Thoughts from the point of view of a 16 year old
The Syria situation is one that is both complex and hard to research, as no one seems to know anything substantial – and by no one, I mean anyone other than the Higher Power Executives of the Western world. This is an article based on deduction and logic. This is not an article in support of any particular side and isn’t actually very focused on the Syria situation, although it uses it as a contemporary example to illustrate certain points.
Vladmir Putin’s plan to take Syria’s chemical weapons has been accepted by Syria – a problem sorted, right? Why would Assad refuse to comment on whether he even HAS chemical weapons, then agree to give them over to Putin? Is this an international agenda to protect various interests of various different elites in various parts of the world? This plan benefits all involved, especially the highest powers in the world – the US, for example. Obama definitely benefits from Putin’s plan – otherwise it’d seem to the world that he’d suffered a massive political defeat with even Britain deciding to take no action and Congress looking sceptical. Putin’s plan means Obama can save face and brush the fact that the US lacked international support – and the support of the UN – in his plans for military intervention in Syria under the rug. It’s interesting to point out the hypocrisy of Obama’s, some might say, ‘war-mongering’ techniques. Obama keeps mentioning the ‘international laws’ that all countries are supposed to abide by, and yet he’s breaking one himself – the UN bans the ‘threat or use of force’ and yet Obama is still threatening use of force. If what we’re told in school is to be believed, two wrongs don’t make a right, Mr Obama.
In September 2013, Putin proposed a plan to neutrally and peacefully take Assad’s chemical weapons after the world leader meeting at which Syria was not even on the agenda, but was inevitably talked about. If a subject which is not officially on the agenda can be discussed, who knows what has been said or agreed behind those closed doors over the years? How has it come to be that people who claim to be so accountable to and representative of the public suddenly become so unaccountable in many ways? Wouldn’t an above-the-board, above-the-belt, by-the-books leadership team let everyone know what was really going on? A straight live audio feed from the room would have been nice – no time for that little bit of editing that we’re so good at doing now-a-days to misframe the real issues. Society has been arranged by the people who run it in the way it is today with the assurance we only ever really see the outcomes and never the real agendas or interests between international allies that these outcomes protect or serve. What other reason is there for Putin’s surprisingly fierce upholding of his view against intervention in Syria, given that Assad had been accused of using chemical weapons against his own people, other than to protect interests? But then, why would he go against a country that Russia had been so closely allied with for many years? Take into consideration that Israel, which is in the region of Syria and has close links with America, has praised the treaty – describing it as a ‘breakthrough’ – has refused to acknowledge its own chemical weapon possession. If it’s such a good idea for Syria to give up their weapons, why wouldn’t Israel follow suit to encourage the entire world to drop their chemical weapons as all these world leaders seem to want? I think it’s because everyone wants change but no one wants to make changes to themselves – ‘I’m fine, it’s those other people that need changing’… It’s perhaps too philosophical for such a slippery and bloody subject such as politics to say that they should look at themselves before trying to change others, but we are humans, and it always seems to be someone else’s problem.
To me, it all seems to be an international, cross-continental and massively propagandized playground fight between 2 of the biggest kids in the school – the US and Russia. According to this metaphor, Syria is a smaller friend of Russia who may have been doing some bad things recently. As a 16 year old, I have heard for most of my life the ‘lessons’, doctrines and ideologies rammed into kids’ heads from the time they start school until they enter the big wide world and find it’s… nothing like they thought. We are told to do the right thing, and stand up and speak out if we see other people doing things wrong – an ‘upstander-bystander’ type principal. So, if Syria and Russia are great friends, why doesn’t Russia speak out against Syria’s bad actions? It just seems that the public is being told, taught and trained to act in one way – perhaps in order to create a whistle-blowing society that lightens the load on law enforcement – while world leaders act in the opposite way. Perverting the course of justice is punishable, at maximum, by a life sentence and is defined as an act in ‘which someone prevents justice from being served on himself or on another party’. This is the rule that applies to the public. Isn’t Assad’s refusal to answer on whether he possesses chemical weapons preventing justice from ‘being served on himself or on another party’? That’s just one example of the double edged sword that is world leadership and the double standard which exists within the world. This system, as I understand it, works on a ‘reverse meritocratic’ basis – in other words, the worse stuff you do, the worse you get punished. Saying this, it just seems to me that the public are given one liberty-reducing rule book whilst if you just happen to run a country, it’s ‘here you go – the same rule book with a few blank spaces left to suit your needs’, have a nice day, Sir’.
