Attack on Syria: The hypocrisy of Obama, Kerry and co.

Two Sec's of State.  Ask her about dead children John?

by Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

The billionaire John Kerry who also functions as the US Secretary of State is ready to teach the Syrian dictator Assad a lesson. He called Assad a "thug and a murderer", and says the US can’t let a dictator get away with such serious crimes; unless it’s one of the US’s dictators of course.  "History will judge us all extraordinarily harshly if we turn a blind eye to a dictator's wanton use of weapons of mass destruction," Kerry added.

I was watching the news tonight and it can make you feel so helpless as it is like a bunch of parrots repeating their master’s words.  Most Americans don’t really pay much attention to the forces that are at play in the world getting most of our news form CNN and other such outlets.  The US is not unfamiliar with chemical warfare as it used it in Vietnam pouring dioxin (Agent Orange) on the Vietnamese people and their food.  The chemical was even poured over their own troops.  Kerry was in Vietnam he must know that.  The US used Napalm ion Vietnam also and white phosphorous and depleted uranium in Iraq.

The phony concern coming out of the mouths of Obama, Kerry and other Wall Street politicians are seen for what they are by the vast majority of people in the world. The US spin doctors have no credibility.  The attack that has taken place, no matter who did it, killed 1,429 Syrians, including at least 426 children reports say.  But lets add a little US political logic to this scenario.  The US enforced sanctions in Iraq cost the lives of some 500,000 people, mostly women and children.  But when Madeline Albright who was also US Secretary of State was asked about this on US TV she said that the deaths were “worth it”.

From her point of view such mass slaughter is worth it of course just like the death of 3 million Vietnamese was worth it I suppose.

Wolf Blitzer had his array of “experts” on a panel, one of them the right wing Zionist Alan Dershowitz. Another one was some sort of former CIA official.  Dershowitz I think it was mentioned something about the US imposing a “no fly” zone.  They all had a nice little chat about this but no one mentioned the possibility of a “no fly” zone over Gaza. The Israeli’s used white phosphorous in Gaza, the US used it in Fallujah, Obama’s drones have been slaughtering innocent women and children in Afghanistan and Pakistan for years.  This whole affair is not about human decency and rights

In the aftermath of the British parliamentary vote to oppose involvement the talk was also about having to put together a US led coalition. Oh, let’s see who will be on that team I wonder.  There’ll be the Saudi’s and the pimps that lead the Gulf States that get US weapons and protection from their own people.  There’ll be some other flunkies who will be blackmailed and cajoled in to giving whatever action is taken some sort of international legitimacy.

But this is less about Syria than Iran.  Kerry says Iran will be “emboldened” if the US doesn’t act.  We’re all supposed to be afraid of Iran.  But why would Iran not want nuclear weapons?  Israel has hundreds of them?  The US invaded the country bordering Iran and also encouraged the former leader of that country, Saddam Hussein to invade Iran and offered money, and chemical weapons to do so. Incidentally, Bremer who was the US imposed governor of Iraq after the US invaded it, repeatedly referred to Assad as Saddam on the news tonight.  What morons.

The capitalist class cannot rule with any level of stability and jumps out of the frying pan into the fire, from one quagmire to the next with working class youth at the front.  The class that rules leads from the rear in these ventures.  If the attack on Syria goes ahead and it looks more likely that it will, a few hundred million dollars of US taxpayer funds will disappear in a few minutes. The war on workers at home will continue in order to pay for it and the ranks of the terrorist groups will find new recruits.  And yet again, the  “experts” at the Pentagon are on the same team as al Qaeda or the Islamic fanatics.  Way to go boys.

The most pressing task facing the workers of the world is the class war over which class governs society and for us in the US which class represents us to the world.  Despite the many changes that have taken place in the working class in the US, the shifting of manufacturing abroad, the growth of finance capital and the service sector accompanied by an increase in unproductive labor, managers overseers, police and the like, global capitalism cannot be overthrown without the US working class settling accounts with the unelected coupon clippers that govern US society, the most heavily armed and ruthless bourgeois on the planet.

I remember when I was in my late teens and early twenties. You could travel from London to Joburg all through Africa overland, no problem.  You could go to Iran and Kashmir and Nepal and from Calais to Calcutta relatively safely. Not today.

This is how far the capitalist system has brought us. And its most powerful representatives are here in the US. We should consider that the US and the Democratic Party in particular is the only nation and the only party to have dropped nuclear bombs on civilian centers.  We should not underestimate their ruthlessness; they will not hesitate dropping nuclear weapons on their own cities if they saw their interests and their system truly threatened---United We Stand be damned.