Exclusive: Official Washington helped unleash hell on Syria and across the Mideast behind the naïve belief that jihadist proxies could be used to transform the region for the better, explains Daniel Lazare.
By Daniel Lazare
When a Department of Defense intelligence report about the Syrian rebel movement became public in May 2015, lots of people didn’t know what to make of it. After all, what the report said was unthinkable – not only that Al Qaeda had dominated the so-called democratic revolt against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for years, but that the West continued to support the jihadis regardless, even to the point of backing their goal of creating a Sunni Salafist principality in the eastern deserts.
Journalist James Foley shortly before he was executed by an Islamic State operative in August 2014.
The United States lining up behind Sunni terrorism – how could this be? How could a nice liberal like Barack Obama team up with the same people who had brought down the World Trade Center?
It was impossible, which perhaps explains why the report remained a non-story long after it was released courtesy of a Judicial Watch freedom-of-information lawsuit. The New York Times didn’t mention it until six months later while the Washington Post waited more than a year before dismissing it as “loopy” and “relatively unimportant.” With ISIS rampaging across much of Syria and Iraq, no one wanted to admit that U.S. attitudes were ever anything other than hostile.
But three years earlier, when the Defense Intelligence Agency was compiling the report, attitudes were different. Jihadis were heroes rather than terrorists, and all the experts agreed that they were a low-risk, high-yield way of removing Assad from office.
After spending five days with a Syrian rebel unit, for instance, New York Times reporter C.J. Chivers wrote that the group “mixes paramilitary discipline, civilian policing, Islamic law, and the harsh demands of necessity with battlefield coldness and outright cunning.”
Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, assured the Washington Post that “al Qaeda is a fringe element” among the rebels, while, not to be outdone, the gossip site Buzzfeed published a pin-up of a “ridiculously photogenic” jihadi toting an RPG.
“Hey girl,” said the subhead. “Nothing sexier than fighting the oppression of tyranny.”
And then there was Foreign Policy, the magazine founded by neocon guru Samuel P. Huntington, which was most enthusiastic of all. Gary Gambill’s “Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists,” which ran on the FP web site just a couple of weeks after the DIA report was completed, didn’t distort the facts or make stuff up in any obvious way. Nonetheless, it is a classic of U.S. propaganda. Its subhead glibly observed: “So the rebels aren’t secular Jeffersonians. As far as America is concerned, it doesn’t much matter.”
Assessing the Damage
Five years later, it’s worth a second look to see how Washington uses self-serving logic to reduce an entire nation to rubble.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then Saudi ambassador to the United States, meeting with President George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas, on Aug. 27, 2002. (White House photo)
First a bit of background. After displacing France and Britain as the region’s prime imperial overlord during the 1956 Suez Crisis and then breaking with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser a few years later, the United States committed itself to the goal of defeating Arab nationalism and Soviet Communism, two sides of the same coin as far as Washington was concerned. Over the next half-century, this would mean steering Egypt to the right with assistance from the Saudis, isolating Libyan strong man Muammar Gaddafi, and doing what it could to undermine the Syrian Baathist regime as well.
William Roebuck, the American embassy’s chargé d’affaires in Damascus, thus urged Washington in 2006 to coordinate with Egypt and Saudi Arabia to encourage Sunni Syrian fears of Shi‘ite Iranian proselytizing even though such concerns are “often exaggerated.” It was akin to playing up fears of Jewish dominance in the 1930s in coordination with Nazi Germany.
A year later, former NATO commander Wesley Clark learned of a classified Defense Department memo stating that U.S. policy was now to “attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years,” first Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. (Quote starts at 2:07.)
Since the United States didn’t like what such governments were doing, the solution was to install more pliable ones in their place. Hence Washington’s joy when the Arab Spring struck Syria in March 2011 and it appeared that protesters would soon topple the Baathists on their own.
Even when lofty democratic rhetoric gave way to ominous sectarian chants of “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the coffin,” U.S. enthusiasm remained strong. With Sunnis accounting for perhaps 60 percent of the population, strategists figured that there was no way Assad could hold out against religious outrage welling up from below.
