Why Are Ukrainian Officials & Bashar Assad Allowed to Call Enemies "Terrorists" but the Western Press Won't Use the Word?

Forty years ago in the 1970s, the Irish Republican Army Provisional faction was performing acts of terrorism and sometimes mass murder in Northern Ireland. And the BBC called them "terrorists." In the same years, the Fatah --meaning conquest of a city in Arabic-- was acting as a mass murderous terrorist group. Neither Fatah nor its partners in mass murder terrorism against Israelis and Jews, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,  the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine plus half a dozen smaller murder factions, was called "terrorist" by the BBC. Who can reckon why this discrepancy? Why were IRA Provos called "terrorists" but not Fatah or the PFLP or the PDFLP?

Maybe the BBC thought that British blood was redder than Jewish-Israeli blood. I can only speculate.

In recent years it is not only the BBC that refuses to call terrorists what they are. Now it is a well-established widespread practice in Western press and media outlets that terrorists are called "militants." In earlier years, a militant was a guy who came out to walk the picket line during a strike, a guy who came to the picket line every day, even in bad weather when most people would be more comfortable at home. A militant for a revolutionary faction was somebody who would pick up a thousand leaflets printed by his faction and stand on a street corner all day giving them out. But nobody in those far off days  would call somebody who planted a bomb in a school playground a "militant."

But the word "terrorist" is still  used these days. Bashar Assad called his domestic enemies "terrorists" in 2011 even before allies and cothinkers of al-Qa`ida had joined the struggle against Assad, or what is now a struggle  to determine the future of Syria.
When Assad started calling the rebels against him "terrorists" before it was  true, back in 2011, he was wrong. But he knew very well what and who were terrorists. He himself and his father before him had funded and trained Arab terrorists attacking Israel. The Assad regime in Syria had funded and trained several of the smaller PLO factions since the 1960s, and Hamas & Hizbullah, since the 1980s. After the  US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Assad regime armed and trained terrorists who operated in Iraq against the foreign occupation troops, including Americans of course. These Syrian-trained terrorists especially took to using bombs to slaughter the Shiite population in Iraq. Surely the Assad regime knew that these were terrorists. By the way, today Assad is allied with Shiites warriors against Sunni Muslim rebels against him.

Now we know that Assad's regime is greatly aided by the Russian government. The Russian govt also supports rebels and insurgents in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. These rebels and insurgents who favor Russian rule over their home areas in Eastern Ukraine, in the Don Basin, and so on, are rough and abusive and often thuggish. But they are hardly terrorists in the sense of Hamas or Hizbullah or al-Qa`ida. Yet officials of the Ukrainian government, Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko and so on, call these rebels/insurgents "terrorists." This is one of the things that keeps the new Ukrainian govt from having any credibility,

Now the new Ukrainian govt is supported by Western powers including the EU & USA. So Russia's ally in Syria, Assad, called his opponents "terrorists"  even when the rebels fighting him were not terrorists.
Today, Ukrainian officials supported by the EU & USA call the rebels that Russia supports "terrorists" when they are not.

Meanwhile, Western news outlets like BBC, France24, the New York Times and so many others, call the real terrorists mere "militants."

Hence the word terrorist has become an ill-treated orphan. Can't somebody sort out the meanings and  usages of the words "terrorist" & "militant"? Where is Orwell when we need him?

Charles Malik: The West Is the Problem

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools.

Charles Malik was a former president of the UN General Assembly, a former foreign minister of Lebanon, and a professor of philosophy. He was not only a knowledgeable insider in world politics but had the intellect to understand what was happening in a historical perspective. Malik was deeply disappointed by the West's failure to defend Lebanon as --in part and imperfectly-- an outpost of Western civilization in the Middle East. In 1984 he wrote an op ed in the Wall Street Journal where he stated:

For months now the world has been focusing on Lebanon as a problem. The problem is not Lebanon or the importance of Lebanon. The problem is the West. Indeed, the importance of Lebanon is precisely that it raises the problem of the West. Lebanon would never have been a problem if the West itself were not the problem. And the West is not only the problem but also the solution. That is its singular greatness. And the solution is to be true to the deepest value of the West: the primacyof the spirit and the freedom of the soul. [WSJ 3-28-1984]

