US to increase aid to Free Syrian Army

From the Kasama Project;

It was only a matter of time before the US put its weight behind the opposition in Syria (most likely the Free Syrian Army). Yahoo News reported that;

“The United States will increase aid to Syrians and the Syrian opposition in an effort to speed a political transition in Syria, a White House spokesman said on Wednesday.

The Washington Post has reported that the White House was considering a shift in policy toward the nearly two-year-long conflict in Syria and may send the rebels body armor and armed vehicles, and possibly provide military training. According to the report, U.S. officials still oppose providing arms.”

For anyone who still believes there is a difference between Democrats and Republicans on these foreign policy issues, just look at what Yahoo News attributes to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry;

"That may require us to change President al-Assad's current calculation," he (Kerry;) said. "He needs to know he cannot shoot his way out of this, so we need to convince him of that and I think the opposition needs more help in order to be able to do that. And we are working together to have a united position."

Most of us know by now that the Free Syrian Army is extremely reactionary and aligned with Islamic militants.

From Otto’s War Room;

“Some leftist in the US have suggested the so called Free Syrian Army, (FSA) the rebels who are trying to topple Bashar al-Assad, are fighting for a legitimate cause. The FSA have now agreed to help Turkey crush the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK.

This is one of the most reactionary rebel movements since the Nicaraguan Contras. This is the first rebel movement in the Middle-east to allow itself to be totally against an anti-imperialist and socialist worker’s movement that has battled a repressive regime for more almost 30 years. The FSA has literally agreed to send mercenaries into Turkey to fight against leftist Kurds in exchange for weapons.

Turkey is also fighting the Communist Party of Turkey, Marxist Leninist, (TKP/ML), which has a military wing and Maoist Communist Party (MKP) of Turkey and North Kurdistan and its military wing HKO. It is highly likely that Turkey will use the help of the FSA to help fight them as well.”

And From A World to Win News Service and Otto’s War Room;

“You asked me about the role of regional inequalities and the growing gap between the countryside and city, both in driving the revolt, and also in providing an audience for fundamentalists.

I would answer this way: During the last decade the regime used financial aid and other incentives to encourage big landowners to eliminate the small peasants. In this, it has been following the IMF strategy for developing globally-competitive commercial agriculture and attracting foreign investment. The now landless peasants immigrate to the big cities in hopes of accumulating enough money to be able to return to their land. In addition, for a long time many small peasants who still own land [and grow vegetables and so on for urban markets] have lived on the outskirts of towns and cities. So there is a very large peasant population ringing all the big towns and cities. Unemployment is very high in both the cities and the countryside, and many people are hungry.

The Syrian peasantry has been playing a big role in the revolt, both in the countryside and the big-city suburbs. The middle classes in the provinces and the cities have gone back and forth, although they have certainly played an important role in the revolt, too. Some sections of the lower middle classes came over to the revolt and some supported the regime, especially the better-off sections. The Islamists draw many of their recruits from the lower classes, and better-off sections as well, such as engineers, doctors, architects and businessmen, including shopkeepers.”

And there is the Santos Republic;

“Armed groups in Syria do not defend democracy, they fight against it

First, the interpretation of Syrian events as an episode of the “Arab Spring” is an illusion because this “spring” has no basis in reality. This is an advertising slogan to positively present unrelated facts. Although there has been a popular revolt in Tunisia, Yemen and Bahrain, there was none in neither Egypt nor Libya. In Egypt, the street demonstrations have been limited to the capital and parts of the middle class; never, absolutely never, have the Egyptian people identified with the telegenic spectacle of Tahrir Square [1]. In Libya, there was no political revolt, but a separatist movement in Cyrenaica against the power of Tripoli, and the military intervention of NATO, which cost the lives of about 160,000 people. (RECOMMENDED READING AND VIDEO OF AMERICAN AGENDA: Libya and the Middle East: Endgame, not Democracy)”
So there are two important points here in this article. One is that the Opposition in Syria are not people looking for freedom or liberation, they are fighting either for western imperialism or for Islamic fundamentalism. Also the Democratic Party is not running a foreign policy that is any different from the Republican Party.