
The U.N has officially classified the fighting in Syria as a civil war. This may eventually benefit desperate Syrians by defining war crimes, and also throws a harsh spotlight on China and Russia, whose repugnant support of a hideous tyranny ignores death raining down upon Syrian civilians, women, and children,
China and Russia defy the UN and disgust the world as they turn blind eyes to wholesale murder by a criminal regime insanely clinging to power over people who want only a breath of the Arab Spring. Fighting has come to Damascus with two members of the Assad inner circle killed today, Bashar al-Assad, if not killed like fellow tyrant Muammar al-Gadafi, will one day stand before the International Court of Justice.
Meanwhile the cynical rationales of China and Russia force us to recall the sorry history of many countries, U.S.A. included, which supported evil regimes for political or economic reasons. In South America, we propped up dictators either because we feared they’d be toppled by communists, or to prop up some vampire banana, rubber, coffee, or oil baron draining their wealth. England, France, Holland, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Imperial Japan, Russia and China, all had empires.
The U.S. has pretty much shucked off its empire. Great Britain let some go (like us) kept connected to others with its Commonwealth, sort of a ghost empire, allowing Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Bermuda, Granada, the Falklands, Gibralter, and others to enjoy their distinct nationalities and still feel British. But Russia, which attempted to Russify and absorb its satellites, turned most of them into enemies with the breakdown of the Soviet Union, and China to this day denies anything approaching nationhood, calling those it absorbed, “minorities.”
This retro behavior is a cold attempt to keep a mid-East foothold. But with all-out civil war now in progress, it is contrary to common sense. And with the inevitable fall of Assad, ties to his bloody hegemony will brand Russia and China as enemies of regimes that follow. China and Russia have produced geniuses in every field, but the behavior of its power elite seems to be only a mindless reflex from the bad old days of centuries past.