By Markar Melkonian

For over a century, Armenians, Assyrians and Kurds have been drowning in America’s alligator tears

On Monday, March 14, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously adopted a resolution describing the violence committed by Daesh (ISIS or ISIL) against “Christians and other minorities” in Syria and Iraq as genocide.

The director of the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) echoed the view of many Armenians when he welcomed the vote “as powerful encouragement for U.S. leadership in ending genocidal attacks.”  The vote, however, is a nonbinding advisory that “doesn’t mandate anything.”  (Washington Post, March 15, 2016.)

The following Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry followed suit, formally designating Daesh violence against Yazidis, Christians, and Shiite Muslims as genocide.  Meanwhile, Washington and its regional confederates continue to support “rebel” forces that have aligned themselves with Daesh to fight againsttheir worst enemy, the Syrian Army. 

The absurdity of the American rhetoric should be obvious:  the violence against Yazidis, Christians, and Shiites in Syria would not be taking place if it were not for America’s trillion-dollar warmongering in half a dozen countries in the Middle East in the past dozen years. Indeed, it was this warmongering that brought Daesh into existence in the first place. 

Take Syria, for example.  Until recently, that country was home to vibrant Armenian communities comprising some 200,000 of our compatriots.  The good people of Syria, Christian and Muslim, were friends and neighbors of Armenians.  Like Armenians, they too had suffered terribly under Turkish rule, and they extended a hand to us in our darkest hour. 

Since 2003, Syria has also been a place of refuge for tens of thousands of Iraqis fleeing the second American war in Iraq.  Those tens of thousand huddled into overcrowded neighborhoods in Damascus and other cities. Many of them were Christians; others were Sunni Muslims who had been forced out of the mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods where their families had lived in peace for generations. As refugees in Syria, they survivedinjam-packed housing, without jobs, medical care, or schools for their children.  In time, exhaustion and fear gave way to anger. 

In the run-up to the carnage in Syria, the U.S. State Department and themainstream presshurled inflammatory accusationsat the Bashar Assad “regime.” Chief among these accusations was the claim that the Syrian Army had used chemical weapons against civilians.Such horrific crimes, the Americans said, demanded regime change in Damascus. 

And so it was that the Americans provided tens of millions of dollars worth of recruitment outreach for the international jihadists.  Heeding the call for jihad in Syria, thousands of recruits from dozens of countries made their way to Turkey.  America’s allies in Ankara provided a secure rear base for cross-border attacks; the Americans provided weapons to these rebels, and the CIA provided training.  In short order, much of that weaponry and personnel ended up inDaesh camps.  

Assad denied that his army had launched the chemical attacks.  He provided evidence to support his denial, and in turn accused the rebels of the attacks.  American spokesmen scoffed at his denial and claimed that the rebels did not possess the resources to produce such weapons.  (“Opposition: Only Syrian gov't can produce, use stock, WMDs,”  http://www.jpost.com/Syria-Crisis/Syrian-government-claims-to-find-chemical-agents-in-rebel-tunnel-324110, August 24, 2013)

Fast-forward to March 12 of this year, when western journalists reported the use of chemical weapons by the rebels, including two March 12 attacks near the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, in which 600 civilians were injured and a child was killed. Now, it seems, even the mainstream media acknowledges what it denied three years ago:  the rebelsdo indeed have chemical weapons after all.  Still, the “objective journalists”havenotdrawn out the implications of their own admission:  if the Americans really were so very concerned about the use of chemical weapons against civilians in Syria, then they should immediately cease support for the rebelsaligned with Daesh. 

This has not happened, of course, and by 2016 it didn’t matter anyway.  Once againWashington’s neocons havesuccessfully conjuredup another war, and this time they achieved their goal of crippling the Syrian armed forces.  The neoconsdo not needto acknowledge the truth of the matter, let alone apologize for anything. 

On the contrary, according to the neocon playbook, the peoples of the Middle East owe America a great debt of gratitude.  In June 2006, while America’s surrogates in Tel Aviv were once again shredding and burninghundreds of civilians in Lebanon, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced that, “what we’re seeing here, in a sense, is the growing—the birth pangs—of a New Middle East.” As Rice saw it, the danger at that time was not the maiming of thousands of children in Lebanon, but rather the prospect of a “pre-mature ceasefire.”  The George W. Bush administration insisted that the Israelis must be given enough time and weapons to complete their work in Lebanon.  So day after day, for a month that summer, the Americans protected their Zionist surrogate from even mild criticism, while “in a sense” the bombs rained down on civilians.

That summer, an audience of many millions followed the news from Lebanon.  Two summers later they followed news about the bombing of Gaza, and two years after that they followed the news about more bombings in Lebanon.  And on and on it went, as it had gone on for six decades before that. 

Meanwhile, an army of experts in think tanks, universities, and intelligence agencies were busy trying to explain why the “Arab street” did not feel gratitude. It seems there was something resentful and irrational about Arab culture.  Perhaps a team of “Arabists” in Tel Aviv or Langley, Virginianeeded to use social media more skillfully, to “change the narrative.”

In the following years, even as Rice’s New Middle East collapsed in flames, commentators in the corporate media congratulated America for bringing on the Arab Spring.Like Rice’sNew Middle East, the Arab Spring came courtesy of America. At least this was the story,according to the famously modest Americans themselves.  President Bush’s deputy national security advisor Elliott Abrams wrotein January 2011 that, “the revolt in Tunisia, the gigantic wave of demonstrations in Egypt and the more recent marches in Yemen all make clear that Bush had it right.” (Elliot Abrams, “Egypt Protests Show George W. Bush Was Right about Freedom in the Arab World.”  The Washington Post, Jan. 29, 2011)Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner celebrated the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt as a“vindication for Bush’s freedom agenda.” Vice President Dick Cheney exulted:  “I think that what happened in Iraq, the fact that we brought democracy, if you will, and freedom to Iraq, has had a ripple effect on some of those other countries.”

