Viet Nam Human Rights
Adding fuel to the fire in Syria
9/4/17
Early on the morning of April 7, from its
warships USS Porter and USS Ross in the Mediterranean Sea, the US launched
dozens of Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat air base near the central city of
Homs, Syria. This is the biggest substantial escalation of the US military
over the past six years of the Syrian civil war, which may pose potential
risk of exacerbating tensions in the region while threatening to completely
shatter all efforts to seek a political solution to the crisis in this Middle
Eastern country.
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The Pentagon has directly carried out attacks targeting Syrian
military. A total of 59 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs) targeted
aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage,
ammunition supply bunkers, air defence systems, and radars at the Shayrat air
base. The US announced that the strike was in response to a chemical weapons
attack in Idlib, which claimed the lives of dozens of ordinary Syrian people;
although there has been no confirmation as to which side in the Syrian war
carried out the attack.
US President Donald Trump ordered the military strike, saying
that it is in the vital national security interest of the US to prevent and
deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons.
However, the US military action has faced strong opposition
from the Syrian Government. Damascus called this an "act of
aggression" and said the attack has caused casualties to Syrian officers
and soldiers. Although US defence officials announced that they have no clear
plans for a military escalation in Syria, and the missile strike carried no
sign of shifting in President Trump's priority policy, the unexpected
military intervention by the US has intensified tensions in Syria, and
increased the risk of a direct confrontation among powers involved in the
ongoing conflict in Syria.
Russian President Vladimir Putin described the US airstrikes
on Syria as "an act of aggression against a sovereign state,"
according to a Kremlin statement. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
called it "an act of aggression under a completely invented
pretext", saying that everything resembled the situation in 2003, when
the US led an invasion in Iraq. Russia said it believed Syria had destroyed
all its chemical weapons since the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons (OPCW) confirmed that all the chemical weapons Syria had officially
acknowledged of possessing were destroyed in 2013. Kremlin also said that the
missile strike "dealt a serious blow to Russia-US relations," and
posed a huge obstacle for the establishment of an international coalition to
fight against the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
Iran also sharply criticised US missile strikes on a Syrian
airfield.
Contrary to the opposition from Russia and Iraq, the surprise
US missile strikes in Syria have been broadly supported by European countries
so far. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the US bombing was a
warning to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s
prime minister, said the “Australian government strongly supports the swift
and just response of the United States.” Syrian National Coalition welcomed
US cruise missile strikes, and demanded the US do more to hinder the Syrian
army's abilities.
The US’s act of military escalation took place at a time when Russia
and the US, which have supported two different rival parties in Syria, are in
strong disagreement on the chemical weapons attack on April 4, which caused
the death of over 80 people and affected hundreds more. While Syrian
government and rebel forces are accusing each other on using chemical
weapons, the tragic images of victims of the attack have prompted the
international community to voice their opposition and prevent brutal killings
of innocent civilians.
Syria badly needs a political solution. Any military
escalation is an act of "adding fuel to the fire", which could even
trigger a military confrontation between powers who are supporting parties in
Syria, and push the Middle East on the brink of peril.
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All comments [ 11 ]
Nine civilians including four children were killed, the Syrian state news agency claimed, but the Pentagon said civilians were not targeted.
Such is the case with the strike against Syria, which is too big a risk in too complicated a place to be used for distraction, for diversion, for the pose he needs in the narrative du jour.
Protesters will reject this latest attack on a poor country coming on the heels of hundreds of civilian deaths at the hands of U.S. airstrikes.
U.S. wars are always built on lies and claims that they are fought for humanitarian reasons. Whether it was the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1966 which launched the U.S. into the quagmire of Viet Nam; the 1990 incubator baby lie which launched a 42-day aerial assault of Iraq, killing tens of thousands; or 2003’s infamous weapons of mass destruction — the end result is always death and destruction
President Trump made an about-face in his approach to the Middle East by launching a fiery salvo of cruise missiles early Friday.
If this is a one-off event, fire-and-forget retaliation against a single incident, it will prove useless.
Each new atrocity will undermine Trump’s effort to project strength and establish the red line he has declared may not be crossed, drawing Americans into a deeper conflict.
Trump now faces exactly the pressures that President Obama sought to avoid when he decided against approving U.S. military strikes in Syria himself in 2013, after Congress refused to authorize them.
The Obama administration found itself in a similar predicament in Libya in 2011.
The mission morphed into regime change, as it often does, and Libya wound up in a civil war that produced a failed state where an Islamic State affiliate has taken root.
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