1058. United National Antiwar Coalition: U.S./Israel Hands Off Syria!

By United National Antiwar Coalition, May 9, 2013

Locations Israeli planes bombed

The May 2-3 and 4-5 nighttime bombings of Syria’s International Airport,
military installations in a Damascus suburb and a military supply depot
reportedly killed 300 people. The bombings were initially denied but then
confirmed by Israel and soon after given the stamp of approval by the Obama
Administration.

The previous week President Obama and Secretary of Defense Charles Hagel
threatened to escalate U.S. intervention in Syria based on the unsubstantiated
charge that Syria had employed weapons of mass destruction, in this case the
deadly sarin gas.

What is incontrovertible is that U.S. allies in the region - Turkey, Qatar and
Saudi Arabia - have supplied hundreds of millions of dollars in lethal
military aid to destabilize the Syrian regime. The U.S. itself claims to have
supplied some $400 million in “non-lethal aid.”  The U.S., which funds
Israel’s multi-billion dollar “Iron Dome” missile program, is the chief
military force in the region.

 No serious observers believe that Israel, the largest recipient of U.S. aid
in the world, to the tune of $4 billion annually, acts without U.S. approval –
the same is undeniable with regard to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. NATO
ally, Turkey.

 In the case of Qatar, a nation without an army, the U.S.-established and
privatized Blackwater military installation is used daily as an operational
base for the U.S. war in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

 The U.S. Machiavellian strategy in Syria is first and foremost to advance its
economic, military and regional “interests.” The latter includes deepening the
isolation of Iran, whose oil wealth the U.S. corporate elite seeks to regain.
 We recognize no rights among imperial nations to determine the future of any
oppressed nation on earth, not to mention the modern day neo-colonial
interveners. With regard to Syria, that right belongs to the Syrian people
only.

 The U.S. government is presently restrained by the mass antiwar sentiment
expressed in repeated polls over the past two years. The most recent Pew
Research poll indicates that 62 percent are opposed to any U.S. intervention
in Syria. We must add to this the fact the U.S. bloody wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the decades long U.S. support to the Egyptian Mubarak
dictatorship as well as the constant drone attacks on Pakistan, Yemen and
Somalia have earned it the deep hatred of the peoples of the Middle East and
beyond.

 The Iraq “weapons of mass destruction” justification for this still-raging
war, that has taken the lives of 1.5 million Iraqis so far, and the ongoing
war in Afghanistan, wherein the U.S. puppet Hamid Karzai regime is discredited
around the world, has convinced social justice activists everywhere that the
U.S. imperial rulers fight for oil and military-geographic advantage and not
for peace and justice.

More than ever the U.S. and the worldwide antiwar and social justice movement
must demand:

·       U.S./Israel Hands Off Syria!
·       Bring All U.S. Troops and Mercenaries Home Now!
·       Self-determination for the Syrian People!
·       No to U.S. Sanctions Anywhere!
·       End All U.S. Aid to Israel!
·       U.S. Out of the Middle East Now!