The creatures that lurk through the
corridors of power in Washington DC have refined corruption to the point where
almost anything goes and almost no one is ever held accountable.
Traditionally, Congressmen reward their various constituencies by inserting
riders into larger pieces of legislation that grant money, exemptions or favors
to certain groups or individuals. It is sometimes referred to as “pork.” The
recent bloated omnibus spending bills totaling
$1.4 trillion, which passed through Congress and were signed off on by
President Donald Trump, were for the shameless denizens of Capitol Hill a gold
mine. The process was so corrupt that even some Senators like Ted Cruz joked
that “Christmas came early in Washington. While you were with your family,
while you were shopping for Christmas, the lobbyists were spending and
spending. I present to you, the massive omnibus bill that Congress is voting
on.”
And no one is more corrupt in Congress
than some of those at the top of the food chain, where the Speaker and the
Minority leader in the House and the Majority and Minority leaders in the
Senate have the final say on what gets cut and what remains. The
lugubrious Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is one of the
most adept at milking the system to buy his continued reelection in a state
where he is actually not very popular, with an approval rating of only 37%.
Within the current spending bill he has managed to include more
than $1 billion worth of federal spending and tax breaks for some choice
constituencies among the Kentucky voters. A tax break for the state’s
whisky distillers alone came to a projected $426 million for 2020 and there
were also breaks for the state’s thoroughbred horse industry as well as
hundreds of millions of dollars more for new federal construction.
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One can
only wish that politicians would actually commit themselves to doing good for
the American people, but the sad reality is that they spend so much time
raising and distributing money that they only respond to constituents with the
deepest pockets or those who make the most noise. Rarely does anyone actually
read the bills that are being voted on. Part of the omnibus spending
bills was the $738 billion dollar defense policy component, and, as in the case
of the larger amounts intended to keep the federal government funded, the devil
is frequently found in the details.
One part of the defense spending is called
the “Caesar Syria Civilian Protection
Act,” which is intended to punish Syria and its President
Bashar al-Assad with sanctions for alleged crimes committed during the
country’s eight year civil war. The Caesar Act is named after a Syrian
military photographer who reportedly took and then smuggled tens of thousands
of photographs out of the country that provided evidence for claims that war
crimes had been carried out by the Syrian government. “Caesar” eventually wound
up in Washington where he briefed sympathetic lawmakers on the regime’s alleged
crimes.
The
Caesar Act will impose new sanctions on Syrian leaders and also on companies,
states and even individuals that support the Assad government militarily,
financially or technically. It will include placing new sanctions on Russia and
Iran. Enab Baladi, a website run by opponents of the al-Assad government
praised the move, writing that “[The bill] imposes sanctions on military
contractors and mercenaries who are fighting for the Syrian government, Russia,
Iran, or any of the parties against which sanctions have been previously
imposed.” It also observes that the act would be a “deterrent” for anyone
seeking to work with or help the al-Assad regime. The US, for its part, has
pledged to support international prosecution of criminals in the Syrian
government.
The use of sanctions is reminiscent of
recent US action directed against Iran, Russia and Venezuela. Both Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo and the White House have been boasting of how Iran’s economy
is being destroyed through economic warfare and it is clear that the intention
is to do the same to Syria. The United States has been destabilizing Syria
since the passage of the Syria Accountability Act in 2004. It imposed sanctions
on the country even before the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, and they were
regularly expanded by the Obama administration prior to the 2016 election.
Treasury
Department sanctions have frozen assets of the Syrian government and also of
hundreds of companies and individuals. They also ban most interactions with Syria
by any US person, which means that anyone traveling to Syria and returning to
report favorably on the al-Assad government can be plausibly prosecuted for
providing a service to the regime.
To be
sure no one is completely blameless amidst the turmoil that has engulfed Syria
since 2011. Respectable organizations including Human Rights Watch have
been able to identify some of the victims in the Caesar photos and have
verified tales of torture and abuse, though it must be observed that fake
photos and false testimony are easy to obtain.
But the
Syrian regime response to the uprising against its authority is only part of
the story, as the violence was fomented largely by Saudi Arabia, and Gulf
States and the United States. And by far the worst atrocities against civilians
have been committed by the groups actively or tacitly supported by the US,
Turkey, the Gulf States and the Saudis, many of which have cooperated openly
with the genuine terrorist groups that have been operating in Syria.
