Black Alliance for Peace: Propaganda greased wheels for U.S. aggression in Syria

Jacqueline Luqman — vice chair of the Black Alliance for Peace’s coordinating committee and co-coordinator of the Mid Atlantic region and the D.C. Citywide Alliance of the Black Alliance for Peace — gave this edited presentation on the United National Antiwar Coalition’s webinar on the U.S. role in Syria.

We in the Black Alliance for Peace have been engaged in this struggle against the expansion of imperialism in the Asian and the Pacific areas and in what we’re indoctrinated to call in this country the Middle East. 

But we in BAP understand that this action in Syria was certainly about getting rid of Bashar al-Assad, and it was certainly about weakening the Axis of Resistance and giving more strength and power and support to the Zionist entity and to help them expand this idea of a greater Israel, this myth that they have in their belief that the land in that region is theirs. And of course, this is disastrous for the Palestinian people. But this attack on Syria is also something that we understand is a part of a larger threat to all anti-imperialist countries in that region. 

And the history and the propaganda about Syria that has come from Western forces really did create the consent that we have seen, not just in the general U.S. population but shockingly among so many on the left. This propaganda campaign, this plan to destroy Syria, has been going on since 2011. 

The U.S., Israel, Türkiye and other NATO members and the Gulf monarch states like Saudi Arabia have been planning this, not necessarily a military defeat in Syria, because that’s not what this was. This was a political defeat, and the propaganda that went into this strategy is very important, because Russia was Syria’s most powerful ally and is engaged in Ukraine. That is not a coincidence. It is by design. 

Of course, the U.S. forces know that Russia and Syria are allies, so certainly it was beneficial to the Empire to get Russia mired in its own proxy war against Ukraine, as Ukraine is being used by the U.S., the European Union and NATO to weaken Russia. That engagement that was created to weaken Russia also gives the added benefit of having Russia busy with something else while the same Empire attacks Syria. 

At the same time, Türkiye, Syria’s enemy, has been playing this two-sided game, working with NATO allies while claiming to be negotiating in good faith with Russia, which they really were not doing. And now Syria is no longer led by [Bashar al-] Assad, who was supportive of the Palestinian struggle to the point that Syria was the primary force in the Axis of Resistance. 

Now the Axis of Resistance is deeply weakened, represented only by Iran, and they have been dealt a huge blow. This does not mean that it doesn’t exist. It doesn’t mean the Axis of Resistance cannot still win. 

As Sara [Flounders] and Joe [Lombardo] have said before me, I believe they can win. I do think we need to be honest about what has happened here and the impact it will have on this continued fight. It is a large blow. It is not a defeat. It is not devastating to the point of losing the entire struggle, but I do think we have to be honest in what the Empire did here with taking Syria out. 

So I really want to immediately turn your attention to the Black Alliance for Peace website, and please read our latest statement on Syria, and to Black Agenda Report to read all of the articles that we have published on this coup in the past two, three weeks. 

Let’s talk about this propaganda, because Syria was the victim of a U.S. regime change plot that began in 2011 and was carried out by successive administrations with the help and collusion of Western media. This was after the Obama administration succeeded in destroying Libya, killing its president with the help of jihadist proxies there. Obama turned his administration’s attention to Syria, because he wanted to do the same thing there, and that’s when the corporate media began with these endless stories about Bashar Al Assad poisoning his own people. 

And that’s just really weird coming from this country that has a very long history of supporting murderers, dictators, you know, tyrants, just full-out fascists all the time, turning around and calling Assad a murderer, a dictator and a butcher with no evidence, none whatsoever. They just kept saying it. 

And then, in 2013, the accusations of Assad gassing his own people were so incessant that even Russia tried to assist. Well, they did assist the Syrian government in destroying their chemical weapons stockpiles to stop these lies. 

Assad not poisoning his people

Assad was not poisoning his own people. He was not using chemical weapons on the Syrian people. But that did not stop the U.S. and the Western media from continuing to perpetuate that lie, and it just continued to the point that in 2018 the U.S., France and [Britain] said out of nowhere that they would take military action against Syria if there were any chemical weapons attacks. 

