U.S.-NATO driven to wage war on Syria

By Ray Duprey

October 20, 2012

Turkey’s war jets forced down a civilian airliner flying from Moscow to Damascus. Thirty-five Russians and Syrians were passengers on the Oct. 10 flight, endangered by the action. U.S. spokesperson Victoria Nuland immediately supported Turkey’s act of air piracy. Also, some 150 U.S. special troops moved into Syria’s southern neighbor, Jordan.

NATO and the major European NATO powers, Britain, France and Germany, have supported Turkey against Syria despite Turkey’s aggressive moves. It is apparent that NATO is edging toward direct military intervention against Syria. Turkey, which had also moved 250 tanks to the Syria border, is spearheading the intervention.

A week earlier, the Turkish parliament voted to approve military operations across the Turkish-Syrian border, and soon after began “return” fire in the form of mortar-shelling of Syria. There has been no proof that Syrian troops fired the first missiles, and even a Turkish newspaper, Yurt, reported that the mortar round that hit Akcakale was of NATO design and was given to the Syrian rebels by the Turkish government, according to the Oct. 9 Russia Times.

Turkey has been supplying and sheltering these rebels. It is easy for them to later turn around and incite reaction by using NATO-made weapons on NATO countries.

Any rational-minded person would reconsider shelling a neighboring country a knee-jerk reaction for six days straight even as the facts begin to appear and the speculation decays in front of our very eyes. If these actions appear irrational, they must be driven by powerful forces.

In his 2012 book, “Capitalism at a Dead End,” Fred Goldstein analyzes with perfection the current economic issues that are the cause of military adventurism. Since World War II, the U.S has used war and the military budget to stimulate its economy, and also to expand capitalist plunder and exploitation of cheap labor.

The capitalist hunt for the highest profit was the driving force behind wars in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Haiti and, perhaps soon, Syria. In 2011, the CIA funded and trained Libyan opposition forces, and NATO bombed Libya. This brought about a bloody civil war that is still to this day not resolved fully, and caused a widespread ripple effect of instability throughout Northern Africa. Even now, European countries are preparing to intervene directly in Mali in northwest Africa.

Under present conditions, the pervading motive to chase the highest rate of profit drives the individual NATO ruling classes’ interests, leading to aggressive actions by the state apparatus of each NATO country, that is, its army.

It is obvious, with the growing capitalist crisis in Europe and the downturn of the United States’ own economy, that the imperialists have targeted Syria as the next step in a long line of steps they have taken since the fall of the Soviet Union eliminated the imperialists’ most powerful opponent. The goal of this aggression is capitalist domination of the planet.

On Oct. 10, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta confirmed the deployment of U.S. troops in Jordan for alleged “humanitarian needs.” Recently, 12,000 troops from various NATO nations conducted military drills in Jordan.

Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria

The dominoes are falling into place, much as they did in Libya and in Yugoslavia. The imperialists are using the same pretext — “humanitarian needs” — once again. NATO is driven to conduct “military operations,” in other words, to wage war on Syria, all in the name of “democracy” for the Syrian people. Even with the facts against them and continuing to mount against them as the conflict continues, NATO moves closer to the point of openly marching into Syria.

What makes this drive unavoidable, as Goldstein points out, can be found in Karl Marx’s explanation of the law concerning the declining rate of profit and capitalist accumulation. Unable to regenerate capitalist profits by peaceful means, the U.S. and European imperialist powers seek plunder through war. Conquest of Syria opens another door, they believe, to seizing the natural resources of the Middle East, that is, oil.

It is of the utmost importance that we stand in opposition to these imperialist wars, which devastate the nations that are the targets of the “interventions.” We must stand against both the military interventions and the economic warfare through sanctions. No more Imperialist wars!

The writer is a revolutionary youth activist in Detroit.