UNAC says U.S./Israel hands off Syria!

The United National Antiwar Coalition, the broadest of the anti-imperialist coalitions active in the United States, issued the following statement on May 10 in the aftermath of the Israeli bombing of Syria.

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 Barack 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!