Tag Archives: Syria

US Threatens Sanctions On Gulf Allies If They Normalize Relations With Assad, by Tyler Durden

Posted on June 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

After ten years of abject failure, the US government is still bent on regime change in Syria. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

For the past couple months there’s been persisting reports and rumors that Saudi Arabia is preparing to restore diplomatic ties and normalized relations with the Syrian government under Bashar al-Assad, coming off a decade of war in which the Saudis spearheaded efforts alongside the US and other allies to topple him.

As we detailed in early May the first major step toward detente came when Saudi Arabia’s powerful intelligence chief, Gen Khalid Humaidan, traveled to Damascus to meet with his Syrian counterpart. The two sides broke off relations since near the start of the war in 2011, especially as it became clear the Saudis were a key part of the Western allied push for regime change, through covert support to anti-Assad insurgents and jihadists which included regular weapons shipments.

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, left, and Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus on Oct. 7, 2009, via AP.

Starting in 2018, other Arab capitals had begun seeking to mend relations with Assad, especially after the United Arab Emirates reopened its long shuttered embassy in the Syrian capital at the end of that year. There’s even been talk of late of Assad being invited back into the Arab League.

Essentially America’s Gulf allies are fast coming to the conclusion that Assad is here to stay, and that pragmatism means opening up relations; however, Washington doesn’t see it that way – as its prior long-running covert war has turned to an economic war of economic strangulation and choking off national resources by occupying the oil and gas rich northeast.

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Assad Move by KSA and UAE Is All About Investing in Russia as a Guarantor for Elites to Remain in Power, by Martin Jay

Posted on June 23, 2021 | Leave a comment

A number of Middle Eastern Arab countries are cozying up to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad because of Syria’s big brother—Russia. From Martin Jay at strategic-culture.org:

America may “be back” for most of the world, but for the Middle East the only thing it is “back” to, is Obama’s “soft power” touch in the region.

GCC countries have so much to learn from Assad on how to survive an uprising and how to stay in power. But what he can really teach them is how to handle Moscow

In early June, the world was rocked by news from the Middle East that Gulf Arab leaders are now moving even further to becoming a full-on ally of Syrian leader Bashir al-Assad. Now, all countries have their embassies re-opened in Damascus with Saudi Arabia being the last to jump on the bandwagon and the new position of these GCC states is to go beyond merely bringing him in from the cold but to embrace him. Soon, we will see Syria reinstated in the Arab League, an institution largely known around the world as an Arab elite talk shop which only makes the headlines when its members have a very good lunch and often nod off in the afternoon during the speeches.

On the face of it, the move is pragmatic, even erudite. Assad is the ultimate survivor who has fought and won a counterrevolution against the very people – the Muslim Brotherhood – which most (not all) GCC states hate vehemently.

Yet there is some irony now with those same Gulf Arab countries using their influence in Washington to try and convince Joe Biden’s administration that it is time to lift sanctions against Syria. Indeed, it is the Biden touch which has pushed Saudi Arabia, UAE and others towards this extreme measure of “if you can’t beat them, join them.” America may “be back” for most of the world, but for the Middle East the only thing it is “back” to, is Obama’s “soft power” touch in the region.

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Were the Wars Wise? Were They Worth It? by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on June 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

Very little about US warmaking since World War II can be considered wise or worthwhile. From Patrick J. Buchanan at lewrockwell.com:

Through the long Memorial Day weekend, anyone who read the newspapers or watched television could not miss or be unmoved by it: Story after story after story of the fallen, of those who had given the “last full measure of devotion” to their country.

Heart-rending is an apt description of those stories; and searing are the videos of those who survived and returned home without arms or legs.

But the stories could not help but bring questions to mind.

While the service and sacrifice were always honorable and often heroic, never to be forgotten, were the wars these soldiers were sent to fight and die in wise? Were they necessary?

What became of the causes for which these Americans were sent to fight in the new century, with thousands to die and tens of thousands to come home with permanent wounds?

And what became of the causes for which they were sent to fight?

The longest war of this new century, the longest in our history, the defining “endless war” or “forever war” was Afghanistan.

In 2001, we sent an army halfway around the world to exact retribution on al-Qaida for 9/11, an attack that rivaled Pearl Harbor in the numbers of dead and wounded Americans.

Because al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden had been given sanctuary by the Taliban in Kabul, who refused to give him up, we invaded, overthrew that Islamist regime and cleansed Tora Bora of al-Qaida.

Mission accomplished. But then the mission changed.

In control of a land that had seen off British and Soviet imperialists, we hubristically set about establishing a democracy and sent hundreds of thousands of Americans to hold off the rebel resistance for two decades while we went about nation-building.

We did not succeed. All U.S. troops are to be gone by the 20th anniversary of 9/11. And the Taliban we ousted has never been closer to recapturing power in Kabul.

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Biden and His Aides Pushed America Into Syria’s Civil War a Decade Ago, by Doug Bandow

Posted on March 31, 2021 | Leave a comment

Can you teach an old regime-changer new tricks? From Doug Bandow at antiwar.com:

The United States tore itself apart with extraordinary violence 160 years ago. Around 750,000 Americans died in the Civil War, which would be about eight million dead today. It is an experience no American should want to go through again.

