President Obama’s policy toward Syria is getting pulled in so many directions that it lacks any coherence, especially since the U.S.-backed Syrian “moderate” rebels are in a tacit alliance with al-Qaeda’s offshoots that are the target of the U.S. airstrikes, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar describes.
By Paul R. Pillar
The U.S. air war in Syria has not gotten off to an encouraging start. For many observers the principal indicator of that is a lack of setbacks for ISIS, as the group continues to besiege a Kurdish-held town near the Turkish border.
We ought to be at least as discouraged, however, by the negative reactions to the airstrikes from the “moderate” Syrian opposition groups that the strikes are supposed to help and in whom so much hope is being placed if U.S. policy toward the Syrian conflict is to begin to make any sense.
President Barack Obama in his weekly address on Sept. 13, 2014, vowing to degrade and ultimately defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. (White House Photo)
Harakat Hazm, a group considered sufficiently moderate and effective to have received the first shipments of U.S.-made anti-tank weapons, called the U.S. campaign “a sign of failure whose devastation will spread to the whole region.”
It is early in that campaign, of course, and if searching hard enough one can also find some more encouraging signs. The airstrikes in Iraq still have more support. And ISIS in Syria at least seems to have seen the necessity of lowering its visibility in places it controls such as Raqqa, although its blending even more closely into the civilian population will make future airstrikes that much harder to do.
Despite administration statements about having to think in long-haul terms, patience in Washington will wear thin amid meager results. Pressures for escalation will increasingly be felt. In response to comments from opposition groups about how the airstrikes are insufficiently coordinated with, and have not aided, their operations on the ground, expect to hear more talk in Washington about a need for putting U.S. personnel on that ground.
That sort of talk ought to be met with a reminder of the fundamental reasons, the inconvenient facts of the Syrian situation that constitute a still-unsquared circle, that will continue to make for poor results.
One reason is the multidimensional nature of the Syrian conflict, in which in the absence of a credible Syrian political alternative the United States has in effect taken the side of a Syrian regime that it supposedly still wants to oust, and in which the opposition groups in which the United States has placed its faith have significantly different priorities from Washington.
Opposition groups have been particularly critical of the United States targeting of the Al-Nusra Front, which is an understandable target for the United States given that group’s status as an affiliate of Al-Qaeda, but which many of the other groups have seen as an effective ally in the fight against the Assad regime.
Another reason is the inevitable damage and resulting anger and resentment from airstrikes, even though high-tech U.S. weapons are far more discriminating than the Syrian regime’s barrel bombs. Some of the resentment-generating impact of the U.S. strikes so far has been indirect and economic rather than direct and kinetic. Attacks on targets such as oil refineries, power plants, and granaries have caused shortages and price rises that have hurt civilians at least as much as they have impeded ISIS.
And related to that is the potential for the United States to make itself a bigger issue in Syria than either ISIS or the regime. There already are worrisome signs that Al-Nusra and ISIS are repairing their breach from last year and campaigning in tandem against the U.S. intervention by portraying it as a war against Islam.
Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be one of the agency’s top analysts. He is now a visiting professor at Georgetown University for security studies. (This article first appeared as a blog post at The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.)
There has never been any evidence that Bashar al-Assad’s forces have ever intentionally targeted civilians. In fact, there never would have been a civilian crisis to begin with had the United States, NATO, and the GCC not funded death squads, terrorists, and mercenaries to create such a crisis in the service of attempting to overthrow Assad’s government.
The buffer zone will not turn into a haven for displaced Syrians. It will be turned into a haven for death squads and terrorists funded, armed, controlled, and directed by the United States, NATO, and the GCC.
Indeed, a “buffer zone,†in Northern Syria, has been a wish of NATO since the beginning of the Syrian crisis. With the establishment of this “buffer zone,†a new staging ground will be opened that allows terrorists such as ISIS and others the ability to conduct attacks even deeper inside Syria.
Working together with its NATO/GCC allies as well as the ever-present provocateur Israel, the United States is helping to create a buffer zone in the North and East of Syria while continuing to facilitate the opening of a “third front” on the Syrian border with Israel.
Mainstream Media A “No Fly Zone†For Truth
By Brandon Turbeville
http://www.activistpost.com/2014/10/mainstream-media-no-fly-zone-for-truth.html
There he goes again. Pillar casually repeats the debunked canard about “the Syrian regime’s barrel bombs.”
Why does this ex-CIA officer, lauded as “one of the agency’s top analysts,” continue to appear on Consortiumnews.com, when what he offers here is nothing other than sideline tactical suggestions about how to advance the regime change agenda in Syria?
“ Al-Nusra and ISIS are repairing their breach from last year and campaigning in tandem against the U.S. intervention by portraying it as a war against Islam.†says Paul R. Pillar.
Well the US.Policy of liberating Iraq and Afghanistan with 2,000-pound bombs in civilian areas and purging Pakistan via drone attacks on weddings and now it’s Syria ,and just about anywhere in the Middle East where liberating “foreign†countries from the barrel of a gun continues to be ongoing and with greater impunity than ever..
Yet from Obama’s famous “The US is not at war with Islam†Cairo speech (2009) we have—-
“ We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security — because we reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject: the killing of innocent men, women and children. And it is my first duty as president to protect the American people.”
This presumably refers to protecting the American people from another dreadful 9/11 attack as no country would undertake to openly attack the US even if it had the capability.
http://test.useetv.com/play/youtube/rnbMjAN7Bws/cia-insider-tells-911-truth-time-to-re-examine-your-world-view–america
So it looks like Zionists neocons like Sen. Lieberman who from the beginning urged killing them over there before they come over here and kill us , have won the day and we now have open range in the Middle East with brutal killing ,destruction and millions of destitute refugees, originally called for by PNAC neocons and naturally promoting Israeli hegemony as seems is and was an intention.