Enter Gambill and the FP. The big news, his article began, is that secularists are no longer in command of the burgeoning Syrian rebel movement and that Sunni Islamists are taking the lead instead. As unfortunate as this might seem, he argued that such a development was both unavoidable and far from entirely negative.
“Islamist political ascendancy is inevitable in a majority Sunni Muslim country brutalized for more than four decades by a secular minoritarian dictatorship,” he wrote in reference to the Baathists. “Moreover, enormous financial resources are pouring in from the Arab-Islamic world to promote explicitly Islamist resistance to Assad’s Alawite-dominated, Iranian-backed regime.”
So the answer was not to oppose the Islamists, but to use them. Even though “the Islamist surge will not be a picnic for the Syrian people,” Gambill said, “it has two important silver linings for US interests.” One is that the jihadis “are simply more effective fighters than their secular counterparts” thanks to their skill with “suicide bombings and roadside bombs.”
The other is that a Sunni Islamist victory in Syria will result in “a full-blown strategic defeat” for Iran, thereby putting Washington at least part way toward fulfilling the seven-country demolition job discussed by Wesley Clark.
“So long as Syrian jihadis are committed to fighting Iran and its Arab proxies,” the article concluded, “we should quietly root for them – while keeping our distance from a conflict that is going to get very ugly before the smoke clears. There will be plenty of time to tame the beast after Iran’s regional hegemonic ambitions have gone down in flames.”
Deals with the Devil
The U.S. would settle with the jihadis only after the jihadis had settled with Assad. The good would ultimately outweigh the bad. This kind of self-centered moral calculus would not have mattered had Gambill only spoken for himself. But he didn’t. Rather, he was expressing the viewpoint of Official Washington in general, which is why the ultra-respectable FP ran his piece in the first place.
Saudi King Salman bids farewell to President Barack Obama at Erga Palace after a state visit to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
The Islamists were something America could employ to their advantage and then throw away like a squeezed lemon. A few Syrians would suffer, but America would win, and that’s all that counts.
The parallels with the DIA are striking. “The west, gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition,” the intelligence report declared, even though “the Salafist[s], the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [i.e. Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency.”
Where Gambill predicted that “Assad and his minions will likely retreat to northwestern Syria,” the DIA speculated that the jihadis might establish “a declared or undeclared Salafist principality” at the other end of the country near cities like Hasaka and Der Zor (also known as Deir ez-Zor).
Where the FP said that the ultimate aim was to roll back Iranian influence and undermine Shi‘ite rule, the DIA said that a Salafist principality “is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”
Bottle up the Shi‘ites in northwestern Syria, in other words, while encouraging Sunni extremists to establish a base in the east so as to put pressure on Shi‘ite-influenced Iraq and Shi‘ite-ruled Iran.
As Gambill put it: “Whatever misfortunes Sunni Islamists may visit upon the Syrian people, any government they form will be strategically preferable to the Assad regime, for three reasons: A new government in Damascus will find continuing the alliance with Tehran unthinkable, it won’t have to distract Syrians from its minority status with foreign policy adventurism like the ancien régime, and it will be flush with petrodollars from Arab Gulf states (relatively) friendly to Washington.”
With the Saudis footing the bill, the U.S. would exercise untrammeled sway.
Disastrous Thinking
Has a forecast that ever gone more spectacularly wrong? Syria’s Baathist government is hardly blameless in this affair. But thanks largely to the U.S.-backed sectarian offensive, 400,000 Syrians or more have died since Gambill’s article appeared, with another 6.1 million displaced and an estimated 4.8 million fleeing abroad.
U.S.-backed Syrian “moderate” rebels smile as they prepare to behead a 12-year-old boy (left), whose severed head is held aloft triumphantly in a later part of the video. [Screenshot from the YouTube video]
So instead of advancing U.S. policy goals, Gambill helped do the opposite. The Middle East is more explosive than ever while U.S. influence has fallen to sub-basement levels. Iranian influence now extends from the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean, while the country that now seems to be wobbling out of control is Saudi Arabia where Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman is lurching from one self-induced crisis to another. The country that Gambill counted on to shore up the status quo turns out to be undermining it.
