America: A Pain in the Back!

If some changes and minute developments in the Syrian conflict — such as the departure of Robert Ford, former American ambassador to Syria, and the final termination of the role played by the Saudi Bandar bin Sultan — are, as many observers believe, indicative of some kind of real change in the position that the U.S.-headed western leadership is taking on what is happening in the country, then it is obvious that such a strategic change — one made necessary by miscalculations, imperfect information and delusive presumptions — will transfer to other issues and events.

However, this change has not yet spread to the positions of the west, America specifically, in other issues like the one in Ukraine, even though the Russian column and those supporting it in the Syrian issue against America and its arrogance are present there too. It’s as though the Syrian lesson has not yet been learned. The Western political psyche has not received and accepted it as should have occurred. This indicates that this psyche, especially its American component, with all the ideas, policies and strategies that it acquired and absorbed during its era of hegemony and domination over the world, is still unable to comprehend the realities of change on the ground. It is still unable to accept the idea of the presence of a Russian rival and those who support it, like China, the BRICS countries and others.

Perhaps, this inability is what today leads the West — America and Europe — to commit many political follies and unjustified, incomprehensible malfeasances when dealing with the Ukrainian issue and with Russia’s involvement, or the Eastern involvement in general, just as it does when dealing with the current Syrian issue. It’s as if the West is still living in the 1990s, a problem causing much of the pain and suffering of peoples who fall in the middle of the new global bipolar competition.

The West in general, America in particular, is a cause, through its policies of hegemony, domination, invasion, occupation, systematic plundering, fabricating false revolutions and spreading chaos, of continual pain for many of the world’s peoples and societies, particularly the Arabs. It is a pain in the back that has turned chronic, a pain that that no emergency and palliative treatments can help — but what about surgeries that eradicate and uproot the underlying cause?