On September 10, 2013, Obama gave a speech full of all the usual American idioms and ideology that’s usually found in President’s speeches – ‘My fellow Americans’ and all that meaningless and fake camaraderie-talk. Obama, in highly dramatic words and in a highly dramatic speech style – the usual even tone from Obama (perhaps so he’s seen as the world’s voice of reason, I don’t know), as well as various stops, pauses and ellipses at the dramatic points of his propagandized and unevidenced claims. There’s no doubt Obama is a great orator, but then again, so was Hitler. Obama accused Assad of gassing ‘over 1000 people, including 100s of children’ without conclusive evidence from the UN chemical weapons inspectors before going on to use not-so-covert shock tactics – describing the images, that most had already seen, in great detail with a disapproving expression across his face - in order to scare his compliant and unthinking nation of people, and indeed the compliant and unthinking people of the world…and he wonders why some say he’s war mongering. In fact, in July, the Office of Foreign Assets Control authorised the channelling of financial support for the Free Syrian Army through the Syrian Support Group – doesn’t it seem like he’s fuelling the war in order to have an excuse to intervene? More on covert operations and coups d’états later. Late social critic and stand-up comedian, George Carlin, commented on America’s lack of skills by pointing out that America ‘can’t build a decent car’ and ‘can’t make a TV set or a VCR worth a fuck’ among other things before coming to the punch line – ‘But we can bomb the shit out of your country, alright’. George puts it perfectly in this section from his 1992 stand-up DVD, ‘Jammin’ in New York’, and has pointed out that America is only 200 years old and has already had 10 major wars – an average of a major war every 20 years. He then goes on to compare America with Nazi Germany by saying, ‘Can you remember any white people we’ve ever bombed? The Germans, those are the only ones and that’s only ‘cuz they were try’na cut in on our action! They wanted to dominate the world, bullshit – that’s our fucking job!’ Maybe it seems that I digress from my point, but it’s just interesting to watch shows from over 20 years ago and we seem to have come so far as a world society… and yet, the same things are still happening today! How far have we really come when Carlin can point out in ‘92, and not for the first time, that America have a habit of getting themselves into wars and the same quotes still be relevant to today’s situations? It would seem that humans ‘like to think we've evolved and advanced because we can build a computer, fly an airplane, travel underwater, we can write a sonnet, paint a painting, compose an opera. But you know something? We're barely out of the jungle on this planet. Barely out of the fucking jungle. What we are, is semi-civilized beasts, with baseball caps and automatic weapons.’ – this passage is a quote from Carlin’s 2005 ‘Life is Worth Losing’ stand-up show, almost 15 years after ‘Jammin’ in New York’ and still saying the same things!
So anyway, George Carlin, in my opinion, has it down to a tee there with his analyses of past America which are, on the whole, still applicable today. Obama described how America had been the ‘anchor of global security’ for almost 7 decades, a conspicuous and highly subjective statement to make to such a wide range of people. How much trust can we put in the statement when almost every few years, the US is involved with the regime change of some less developed country with outcomes that ‘coincidentally’ benefit themselves, such as the Iranian coup of 1953.
During the Cold war, America had been involved in 21 coups d’états – both successful and unsuccessful. Since the end of the cold war, they have been involved in 8 coups d’états including the current Syrian crisis – some of which are still happening. I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t sound like a country which has been the ‘anchor of global security’ as Obama put it. I don’t understand how he can outright lie to the world in saying this, when any member of the public can go on the internet or go to a library and find out that America – and especially the CIA – has been involved with many regime changes abroad which did not threaten their national security. For example, 1983 – the Grenada coup had US support under Reagan who’s administration had over 250 members that had quit, been arrested, been fired, convicted or were otherwise under investigation. In fact, the Attorney General was under investigation by 4 different bodies and he was the nation’s leading law enforcement officer! Another example, 1973 – the US played a major role in overthrowing the parliamentary democracy of Chile and imposing a military dictatorship after Nixon launched economic warfare and once ordered the relevant people to, ‘Make the economy scream’. People in Latin America actually call the coup ‘the first 9/11’. Yet another example, 1963 – the South Vietnam coup, backed by the US, which was surrounded with mystery and controversy after their target was executed in convoy and the offending officers tried to cover it up as a suicide despite there being multiple gunshot and stab wounds on the body. Are they to be fully trusted after such dishonesty has been shown in the past? Now, another ‘incident’ America played a little part in – the 1953 Iran coup. In 1953, the US and the UK, we are not excluded from all of this by the way, overthrew the parliamentary system of Iran and wanted to impose a ‘puppet regime’ on the country. . Iran naturally wanted to get rid of the British political influence and put an end to exploitation by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company which is now one of our main suppliers of oil – BP. In 1951, 2 years before the coup, negotiations between AIOC and the Iranian government failed and the oil industry was nationalized with the industry being transferred from private to state ownership or control. Do you think AIOC would have liked this? Probably not – they would have lost millions, maybe more, from the move. So what did they do about it? On British initiative, the CIA overthrew Prime Minister Mosaddegh which meant that although the oil industry was still formally nationalized, a few different oil companies were allowed to operate and make money there under a standard of 50/50 profit-sharing deal. The whole process left the British a major share in what had been their ‘single most valuable foreign asset’. Now, back to the present day – or recent past if you want to be picky – in August 2013, the CIA formally admitted that it was involved in both the planning and execution of the coup, including the bribing of Iranian politicians, security and high ranking army officials as well as pro-coup propaganda. Also, it has emerged that AIOC contributed $25,000 towards the expense of bribing officials and ‘nobody seems to notice… nobody seems to care’ (another Carlin quote if you were wondering).
So you see that my point is, money and national interests – economic, political or other – can come before what might be best for certain countries and is an amplified version of the very human trait of self-preservation and the evil ‘twin’ of that trait – self-interest. Democracy and fairness will always be overturned by the want – the need – for money and power over others. But maybe that knowledge of self-worth, self-interest and greed is what makes us human and what has led the human race to ultimately, as Louis CK put it, ‘get out of the food chain’. People forget that these are human traits, they affect most of humanity, including politicians. These people also blame politicians for being as they are but don’t understand that these politicians come from the same societies as they do - although no doubt from a higher class. The difference is that these politicians just happen to have enormous and devastating amounts of power in their hands. Anyone familiar with even more George Carlin quotes or shows may see the start of one of his arguments, but I won’t go into it more than to say; these are the reasons society will never change, never improve and never succeed – humans look for ideals when we are ourselves massively flawed in our nature.
‘It's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.’ – George Carlin, Life is Worth Losing, 2005
Very good ive enjoyed reading this article.
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