It’s not easy to screw things up so badly, but somehow Washington’s bloated foreign-policy establishment has done it. Since helping to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, Gambill has moved on to a post at the rightwing Middle East Forum where Daniel Pipes, the group’s founder and chief, now inveighs against the same Sunni ethnic cleansing that his employee defended or at least apologized for.
The forum is particularly well known for its Campus Watch program, which targets academic critics of Israel, Islamists, and – despite Gambill’s kind words about “suicide bombings and roadside bombs” – anyone it considers the least bit apologetic about Islamic terrorism.
Double your standard, double the fun. Terrorism, it seems, is only terrorism when others do it to the U.S., not when the U.S. does it to others.
Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace).
Washington will cheer Muslims, jihadists or not, as long as they serve US agenda. Muslims benefit from that because their brainwashed people are content to suffer as long as the religion spreads. Muslims love the help it gets from infidels to make progress with their islamification. Blaming the jews for everything that goes wrong is stupid. All the greedy, power hungry inhumane ideologies and their followers and responsible for this. I’m tired with people making excuses. If it’s not the Trump fools bawling about how elite whites are so innocent and suffering for no reason whatsoever, it’s the muslim hordes bawling that people hate them because they reject the torture of sharia. The new thing is for Muslim men to pretend they care about their women if a non muslim does something to her. It’s the only time they’re interested in their safety- if they can pimp it for Islam; of course their view of women’s rights is the right to be abused. Washington is also covering for Muslim takeover of Myanmar. JIhad is only 1 problem with Muslims and their lying allies.
Great. After all those excellent comments, an Islamophobe has to chime in, out of tune.
@ BannanaBoat December 11, 2017 at 4:11 pm
I’ve seen three or four different video interviews of Wesley Clark; in all of them, he says the officer told him, but when he proffered it to Clark, Clark asked if it was classified (Clark was retired) and was told ‘yes’, he wouldn’t look at it. There is another little nugget in this video as well – the bit about ‘we can bomb who we want, and no one’s going to stop us’ (and that was before 9/11!).
Well, they’ve found out different now – though they can still bomb, Russia has shown it will react:
‘General Wesley Clark: The US will attack 7 countries in 5 years’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUCwCgthp_E
It’s a very good article, but I have found two items I disagree with, and one error of fact.
Wesley Clark was told by a 3* serving General on the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the US was going to overthrow 7 countries in 5 years when he visited the Pentagon in 2001, not 2007.
The other two problems are that though technically correct, the statement ‘..Hence Washington’s joy when the Arab Spring struck Syria in March 2011 and it appeared that protesters would soon topple the Baathists on their own…’ gives the impression it WAS an ‘Arab Spring’, instead of a Western-fomented gambit.
And of course, there is no evidence that the Jihadis and Al Queda brought down the Twin Towers etc., so alluding to the US backing the forces that brought 9/11 to America as being Al Queda is questionable.
Sure, they were Western proxies, and still are, doing the West’s and Israel’s will. Both the Yinon Plan and various US reports relish just such an outcome, sowing mayhem in the regions surrounding Israel, Balkanising them and making Israel’s dream of a ‘Greater Israel’ far easier to bring about.
I never heard Clark say a general told him but have seen a few videos in which Clark states he saw the memo in the Pentagon verbatim as in the above article, 7 nations in 5 years to be destroyed by the USA military.
To me, the fact that Tulsi Gabbard’s “Stop Arming and Funding Terrorism” Bill failed so badly speaks volumes in my mind about the US’ true intent and that the United States cannot be trusted.
Can’t we just subcontract out our foreign policy to the Russians who seem to have a knack for this kind of thing?
It appears that Russia today might be too principled to hire themselves out as mercenaries for the interests of another state.
Thanks Mr Lazare for a very thoughtful analysis of the unnatural disaster that our government has enabled in Syria. The facts of our action and their consequences have received all to little attention.
I appreciate the detailed comments largely attempting to explain why our government could possibly support Al Qaeda. However, most we not first make known that it happened. No matter how well intentioned (and perhaps merited) are the use of such descriptors as evil and empire, is that necessary to or helpful in countering the overwhelming propaganda which lulls good people into ignoring such bad things.
