Darius Shahtahmasebi is een mensenrechten activist, jurist en schrijver met het Midden-Oosten als specialisme.

In het volgende artikel, dat ik overnam van Anti-Media, buigt Shahtahmasebi zich over de illegale bemoeienis van de VS met Syrië en de vele leugens waarmee figuren als ex-VS-minister van BuZa John Kerry de aanwezigheid van de VS in dat land probeerde te legitimeren (en dat ging behoorlijk ver, zoals u in het artikel kan lezen.

Kerry is zo’n ongelofelijk hufter, dat hij de zaak volkomen omdraaide (en nog steeds omdraait). Als je hem moet geloven, is Rusland niet legaal op Syrische bodem daar Assad in de ogen van de VS niet de legitieme president van Syrië is….. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Als het over verkiezingen gaat, kunnen de VS overheid, inclusief Kerry, beter de eerste 100 jaar de vuilbek dichthouden, wat in dat gestolen land gebeurd (middels de op 1 na grootste genocide ooit), heeft al lang niets meer met democratie te maken!!

Voorlopig werd Assad met een fikse meerderheid in 2014 tot president verkozen, in door internationale waarnemers als eerlijk beoordeelde verkiezingen!! Zo wil oud-VS-president Carter wil al jaren niet meer als waarnemer werken voor verkiezingen in de VS, daar deze verkiezingen in zijn ogen niet eerlijk en democratisch verlopen, terwijl hij dit wel in diverse andere landen heeft gedaan…….

Bovendien zou Rusland zich in Syrië niet bezig houden met het bestrijden van IS, iets dat de VS wel zou doen. Toen Rusland eind september 2015 de Syrische regering te hulp schoot in de strijd tegen IS en andere terreurgroepen (‘gematigde rebellen’ aangestuurd door Al Qaida en Saoedi-Arabië), was IS sterker dan ooit, ondanks dat de VS al meer dan een jaar deze terreurgroep ‘bestreed’, o.a. middels een enorm aantal bombardementen……. (waarover VS veteranen en andere getuigen vertelden, dat niet zelden delen van de woestijn werden gebombardeerd, waar geen mens te vinden was…..)

Zelfs de export van ‘IS olie’ naar Turkije werd niet aangepakt door de VS…… Na 2 maanden van Russische hulp aan het Syrische leger werd er (veel) meer bereikt tegen IS, dan de VS en haar coalitiegenoten in meer dan 1 jaar voor elkaar kregen en lag de IS oliehandel zo goed als op de reet…….

Ach wat zou ik nog toevoegen, lees de volgende uitstekende analyse van Shahtahmasebi:

America’s
Catastrophic — and Illegal — Intervention in Syria Must Be
Stopped

August
3, 2017 at 11:36 am

Written
by Darius
Shahtahmasebi

(ANTIMEDIA Op-ed) — Toward
the end of last year, leaked
audio of
then-Secretary of State John Kerry went viral across the independent
media because it appeared to confirm that the U.S. was watching ISIS
and allowing the group to grow in order to exert pressure on the
Syrian government, a long-time
adversary of
the Obama administration.

However,
more stunning than this apparent admission was the fact that Kerry
confirmed what Anti-Media has
been warning
about for some time now regarding
the legality of America’s Syrian operation. In the leaked audio,
speaking to Syrian opposition members at a meeting that took place at
the Dutch mission to the United Nations, Kerry stated:

“The
problem is that the Russians don’t care about international law,
but we do. And we don’t have the basis – our
lawyers tell us –
unless we have the
U.N. Security Council Resolution, which the Russians can veto, and
the Chinese, or unless we are under attack from the folks there, or
unless we are invited in. Russia is invited in
by the legitimate regime –
well it’s
illegitimate in our mind – but by the regime. And so they were
invited in and we are not invited in. We’re flying in airspace
there where they can turn on the air defenses and we would have a
very different scene. The only reason they are letting us fly is
because we are going after ISIL. If we were going after Assad, those
air defenses, we would have to take out all the air defenses, and
we don’t have the legal justification, frankly, unless we stretch
it way beyond the law.” [emphasis
added]

As
a lawyer who is extremely concerned with human rights and
international law, I could have told John Kerry this for free. Though
this devastating truth is evident to anyone who has a basic
understanding of international legal principles, the fact that the
U.S. is still pressing
ahead with
this strategy despite being informed of the illegality of the
operation by their lawyers is quite telling on its own.

It
is laughable that before stating this damning fact, Kerry alleged
that the Russians don’t care about international
law, but “we do” — before he went on to explain that Russia was
acting within the bounds of international law while the U.S. wasn’t.

