US angling to conduct air war on Syria

Press TV has conducted an interview with Don DeBar, an activist and political commentator from New York.

Press TV: Since we are talking first of all about the role of Israel in this, a lot of people had been suggesting for a long time now that in the Golan Heights there have been reports and evidence of cooperation between Israeli forces and militants in that region and now I would just like to mention again the equipment that has been found in Syria, which is Israeli made.

Do you agree that Israel is in fact not on the side of the militants?

DeBar: Please. Israel has occupied the Golan Heights for decades now in opposition to the Syrian government whether (Syrian President) Bashar this particular Assad or his father or any Syrian government since 35-40 years ago; better than 40 years ago.

Israel is an enemy of Syria. Israel chose Syria as an enemy because Syria is a friend of the Palestinian people in material and very concrete ways, which Israel finds dangerous, offensive and just doesn’t care for.

The United States does not like the Syrian government, they don’t like the fact that Syria exercises, practices sovereignty and it does not belong to the club of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others that are essentially puppets of the United States as they were puppets of Britain before.

Press TV: I guess what our guest there in London was saying, if I could jump in here, he was saying the Israeli airstrikes that we saw in Syria were actually meant to destroy the military equipment from reaching the militants.

We know Israel itself has said that it wanted to stop those weapons from reaching Hezbollah. What do you think the Israeli airstrikes were all about?

DeBar: The Israeli airstrikes were an extension of American power. The government of the United States is looking at deep domestic political crises and also something like 65 to 70 percent of the population against any further engagements in war.

In addition to that, the Obama administration rests on support from the most virulent anti-war constituency among those that vote for major party candidates in the country.

It is impossible at the moment – although they have tried to maneuver it numerous times with various scenarios of nerve gas and other allegations – it is impossible for them to directly act with air support in support of the ground troops that your guest in London supports.

This is the same scenario that is trying to find expression in Syria.

Press TV: Mr. Don DeBar, when that shocking video did come out there were of course a lot of reactions and throughout these days a lot of people have been interpreting that video as a sign that what the West called the moderate armed opposition in Syria has now actually turned quite radical.

A lot of people were saying that the person who was in that video, who was saying that he is the leader of the Farouq Brigade that that was part of the Free Syrian Army and that shows that the militancy is getting more radical every day. How do you interpret that video?

DeBar: It is disgusting and it shows the level of terrorism as the expressed policy of these groups that is unmatched in my memory except by state terrorism like carpet bombing of North Vietnam by the United States or carpet bombing of Libya by the United States, or nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I mean this is – at a personal level at a small numbers level – the most grotesque thing that I have seen.

I would like to ask our guest in the UK if all of these Muslim fighters who are pouring in to fight Bashar Assad – which apparently they are not making it to the ground because the government is cleaning up rather handily there – I am wondering if any of them plan to stop off in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia or the other places where the most repressive regimes on planet Earth, the most backwards, the most brutal that have Muslims as the objects of their brutality, if those fighters are going to stop and deal with that on their way to dealing with Assad, because the scale of offense of the Saudi monarchy, the Qatari monarchy and the Bahrain monarchy being propped up by those two is on several orders of magnitude against anything that has happened even in this war that is going on in Syria…

So, I would like to know if they plan to deal with that first as a show of good faith to Muslims around the world.

Press TV: Would you say that there is no al-Qaeda in Syria and then again we have got the now categorization by the UK, the US and etcetera. They are saying we have got good rebels, bad rebels, we have got the moderate opposition, [and] we have got the radical opposition. Is that a categorization that you think is realistic?

DeBar: No, it depends on who is applying the term good or bad, but first of all al-Qaeda isn’t trademarked. There are no property rights in the name and when people call themselves al-Qaeda one has to first look at the genocist of al-Qaeda, which is of course US intelligence.

Your guest in London made reference to the Mujahedeen, again a product of US intelligence in Afghanistan intended as a Cold War tool to destabilize the southern flank of the Soviet Union.

The outcome of the US intelligence meddling and the wars that were conducted in Afghanistan and elsewhere, through Iraq and elsewhere, through Libya and elsewhere, are people on the ground, Muslims, murdering each other on a daily basis by the scores – the United States and Western Europe carting off the wealth of the region.

Some local [confidants] like the Saud family, like the royal family in Qatar and others making billions of dollars and repressing their people brutally to the extent women, for example, can’t drive in Saudi Arabia, people have their hands and feet cut off, I don’t know if that is the Sharia law that he is referring to, but that is what they practice in Saudi Arabia.

The obvious material basis for what is going on there is to serve US and Western European imperialism and you can look at the ledger in terms of bodies or funds and see that that is exactly what is being practiced and what is being advocated by your guest in London materially, practically speaking is more of the same.

If you cannot identify the enemies of your enemies as allies and instead see those as your largest enemies then instead you are identifying yourself as an ally of the enemy. And that is what he is doing.

Press TV: Mr. Don DeBar I guess you want to respond to that [comment by our guest in London that these militants in Syria have been fighting the father of Israel, the US and UK, all over the world].

DeBar: Yeah, baloney. First of all, assuming that the attacks on the United States in 2001 were actually conducted by al-Qaeda; assuming that, which I don’t, but assuming that, the only beneficiary here was a small circle of people at the pinnacle of power, who wanted the ability to basically waste the United States constitution and impose a police state on the American people, which they have done in the main and they continue to do that every time there is one of these exercises.

Likewise in the UK, there has been no analogous action by al-Qaeda or any of your brothers in the struggle against Israel. Those battles have been taken to Israel by Hezbollah and by Hamas and by the people of Palestine, who for some reason do not warrant the attention that Bashar Assad does.

Now, again I am going to go back to this. When you look at a war and you see who is fighting whom and who is supporting whom, you can tell who is on which side.

When weapons are flown in from the United States and Western Europe to the insurgents in Syria and not the government, when Israel was attacking weapons caches that are being brought in to support the government or to be given to Hezbollah depending on which story you believe, but they were inside Damascus in the airport through regular channels; they were not smuggled; when that is whom Israel attacks, that is because Israel is attacking Syria or Hezbollah.

And the United States, of course, is the sponsor of Israel and has been angling to conduct an air war against Syria, like the one it conducted against Libya with your brothers on the ground working as allies with NATO against the Libyan people and destroying that country. And that is what you intend to do to Syria and that only serves the United States and Western Europe.