I suggest that most evil actions are performed by people who believe they are doing good. Although the comment from general Curtis LeMay to then major? McNamara regarding US “strategic” bombing campaign might be to the contrary:
“Bob, we better win this war, or we’ll all be tried as war criminals.”
“Strategic warfare” is troubling: Firebombing Dresden and Tokyo. Nuking Heroshima and Nagasaki. The starvation blockade of Germany during and after WWI, sanctions against Iraq, Sherman and Sheridan’s war on civilians. To name but a few. It’s more recent iteration in the forms of arming Al Qaeda against a communist government in Afghanistan or the much more benign Bashar al Assad, They have all wrought death and destruction on a grand scale, with questionable benefit and great cost to these United States.
Clinging to useless descriptions such as left or right, conservative or liberal is unhelpful. It’s critical to recognize We stand on the verge of very sudden “global warming “.
“So instead of advancing U.S. policy goals, Gambill helped do the opposite. The Middle East is more explosive than ever while U.S. influence has fallen to sub-basement levels.”
And now, Trump has declared that the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capitol and will move its embassy there as soon as possible.
Throwing gasoline on fires – that works wonders. I wonder how many more ways our chicken-hawk “leaders” can find to f’ck up the Middle East.
What’s interesting of course is how not just Washington, but much of the ‘left’ also cheered on the jihadists.
Of course, they were told (by whom?) that the jihadists were ‘democratic rebels’ and ‘freedom fighters’ who just wanted to ‘bring democracy’ to Syria, and get rid of the ‘tyrant Assad.’
5 years later, so much of the nonsense about “local councils” and “white helmets” has been exposed for what it was. Yet many ‘free thinking’ people bought the propaganda. Just like they do on Russiagate. Who needs an “alt-right” when America’s “left” is a total disgrace?
Yes, at the moment, the strongest anti-war, anti-empire voices are not from the Left, but from the alt-right. The alt-right is so much further along then the left in acknowledging how corrupt our government is; unlike what is repeated endlessly by the left they don’t spend all their time trying to resurrect the KKK The left cling to this fantasy, that all the wars were created in the Middle East by Bush. Obama then tried to fix everything and give peace and love to all because he is progressive and multicultural, but then Trump restarted the wars, because he is a white man. Hillary, because she is a woman, would have continued Obama’s policies of peace and love if only Putin, another white man, would not have interfered with the election. Thankfully, we have the CIA aligning with the DNC to protect us from Putin.
It is undeniable that this ridiculous fantasy is being repeated ad nauseum by anyone on the left. None of this fantasy exists in the alt-right universe. You dont have to unpack this insidious propaganda each time you have a conversation with alt-right, or fear that any such deviation from the wonderful Hillary, propaganda will end any relationship you have with them.
The US Military is part of the largest terrorist organization on Earth. For the super rich and powerful rulers of that US Mafia, the ignorant religious fanatics and other tools of Empire are just pawns in their game of world domination and universal slavery for all but themselves. These monsters of evil delight in profiting from the destruction of others; but their insatiable greed for more power will never be satisfied, and will become the cause of the annihilation of every living thing – including themselves. But like other sold out human addicts, at this point they don’t really care, and will blindly pursue their nightmare quest to the very end – and perhaps they secretly hope that that final end of everything will at last quench their burning appetite for blood and gold.
I’m leaving a link to a very long David Swanson article, where Mr Swanson goes into quite a lot of detail to how the U.S. wages war.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/12/76-years-pearl-harbor-lies.html
An outstandingly detailed article indeed Joe. Very much disabused the myth of Pearl Harbor. There is much here to mull over, but if I had to take away just one line from Swanson’s article it would be: “The worst thing about peace advocates is how many times they turn out to be right.” Thanks Joe.
Joe, I’d urge caution with that long Swanson article. If you scroll down to the bottom of it, you’ll notice he doesn’t provide a single source/reference for the claims he made. And he showed some astonishing gullibility in the piece. Consider this nonsense:
When I was about 12 years old I believed anything I saw in print simply because my respect for books made it unthinkable to do otherwise. I’ve outgrown that, but Swanson hasn’t. His swallowing whole the lies of S.L.A Marshall demonstrates that all too well. There are many other problems with that long essay, and I hope it doesn’t get republished here.
