WHITE PAPER distributed at 10-12Oct16 NORWEGIAN DEFENCE UNIVERSITY SYRIAN WAR LEGALITY/ILLEGALITY SEMINAR "Syria and states' right to self-defense"
My name is Lou Coatney. I am an American here in Norway. Ethical philosophy was my undergraduate major at Swedish Lutheran Augustana College back home in Illinois and the moral and political consequences of the Soviets' 1940 Katyn Massacre was my 1994 Western Illinois Univ. history masters thesis. (It was truth that brought down the Soviet regime - not mere economics.)
I ask that the legalities/illegalities of Norway's sudden involvement in the Syrian war be considered in the full ethical, historical, political, and legal context of the war ... especially since the external training of insurgent groups - agents of regime-change by definition - by outside powers like Norway is doing, was already declared illegal by the International Court of Justice in 1986, when we Americans were doing exactly this with Contras in Central America.
From the seminar introduction: "In June 2016, the Norwegian Government decided to deploy Norwegian Forces in order to support Syrian insurgent groups operating from Jordan and into Syria."
(Referencing Øystein Bø's concern about innocent people, an insurgency guarantees them suffering & dying.)
ICJ, 27Jun86: (3) By twelve votes to three,
Decides that the United States of America, by training, arming, equipping, financing and supplying the contra forces or otherwise encouraging, supporting and aiding military and paramilitary activities in and against Nicaragua, has acted, against the Republic of Nicaragua, in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to intervene in the affairs of another State;
QUESTIONS SEEKING COMMON GROUND FOR ANALYSIS - Is the legal focus too narrowly defined?
1. Can we all agree that the "Arab Spring" revolts in and attacks on Libya and Syria were promoted into action by Western political leaders?
... thinking here of the MI6/SAS team captured by Libyan farmer militiamen (and returned) and U.S. Sec/State Hillary Clinton having Libyan weapons shipped to Syria via the Persian Gulf ... and that this was done regardless of the previous example of the tragedy of Iraq?
BBC, 2Mar11: "Libya unrest: SAS members 'captured near Benghazi'"
Wash Times 15Oct15: "Clinton State Department approved U.S. weapons shipment to Libya despite ban. Memos recovered from Benghazi compound divulge covert effort"
(Britain's Parliament report recently condemned David Cameron for the Libya tragedy as well.)
National Review 2Aug16: "Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi Debacle: Arming Jihadists in Libya . . . and Syria"
From the latest WikiLeaks - 2014 e-mail to John Podesta: "the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region."
Breitbart 4Oct16: "Obama's deputies drop criminal charges against Hillary-Clinton-linked arms dealer ..." From the article: "Turi has been willing to publicly talk about the weapons-running scheme, saying, “When this equipment landed in Libya, half went one way, and the half went the other way. The half that went the other way is the half that ended up in Syria.”"
Can we therefore agree that everything that has happened since, in Syria, including Aleppo, was/is therefore our moral, legal, and political responsibility and continues to be so because of our continuing support of the insurgency?
2. Can we all agree that with Russia and soon China now legally involved, Syria now has both the will and the ability - when we aren't bombing its troops - to annihilate Islamic State and any other terrorist or insurgent groups within its borders? ... so that the UN Resolution 2249's "unwilling or unable" justification for us being there to destroy Islamic State is now gone?
3. If Islamic State and not Assad's government is the real target, why aren't we letting Assad's government target our anti-IS airstrikes?
4. Likud Israel's Aleppo-like savage bombardment of Gaza a couple years ago - 1,400 Palestinian civilians including 500 children killed so that 600(?) terrorists could be, because 6 Israeli civilians had been - made many people in the world turn against Israel's Right to Exist. Turkey, the Philippines and the war crimes trial in Malaysia shows that countries in the world are turning against the West because of our actions.
Is our continuing support of these wrongful coups and wars, in Ukraine as well as the Mideast, destroying our own countries' legal Right to Exist ... especially considering that we are pitting ourselves against nuclear superpowers?
5. Is Norway protected by NATO Article 5 from direct Russian military retaliation, if Norway is (even externally) supporting insurgent groups attacking Russia's personnel and its sovereign state ally Syria ... or if Norway escalates to direct involvement in Syria?
Does Norway have civil defenses - blast and fallout shelters, food etc. stockpiles - for our families ... our children ... if its Syrian involvement helps touch off World War 3?
6. I was very glad to hear John Kerry calling for war crimes trials. Isn't, by Nuremberg, promoting coups and wars of aggression a Crime against Peace?
Norway's Arbeidspartei foreign minister Jonas Støre most pushed Norway into joining the attack on Libya. His friend neoconservative guru Bernard-Henri Levy was in Litteraturhus a year ago bragging about helping foment our Kiev coup. (That coup broke our Ukraine non-intervention Budapest Memorandum/treaty and threatened Russia with NATO bases within its inner security perimeter, exactly like the pro-Soviet coup on Grenade in Oct83 had threatened us - and the Russians are counter-moving just like and just as justifiably as we did then. Levy was in Georgia in 2008 as well and was the principal non-governmental promoter of attacking Libya.)
Shouldn't Hillary, Sarkozy, Levy, Cameron, and Støre be prosecuted for such?
Doesn't Norway have laws against committing such war crimes which can be used to prosecute Norwegian ethical, legal, political, and opinion leaders who are guilty of this?
FACTORS AND QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER - an assessment of our involvement in Syria:
Our "Arab Spring" revolutions - coups - and wars in Libya and Syria were intended to overthrow *independent*, secular governments, using "democratization" as a justification. But it was obvious, as we had already seen in Iraq, Islamic fundamentalist dictatorships would result ... or today's chaos ... and that the inhabitants would suffer terribly.