Now, there never were chemical weapons attacks, but the Empire decided they needed to drum up this lie again, because the plan to destroy Syria never ended, no matter who was in the president’s office. 

So like clockwork, on April 7, [2018,] after this weird declaration came out of nowhere in 2018, the U.S. and its allies bombed Syria. One inspector from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the OPCW, actually openly cast doubt on the official narrative about that event in 2018. A leaked document stated, “There is a higher probability that both cylinders of chemical gas were manually placed at both locations,” rather than being delivered by aircraft, which was the lie that came from the propaganda.

The whistleblower disappeared from corporate media accounts, while the likelier explanation was that civilians were kidnapped and killed by U.S. jihadist proxies.

Who remembers anybody else saying anything about that, except for us crazy anti-imperialists who knew the truth and were trying desperately hard to get people to understand what was going on in 2011 was the same thing going on in 2018 in Syria?

A U.S. operation that never ended

It was a U.S. operation that never ended, and in this we can’t leave out Donald Trump from the attempt at imperialist domination, because this is what happened under his previous administration. He also bombed Syria with the help of France and Britain.

We remember where Trump talks about all of the wonderful countries in the free world that had a right to attack Syria, because, you know, Assad gassing his own people, he was an evil dictator, all of this kind of stuff. And the fact that Donald Trump was saying those things was particularly laughable. 

But Trump did, and that’s very interesting, also, because all of the countries involved in helping Donald Trump to bomb Syria had all gotten rich from the genocide of Indigenous people and the enslavement of African-descended and other marginalized people and the continued economic oppression of those same people and the descendants of those people, in their countries and in the countries that were their former colonies. 

These countries involved in the imperialist project to destroy Syria were not decent nations. They’re not caring about democracy or freedom; what they want is control over the Western Asia region. The West and their agents in this region have schemed to take over Syria for years, and this war propaganda has been a main weapon. They will continue to do this as they work to consolidate their bloody work here in the U.S. 

So many progressives and so-called leftists have supported the Empire’s lies about Assad. But we in the Black Alliance for Peace do not individualize conflicts. We don’t individualize politics, not even foreign policy; especially not foreign policy. 

If leftists in the U.S. believe Assad is evil and he needs to be removed, I really do wonder what they believe about all the U.S. leaders of both political policies, who have lied throughout all of these years and done much worse than lied to make this happen. How do the same people who seem to know that the U.S. lies about everything, especially foreign policy, but suddenly believe that the U.S. has developed a case of honesty and morality about Syria, things no one in this imperialist system has or has exhibited before. 

This makes no sense friends, and it’s especially insulting that leftists in the U.S., while celebrating the removal of Assad, because they believe this war propaganda, have either forgotten or have chosen not to be concerned about Syria’s role in the Axis of Resistance against Israel and U.S. warmongering in Palestine.

U.S. is there for the oil

And further, with Syria’s military destroyed by the IOF [Israel Occupation Forces], there is no Syria in the Axis of Resistance any longer. Israel has staked its claim to a larger part of Syria, as has Türkiye and the U.S. And, you know, the U.S. is there for the oil. 

So the Syrian people lose, and the Palestinian people lose, and the Lebanese people in the crosshairs of U.S. imperialist and Zionist aggression, they also lose. They will continue to lose their lives and their land while the U.S. left cheers with the Empire, that the people fighting for liberation in that region now have significantly less support from a country that was a major supporter of them.  

And I think as I wrap up, we need to ask ourselves, who are the people that U.S. leftists are celebrating, who were the willing foot soldiers for the imperialist violation of sovereignty that was just carried out in Syria? 

Well, Al Jalani, let me give you his full name, Abu Muhammad Al Jalani, was once wanted by the U.S. [who accused him of being a ‘terrorist’]. In 2017, the State Department announced a reward of up to $10 million for his capture.  [Now the U.S. imperialists call  Al Jalani a ‘statesman’].

