OBAMA had been facing massive opposition in every State of the Union, with opinion polls saying that he faced defeat in any Congressional vote to support his demand for a strike on Syria.
This was until much needed help arrived from the remnants of the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia, led by President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov.
They leapt like hungry predators onto remarks by US Secretary of State Kerry that had earlier been dismissed, both by the State Department and by the Cameron government, as being made while Kerry’s brain and mouth were out of coordination.
Kerry, in an off-the-cuff rejoinder to remarks by a journalist, had said that the only way Syria could stop an Obama missile strike was if it handed over, to the control of the international community, every chemical weapon that it holds for destruction.
While capitalist governments everywhere were openly questioning just how Kerry had managed to get his job, Putin and co embraced his remarks with enthusiasm, thrust them onto the Syrians, and pledged that Syria’s chemical weapons would be put under international control and then destroyed.
For Obama – who had been considering what he would do if he lost the vote, either be a lame duck president for the rest of his term, or be impeached and removed if he defied Congress and announced that he intended to strike Syria anyway – relief had arrived!
Obama has embraced the Russian plan, like a drowning man grabs a lifesaver, and all thoughts of votes in Congress have been abandoned to make way for a new campaign to make Russia force Syria to declare all of its chemical armaments, as a preliminary to destroying them.
This campaign will be conducted with the same verve as was the earlier campaign in Iraq in 2002-2003, with any adjudged failure to cooperate as demanded, a cause for war.
Once again US imperialism, having been fought to a standstill by the Syrian masses and with the working people of the world, especially in the US and the UK, completely opposed to its war, faced a humiliating defeat at the hands of the US Congress.
He has now been rescued by Putin, delighted to prove to Obama just what kind of important services the Stalinist bureaucracy can perform for him, in an attempt to establish a special relationship between the bureaucracy and its US ‘partners’.
The imperialists will also also be re-examining the prospects for a Geneva conference, presided over by Putin and Obama, at which the retirement of Assad and the current Baathist leadership can be organised.
This is now the perspective that will be opening up thanks to Putin’s rescue of Obama when, if he had waited just a few more days, Obama and US imperialism would have been greatly weakened by a Congressional rejection.
The Stalinist bureaucracy however is not in the business of aiding the overthrow of imperialist leaders or imperialism, it is seeking ways and means to live alongside them.
These are the same politics that saw Stalin sign the pact with Hitler and then be the victim of a ‘surprise attack’ in 1941 that cost tens of millions of citizens of the USSR their lives.
As to the question of chemical warfare and weaponry, their greatest-ever use was by the United States in the Vietnam war, when vast amounts of chemicals were sprayed, such as Agent Orange, over Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia killing hundreds of thousands of people, and still killing children to this day.
The UK used such weaponry in Iraq in the 1920s and 30s. Meanwhile, chemical warfare research and development is still being carred out at establishments such as Porton Down, and both the US and the UK have vast stocks of chemical weapons intact and ready for use.
The workers of the world must not allow the Stalinist bureaucracy to betray the Syrian people into the hands of the imerialist powers. There must be massive strike actions worldwide, particularly in the US and the UK to demand ‘hands off Syria’ and that all imperialist armed forces and their mercenary stooges quit the Middle East and Syria at once.