And so, according to the neocons and the experts on TV, the Arab Spring confirmed America’s special role in bringing “democracy, if you will, and freedom” to the Middle East.  After a million deaths, millions of refugees, and tens of millions of destroyed lives,this is the lesson that they say they have learned.

Under these circumstances, it would be foolish to expect American foreign policy to change any time soon.  They will continue their rampage as long as they think they can get away with it. 

Of course, America did have something to do with the uprisings in Tunis and Cairo.  There was indeed a “ripple effect,” but it was not exactly the way Cheney described it. American tutelage in Egypt and Tunisiahad exacerbatedpoverty and social displacement andproduced high youth unemployment and rising food prices.  Thus, it magnified widespread disgust with dictators and kings. The Mubarak regime in Egypthad for decades been the second-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, a distant second from Israel.  The aid went predominantly to the Egyptian army, the core of a “deep state” that wasready for deployment just as soon as democracy failed to serve the interests of the imperialists. 

And that is exactly what took place in July 2013, when General Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and his forces overthrew the elected President of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi.  When the army crushed protests and jailed thousands of demonstrators, the same neocons who had taken credit for the Arab Spring suddenlyleaped up to applaud. 

Some readers might recall that in the late 1980s everyone agreed that “communism” was dead, in fact and in theory.  And no item of communist propaganda was more ridiculous, more baldly false, than the claim that Americawas run by warmongers who used the charge of “Soviet aggression” as a pretext for their own aggression. Counter-revolutionaries in cities like Yerevan laughed at the suggestion that America--that glittering beacon of freedom and democracy,the home of Disneyland, Las Vegas, and the eternally desirable MTV--was an imperialist state.

Since then, a new generation has come of age in cities like Yerevan, a generation for whom capitalism is not a distant dreamland but an all-too-tangible reality.  Members of this generation, born into capitalism, have witnessed the procession of one American war after another.  They know that the testimony of their daily lives is not communist propaganda, because they have heard only capitalist propaganda.  Faced with this disconnection between reality and rhetoric, they may now compare the democracy-and-freedom picture of America to the communist view of American imperialism.  Who has been proven right after all--the communists or the counter-revolutionaries?  And who was dead wrong? 

For over a century, Armenians, Assyrians and Kurds have been drowning in America’s alligator tears. Now we have an announcement that Daesh is committing genocide. Apologies to the ANCA spokesperson, but a correction is in order:  America doesn’t lead in ending genocidal attacks:  America leads in setting the stage for genocidal attacks. 

In so doing, the Americans neocons have foistedrefugeemayhemonto Europe, mayhem that they expect the Europeans to deal with.  Five years of war in Syria have produced some 4.2 million refugees.  Armenia has received more than 17,000 of them.  (http://www.un.am/en/agency/UNHCR)  America, by contrast, has received some 2290 refugees since 2011 (Time, Nov. 30, 2015)—less than one-seventh of the number that Armenia has received.The Home of the Brave, it seems, is seized with fear about homeland security. 

The blessed few refugees who are lucky enough to find themselves in the United Statesknow what they are required to do.  They understand that they must now express gratitude to those who destroyed their homes, jobs, and neighborhoods in their ancestral land. There they are on the local television news:  a family ofYazidis,Alawites, or Armenians--three generations perched on a donated sofa in a living room in San Diego or Omaha, Nebraska. A twenty-something son or daughter describesthe lake of fire they have traversed, the family and friends they have lost; the atrocities they have witnessed. 

How very grateful they are to be in a decent, safe, prosperous Land of Opportunity. The deer-in-the-headlights grandmother sits uncomprehending:  after six, seven, or eight decades in her homeland, she will die a stranger in a strange land.  And here we have a scene of the youngsters playing video games.  They will adapt and do well in school, and perhaps in thirty years one of them will own an auto stereo shop.  And that will all go to show how, in the Land of Opportunity, anything is possible.

And so, having performed the required act of self-abasement, the final phase of humiliation is complete.But don’t ever expect the slightest expression of regret from the neocons:  American imperialism is like love—they never have to say they’re sorry. 

But what good is all of this recrimination, all of this finger pointing?  After all, what’s done is done.  Our communities in Iraq and Syria are gone:  homes, neighborhoods, community centers, churches, schools, the work of generations--all gone.  Too bad, but what’s the use in crying?  Let us save our tears for April 24.  Maybe some day the Americans who destroyed the lives of tens of thousands of Armenians in Iraq and Syria will “recognize” the Armenian genocide, and all will be well on Earth. 

So why should be play the blame-game?

One obvious answer is that the finger pointing is really a search for a causal explanation of our current situation.  The New World Order, the New Middle East, the Arab Spring--we need to understand where the neocons are trying to take us, and what is at stake for Armenia.  

Or have we reached a point where we no longer even expect to understand what is happening to us?

There is another answer to this question, a related answer that can be put in two syllables:  Iran.  Having bestowed the blessings of freedom and democracy on Iraq, Libya, and Syria, the neocons are now pushing their plan to plunge Iran into a bloodbath.  And they have the ears of both of the 2016 American presidential candidates.

Markar Melkonian is a philosophy instructor and an author. His books include Richard Rorty’s Politics:  Liberalism at the End of the American Century (1999), Marxism: A Post-Cold War Primer (Westview Press, 1996), and My Brother’s Road (2005).