Sheldon Adelson, Soros, Saban all wanted carving up of Arabic states into small sectarian pieces (No Nasseric pan-Arabic states, a threat to Israël). And protracted wars of total destruction.
Easy.
I think this pattern of using Salafists for regime change started alreadyin Afghanistan, with Brzezinski plotting with Saudi-Arabia and Pakistan to pay and train Osama bin Laden to attack the pro Russia regime and trying to get the USSR involved in it, also trying to blame the USSR for its agression, like they did in Syri”r?
Yes, the Brzezinski/Reagan support of fanatic insurgencies began in AfPak and was revived for the zionists.
Russia happened to be on the side more or less tending to progress in both cases, so it had to be opposed.
The warmongers are always the US MIC/intel, allied with the anti-American zionist fascists for Mideast wars.
It was much sooner, Islam was weaponized during the Cold War to fight the Soviets. The Turkic minorities in the Soviet Union were discriminated turned them against the Soviets.
This is possibly the most intelligent and hopeful discussion I have read since 9/11. It says that at least some Americans do see that we have a fascist cell in our government. That is the first step in finding a way to unplug it. Best wishes to all of you who have written here. We will find a way to put war out of business.
The path the US has chosen since the end of WWII has been over dead bodies. In the name of “security”, bringing “Freedom” and “Democracy” and complete unconstrained greed it has trampled countless nations into piles of rubble.
To say it is despised or loathed is an overwhelming understatement. It is almost universally hated in the third world. Rightly.
Bringing this monstrosity to a halt is a difficult task, and probably cannot be done militarily without a nuclear war, economically could in the end have the same outcome, then how?
Easy! Ruin its population. This process has started, long ago.
The decline in the US of health, general wealth, nutrition, production, education, equality, ethics and morals is already showing as cracks in the fabrics of the US.
A population of incarcerated, obese, low iQ zealot junkies, armed to teeth with guns, in a country with a crumbling infrastructure, full of environmental disasters is 21 st century for most Americans.
In all the areas I mentioned the US is going backwards compared to most other countries.
So the monster will come down.
I think you are being a little hard on the incarcerated, obese, low iQ zealot junkies, armed to teeth with guns
I am not sure who is more loathsome the evangelicals who were supporting the Bush / Cheney cabal murderous wars until the bitter end or the liberal intelligentsia careerist cheerleaders for Obama and Hilary’s Wars in Iraq and Syria, who also dont give a damn about another Arab country being destroyed and sold into slavery as long as Hillary gets elected. At least with the former group, you can chalk it up to a lack of education.
The machinations of those seeking to gain advantages for themselves by hurting others, are truly appalling. If we fail to name evil for what it is, then we fail as human beings.Those who look the other way as their country engages in an organized reign of terror, are complicit in that enormous crime.
In October 1973, a nuclear armed rogue state almost triggered a global thermonuclear war.
Yom Kippur: Israel’s 1973 nuclear alert
By Richard Sale
https://www.upi.com/Yom-Kippur-Israels-1973-nuclear-alert/64941032228992/
Israel obtained operational nuclear weapons capability by 1967, with the mass production of nuclear warheads occurring immediately after the Six-Day War. In addition to the Israeli nuclear arsenal, Israel has offensive chemical and biological warfare stockpiles.
Israel, the Middle East’s sole nuclear power, is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In 2015, the US-based Institute for Science and International Security estimated that Israel had 115 nuclear warheads. Outside estimates of Israel’s nuclear arsenal range up to 400 nuclear weapons.
Israeli nuclear weapons delivery mechanisms include Jericho 3 missiles, with a range of 4,800 km to 6,500 km (though a 2004 source estimated its range at up to 11,500 km), as well as regional coverage from road mobile Jericho 2 IRBMs.
Additionally, Israel is believed to have an offshore nuclear capability using submarine-launched nuclear-capable cruise missiles, which can be launched from the Israeli Navy’s Dolphin-class submarines.
The Israeli Air Force has F-15I and F-16I Sufa fighter aircraft are capable of delivering tactical and strategic nuclear weapons at long distances using conformal fuel tanks and supported by their aerial refueling fleet of modified Boeing 707’s.