Yet U.S. policymakers seem drawn to foreign conflicts like moths to light. Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton unaccountably made brutal battles in Lebanon, Somalia, and the Balkans Washington’s own. George W. Bush turned Iraq into a civil war and joined Afghanistan’s long-running conflict. Barack Obama escalated in Afghanistan, returned to Iraq after leaving, and racked up involvement in three additional bitter conflicts: Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Donald Trump kept the US fighting in all of them, though he launched a last-minute bid to withdraw from the longest one, Afghanistan.

So tired of enduring “endless wars” was the American public that even candidate Joe Biden promised to halt them. But will he? Or will this pledge, like the promises of so many other presidents, end up down the fabled memory hole?

A decade ago the “Arab Spring” swept the Middle East. Protests in Tunisia upended the dictator and led to a democracy which survives against the odds. In Egypt the autocrat also was ousted and a democratic election for president was held. However, the Saudis and Emiratis underwrote the generals, who retook control, creating an even more brutal tyranny that killed hundreds and imprisoned tens of thousands. The Gulf monarchies generally recognized the threat and opened their treasuries to dampen revolutionary sentiments. Bahrain invited Emirati and Saudi troops to back a vicious crackdown on protesters and guarantee the authoritarian Sunni monarchy’s survival, along with its rule over a majority Shia population.

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Joe Biden Is Following a Blueprint for Forever War, by Danny Sjursen

Posted on March 16, 2021 | Leave a comment

Going bigger in Syria and backing up the power-mad idiot in Saudi Arabia just gets the US more stuck on the Middle Eastern tar baby. From Danny Sjursen at inthesetimes.com:

Bombing Syria and excusing the crimes of the Saudi crown prince won’t bring us any closer to a withdrawal from the Middle East.

Last week, the U.S. military bombed a site near al-Hurri, along the Iraqi border inside Syria, where Iranian-backed Iraqi militias were allegedly stationed. Although the U.S. launched its missiles across an international border (and without the approval of Congress), White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki framed the strike as a ​“defensive” response to a series of rocket attacks that have killed one and wounded several Americans over the past two weeks. The American bombing left ​“up to a handful dead,” according to one U.S. official who spoke with CNN, and Tehran condemned the assault as ​“illegal and a violation of Syria’s sovereignty” — a perception gap certain to complicate President Joe Biden’s pronounced plans to reverse Donald Trump’s antagonistic Iran policies and rejoin the nuclear deal.

The campaign will do little to further the United States’ objectives in the Middle East (in as much as they can even be articulated at this point), but it heralds something more dispiriting still: That nearly two decades into a regional war, Washington (perhaps willfully) does not understand the Syria-Iraq-Iran nexus, and that the Biden administration is following a failed blueprint in the Middle East — a reality that was thrown into even sharper relief when the U.S. elected not to punish Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) after the release of a declassified intelligence report that found he was directly responsible for the murder of the Washington Post’s Jamal Khashoggi.

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Ten Years Since Beginning of Failed Regime-Change Operation Against Syria, by Paul Antonopoulos

Posted on March 16, 2021 | Leave a comment

When does a long war become a forever war? A decade seems like a good dividing line. From Paul Antonopoulos at antiwar.com:

The initial coalition against Syria has collapsed, with Turkey frustrated over the U.S.’ sustained support for the Kurds and the Arabs pivoting back to Syria.

On this exact day ten years ago, NATO, the Gulf Cooperation Council, Turkey and Israel began a coordinated campaign of regime change against President Bashar al-Assad and the destruction of Syria. This has led to the death of over 500,000 people, millions of refugees, destroyed infrastructure and an economy in crisis. Despite numerous political maneuvers, this alliance against Syria catastrophically failed and could not achieve regime change. Not only did Assad survive the onslaught, but the geopolitical situation dramatically changed as a result.

Each aggressor had its own ambitions in Syria but was united in the goal to achieve regime change. Thanks to the contributions made by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, the Syrian government survived the coordinated aggression. Whilst NATO and Turkey continue to insist on regime change, Arab states, most prominently Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, were forced to normalize their relations with Syria to counter the growing threat of Turkish expansionism and influence into the Arab World that they had not anticipated when they decided to destroy Syria ten years ago.

Although a U.S.-dominated unipolar system was consolidated with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia’s 2008 intervention to defend the de facto republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia against NATO-encouraged Georgian forces was the first sign of an emerging multipolar system. A multipolar system, where there is a more equal distribution of power compacted into spheres of influence, was strengthened whilst the US could only helplessly watch as Russia successfully defended South Ossetia and Abkhazia in a region that falls under Moscow’s sphere of influence.

