The Neocons Still Won’t Take Responsibility For The Destruction Of Syria

The U.S. empire has been trying to change who rules Syria since 1956, when the CIA staged an “anti-communist” coup called Operation Straggle. According to General Wesley Clark, in 2002 the U.S. began secretly planning to overthrow Syria’s government after several such attempts throughout the last five decades. Since at least as far back as 2005, the U.S. began financing and training anti-government forces in Syria, which Obama mobilized in 2011 to catastrophic effect.

To believe the neocon narrative about Syria is to believe that a global refugee crisis and a seven-year-long war have stemmed from Syrian labor protests that broke out in 2011. The facts don’t back this story up, and it makes much more intuitive sense to blame Western intervention for what’s happened.

Despite the neoliberal policies of Assad’s Baath party, which has lead to worker rebellions, Assad hasn’t been the one behind Syria’s destabilization. Assad has not “attacked his own people,” and he hasn’t been behind the famous bombings of Syrian hospitals. Nor has he committed a single chemical attack throughout his rule. The West has consistently worked to shift the blame for violence onto Assad. And Assad’s supposed gas attacks have all been either hoaxes or false flags carried out by the Syrian rebels, who continue to have a chemical weapons supply of their own.

If this sounds like a stretch, it follows in the line of how the U.S. empire has operated for the last century or so. The Spanish-American War was started through a U.S.-initiated false flag, with the USS Maine having been “attacked” by Spain so that America could start a war over the sugar trade. Vietnam started
similarly, and so did the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War. The 2003 US Special Forces Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces even advisesthe use of false flags. The U.S. empire’s desire to replace the disobedient Assad with a leader that they can control has motivated America's involvement in Syria, along with the deceptions that this regime change war has entailed.

The U.S. and Israel have armed and trained al-Qaeda forces to commit terrorist
attacks against Syria, a fact that the West has clumsily covered by calling these forces “moderate rebels.” The U.S. has bombed Syrian and Russian soldiers in Syria, a recent incident that almost escalated the conflict into a U.S.-Russia hot war. American forces have crossed the Euphrates river against Assad’s wishes, a clear violation of sovereignty that constitutes an invasion. The West has used its jihadist forces to seize brutal control of Aleppo, while portraying the Syrian Arab Army as malevolent for trying to win back the “liberated” city. Under Trump, the  U.S. has struck Syria under the guise of punishing Assad for chemical attacks, which would be a war crime even if Assad had actually ever used chemical weapons.

Yet Western imperialists still won’t acknowledge their role in the catastrophe, and are sticking to the story that Assad caused the war by attacking the innocent rebel forces. This is the view of Syria that’s promoted by the mainstream media and by prominent neoconservatives, and that’s even shared by the pro-intervention leftists who seek to overthrow Assad’s government.

As the Syrian war slowly concludes, we can’t let its history be revised. Spread the truth about what’s happened; it’s how we can help inspire a massive, sustained mobilization against the forces of empire.