President Obama was reported at the time to be reluctant about the attack on Libya, and he recently publicly regretted allowing it, for which Putin said he was a "decent man." As Sec/State, Hillary Clinton was the single person with the most executive branch power in the world to push the coups/wars in Libya and Syria - it is unlikely Europeans would have attacked without us - and after the killing of Gaddafi, she was laughingly gloating "We came, we saw, he died."
Atlantic, 18Mar11: Obama, the Reluctant Warrior on Libya.
Washington Post, 14Apr2016: Putin calls Obama 'decent man' for remarks on mistakes in Libya
Hillary, "We came, we saw, he died." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgcd1ghag5Y
Did the weapons Sec/State Clinton had shipped to Syria via the Gulf include the sarin gas used in al Nusrah's Aug13 false flag Ghouta Massacre?
(False flag according to Seymour - Pulitzer Prize, My Lai Massacre - Hersh, Sister Agnes, and genuinely Syrian rebels interviewed on-site by Ababneh in Gavlak article. If Syria had done it, it would have crossed our "red line" against the government using chemical weapons against civilians. Why wasn't our "red line" also against al Nusrah then?)
PBS 10Mar16: Obama says he's proud of pulling back from Syria airstrikes
It appears that Islamic State was created - by an alliance of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Western intelligence agencies - to be such a horrible and external terrorist threat as to justify the Western powers' continued involvement in Iraq and in Syria with the ulterior intent of regime-change. More and more pieces of evidence of this are appearing. Here are 3:
1. Neoconservative U.S. Senator John McCain's contacts with Islamic State - photographs of him with them and his videotaped interview saying he knew better than Sen. Rand Paul what was going on, because he had talked with Islamic State and other groups. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5-51-wLVG0
2. After the death in Britain of well-respected and -liked human rights lawyer John Jones - WikiLeaks' Assange's lawyer - pro-national-security Telegraph newspaper astonishingly published an article about MI5 having discouraged Scotland Yard from prosecuting and shutting down Anjem Choudary's Islamic State operations in Britain. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/21/mi5-stopped-scotland-yard-taking-choudary-down-sources-claim/
3. Our air attack on Syrian troops who had long occupied their positions occurred right before an Islamic State ground attack on them. This appears to have been a co-ordinated attack. Syrian intelligence claims there was air-ground coordination between the Coalition and IS.
Who provides targeting to Coalition aircraft and drones?
Moreover, the devastation of Libya and Syria was used to create the refugee crisis inundating Europe which was a further spur to get Europeans involved in the Mideast, especially with political agitation by Islamists and Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe.
Are the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine better off, after external Western intervention? Specifically, do Libyans think they are better off now, thanks to our Arab Spring?
Emphatically NO.
PBS, 29Sep15 "Regrets of a Revolution? Libya After Qaddafi"
QUESTIONS OF WHY:
WHY does U.S. and other Coalition members want Assad's secular (Christian-tolerant), independent government overthrown?
"Democratization" - why not far worse Saudi Arabia instead?
Syria is a supporter of Hezbollah (in Lebanon too) and Iran - a threat to Israel and pro-Western Mideast.
WHY did the Coalition want Norway involved?
Training a few insurgents is negligible. Especially because of the Nobel Peace Committee, Norway has been internationally seen as righteous. Norway's participation lends legitimacy and ... stretching it ... legality to our anti-Assad war.
If Norway pulls out, it would stop legitimizing our Syrian war and could lead others to follow, ending the tragedy and averting World War 3 starting with a nuclear confrontation with Russia (and now possibly China) over Syria.
If Norway pulls out, its personnel won't get killed if - when - Russia starts bombing external terrorist/insurgent bases.
WHY did Russia intervene in Syria?
I don't think it was because of the naval base at Tartus or any loyalty to Assad. Last year, I was reading that the Russians were abandoning Assad and Syria. On my various forums, I said that that would be foolish - that the West's neocons would just make Ukraine and southern Russia their nuclear battleground instead. Apparently the Kremlin was thinking the same way - self-defense! - and about 10 days later (to my and others' shock), the Russians went in.
WHY did Norway get involved? External pressure? (Arbeidspartei guilty of Libya, but Høyre and Frp were clean.)
Was it President Obama wining and dining PM Solberg and other Nordic leaders beforehand?
Concern that the market for Norway's oil (with its budget revenue) might be curtailed? Whale catch quota??
Did Norway feel threatened with being terrorist-attacked if it didn't?
(Note our State Dept. spokesman Kirby recently threatening the Russians with terrorist attacks, if they didn't cooperate on Syria. https://www.voanews.com/a/russia-backs-2-day-aleppo-cease-fire/3529922.html)
Why was this seminar convened?
To try to legally justify Norwegian involvement after the fact?
To begin a re-evaluation and re-consideration of the morality and legality of Norwegian involvement?
To legitimize escalation of Norwegian involvement - Norwegian troops in or bombing of Syria?
Levy helping foment Kiev coup - "Maidan Revolution" - Feb14:
Triumphant "architect" of Libya holocaust Levy behind Sarkozy and Cameron in Libya:
[The only real solution to the Mideast Gordian Knot mess (and averting WW 3 over it, it seems) is the great powers - U.S. and Russia - sitting down with a map and pencil and delineating spheres of influence ... and responsibility for (controlling) them - just two examples: Russia would get Syria and we would get Lebanon.]
*****
And while we are wasting time and resources playing our Neanderthal nuclear confrontation games to possible Armageddon ... over petty ethnic spats ... the atmospheric CO2 count has passed 400, and polar ice continues to melt.
Mass desalination - Israel leads in that technology - could turn deserts green and help restore the atmosphere.