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9 Signs That Chess Pieces Are Being Moved Into Place For A Major War In The Middle East, by Michael Snyder

Posted on March 9, 2021 | Leave a comment

Would anybody be surprised that the same crew who brought us Libya and Syria forever wars would start a new one in the Middle East? From Michael Snyder at themostimportantnews.com:

The American people are really going to regret putting the warmongers back in control.  Joe Biden has been in the White House for less than two months, and the warmongers that Biden has surrounded himself with have been feverishly setting the stage for the next war in the Middle East.  I do not believe that it will start within the next week, but I do believe that it is inevitable.  While President Trump was in the White House for four years, the U.S. didn’t start any new conflicts, but now the Biden administration is quite determined to start projecting “American influence” all over the globe once again.  Most Americans don’t understand the bigger picture, but the truth is that this is going to have very serious implications over the next few years.

In this article, I would like to examine some of the chess moves that have been made since Joe Biden entered the White House.  As you will see, a very troubling picture emerges once you start putting all of the pieces together.

#1 Literally one day after Biden was inaugurated, a massive U.S. military convoy rolled into Syria…

A large US military convoy entered northeastern Syria on Thursday, Syrian state news agency SANA reports, citing sources on the ground.

According to the report, the convoy included some 40 trucks and armored vehicles and was backed from the air by helicopters.

President Trump had tried very hard to disengage from the war in Syria, but Biden has made it crystal clear that the U.S. will be heavily involved in that conflict moving forward.

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Biden’s Syria Attack: An Actual Impeachable Offense, by Ron Paul

Posted on March 1, 2021 | Leave a comment

The last president who actually declared war against an actual enemy was Franklin D. Roosevelt. From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:

Last Thursday President Biden continued what has sadly become a Washington tradition: bombing Syria. The President ordered a military strike near the Iraqi-Syrian border that killed at least 22 people. The Administration claims it struck an “Iranian-backed” militia in retaliation for recent rocket attacks on US installations in Iraq.

As with Presidents Obama and Trump before him, however, Biden’s justification for the US strike and its targets is not credible. And his claim that the US attack would result in a “de-escalation” in the region is laughable. You cannot bomb your way toward de-escalation.

Biden thus joins a shameful club of US leaders whose interventions in the Middle East, and Syria specifically, have achieved nothing in the US interest but have contributed to the deaths of many thousands of civilians.

President Trump attacked Syria in 2018 in what he claimed was retaliation for the Assad government’s use of chemical weapons against its own citizens. The Trump Administration never proved its claim. Logic itself suggests how ridiculous it would have been for the Syrian president to have used chemical weapons in that situation, where they achieved no military purpose and would almost certainly guarantee further outside attacks against his government.

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Conspiracy Theories Are Caused By Government Secrecy, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on February 14, 2021 | Leave a comment

This is one of Caitlin Johnstone’s better articles. From Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

The DC Circuit has ruled that the CIA is under no obligation to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests pertaining to its involvement with insurgent militias in Syria, overturning a lower court’s previous ruling in favor of a Buzzfeed News reporter seeking such documents.

As Sputnik‘s Morgan Artyukhina clearly outlines, this ruling comes despite the fact that mainstream news outlets have been reporting on the Central Intelligence Agency’s activities in Syria for years, and despite a US president having openly tweeted about those activities.

“In other words, the CIA will not be required to admit to actions it is widely reported as having done, much less divulge documents about them to the press for even greater scrutiny,” Artyukhina writes, calling to mind the Julian Assange quote “The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security, not national security.”

The CIA’s brazen collaboration with dangerous extremist factions seeking to topple Damascus, and its equally brazen refusal to provide the public with any information about the extent of its involvement in Syria from the earliest stages of the violence in that nation onwards, will necessarily provide fodder for conspiracy theories.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, Intelligence, Media, Politics

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Washington’s Endless Policy Bankruptcy in Syria, by Doug Bandow

Posted on January 6, 2021 | Leave a comment

The fiasco in Syria easily makes the list of the ten dumbest things the US government has done since the turn of the century. From Doug Bandow at antiwar.com:

US Should Avoid Other Nation’s Civil Wars

It took a particularly perverse and misguided mindset to watch the tragic collapse of Syria and insist that Washington intervene. One of the most important benefits of living in a nation that is stable politically (well, sort of these days!) and prosperous economically is to escape precisely that sort of devastating collapse. The U.S. government’s job is to protect its own people, and that should mean avoiding unnecessary involvement in destructive wars, not embracing them.

Yet in the nation’s capital foreign conflict attracts armchair field marshals like lights draw moths. There is an overwhelming desire throughout government bureaucracies, think tanks, and media newsrooms to get involved or, more accurately, to make others get involved. Opinion leaders rarely go themselves. But they are only too happy to send others to do the dirty work. Successive administrations have imposed sanctions, provided weapons, trained soldier, introduced troops, launched bombing raids, seized resources, occupied territory, and done more in assorted civil wars, including Syria.

The latter is a terrible tragedy, with an estimated half million deaths. It is not genocide, however, as oft-claimed. It is a civil war. And one with multiple factions, many if not most ugly, brutal, and murderous. Unfortunately, President Bashar al-Assad has no monopoly on evil. Yet the US cheerfully collaborated with most any killer of most any ideology if he opposed Assad, a perverse policy of dubious morality and dismal effectiveness.

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