– by Matt Carr

In August 2013, when the U.S. et al looked set to start bombing Syria in response to what they claimed was a chemical weapon attack by the Assad regime in Ghouta, The International Committee of the Red Cross went on record to say that any escalation of the conflict  would:

likely trigger more displacement and add to humanitarian needs which are already immense.

And it’s clear from the context that by ‘escalation’, they meant U.S. led bombing.

Just over a year later, and that bombing has finally commenced.

The International Committee of the Red Cross have now had this to say about it. From Reuters:

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Friday that U.S.-led air strikes on Islamist insurgents in Iraq and Syria had worsened a dire humanitarian crisis on the ground.

All warring parties in the widening conflicts in the two countries should spare civilians and allow delivery of aid, the Geneva-based ICRC said in a statement.

“Years of fighting in Syria and Iraq, the proliferation of armed groups and the recent international air strikes in Iraq and Syria have compounded the humanitarian consequences of the conflicts in both countries,” it said. “The humanitarian situation continues to worsen.”

As they’d previously predicted, then, the U.S. led ‘humanitarian’ bombing of Syria has already lead to a worsening of the humanitarian situation, and we are only a few days in.

And if anything, it’s only going to get more brutal from here on in, rather than less so, as all sides start to dig in for what they could see as a fight to the finish. Or to put it more bluntly, a fight to the death.

The very idea that a coalition featuring the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Bahrain – some of the world’s most persistently abusive, repressive and criminal states – was going to start bombing Syria to ameliorate the humanitarian crisis there always seemed absurd on the face it. Regardless of what Samantha Power says, or what The Guardian says, or any of those other ‘liberal humanitarians’ who are busily spinning illusions in the beneficent power of U.S. led military violence.

Now the world’s foremost aid and relief organisation is openly saying that a bad humanitarian situation is being ‘compounded’ by the bombing. But expect them to be virtually ignored by these said same ‘humanitarians’, on account of their statements simply not being commensurate with the dominant state-corporate media narrative.

Matt Carr is the author of three published books: My Father’s House (Penguin 1997), The Infernal Machine: a History of Terrorism (New Press 2007), recently republished in the UK as The Infernal Machine: an Alternative History of Terrorism (Hurst & Co 2011), and Blood and Faith: the Purging of Muslim Spain (New Press 2009, Hurst 2010). http://interventionswatch.wordpress.com/