There
also has to be some question raised about the general credibility of attacks
directed against the al-Assad government. It has recently been revealed that
both the United Nations Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
(OPCW) and the US media were pressured to cover-up the
fact that Syria did not use chemical weapons against its own civilians in
terrorist infested areas. A Newsweek reporter even resigned when he wrote a story
seeking to expose the scandal. The magazine had refused to print the piece.
The
US sponsored Syrian National Council has been most active in spreading reports
about regime activity, much of which has been proven to be little more than
propaganda. Caesar’s trip to Washington in 2015 to show his photos was, in
fact, sponsored by the SNC and there is a whole series of fabrications spread
by a number of groups supported by those who desire regime change in Damascus.
Consider for a moment the Oscar Award
winning White Helmets, “the story of real-life heroes and impossible
hope.” The group, which cooperates with the terrorist groups operating in
its area, travels to bombing sites with its film crews trailing behind it. Once
at the sites, with no independent observers, they are able to arrange or even
stage what is filmed to conform to their selected narrative. Exploiting their
access to the western media, the White Helmets thereby de facto became a major source of “eyewitness”
news regarding what was then going on in those many parts of Syria where
European and American journalists were quite rightly afraid to go, all part of
a broader largely successful “rebel” effort to
manufacture fake news that depicts the Damascus government as engaging in war
crimes directed against civilians
The
mainstream media is a major part of the problem as it generally only reports
stories, like the White Helmets, that denigrate the Syrian government and its
allies. Watching the recent BBC reporting of the Syrian Army’s push into Idlib
province one learns that “Russian backed Syrian groups are attacking Idlib and
creating a humanitarian crisis with 230,000 civilians fleeing the fighting.”
The only problem with the coverage is that it does not really make clear that
Idlib is terrorist occupied territory. Nor does it say where the civilians are
fleeing to – nearly all have headed for the safety of Syrian government held
areas.
And particularly for those strivers in
Congress who are out hustling for money rather than finding out what is really
going on in the world, it might be wise to recollect how gullible the Solons on
the Potomac have been in the past. Going back to Ahmed Chalabi, who more than
any single individual led the US government to believe that the invasion of
Iraq would be a cakewalk, there has been a series of disastrous policy choices
made after swallowing whole cloth lies and fabrications made by interested
parties. Chalabi provided false intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and
alleged ties of the Iraqi government to al-Qaeda. It turned out that he was
working for several of the sides in the conflict that ensued, including the
Iranian government.
And then there is the Magnitsky Act,
sponsored by Russia-phobic Zionist Senator Ben Cardin and signed by President
Barack Obama in 2012, which continues to be expanded and exploited by virtue of
2016’s Global Magnitsky Act to
intervene in countries that are alleged to be human rights violators. In its
original iteration, the Magnitsky Act, sanctioned individual Kremlin
officials for their treatment of alleged whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky,
arrested and imprisoned in Russia. Billionaire Bill Browder has sold a
contrived narrative which basically says that he and his “lawyer” Sergei
Magnitsky uncovered massive tax fraud and, when they attempted to report it,
were punished by a corrupt police force and magistracy, which had actually
stolen the money. Magnitsky was arrested and died in prison, allegedly murdered
by the police to silence him.
Browder
and his apologists portray him as an honest and honorable Western businessman
attempting to operate in a corrupt Russian business world. Nevertheless, the
loans-for-shares scheme that made him his initial fortune has been correctly
characterized as the epitome of corruption by all parties involved, an
arrangement whereby foreign investors worked with local oligarchs to strip the
former Soviet economy of its assets paying pennies on each dollar of value.
Along the way, Browder was reportedly involved in money
laundering, making false representations on official documents and bribery.
Browder,
who renounced his US citizenship in 1997 reportedly to avoid taxes, has been a
frequent visitor to Capitol Hill where he tells congressional committees all
about the corrupt and evil President Vladimir Putin. He is also a darling of
the completely corrupted mainstream press because he is saying what they want
to hear.
So, is the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection
Act just another bit of nonsense, like Chalabi and Magnitsky? Probably, and all
it will do is punish the Syrian people by trying to wreck the country’s economy
while also limiting the ability of Americans to go independently to the region
and see for themselves what is actually going on. It will prolong the pain
being experienced by all involved while the legitimate government in Damascus
seeks to restore its pre-war borders. It is, unfortunately, a prime example of
the United States government in action.
The
views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the
Strategic Culture Foundation.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for
the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax-deductible educational foundation that
seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is
www.councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
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