Is the US sincere in its fury about the alleged chemical attack
in Syria? If this were more than theatrics, it would repent of its role in the
1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. More than 30 years ago the Iraqi regime was regularly
delivering devastating chemical barrages against Iran. The US knew all along that
Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader at the time, had been using mustard gas and
sarin since 1983. Roughly 20,000 Iranian troops were killed by chemical weapons
(CW) in that war.
No emergency
UN Security Council meetings were convened, no warships capable of striking
land targets with cruise missiles rushed toward Iraqi shores, no belligerent
statements were issued, and no sustained military operations were announced.
Quite the opposite, the US provided the regime with
intelligence. This is an example of how satellite imagery was used
to violate human rights. The US assistance was not limited to providing just
military data. Arms were funneled
in via Middle East allies.
Donald
Rumsfeld, then special envoy to the Middle East, visited Baghdad in 1983
to shake hands with Saddam Hussein. It was
the US and only the US that protected Iraq in the UN against
Iran’s charges of CW use. The 1925 Geneva Protocol states that the signatories
are to induce other states not to use CW.
In 1988, the
Iraqi regime killed 5,000 of its own citizens in Halabja, Iraqi Kurdistan. The
US sought to obscure Baghdad’s responsibility by falsely accusing Tehran,
despite the fact that Iran did not possess CW.
Washington turned a blind eye toward
the use of CW by jihadists in Syria. It did not react when members of the UN independent
commission of inquiry warned of its "strong suspicions"
that it was the rebels, not the government, who had used CW in that war-torn
country.
The US used deadly substances in
Syria and Iraq, such as , breaching International Humanitarian Law.
The use of white phosphorus munitions in the Iraqi
city of Fallujah in 2004 has been acknowledged by US officials. That is an incendiary
weapon prohibited by the 1980
The use of US cluster
bombs against civilians in Yemen is a violation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM).
Unlike Russia, the US has failed to comply with the Chemical
Weapons Convention (CWC). It has also refused to
join the 1997 Ottawa Convention, which bans antipersonnel land mines (the Mine
Ban Treaty).
The US never
stopped working on its biological programs. It
operates 25 bio-labs around
the world in violation of the UN Biological Weapons Convention. Russia is
concerned about the fact that the US has bioweapons
programs in place near its borders in Ukraine and Georgia. A leak could lead to
mass epidemics that would spread to Russia. No borders exist for killer
insects.
The State
Department described the alleged CW attack in
Douma as "horrifying". It said so even before the OPCW
experts arrived there on April 13. Its statement claims that Russia’s support of
the Syrian government is a betrayal of the CWC. No statement coming out of
Foggy Bottom has ever declared that the US government is sorry for its multiple
violations of international agreements, universally accepted norms of conduct,
or for the people who have died or suffered as a result of its misdeeds.
Perhaps American diplomats see nothing “horrifying” here.
The State
Department fails to explain why a multinational invasion of Syria could be
justified by something that might prove a hoax. Besides, no one has proved that
anything like a CW attack took place in Douma at all. Should multinational
forces invade the US because of its violations of international law? Could
anyone in his right mind believe the US is really worried about the Syrian
civilians who allegedly suffered as a result of the attack it says has taken
place?
Last year, it
took the US military about 48 hours to kill 100 civilians in Raqqa.
One thousand eight hundred civilians overall lost their lives over the course
of the US-led offensive to oust Islamic State fighters during that operation.
There was no State Department comment on what happened. Were those civilians
different from the ones in Douma?
State
Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert believes Russia bears responsibility for
the CW attack because it “shields” Syria. By doing so, it “has breached its commitments to the
United Nations.” She has a lot of nerve saying that, given all
the numerous violations and illegal activities her country conducts practically
in broad daylight. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