In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at Dimona, fled to the United Kingdom and revealed to the media some evidence of Israel’s nuclear program and explained the purposes of each building, also revealing a top-secret underground facility directly below the installation.
The Mossad, Israel’s secret service, sent a female agent who lured Vanunu to Italy, where he was kidnapped by Mossad agents and smuggled to Israel aboard a freighter. An Israeli court then tried him in secret on charges of treason and espionage, and sentenced him to eighteen years imprisonment.
At the time of Vanunu’s kidnapping, The Times reported that Israel had material for approximately 20 hydrogen bombs and 200 fission bombs by 1986. In the spring of 2004, Vanunu was released from prison, and placed under several strict restrictions, such as the denial of a passport, freedom of movement limitations and restrictions on communications with the press. Since his release, he has been rearrested and charged multiple times for violations of the terms of his release.
Safety concerns about this 40-year-old reactor have been reported. In 2004, as a preventive measure, Israeli authorities distributed potassium iodide anti-radiation tablets to thousands of residents living nearby. Local residents have raised concerns regarding serious threats to health from living near the reactor.
According to a lawsuit filed in Be’er Sheva Labor Tribunal, workers at the center were subjected to human experimentation in 1998. According to Julius Malick, the worker who submitted the lawsuit, they were given drinks containing uranium without medical supervision and without obtaining written consent or warning them about risks of side effects.
In April 2016 the U.S. National Security Archive declassified dozens of documents from 1960 to 1970, which detail what American intelligence viewed as Israel’s attempts to obfuscate the purpose and details of its nuclear program. The Americans involved in discussions with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and other Israelis believed the country was providing “untruthful cover” about intentions to build nuclear weapons.
Good info, Abe. Don’t forget that Israel also has those super-stealthy German diesel-electric submarines capable of firing missiles. In fact, dealings surrounding those are part of the corruption investigation against Nutty Yahoo. Most analysts assume they have at least one off of Iran’s coast 24/7, but in preparation of a “Samson Option,” they could show up and threaten most anyplace on earth.
Gotta keep the War Machine well fed and insure Corporate control of markets and taking of resources.
https://www.rt.com/news/412590-russia-us-syria-air-force/
If this story is true, then it illustrates a number of things. First, the US is still providing ISIS air cover. Second, either the F-22 pilot or his commander is dumber than dirt. The F-22 may be a fine airplane, but getting into a contest with an equally fine non-stealth airplane at eyeball distances means throwing away every advantage of the super-expensive stealth.
It would appear that the F22 was meant to get the Russian jets to back off, which they did, so that required being obvious. It was followed by a very thinly veiled threat from the DoD.
The arrogance of the US threatening Russian and Syrian jets legally flying in Syria’s sovereign airspace by suggesting the “Coalition” (which is an illegal invading and occupying aggressor) owns part of that airspace is stunning.
Apparently, shortly after this event, a super-stealthy and shockingly maneuverable Russian F35S showed up, and the F22 scurried away.
https://sputniknews.com/military/201712091059853377-russia-us-army-syria/
Daniel Pipes, from what I’ve read of him, is among those who counsel the U.S. government to use its military power to support the losing side in any civil wars fought within Israel’s enemy states, so that the wars will continue, sparing Israel the threat of unified enemy states. What normal human beings consider a humanitarian disaster, repeated in Iraq, Syria and Libya, would be reckoned a success according to this way of thinking.
The thinking would appear to lead to similar treatment of Iran, with even more catastrophic consequences.
Behind all this is the thinking that the survival of Israel outweighs anything else in any global ethical calculus.
Those who don’t accept this moral premise but who believe in supporting the survival of Israel have their work cut out for them.
This work would be made easier if the U.S. population saw clearly what was going on, instead of being preoccupied with salacious sexual misconduct stories or other distractions.
I am stunned that anyone could be so foolish as to think that the US military machine, US imperialism, does things “naively”, bumbling like a helpless giant into wars that destroy entire nations with no end in sight. One need not be a “conspiracy theorist” to understand that the Pentagon does not control the world with an ever-expanding war budget equal to the next 10 countries combined, that it does this just because it is stuck on the wrong path. No! US imperialism develops these “big guns” to use them, to overpower, take over and dominate the world for the sake of profits and protection of the right to exploit for private profit.
