afraid if I was on one of those 6 US warships off the coast of Syria.
Obama has to be prepared to lose his Mediterranean fleet.