An analyst says Western countries stoke violence in Syria, supporting death squads who ravage the local population, as well as undermine the functioning government.
The United States has announced that it will be providing an additional USD 45 million to the insurgents fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
The US has already provided some USD 25 million to the armed groups.
Some European and Arab countries have also provided weapons to the insurgents fighting against the Syrian government.
Press TV has conducted an interview with Stephen Lendman, a writer and radio host from Chicago, to further discuss the issue. The following is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: Why is Turkey doing this to itself? Let’s start off with the “why” of this to begin with, why is Ankara even involved in trying to overthrow a neighboring country?
Lendman: Well, in a word, Turkey is involved because Turkey is a NATO country; 28 countries; every country is obligated to the other 27.
Washington leads NATO. Washington gives the orders. The conflict in Syria, it’s a proxy war; it’s a Western proxy war.
One correction on what Johnny Miller said, it is not a civil war. There is nothing civil about what’s going on. It’s an invasion. It’s a Western-generated invasion.
The militants that are in Syria, they are death squads, the same type of death squads that ravaged Nicaragua in the 1980s. They are killers. They are hired paramilitaries; they are hired to kill local people, to stoke terror, to stoke fear.
They can keep coming. There are many of them who, I guess, can be recruited for a buck, for ideology, whatever reason they may have.
I can’t imagine what Turkey can gain out of this except staying on Washington’s good side.
But aside from the expense internally in Turkey, and the internal opposition from its own people, what on earth does Turkey want to get involved with a country that over many years it had good relations with and it kept the PKK from stirring up too much trouble?
Well, exactly the opposite is going on now.
Everybody is losing on this. The Turkish people are losing. The Syrian people are losing.
The opposition in Syria, most of the internal opposition is non-violent. You never hear that reported in the major media.
There is opposition in every country. There is plenty of opposition in America. They don’t go out on the streets, shooting people and blowing up buildings. The people doing that are the Western-recruited death squads brought in from the outside. They’re responsible for the massacres, for the killing.
Press TV: I saw you shaking your head when our previous guest [John Hajjar] was talking. Your take on what he was saying, that basically the focus of attention is not what we’re calling these armed infiltrators in Syria but on the government itself, and that Turkey is actually not a secular government as many of us have believed, but an Islamic one. Your take, Stephen Lendman.
Lendman: Your guest from Boston, my home city, he sounds more like a propagandist who appears on Fox News in America. He simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Number one, Turkey is a secular government. It’s not an Islamist government. It’s run pretty much by the military. It has civilian heads but the military is the ultimate power in Turkey, and it certainly is a secular government. It has been that way for a long time.
As far as Assad, Assad is doing what any responsible leader would do. Syria was invaded from the outside by killers. These death squads have been imported from surrounding countries; they’re coming from Libya; they’re coming from Iraq; they’re coming from Jordan; Israel is very much involved.
America is supplying all kinds of things by proxy. The so-called humanitarian money that’s being donated, that’s a cover. That’s a cover. There are American weapons being used. These people are being supplied; they’re being directed. The CIA is involved. US Special Forces are being involved.
British intelligence have been involved. They’ve been involved since last year. These are the facts that are going on in the country.
Any government would do exactly what Assad has done. He is fighting these killer invaders that have come into his country.
If they came into Chicago, the Chicago police would do the same thing. If they couldn’t handle it, the National Guard would do the same thing. They’d come out with guns, with tanks.
If they couldn’t handle it, the US Marines would come in, and they would come in with F-16s, and they would get rid of these people; they would route them; they would kill them.
If I was Assad, I would do exactly what he is doing, and I am absolutely non-violent. If the Syrian people don’t have Assad to protect them, who do they have? They’re aligned with him.
They are not war crimes. They are not war crimes. War crimes are committed by the mercenaries.