To confirm what Malik wrote, Lee Smith points out how US policy [he refers mainly to the Obama administration] has befriended the Syrian Assad regime despite its many many offenses against the United States and against Americans:

To survive, Damascus needs the world to ignore what it is up to. It particularly needs indifference in Washington, where the Obama administration has seemed sadly oblivious to the fact that what a regime does at home is indicative of how it will act abroad—or, in the case of Syria, a state sponsor of terror and ally of Iran, how it has acted over the last 40 years, targeting especially American citizens, interests, and allies.
For all that, the administration just wants the Syria issue, the uprising, the opposition, to go away. It would prefer not to deal with it and thus has come up with all sorts of excuses to do just that.
It was five months, and many thousand dead, into the uprising before Obama called on Assad to step down. Instead of leading, the president tasked Syria policy out to Turkey, then to the Arab League, which sent a monitoring delegation led by a former Sudanese intelligence chief suspected of war crimes in Darfur.

Smith goes farther. He argues that its position on Syria, since it asked Assad to leave office, does not indicate real opposition to Assad but rather reluctance to see the Assad clan's fall. Smith raises the question of where the Obama administration and the State Dept really stand:

Unfortunately, the White House has painted itself into a corner. Because the administration has never really wanted to see Assad fall, it has talked only of stopping the violence . . . , with the unstated provision that once the murders stop, the murderer still rules. . . .

The question of where Obama & Co. really stand arises concerning the Iranian nuke bomb project as well. Bear in mind that Iran's ayatollahs are major supporters of the Assad regime and vice versa:

What’s odd is that the White House has let on, through various media surrogates, that it may come to accept the inevitability of the Iranian nuclear program and move toward a policy of containment and deterrence. . . . In its dithering on Syria, the administration shows a lack of seriousness in dealing with Iran. . . .

Yet the Assad regime, going back to 1983 at least, has a record of killing offcial Americans as well as American troops in both Lebanon and Iraq:

Under Assad the Damascus airport was a jihadist transport hub from which foreign fighters were either bused directly to the Iraqi border to fight U.S. troops, or warehoused in Syrian prisons until they could be put to some use. Washington knew very well that Syrian intelligence was working with al Qaeda because it had evidence of it in the Sinjar documents, showing that 90 percent of the foreign fighters in Iraq were coming through Syria. When a series of suicide bombings killed hundreds of Iraqis in the fall of 2009, the Obama administration hushed Iraqi officials who pointed a finger at Damascus. In other words, al Qaeda’s position in Syria was a problem U.S. officials were content to ignore when, with the help of Assad’s intelligence agents, the organization was killing American troops and Iraqis. But now the fact that al Qaeda elements, which may still be under the control of Syrian intelligence, are targeting regime installations, is a reason not to support the opposition [here Smith is pointing at Obama administration hypocrisy]. . . . The regime in Damascus that has so much Syrian blood on its hands also, along with its allies in Iran and Hezbollah, has killed many thousands of Americans. In Lebanon, U.S. Marines, diplomats, and intelligence officials were slaughtered by Iranian and Syrian assets; in Iraq, the Syrians and Iranians backed both Sunni and Shia fighters in their war against American troops, leaving almost 5,000 dead and many more thousands wounded [The Weekly Standard, 5 March 2012]

So the Assad regime in Syria has been an enemy of the United States and of Americans, including rank and file soldiers plus diplomats and intelligence officials. Yet the Syrian Assad regime was being coddled by the State Dept in the mid-1970s, under Kissinger and since then. The Baker-Hamilton Report drawn up for the Bush 2 administration in about 2006 recommended helping solve all Middle Eastern problems by pressuring Israel to give up the Golan Heights to Assad-ruled Syria. Apparently, Israel's welfare was secondary to Assad regime welfare. Or just how does one explain the situation that Lee Smith describes together with my extending the picture of Washington indulgence of the Assads back to the mid-1970s?

