by DANNY HAIPHONG
“Syria and Black America are thus facing down the same enemy.”
In the summer of 2012, thousands hit the streets all over the US after vigilante George Zimmerman gunned down Trayvon Martin. Four years later, US cities all over the country demonstrated in memory of the police murder of Michael Brown. Brown’s murder in August of last year ignited the Black Lives Matter movement in the midst of nearly six years of racial conservatism led by the Obama Administration. Throughout this four year period of heightened Black political response to police terror, the US has been engaged in many other wars abroad. One of Washington’s most ruthless wars resides in Syria. From the time Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012 and Michael Brown remembered in 2015, Washington has simultaneously worked to destabilize the Syrian state.
On the eve of Michael Brown’s one-year anniversary, Washington escalated its war on Syria by giving six new fighter jets and hundreds of military “personnel” to Turkey. Turkey has been hostile to Syria and a long-time US client, but it hasn’t acted alone. Since at least 2011, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other regional partners have waged a multifaceted proxy war to overthrow the Syrian government. This has primarily consisted of financial and logistical assistance to jihadist terrorist groups. In 2013, Washington attempted to launch a direct military offensive in Syria under the pretext that the Assad government had attacked its own citizens with sarin gas. The claim was proven false by numerous sources and Russia helped broker a deal to prevent a potential world war scenario.
But Washington didn’t quit. The Obama Administration quickly moved to justify war with Syria by forming a coalition with its regional allies in the name of a campaign against a particular brand of jihadist terrorists called the Islamic State (ISIS). ISIS provided a new pretext to launch airstrikes in Syria in a blatant violation of international law. In May, these airstrikes killed 52 Syrians and not one ISIS fighter. This should come as no surprise, as reports have confirmed that Washington not only backed ISIS financially, but also was willfully involved in its very creation. The war on ISIS remains a war against Syria. It has killed tens of thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands more in what amounts to a continuous wanton massacre of the Syrian people.
“Washington not only backed ISIS financially, but also was willfully involved in its very creation.”
The entire US populace has in large part ignored the US war in Syria. The lack of attention on this war can be attributed to the same white supremacist system that sparked the Black Lives Matter insurgency. One of Washington’s most popular narratives, conveyed conveniently through its mouthpieces in the corporate media, is that military operations in Syria are meant to protect the region from ISIS. And prior to the sarin gas debacle, Washington attempted to assert a “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) no fly-zone in order to conduct airstrikes on Syrian land with international protection. Both moves justify imperial intervention by stripping the Syrian people of their humanity and self-determination. They assume that the Syrian people need the help of the “civilized” West to develop a legitimate state.
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