RNA - May is backing military intervention against Syria outside of a wider diplomatic strategy and without UN backing. This comes across as calculating, unconsidered, and without the best interest of the Syrian people at heart. It also comes as other parties to the conflict, mainly Iran and Russia, say the crisis would only be resolved through dialogue and international peace efforts.
Nevertheless, Britain is already a party to the Syrian conflict by providing direct support for the so-called “moderate” rebels, including supplying arms and providing planes during bombing raids – which are supposed to target ISIL militants but in fact only cause civilian casualties and support terror proxies. International legal scholars and British lawmakers have warned that continued UK support to the US-led war on Syria may not only make the British government complicit in American violations of the laws of war, but also expose British officials to legal liability for war crimes.
The same is true about the US government. The decision by the Pentagon regime to aid and abet Qaeda-allied “moderate” rebels has a substantial effect on the commission of war crimes. They know and they are aware that their assistance has a substantial likelihood of aiding those crimes. The US has for many years sold arms to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have given these weapons to their proxies in the Syria attacks, which are also war crimes.
US and British officials are, hence, guilty of aiding and abetting terrorist groups’ war crimes. They must be aware of their substantial aid to unlawful attacks, and they know that the “moderates” they are assisting do intend to commit war crimes. Many human rights groups and international aid agencies, reporting on the Syrian situation, have made the same point.
British officials should be aware that any attacks against Syrian forces will violate the laws of war. Their support for “moderate” rebels could make British personnel criminally liable, if support continues despite continuing evidence of violations of the laws of war. As the US war on Syria escalates and evidence of war crimes mounts, legal risk for British officials will also increase.
There is no mystery here: All foreign-backed terrorist groups, including Qaeda-allied “moderates”, have committed, and continue to commit, scores of unlawful attacks against civilian populations, many amounting to war crimes. Continued arms supplies and air support not only send a clear message to the terror proxy forces that they can kill innocent noncombatants with impunity, but they increasingly put British and US officials at legal risk for aiding those crimes.
Nor is that all. The British premier still insists there is no deviation from the norm. She insists nothing has changed in their methods of warfare – and she is right. While the British government accuses and threatens Iran and Russia for supporting the Syrian government’s war on terror, its own apparatus of planned, deliberate, systematic and discriminate support for terrorist groups continues with almost no legal or moral constraints at the United Nations.
Which makes it the most imposing threat today. Any direct attack on Syria will replicate a familiar disregard for long-established International Law. The increase in civilian deaths caused by British and American military forces displays very well that the British and American governments are violating the laws of war – specifically the 1949 Geneva Protocol prohibiting wanton attacks on civilians and support for terrorist groups.
Taken together, as London looks to increase direct military intervention in Syria, the unnecessary escalation of the conflict should be taken seriously. For several years, the warmongers have done everything short of all-out war to affect regime change in Damascus: Large-scale military presence, widespread support for terror proxy forces, economic sanctions, cyberattacks, new troop deployments, constant threats of attack.
The Americans and the British already know far more than they would prefer about the horrors of the dirty war of choice on Syria. They have routinely tossed aside political, legal, and moral constraints in favor of the kind of war of attrition they have ruthlessly waged against the Syrian people. This is part of a scorched-earth policy to destroy Syria, an imperialist ideology that embellishes, even celebrates, warfare against sovereign states and civilians.
Prime Minister May seems to agree that in her new war of choice everything will be permissible, starting with the deliberate and ruthless obliteration of entire Syrian communities, including those with little or no military significance. There could be no justification for such criminality.
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