More White House/Obama/Hilary Cover Up for Assad Basher

As bloody, murderous repression continues in Syria, the Obama gang continue to cover up for Assad the Basher. Hilary gave an asinine interview to La Stampa, saying things which even a sixth grade teacher would be ashamed to tell her class, so silly and unbelievable they were. She needed an excuse as to why the USA was attacking Qaddafi in Libya but would not attack Basher Assad in Syria, or call on him to give up power. Here are main points of the interview as quoted in Corriere della Sera:

The USA -- "We don't have certain data, but we know that Syria can still pass reforms. On the other hand, no one believed that Qaddafi would have done it." Thus the American secretary of state Hilary Clinton stressed the differences between the situation in Libya and that in Syria, during an interview given to the daily La Stampa. "People believe that there is a possible path [of dialogue & cooperation] with Syria. For that reason, we continue, together with our allies, to exert pressure" [on Syria, that is, on Assad's regime], the chief of America's diplomacy added, also referring to the sanctions that were passed against Damascus. [qui]

GLI USA - «Non abbiamo dati certi, ma sappiamo che la Siria può ancora varare riforme. Nessuno invece credeva che Gheddafi lo avrebbe fatto» Così il segretario di Stato americano Hillary Clinton ha sottolineato le differenze fra la situazione in Libia e Siria, nel corso di un'intervista concessa al quotidiano La Stampa. «La gente ritiene ci sia un percorso possibile con la Siria. per questo continuiamo insieme ai nostri alleati a fare pressioni», ha aggiunto il capo della diplomazia americana, riferendosi anche alle sanzioni che sono state varate nei confronti di Damasco. [qui]

This would be pathetic and laughable if were not so sad and dangerous. The sanctions that she mentioned were mild and toothless. She says all this after a host of Syrian/Assadian deeds demonstrating the bloodthirsty, tyrannical nature of the Syrian/Assadian regime. Has she forgotten the murder of Rafiq Hariri in Beirut, only six years ago, together with two dozen other people?? How about all the murders of the anti-Syrian leaders in Lebanon, members of parliament and journalists, etc? What about the short-lived Lebanese president, Rene Mu`awad, murdered 20 years ago, after the Taif Accord? What about Kamal Jumblatt and Bashir Jemayel? What about the 20,000 to 30,000 Syrians slaughtered by Junior Assad's father, Hafiz, in Hama in 1982? And Bashar who shows no mercy to his own people eagerly helps the Hizbullah in Lebanon to kill as many Jews in Israel as possible. Does any of that make an impression in Washington? Does any of it evoke any pangs of conscience there? Of course it supports what we said here at Emet m'Tsiyon as to an Obama policy erecting and maintaining an array of very hostile states around Israel, more eager to go to war with Israel than Mubarak was.

To conclude: Isn't Hilary ashamed to sound so stupid --or so disingenuous? Obama has no shame, as we know. These people are a disgrace to America and very dangerous to Israel, the rest of the world, and of course to America.

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Jackson Diehl on Washington policy towards Basher Assad [here].
An interview with Hilary Clinton for Italian TV [in English on the State Dept site]. This may be the source of the quotes from Hilary in La Stampa and quoted in turn from La Stampa by Corriere. It was picked up from the the State Dept site by Elliott Abrams. The questioner is referring to Syria:

QUESTION: (Inaudible) they are big ethical case.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, and I think it’s fair to say that everyone has the same concerns – the United States, Italy, our other European and Arab partners – about what’s going on in Syria. And we have been absolutely outspoken on that. We have begun to sanction Syrian leaders. I know the EU is considering doing the same. But the situation in Syria is even more complex in many, many eyes. There are deep concerns about what is going on inside Syria, and we are pushing hard for the Government of Syria to live up to its own stated commitment to reforms. So I think it’s – it is fair to say --

QUESTION: But the Syria case is particularly poignant, the (inaudible).

SECRETARY CLINTON: It is poignant.

QUESTION: At this point, this is a country where they have killed most people in the street.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I don’t have that comparison, but what I do know is that they have an opportunity still to bring about a reform agenda. Nobody believed Qadhafi would do that. People do believe there is a possible path forward with Syria. So we’re going to continue joining with all of our allies to keep pressing very hard on that
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5-14-2011 Fouad Ajami on the diplomatic strategy of the Syrian Assad regime [here]. Ajami is a respected historian of Lebanese origin, now at the Hoover Institution in California.
Michael Young on Obama, Syria, and the New York Times [here]. Young is an editor at the Beirut Daily Star.