OPEDS | STEVEN ARGUE
“From Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, the biggest sponsor of radical Islam in the traditionally Muslim world is the United States…”
Photo: Women in the Syrian Arab Army in 2013 desperately fighting against the western trained and armed counterrevolution of religious fanatics in the so-called “Free Syrian Army”.
Today, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) barely exists, but when it was strong a couple years ago it was a western sponsored Army of Sunni religious fanatics who carried out numerous massacres of Christians, Alawites, and other minorities. These western trained combatants of the FSA have largely joined ISIS, Jabat al-Nusra (al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria), and the Islamic Front. All of these groups are religious extremists violently opposed to the secularism, semi-socialist, and pro-woman nature of the Syrian government that stems from the legacy of the March 8th, 1963 Syrian Revolution. By backing religious extremists in Syria, the United States and its allies hoped to smash the legacy of the 1963 Syrian Revolution. They also hoped to isolate other countries and forces that take an independent stand against U.S. imperialism and Zionist Israel, especially Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia.
The United States only turned on the Syrian counterrevolution they had sponsored when a component of that counterrevolution, ISIS, spilled over the border into Iraq. They had become a threat to the murderous and corrupt Shi’ite and Kurdish puppet regimes the United States imposed there at the cost of over a million Iraqi lives through Bush’s invasion of Iraq. The U.S. installed Kurdish puppet regime in Iraq is not to be confused with the leftist and pro-woman PKK and YPG Kurdish forces in Syria, Turkey, and Iraq who are some of the best fighters against ISIS and who are being bombed by U.S. ally Turkey. This should be no surprise as the U.S. imperialists have long backed Turkish genocide against the Kurdish people, including supplying the weapons to the Turkish government used to slaughter Kurds.
Turkish fighter-bomber on a sortie against Kurdish positions. One of the enticements for Turkey’s leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to get more deeply involved in the overthrow of Bashar al Assad was Washington’s permission to carry out a genocidal war against the Kurds.
In Syria, in violation of international law and without the permission of the Syrian government, the United States and U.S. allies have been bombing ISIS positions in Syria. Now, with the permission of the Syrian government, the Russian military are carrying out bombing campaigns against ISIS in coordination with the Syrian Arab Army. It is the right of Syria to defend itself from the misogynistic and genocidal lunatics western imperialism has armed and trained to overthrow their secular and pro-woman government. It is also the right of Syria to enlist the help of Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia in this desperate fight.
We should never forget the USSR’s heroic role in Afghanistan. In December 1979, the USSR, at the invite of the pro-woman and secular PDPA government of Afghanistan, sent in troops to try to defeat the U.S. sponsored misogynistic religious fanatics of the mujahideen. Despite the lies of the western imperialists, there was no Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Soviet troops were sent in at the invite of Afghanistan’s government. Likewise, as Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski later bragged, CIA operations to overthrow the PDPA through the mujahideen started before Soviet troops went into Afghanistan. Ultimately, with 8 billion dollars in aid to the mujahideen, and at the cost of a million lives, the United States was able to defeat the PDPA government in Afghanistan and brought to power the governments of mujahideen warlord religious fanatics and their ultimate spawn, the Taliban.
Afghan Mujahedins with US-supplied Stinger. Washington was bent on giving the Soviets their own “Vietnam”. Never mind they were empowering the most fanatically reactionary sector of Afghan society, precursor of today’s Taliban, and the Jihadist plague across the Middl East and other corners of the world.
From Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, the biggest sponsor of radical Islam in the traditionally Muslim world is the United States. It is these forces that the west uses as a club against nationalist and socialist forces that stand up to western corporate looting of the region’s dwindling oil resources. The defense of Syria and Syrian Kurdistan from the genocidal and anti-woman terrorists that U.S. imperialism has helped unleash is not a crime. The first priority of revolutionary socialists in Syria and Syrian Kurdistan is the defeat of the genocidal and anti-woman religious fanatics unleashed on Syria by the western imperialists. Whatever the crimes of the Assad government, many of which are just the manufactured lies of the west, those crimes are a secondary priority compared to the immediate need to defeat the deadly counterrevolution unleashed by western imperialism.
Against the Forces of Counterrevolution in Syria including ISIS, Jabat Al-Nusra, the Islamic Front, the Free Syrian Army, the CIA, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Israel, Jordan, and U.S. Imperialism!
Victory to the Syrian Arab Army, YPG, PKK, Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia!
Note: While we use and practice Marxist analysis, The Greanville Post does not endorse any Marxian faction, group, party or tendency.
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Thank you for that information. I had always thought the Soviets invaded to prevent terrorist incursions over its border.
The Soviet Union went into Afghanistan at the request of the revolutionary Communist government of Afghanistan. While the communists ruled Afghanistan the kind of society that western propaganda has always put forward as ideal, was realized. It was a genuinely secular society. The root of ALL (man made) evil in the world , post ww2 – 1992, flowed from the sick, misanthropic scheming of US capitalist imperialism. About 75% of it still does. Now that capitalist imperialism is global, the US has many helpers in its infliction of misery and destruction