The news anyone with half a brain has been dreading:
"On Friday evening, President Trump announced that he has ordered the US military to attack Syria's government. The attacks, which will be participated in by British and French forces, will focus on strikes against Syrian chemical capabilities... " (US, UK, France launch attacks on Syria, Jason Ditz, antiwar.com, 13/4/18)
I'm reminded of the combined British/French/Israeli aggression against Egypt in 1956, known as the Suez crisis. (For Israel today, merely substitute USrael.)
I'm reminded too of the following words by Britain's Minister of State at the Foreign Office at the time, Anthony Nutting, who resigned in protest at Britain's decision to join the prior Franco-Israeli conspiracy to attack Egypt:
"Rudyard Kipling's well-known lines on the Boer War - 'Let us admit it fairly as a business people should/ We have had no end of a lesson, it will do us no end of good' - apply equally appropriately to the Suez disaster of 1956. The Boer War, like the American War of Independence nearly 150 years before, showed that the Dutch colonies were not prepared to submit to British imperialism: the Suez War, 40 years later, showed that Britain could no longer dictate to Egypt.
"Within the span of that turbulent half-century the world was transformed and the conditions in which Britain had been able to play her former imperial role ceased to exist. British rule was withdrawn from vast areas of the world as the nineteenth-century concept of Empire was swept away in the scalding torrents of twentieth-century nationalism. Tel el-Kebir, Omdurman and the Khyber Pass now belong in the history books: the Wolseleys and the Kitcheners have ceased to be the arbiters of the fate of nations which, regardless of size and strength, now enjoy equality of status with the mightiest of powers in the United Nations.
"One of the more curious features of modern British history is that, while generally prepared to accept this transformation in respect of the Indian and Colonial Empires, successive British Governments were to show an extreme reluctance to abdicate control in the Middle East." (No End of a Lesson: The Story of Suez, 1967, pp 7-8)
Nutting published this insight into the colonial mindset of the British ruling class in the preface to his book on the Suez debacle 51 years ago. In attacking Syria yesterday, Britain and its Franco-USraeli accomplices have obviously learnt NOTHING in the 62-year period since they fucked up in Egypt in 1956.
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3 comments:
Thoroughly disgusting behaviour by the so-called leaders of the Western World - let us not give OPCW a chance to find out the truth. But as you rightly indicate MERC, it has happened many times before. I have seen nothing to suggest that Australia was involved in this. I hope not but am not optimistic. My heart goes out to the people of Syria.
Here is what Eisenhower said when he forced the British/French/Israelis to withdraw: “Under all the circumstances I have laid before you, a greater responsibility now develops upon the United States. We have shown, so that none can doubt, our dedication to the principle that force shall not be used internationally for any aggressive purpose and that the integrity and independence of the nations of the Middle East should be inviolate."
How things have changed!
I had not appreciated before, MERC, that the French and Israelis were already plotting before inviting the British to join their manufactured crisis in 1956. In the end, the Suez adventure cost Eden dearly - he lost the prime ministership. Let us hope that the same will be true of May, Macron, and Trump. All three appear to be totally in hock to Israel.
G, the relevant chapter in Nutting's book is 10, Invitation to a Conspiracy:
"... at three o'clock the Frenchmen arrived and were escorted into the Prime Minister's study, followed by Eden's Private Secretary, and myself... [Acting French foreign minister] Gazier then proceeded to ask us what would be Britain's reaction if Israel were to attack Egypt. Eden replied that this was a very difficult question... 'But would you resist Israel by force of arms?' Gazier asked. To this Eden replied with a half-laugh that he could hardly see himself fighting for Colonel Nasser!... I asked Gazier what, if any, information he had that Israel was contemplating an attack on Egypt. For a moment or two he did not answer, but sat looking nervously at the Private Secretary, who was busily taking notes in the background. Then, when Eden had told his Secretary to stop, Gazier said that he would like General Challe to speak. Challe then proceeded to outline what he termed was a possible plan of action for Britain and France to gain physical control of the Suez Canal. The plan, as he put it to us, was that Israel should be invited to attack Egypt across the Sinai peninsula and that France and Britain, having given the Israeli forces enough time to seize all or most of Sinai, should then order 'both sides' to withdraw their forces from the Suez Canal, in order to permit an Anglo-French force to intervene and occupy the Canal on the pretext of saving it from damage by fighting."
The 21st century has still not managed to rid the world of this cabal! My heart goes out to the beleaguered people of Syria, there are some of us who care!
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