It’s somewhat understandable that many in the West are confused by statements and rhetoric coming from certain Western quarters since Russian airstrikes commenced in Syria on September 30th, leaving them wondering: ‘whose side are we on anyway?’. Given that the Western media has spent the last two years portraying ISIS as the epitome of evil, shouldn’t the Russians’ intervention, at the invitation of the Syrian government, be seen as a good thing? The results so far are impressive. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the following ISIS assets have been destroyed in the first week of bombing:

  • 71 armored vehicles
  • 30 other vehicles
  • 19 command facilities
  • 2 communication centers
  • 23 depots with fuel and ammunition
  • 6 plants used to make IEDs, including car bombs
  • several artillery pieces
  • several training camps

World leaders, if they really believe what they claim about ISIS being the number-one threat to global security, should be ecstatic. But they’re not. Instead, we hear NATO Sec.-Gen. Jens Stoltenberg screaming about Russian ‘aggression’, and calling once more for more NATO troops all along Russia’s European border and in Turkey.

America’s ‘coalition of 60+ countries’ have allegedly been bombing ISIS inside Syria for just over a year. Given the contrast with Russian results in just one week, US-led airstrikes have been dismal (to say the least), with ‘Islamic State’ increasing, not decreasing its control of territory in Syria. What else can we conclude from this but that the US-led airstrikes have helped, not hindered, ISIS?

In retrospect, you really have to wonder about those reports of weapons air-drops ‘accidentally’ falling into the hands of ISIS terrorists. If we put that down to ‘bad luck’, then the US-led operation has been a complete failure, something acknowledged by top US military commanders testifying before the US Senate in recent months.

But it’s one thing to be ‘less than ecstatic’, another to be so furious as to attack Russia’s efforts to rout ISIS from the moment it got involved. 36 civilian casualties on the first day, they told us, citing the dubious, UK-based ‘Syrian Observatory for Human Rights‘, an outfit run by one man from his 3 bedroom house in Kent, England.

Russia is also accused of only going after ‘the moderate rebels’ trained by the US and ostensibly tasked with first getting rid of ISIS, and then, one assumes, Assad’s forces. But which ‘moderate rebels’? The first and only batch of a hundred ‘moderate rebels’ hatched just over a month ago – at a cost of half a billion US dollars – either deserted or were kidnapped, and in the end only “4 or 5” remained. These were the ‘moderate rebels’ the US said it would defend with airstrikes if Assad dared touch them. Let loose into Syria from Turkey just over 3 weeks ago, they immediately gave their weapons and vehicles to ‘al-Qaeda terrorists’ and swore allegiance to them.

Clearly then, the ‘moderate US-trained rebels’ the US government is accusing the Russians of bombing aren’t those “4 or 5” recently-trained ‘rebels-turned terrorists’. They’re reluctant to say it outright because it was a state secret until mid-2013, but the ‘moderates’ they’re referring to are the tens of thousands of mercenaries trained by the CIA in Qatar, Jordan, Turkey and elsewhere, officially as far back as 2012, but possibly beginning before the Arab Spring even began.

The reason the Russian government doesn’t distinguish between ‘moderate rebel’ and ‘Islamic terrorist’ is because they behave exactly the same way. Long-before they were re-branded as ISIS/ISIL (or defected to ISIS/ISIL – take your pick), the CIA-trained ‘Syrian moderate rebels’ were doing this:

The Russian foreign ministry responded appropriately to the US government’s ridiculous and paramoralistic ‘accusations’ by sharing this cartoon on social media:

    

No doubt about it, ISIS is being hit hard:

Where is the round-the-clock Western media coverage applauding this actual humanitarian intervention against creatures the recently deposed Australian prime minister said are “worse than the Nazis“? These are, after all, terrorists who enslave women, decapitate anyone they suspect of being opposed to them, and who abhor historical and cultural treasures such as the World Heritage site of Palmyra.

Barely a fortnight ago, Western media were warning that this barbarity and brutality could come to Europe. Hidden among the millions of refugees making their way northwards were ‘swarms’ of jihadis just waiting to strike at our freedoms. And yet now the message, coming form the US government in particular, is ‘we’ must protect these vectors of barbarity and brutality at all cost. Whose side are we on?

Amnesty International’s UK campaign manager Kristyan Benedict is upset at Russia’s effort to deal with the humanitarian crisis, calling for protests against Putin’s intervention in Syria:

Strange, we don’t recall Amnesty International calling for such when the US ‘coalition’ illegally bombed Syria.

And what about Yemen?

It’s not just the Pentagon that’s scrambling to form a coherent response to Russia’s arrival in the Middle East. Dozens of fundie clerics across Saudi Arabia have called for jihad against the Russians in Syria. Again, they said nothing of the kind against the US intervention in Syria. Equally ambivalent about ISIS atrocities and the refugee crisis, Saudi Arabia, which embodies the same bastardised version of Islam as ISIS and has the same penchant for head-chopping and using women as sex slaves, has been extremely clear about where it stands on removing the secular, Arab nationalist, Assad regime:

Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia illegally invaded Yemen with the support of the U.S. and friends. While the media is focused on Russia’s evil intentions in Syria, there is complete silence about what’s going on in Yemen, helped by the fact that as chair of the UN Human Rights Commission, Saudi Arabia, has ensured that debate about Yemen is off limits at the UN, despite evidence that the US and UK-armed-and-trained Saudi military has deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure, killing thousands of people and creating an equally appalling humanitarian crisis. Scenes reminiscent of American atrocities in Afghanistan have been steadily pouring in:

Phony humanitarian interventions versus real ones

Notice also that, for the first time, there is media reporting on the ground in Syria. We must take the Pentagon’s word for it that the ‘3,200’ US-led airstrikes in Syria and Iraq have been targeting ISIS, but the Russian media is documenting every move by the Russian military, and not just relying on ‘social media’. Russia has invited the US to share intelligence on terrorist sites and movements, but the US has refused, prompting the Russian deputy foreign minister to wonder what side the US is on:

The refusal to share intelligence on terrorists “just confirms once more what we knew from the very start, that the US goals in Syria have little to do with creating the conditions for a political process and national reconciliation,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said Thursday.

“I would risk saying that by doing this the US and the countries that joined the US-led coalition are putting themselves in a politically dubious position. The question is: which side are you fighting for in this war?”

Indeed, in the immortal words of George W Bush: “Either you’re with us, or you’re with the terrorists.”

Anyone who supports the US on this issue is aligning him/herself with the destructive principle embodied by the psychopathic, Western elites.

What about you, are you ‘with us or against us’?

Dear Putin: A letter of support to Russia’s president for countering the U.S. and ISIS in the Middle East