Time to turn table on West warmongers
By Finian Cunningham
US President Barack Obama described the latest Security Council resolution on Syrian chemical weapons as “a huge victory for the world”. It certainly was a huge victory for diplomacy over war, to the relief of the world’s people. But for Obama to seek credit in the passing of this resolution is contemptible. It was a defeat for warmongers led by the likes of Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry, who were clamoring for unilateral missile strikes on Syria.
Also among those defeated are the American warmonger puppets of Britain and France, David Cameron and Francois Hollande. Nursing wounded egos are those other cheerleaders of American imperialism, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Recall that only a few weeks ago, these protagonists and proxies were on the cusp of launching an all-out criminal war of aggression on the Syrian Arab Republic.
Some of these warmongers seem to still retain residual fantasies of a military attack. President Obama has since the signing of the UN Security Council resolution last Friday, warned that Syria’s government will “face consequences” if it does not comply with the disarmament of its chemical weapons stockpile.
The Israeli minister of military affairs Moshe Yaalon went even further, reportedly telling media “after dismantling Syria’s chemical weapons, the regime in Damascus must be changed”.
The truth is that the UN resolution successfully de-fangs the warmongers. They now sound like sore losers whose diminishing threats are impotent attempts at flexing muscle. In this regard, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has safely steered the American war machine off the road.
In the wording of the resolution, which is binding to all parties, there is no mention of the use of military force. Use of force was precisely what Washington and its puppets and cheerleaders were threatening. Now there is a legal framework in place where such threats have been excluded.
Admittedly, in the final provision of the resolution, number 21, it is stated “in the event of non-compliance with this resolution, including unauthorized transfer of chemical weapons, or any use of chemical weapons by anyone in the Syrian Arab Republic, [permits] to impose measures under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter”.
The ominous Chapter VII may, in theory, lead to military force. But that eventuality would require another unanimous resolution, which Russia and China will veto.
This is no guarantee that the warmongers will not persist at some stage in the future with their plans of aggression and regime change in Syria. After all there are countless laws and charters already in existence for many decades that prohibit illegal violence, but which have not deterred American, British, French or Israeli terrorism.
Nevertheless, Resolution 2118 on Syria is an important impediment to the illicit war agenda and raises the political price for parties that might try to embark on a belligerent path. This is in the crucial context of worldwide public opposition to the warpath. No less important is that the American and European public is trenchantly against any such bellicose adventurism by rogue leaders.
In that way, the resolution is not so much a framework that puts Syria’s chemical weapons under international control but rather it puts American lawlessness and recourse to unilateral aggression, or state terrorism, under international control.
There are more positive aspects. For a start, if we accept the assumption that the Syrian government did not use or has no intention of using chemical weapons and that it has signed up in good faith to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, then there will be no such contingency as “non-compliance”.
The Syrian government has therefore found a legal way to safely dispose of a dangerous liability in the form of its chemical munitions stockpile. Maintaining this arsenal imposes unnecessary financial costs on the Syrian government. In an analogous way to Iran’s argument that nuclear weapons are an obsolete instrument at this point in history, so too it can be said about chemical weapons. To get rid of them is thus a relief from a burden.
The beauty is that this seeming concession is actually a gain, while the West’s concession of disposing its war plans is obviously a double gain for Syria.
Furthermore, the resolution agreed to last Friday by Washington, London and Paris, does not attribute the blame for the chemical weapon incident near Damascus on 21 August to the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The significance of that is that it discards from the official discourse the erstwhile and spurious allegations from these Western powers that the Syrian government forces were the perpetrators. That is an important nullification on the record of the West’s propaganda line.
In addition, the resolution places explicit onus that “no party in Syria should use, develop, produce, acquire, stockpile, retain, or transfer chemical weapons”.
This means it is not just the Syrian government that might be faulted and sanctioned for non-compliance (which it won’t); the Western-backed militants are now under scrutiny. And not just the militants, but all those who support, sponsor and supply them.
The resolution is not a one-way street compelling the Syrian government to walk alone. It rightly allows for the focus to be put on the Western-backed mercenaries and their masters. Washington, London and Paris can be made to do some serious walking by the assiduous application of their own signed-up-to words.
There is a risk, of course, that the Western-sponsored militants will try another false flag with chemical weapons to pin on the Assad government.
But, again, this risk is minimized by the Syrian government putting its arsenal under verifiable jurisdiction. If anything, it should become more apparent who the real perpetrators of misusing chemicals are: the Western-backed Takfiri groups.
In that case, the UNSC resolution permits legal and political sanctions to be slapped on the Western governments or their regional proxies in Tel Aviv, Riyadh and Ankara.
As time goes by, the evidential case points more strongly and irrefutably to the Western-backed militants as having used these ghastly chemical weapons. Just this weekend, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov disclosed that Moscow has further evidence connecting the Western-sponsored militants in the deadly sarin attack on Khan al Assal in Aleppo on 19 March earlier this year with the atrocity on 21 August near Damascus.
Sooner or later the full truth will emerge; and in that event the Western governments will be gravely liable on the basis of the latest UNSC resolution.
Finally, another advantage from the latest resolution is that under provision 16, it “endorses fully the Geneva Communiqué of 30 June 2012 (Annex II), which sets out a number of key steps beginning with the establishment of a transitional governing body exercising full executive powers, which could include members of the present government and the opposition and other groups and shall be formed on the basis of mutual consent.”
Notable is the reiterated inclusion of members of the present government. This provision scotches, at least legally speaking, the Western agenda of regime change through covert terrorism. It pours egg on the face of the likes of John Kerry, William Hague and Laurent Fabius who have been harping on about Assad standing down and “having no place on this earth”.
To be sure, it would be foolish to complacently place all trust in a UN Security Council resolution. The warmongers have been de-fanged for now but they can grow back new teeth.
However, it should not be underestimated that the legal framework has been carved out through the diligent work of Russia, Syria and Iran to turn the table on the Western warmongers.
The ultimate weapons are knowledge and intelligence; and these warmongers, while they are sneaky, are fatally weakened by their own stupid contradictions and lies. Let’s hit them with everything.
FC/HGH
This article was originally published at PRESS TV
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Finian Cunningham, originally from Belfast, Ireland, was born in 1963. He is a prominent expert in international affairs. The author and media commentator was expelled from Bahrain in June 2011 for his critical journalism in which he highlighted human rights violations by the Western-backed regime. 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 is also a musician and songwriter. For many years, he worked as an editor and writer in the mainstream news media, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. He is now based in East Africa where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring.He co-hosts a weekly current affairs programme, Sunday at 3pm GMT on Bandung Radio.
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