— by Melissa Hemingway (feminine-perspective.org staff writer)
Military retaliation against Damascus only hurts more women & children. Making the institutions of peace and humanitarianism work is the only way ahead. Syria’s despicable dictator Bashar al-Assad, his brutal confreres, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Assad’s enabler, must be brought to justice under the rule of law.
The Syrian Civil War Must END Now
The conduct of war by all sides in and around Damascus, Syria has been devoid of proper care and respect for international human rights law, including humanitarian access across Syria to civilians in need.
Setting a new tolerance for obscenities on civilians, the conflict was launched by the Assad regime in 2011 with brazen attacks against Syrian opposition demonstrators who peacefully sought a shift toward democracy. Assad proceeded on a tirade of murder, killing hundreds of women and children. He behaves like a terrorist.
Not much has changed since 2011. Assad seeks more and more ways to project himself as an inhumane murderer of children. He pines for media images of choking women and kids and orders that controversy a hundred times a year. He is a terrorist in addition to being an unscrupulous authoritarian leader of Syria following in his disgusting father’s brutal footsteps.
But occasional bombings by America, Britain, and Israel have only increased the harm to civilians in Syria.
Arming and supporting the opposition to the Assad regime has produced only bloodshed. The terrorist Bashar al-Assad remains in power.
America’s militarizing and bolstering of the democratically-minded liberal opposition to Assad has killed half a million Syrians and displaced over 12 million.
Wasn’t that stupid?
In March 2011, Assad’s Win Was Predictable
Nobody but Assad was willing to use the brutally obscene crimes against humanity that both Assad and his father before him were willing to perform on ordinary Syrian women and children. That fact alone assured Assad’s win. (It’s a tangential argument for another time but the only way history tells us that terrorists can be defeated is to kill them. Assad is very much alive.)
The clues were not hard to see from March 2011. The Arab Spring unfolded in Tunisia and Egypt and those of Syria who sought the overturning of the Assad dynasty were encouraged to peaceful revolution.
That quasi-stab at revolution was met with obscene brutality and wanton mass murder.
Assad is a terrorist. He has a bevy of old-men officials who think the way he thinks.
Western Interference Made Things Worse Prolonging Conflict
Assad’s detractors would have walked away from armed revolt. They were peaceful idealists. But in came the outsiders interference club contributing billions of dollars worth of armaments and support. The arms makers are earning fortunes from their sales of weapons.
Armed to the teeth with modern assault weapons, what else could the Syrian opposition do but carry out their dreamed revolution. But it was doomed to failure as has been the case with all external manipulations in the Middle East.
People call the Syrian civil war a proxy war between America and Russia, Israel and Iran. But that is not the case. It is a failed revolt by well-meaning democratic thinkers in opposition to Assad’s brutal regime.
It’s a tangential argument for another time but the only way history tells us that terrorists can be defeated is to kill them. Assad is very much alive.
Outrage and Indignation are Wasteful
The April 7 chemical barrel bomb attack against women and children hiding in their basements in the back area of the conflict in Douma, if indeed that is what happened to bring death and suffering from unequivocal symptoms of chemical warfare, must be investigated completely for the purpose of trying, convicting and imprisoning or hanging those criminals who did this.
Military retaliation only hurts more women and children. Making the institutions of peace and humanitarianism work is the only way ahead. Assad, his brutal confreres, and Putin, Assad’s enabler, must be brought to justice under the rule of law. – Melissa
America Hands Russia a Foreign Policy Coup
Donald Trump needs to learn when to shut up (STFU). His enormous policy failure coup handed to Putin (Bashar al-Assad’s chief military ally) and Bashar al-Assad on a platter is a plate full of chemical-sickness baby barf from the basements of eastern Ghouta, Syria. There is nothing Trump can do militarily to help the situation. Nothing.
Trump got it right when he said it is time America left Syria.
American gaffs in Syria will feed future historians and critics with tons of material. For example, in 2013, the CIA began a covert programme to arm, fund and train pro-democracy anti-Assad revolutionaries, but the programme was later shut down after it was alleged that the CIA had spent half a billion dollars but reportedly trained only 60 fighters. WHo knows what is true amongst the cacophony of lies coming from Washington DC this past 15 months?
America has been involved in the Syrian shadows only, but then a year ago, US naval forces carried out America’s first military action against Assad’s forces on Syrian territory, launching 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Shayrat, a Syrian air force base from which US officials believe a chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun had been launched. But despite America’s so-called Red Line policy on chemical weapons (CW) use in Syria, hundreds of CW uses have been observed.
Too Many Players In A War That Makes No Sense
The Shia Muslim governments of Iran and Iraq plus Lebanon-based Hezbollah, have supported Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad, while mainly Sunni-Muslim countries, including Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, support the pro-democracy anti-Assad revolutionaries.
Since 2016, Turkish troops are in Syria launching operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant near Turkey’s borders, as well as against Kurdish groups armed by the United States.
Israel has carried out air raids inside Syria, reportedly targeting Iranian/Hezbollah and pro-Assad fighters and facilities.
Russia has been bombing what it says are “terrorists” in Syria, including ISIS fighters and American-backed pro-democracy anti-Assad revolutionaries.
Assad has won the civil war in Syria.
Stability and humanitarian recovery are the only things needed by the people of Syria.