Donald Trump said that we remain committed to bringing leading al-Qaida figures in HTS to justice. HTS is the Hayat Tahrir Al-Shams organization, and they are an offshoot of al-Qaida. 

[Former President][ Barack Obama, [former] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former president, Donald…well, President-elect Donald Trump, John Kerry, [President] Joseph Biden [Vice President] Kamala Harris, everybody in the U.S. government and in the British government and in the German government, they all know that the people who have done this for them in Syria, they all know they have been a part of ISIS and al-Qaida, and these are people that the U.S. government has been working with since the Carter administration, first under Carter to fight the Soviet Union, and now the United States government is continuing its relationship with the very same people.

What did they call them? “Fundamentalist Islamic jihadists,” which is insulting, but that’s what the U.S. calls them. So the U.S. government has initiated the war on terror to “destroy the alleged fundamentalist Islamic jihadists” who they said were responsible for 9/11, but then they keep using these same people to overthrow democratically elected leaders in countries that will not let them come in and just take control over everything. 

So this is a situation in which we need to be clear, not just who our enemies are — the imperialists obviously here in the beating heart of imperialism, NATO, the EU — but also those collaborators within our own organizing spaces. We need to understand that the forceful overthrow of the government in Syria does represent a colossal defeat to the pan-Arabists in the region and those who center the Palestinian national liberation cause. 

This demise of Syria, as we and the Syrian people know it for now, will have direct consequences on the Axis of Resistance. Because the land bridge — Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon —  has been undermined, and the interconnected struggle of all of those countries against imperialist Zionism has been dealt a blow.

Why? Because these countries have held the expanding imperialist and Zionist hegemony at bay in this region by training, housing, funding and arming the Palestinian resistance. For that reason, color revolutions have been instigated to allow for the Zionist entity to enjoy its expansion project without any resistance, with the help of Zionist Arabs. Yes, they exist, just like Zionist Christians do and the NATO proxies in the region. 

So, yes, this loss in Syria, it is a defeat for the Axis because Lebanon’s land bridge has been cut off by the Zionist “moderate rebels” who took power in Syria, and they promised to stifle the presence of Shia in the country, namely Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, the very powers that are sacrificing their lives and their livelihoods for Palestine, liberation and the resistance in Gaza. 

Silencing anti-imperialism

There will be loss of individual freedoms in Syria, we’re already seeing forced assimilation to an Islamicist, fundamentalist status quo. Yes, discrimination based on sects and silencing sects, silencing of ideologically anti-imperialist knowledge production. 

Yes, that’s absolutely going to happen. The education, even in Syrian public schools, where their inclusive, progressive society is a part of the curriculum for children, that was teaching children about what peaceful coexistence with all of our brothers and sisters is — that’s gone in Syria now, too. 

Syrian society will be undermined by anti-Kurd, anti-Shia propaganda, by anti-religious pluralism. These are the lessons we anti-imperialists in the beating heart of imperialism need to be very clear on and learn from, not just from the destruction of Libya and how Islamist takeover reduces that country so that it’s run by reactionary and conservative forces that seek to normalize relationships with Zionism, while the sanctions against the countries that continue to fight become even worse, because they’re next.

What does this mean? Again, we need to be clear. We are anti-imperialists in the beating heart of imperialism whose job it is to destroy this system to save our brothers and sisters lives around the world. We need to be clear who our enemies are, who the enemies of the people are, the imperialists in every form, in every country, those are our enemies, and who we are fighting with the people who are fighting to be free from Western imperialism and Zionism. 

We will remain on the right side of the fight. Call me an Assadist all day long. Call me a Putin apologist all day long. Call me an agent of Xi Jinping, yes, but I’m going to stay on the right side of the fight against imperialism, because I will remain on the side of the people and the people’s fight for liberation. 

We will continue to fight until all of the people are free and imperialism is dead, and that is why we say in the Black Alliance for Peace: “No compromise, no retreat, until we are all free.” Thank you.