On the road to Damascus

What follows is my English translation of an article by Nestor Halak, originally in Italian, published on ComeDonChisciotte.org today, Wednesday 11th December 2024. Although I do not fully agree with the author of this article, it is still an interesting read. (All emphasis mine - emphasized parts are those I agree with the most).

It seems to me that several lessons can be drawn from the fall of Damascus, which occurred with such unpredictable and unforeseen (even by those who should have foreseen it) ease.

First, I would say that a war is never over until it is over and it is futile to sing victory before it is.

Then I would say that it is foolish to agree to stop a conflict when you are winning, because at the time of any future resumption, conditions may be completely different.

It is also futile to rely on covenants and treaties: in international law, agreements are only respected as long as it is convenient or as long as one is able to enforce them, which is a variant of the same thing.

The pacts made with the United States, then, are notorious for not being worth the paper they are written on, at least since the days when the Great White Father of Washington cheated the Indians by making promises, obviously untrue, that they should be valid as long as the grass grows and the rivers flow.

So it seems to me that there was little to rest easy following an “Astana Group” agreement signed by none other than that gentleman Erdogan. And yet it seems that chancelleries relied on it to a certain extent. They probably thought they had more deterrence, but deterrence soon wears off if a provocation is not matched by an adequate reaction.

Syria is lost, and with it the whole Russian rescue operation and its costs, and with Syria goes the land corridor between Iran and Lebanon that kept Hezbollah going: Israel, which was allowed to bomb Damascus with impunity, and is currently busy slaughtering Palestinians in Gaza to general indifference, can gloat.

I hope at least that the events in Syria will bring advice regarding the war in Ukraine, especially now that the West, militarily ill-equipped, is proposing plans to freeze the front lines by “promising” with great generosity that for ten or twenty years Ukraine “will not join NATO”. Strange promise: it seems to me that it should be clear to everyone by now that it is not at all a question of preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, but of convincing it to leave it: isn't the Ukrainian army a NATO army? Isn't the current war between NATO and Russia? Yet whenever President Putin or his minister Lavrov speak, the point that is most often repeated is that the Russians “remain ready and willing to seek an agreement”.

But an agreement with whom? An agreement that stipulates what? That NATO will not expand an inch to the east? All previous agreements have proved to be waste paper, among Western politicians there are even those who candidly confessed that they were merely expedients to gain time, do you want them to tell you more clearly than that? In reality there is nothing to negotiate except how the Americans are to leave Ukraine and perhaps finally return to their home. What else can one possibly negotiate with an enemy that declares on television that its goal is the strategic defeat of Russia and its destruction as a unitary state?

In reality, the Russians cannot really win this war unless they bring almost the entire Ukrainian territory permanently under their direct or indirect hegemony, and they can only do this by military means, since they are outclassed in propaganda: I would see more grounds for a full-scale war, as intense and brief as possible, rather than for a years-long “special military operation”, what do you say?

The Americans are relatively weak militarily, in fact they always need others to fight in their stead unless it is to invade Grenada, whereas they are strong (still today, incredibly), in terms of soft power: in theatre they are unbeatable. Compare real military exploits with colour revolutions: in terms of results, there is no comparison. Rambo only works in the movies, in reality, corruption, infiltration, propaganda, deception, etc. etc. are much more valuable.

Maybe convincing ignorant and practically psychopathic religious fanatics to wage war on their own isn't too difficult, but they actually managed to convince an educated and world-conscious people like the Ukrainians to die for the empire, and mind you, dying is no small feat.

It seems really strange that in the twenty-first century one can persuade a guy who has always spoken Russian even in his family and considers Ukrainian a funny dialect of L'Vov and who, moreover, has always followed Russian customs as his own, to go and fight against the “Russians” because he is not Russian, but Ukrainian. Especially in light of the incontrovertible fact that the Russian Federation had five times the population [of pre-war Ukraine] and [has] the largest atomic and conventional arsenal in the world. Yet it must be admitted that the Americans have succeeded: they have not convinced everyone, of course, but a good part. Are they good or not?

It is tragic, but also grotesque and bizarre, and yet the facts prove that yes, one can be stupid enough to go and die for Black Rock. It seems all you have to do is draw a line down the road and say that those in the odd numbers are all fucking foreigners who have come to steal our land. Maybe rewriting history in school books helps too.

I take some comfort in the firm belief that in Italy this will not be possible anyway, although, who knows, they might even try. Not that we don't also get fooled with derisory ease, just think of what the “pandemic” was, when people hitherto considered unsuspected, friends and relatives, began to believe the most laughable nonsense, but I like to think that the Italian army would melt away with a speed comparable to the Syrian Arab army well before coming into contact with the enemy. In fact, you know what? Probably the best way to lose the war in Ukraine quickly would be to send European troops to the battlefield. Go, go and teach the Ukrainians how to fight.

The Syrian disaster clearly demonstrates how one can almost win the war and then lose the peace, and it will certainly bring further endless grief to an already tormented population, but perhaps it could serve as a lesson for the wars still ongoing more than the outcome of the Minsk agreements, but I confess I remain doubtful. The Russian responses to the Western moves continue to seem rather weak and sometimes a little naïve, in any case insufficient to discourage the warmongers in Washington, people so ferocious as to ask Ukraine to lower the age of conscription in order to send even the youngest (Ukrainian) boys to die (for them): the Aztec priests were probably more empathetic, these are great scoundrels, hundreds of thousands of dead are still not enough for them. There is really no need to bother with the extraordinarily misused Hitler, always in the mouth of the main stream, when we have such shining examples of philanthropists, here among us, in our times, in the world's largest democracy.

How do you want them to be shocked by a hypersonic missile targeting a factory that has already been bombed so many times in Dnepropetrovsk? What's more, without even a proper boom to make an impression on television. As far as those rich gentlemen are concerned, the “white niggers” can all drop dead. In fact, it would be all the better for it.

Perhaps if a couple of those missiles had destroyed the new American base in Romania, the message would have got through more clearly. Those are people who don't feel anything that doesn't hit them directly.

Sure, sure, I know, the Russians didn't want escalation [that’s what NATO wants], but they didn't want war either, and yet in the end they suffered it anyway and at home. Not responding adequately to the enemy's escalation leads to a loss of deterrence and is tantamount to inviting them to take a step further. The slow boil does not only apply to frogs. Or so it seems to me.

Who knows, maybe a vision will appear to them on the road to Damascus as well.

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