US stoking flames of civil war in Syria

A political commentator tells Press TV that the United States is ‘stoking the flames of civil war’ inside Syria by funding the militant groups that are fighting the government.

Secretary of State John Kerry underlined the United States’ ‘determination’ to intervene in Syria in favor of the foreign-backed militant groups. Kerry announced Monday that the Obama administration had been looking at fresh ‘steps’ to expand its support for the anti-Damascus armed gangs. Syria has been experiencing unrest for nearly two years, and many people, including large numbers of army and security personnel, have been killed in the turmoil.

Press TV has interviewed Kevin Barrett, an American author and political expert in Madison, Wisconsin, to further discuss the issue. The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: How significant is this statement now that the United States will be providing ‘non-lethal’ aid to these insurgents?

Barrett: Well, I am not sure how significant it is, but I am sure how absurd it is when Senator Kerry – or I should say secretary Kerry – tells us that the way to get a negotiated solution to the Syria crisis is to give more material to these rebels inside Syria and stoke flames of civil war even more than they have already been stoked. I do not know what he is been smoking. You know, throughout this crisis, the Western governments have been arming these rebel groups and mercenaries.

There are mercenaries from Saudi Arabia and other places who have been sent into Syria, and this violence has actually been the main bar to a political solution that, you know, if these demonstrators in Syria had stuck with the Arab Spring plan of peaceful protests, progress would have certainly been slow and like in Bahrain where the progress has really been slow, but in Syria the Western governments and other regional governments are very much open to supporting those kinds of protests.

So it was, I think, a terrible mistake by Syrian opponents of the government when they decided to start a civil war, decided to go along with the plans of the Zionists and the Saudis and the Americans to try to destabilize Syria through violence.

That was a terrible, terrible mistake. Certainly, you can understand why some of them may have made that mistake in good faith but it was a tragedy, and to hear Kerry come out and say we have to keep helping this war, keep fueling this war and that is the way to get peace, is just a rank nonsense.

So is there any significance… does this mean that the US is going to be directly helping the Syrian rebels any more than it has in the past and the mercenaries from outside Syria who were probably the real problem? I do not know. I kind of think that it is more political posturing and so often the way that these guys think is that they believe that if they pressure the other side more that somehow they will get a better deal at the negotiating table. So maybe that is what Kerry’s war words is really all about.

He is just beating his breast and talking big with the hope that that will improve his side standing at the negotiating table, which is where the solution in Syria is going to have to come from, not from the battlefield in these cities, where people are being slaughtered in mass by all sides; where these terrifically awful kinds of battles and catastrophes for this growing population of Syria have been going on for so long.

We need a political solution as fast as possible and this kind of American posturing is not helping.