Mick Hartley

The world's been waiting for Bashar al-Assad's view on Ukraine, and, at last, we have it:

"The West has proven that it does not have friends or enemies. It has only one enemy – anyone who stands in the way of its material interests. Communism, Islam, Nazism, China, Russia, or anyone else are not the enemies of the West. If they serve the interests [of the West] – they are friends. In other words, they have zero principles. The ugliest truth of them all – and not many people know this – is the lie that the West and Zionism oppose Nazism. Not many people know that the leaders of the Nazis in Ukraine – Nazi organizations that closely collaborated with Hitler in terms of security, military, and ideology – were driven out [of Ukraine] at the end of WWII, some of them to Europe, and some of them to America. In the 1950's, the CIA asked the American administration to lift the ban on these Nazi groups, because America needed them in Ukraine, which was part of the USSR.

"What proves these historic facts today is that Zelensky is a Zionist Jew, yet he supports the extremist nationalist organizations that fought [alongside the Nazis] in WWII when Hitler invaded [the USSR], and some of them took parts in the massacres committed against the Jews. So how come that Zionist Jew is supporting these organizations? The West supports these organizations, which today are called the right-winged 'Azov organization.' And Zionist Israel, which keeps crying about the victims of the Holocaust, supports a leader that supports the Nazis that killed the Jews. This proves that the West is lying in everything that it is saying, and it does not care about anything except ruling the world, plundering resources, and filling its coffers."

It's one of those strange historical quirks that Assad's new Syria, as supported by Russia, is as close as makes no difference to Saddam's Iraq – which is to say a state run on terror that imprisons and tortures its enemies, and employs all means up to and including chemical warfare against its own people to stay in power.

Of the two Ba'athist states of the time, Iraq and Syria, you'd have to say that Iraq was the worst, as documented in Kanan Makiya's Republic of Fear and Cruelty and Silence. Bashar's dad Hafez, it's true, did kill thousands in the 1982 Hama massacre, but that was nothing compared to Saddam and the Kurds – or the Marsh Arabs, or indeed the invasion of Kuwait and the war with Iran.

Well, we all know the story. Bush and the allies took down Saddam, and it's now agreed historical fact that this was a terrible disaster all due to lies about WMDs. Never mind that the main complaints at the time were about the appalling war that would be unleashed: in fact overthrowing Saddam was little problem. And never mind that Iran was never going to allow Iraq to develop into a normally functional state, especially since it had all those grievances to exploit about a majority Shia population that had languished all those years under a brutal Sunni dictatorship. 

Anyway, the West in general and Obama in particular learnt the lesson. No more intervention. So when Syria happened the US made it clear that it would do nothing, and allowed Russia to take control – up to and including bombing hospitals and the use of chemical weapons. The unfolding disaster, in sheer humanitarian terms, was on a wholly different scale to Iraq. But at least we could say we weren't to blame. We sat back smugly and did nothing, while Russia perfected the type of warfare we're now seeing in Ukraine. 

And look – there's Saddam no. 2 in charge of Syria. He may lack the basic sadism and cruelty of the original Saddam, but he's learning.