In
all likelihood, the real reason Russia and Syria allow American
aircraft to fly in Syria’s airspace is not that they are targeting
ISIS, as Kerry pondered, but because there is very little that Russia
and Syria can do without risking an all-out war with the world’s
largest military superpower.

It
is almost like saying that Iraq ‘welcomed’ the U.S. invasion in
2003 because there was little that Saddam Hussein’s military could
do to stop it. Make no mistake, a country’s inability to drive the
U.S. out of its country does
not equate
to tacit acceptance of its military presence. The schoolyard bully is
not welcomed by the silent kids he or she wails upon. In fact,
Syria’s president has
made it quite
clear that the U.S. has invaded its territory, and this alone should
be all the knowledge we need to oppose yet another American-led war
in the Middle East. Just because the U.S. is targeting ISIL and not
Assad, does not legitimize America’s operations at all, especially
in light of Kerry’s own assessment of the operation as referred to
above.

How
many countries does the U.S. have to invade illegally before its
people decide it’s time to do something about it?

The
2003 invasion of Iraq had no U.N. Security Council Resolution, and
the country has been plagued
with rampant violence ever
since. If the Russians had not been duped out
of vetoing the misused U.N.
Security Council Resolution 1973 with
regard to the Libyan conflict in 2011, then Libya would not be
the failed
state it
is today. The Libyan resolution did not authorize regime change and
was specifically worded so as to be concerned with protecting
civilians on the ground. NATO used the authorization to transform
itself into the air force of al-Qaeda-linked
rebels and
pounded Libya until Muammar Gaddafi had been assassinated.

Under
President Trump, the U.S.’ bombing campaign in Syria makes
even Obama
pale in comparison.
The U.N. estimated that
in just the first week of America’s ramped up illegal bombing
campaign in Raqqa, airstrikes killed 300 civilians.

Even
if the U.S. does have some legal justification to bomb Syria,
shouldn’t we still oppose
military intervention? The U.S. has waged war in a number of
countries since the attacks of September 11, and millions
of people have
died as a result of these American-led conflicts. Terror
attacks still
run rampant; part and parcel of the vicious cycle of violence
responding to violence across
the globe.

In
areas that have been liberated by the Syrian government, hundreds
of thousands of
displaced Syrians are returning home. In Aleppo, in a
Christian-inclined district that was besieged by fanatic rebels who
abhor religious diversity, a Cathedral just reopened with
a Mozart-inspired concert – something that would have been almost
impossible under
rebel-held rule.

It
is also worth pondering why it is that the U.S., a majority Christian
nation, is siding with Islamist
rebels against a
government that protects the
rights of Christians. It makes no sense outside of a geopolitical
lens,
and Trump supporters who openly profess to be “good American
Christians” should take note of this damning fact.

Forget
the legality of the war for a minute, forget the mounting
death toll that
is only able to accrue courtesy of your taxpayer dollars, and take a
moment to figure out where we are headed
as a species.

The
U.S. has not only placed itself in a worldwide conflict with no
foreseeable end that will continue
to line the
pockets of the arms-dealing class for centuries to come, but it is
also bombing the same territory as another nuclear power
with complete
polar opposite interests.
It is a powder keg that has been waiting a few years to ignite, and
the two nuclear powers are becoming ever closer to bombing the exact
same location with
different ambitions as to which party to the conflict should emerge
as the victor.

The
potential for this conflict to dramatically escalate should be high
enough to warrant a mobilization of effective resistance. If you
don’t want your sons, daughters, partners, parents, and friends to
go and die in Syria propping up a failing empire concerned only with
money and resources, now is the time to act. You can’t afford to
wait until body bags of loved ones come parading home before you
decide that enough is enough — by then
it may be too late.

Before
anyone accuses me of sounding the alarm prematurely — and though
the corporate media has attempted to accuse Trump of conceding to
Putin inside Syria — can anyone name another conflict in which two
nuclear-armed powers were bombing the same country with completely
different intentions that was also concluded and de-escalated in a
timely, safe, secure, and low-risk manner?

Didn’t
think so.

The
battle against ISIS is still ongoing and involves multiple state
actors attempting to hoard as much Syrian territory as physically
possible. It is clear that the U.S. has no legal or moral right to be
inside Syria in the first place, so does it seem fair to endanger
countless more lives in order for the U.S. to gift its proxies a
chunk of Syrian territory after ISIS’ downfall?

Opinion
/ Creative
Commons / Anti-Media / Report
a typo