International Journal on Criminology Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2018 | Page 56

Syria: An Epistemological Obstacle
The final reckoning has turned out to be particularly disastrous for Western
countries, foremost among them the United States. Neo-Sultan Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan is gradually moving away from NATO and eyeing up the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization; Russia and Iran are back in the eastern Great Game
and the Mediterranean is no longer a Western sea. 5 As in Djibouti, the Chinese
navy is building a long-term base in Tartus, and Vladimir Putin continues to impose
his agenda on the global community in order to promote a “regional Yalta”
while marginalizing the West. Last but not least, Iran cherishes the hope of regaining
its position as the major regional power in the Middle East.
On December 13, 2016 at the United Nations Security Council, addressing
representatives from Syria and Russia, United States ambassador Samantha Power
dared to declare quite seriously: “Syria, Russia, and Iran: three member states of
the UN contributing to a noose around civilians. It should shame you. Instead, by
all appearances it is emboldening you. You are plotting your next assault. Are you
truly incapable of shame? Is there literally nothing that can shame you? Is there
no act of barbarism against civilians, no execution of a child that gets under your
skin? That just creeps you out a little bit? Is there nothing you will not lie about,
or justify?”
Is Ms Power ashamed of the million Iraqis killed in spring 2003? Is Ms
Power ashamed of the daily, clandestine collateral damage caused by American
drones across some fifteen locations around the globe? Is Ms Power ashamed of
the destruction of part of the Arctic by big American companies? Is Ms Power
ashamed of the tens if not hundreds of thousands of victims of Operation Condor
(most of whose bodies have never been found)?
The list goes on of the millions of disappeared, the appalling processions
and deportations organized by successive American administrations—both
Republican and Democrat—since the end of the Second World War, since the discovery
of the Nazi concentration camps and the Nuremberg trials! This rhetoric of
shame anchors the phenomenology of post-truth in morality, a morality applied
to the rights of individuals against those of national collectives. “The fiction of the
policy of human rights, which is predicated on the national infrastructure that it
also strives to destroy! We know that the individual’s accession to rights threatens
our very existence, and our national freedom,” notes Hervé Juvin. 6
In the spirit of Jean-Marie Colombani’s “We are all Americans!,” the
“Discussion” pages of Le Monde on December 15, 2016 began with a letter signed
by two individuals with the heading “SOS Aleppo.” The first author, son of André
Glucksmann (former Maoist turned “New Philosopher,” before ending his career
in the ranks of the American neoconservative school), is an advisor to various
NATO-linked interest groups in Ukraine, Georgia, and elsewhere, which seek
to revive primitive anti-Sovietism transformed into hatred of Russia. The other
5 prochetmoyen-orient.ch, September 12, 2016.
6 Hervé Juvin, Le Gouvernement du Désir (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 2016).
53