There is ample evidence–see the Brookings Institute study among many others–that the Gulf monarchies–flunkies of US imperialism–who “host” dozens of US military bases in the region, some of them central to US war strategy–initiated and nourished and armed and financed the “jihadi armies” in Syria AND Libya AND elsewhere; they did not do this on their own. The US government–the executive committee of the US ruling class–does not naively support the Gulf monarchies because it doesn’t know any better! Washington (following British imperialism) organized, established and backed these flunky regimes. They are autocratic, antediluvian regimes, allowing virtually civil rights, with no local proletariat to speak of, no popular base. They are no more than sheriffs for imperialism in that region of the world, along with the Zionist state of Israel, helping imperialism do the really dirty work.
I research this and gathered the evidence to support what I just asserted in a long study printed back in Dec. 2015 in Truthout. Here is the link: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34151-what-is-the-war-on-terror-and-how-to-fight-it
Look at the evidence. Stop the totally foolish assessment that the US government spends all this money on a war machine just to “naively” blunder into wars that level entire nations–and is not taking on destruction of the entire continent of Africa to eliminate any obstacles to its domination.
No! That is foolish and destructive. Unless we look in the face what is going on–the US government since its “secret” intervention in Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s, has recruited, trained, armed, funded and relied on jihadi armies to unseat regimes and destabilize and destroy populations and regimes the US government wants to overthrow, and destroy, any that could potentially develop into an alternative model of nationalist, bourgeois industrial development on any level.
Wake up!!! The evidence is there. There is no reason to bumble and bungle along as if we are in the dark.
Good comment, please post more. Joe
“Official Washington helped unleash hell on Syria and across the Mideast behind the naïve belief that jihadist proxies could be used to transform the region for the better, explains Daniel Lazare.”
Lazare makes the case very well about our amoral foreign policy but I think he errs in saying our aim was to “transform the region for the better.” Recent history, going back to Afghanistan shows a very different goal, to defeat our enemies and the enemies of our allies with little concern for the aftermath. Just observing what has happened to the people where we supported extremists is evidence enough.
Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward men. We hope the conscience of our nation is bothered by our behavior but we know that is not true, and we sleep very well, thank you.
From the October 1973 Yom Kippur War onward, the United States had no foreign policy in the Middle East other than Israel’s. Daniel Lazare should read “A clean break: a new strategy for the Realm”.
Yes, Israel is the cut-out or fence for US politicians stealing campaign money from the federal budget.
US policy is that of the bribery sources and nothing else. And it believes that to be professional competence.
For the majority of amoral opportunists of the US, money=power=virtue and they will attack all who disagree.
You might enjoy
“False Testament: Archaeology Refutes the Bible’s Claim to History”
Author: Daniel Lazare
Harper’s Magazine, 2002
https://khaschayarrochssani.blogspot.com/2011/11/false-testament-archaeology-refutes.html
In fact, EVERYONE should know that the Bible is a collection of Bronze Age fairy tales, with next to no basis in reality. No Exodus. No “Conquest of Canaan.” No great “Kingdom of Israel.”
At best, a couple of the Bible legends are what Hollywood would describe as “based on a real event.”
Great article and spot on as far as the author takes it. But the world is hurtling towards Armageddon so I’d like to back things up about one hundred years and get down to brass tacks.
The fact of the matter is, the M.E. has never been at total peace but it has been nothing but one colossal FUBAR since the Ottoman Empire was defeated after WWI and the Allied Forces got their grubby, greedy mitts on its M.E. territories and all of that luscious black gold. First up was the British Empire and France and then it really went nuclear (literally) in 1946 when Truman and the U.S. joined in the fun and decided to figure out how we could carve out that ancient prime piece of real estate and resurrect Israel. By 1948…..violà…..there she was.
So now here we sit as the hundred year delusion that we knew what the hell we were doing comes crashing down around us. Seriously, whoever the people have been who thought that a country with the historical perspective of a toddler was going to be able to successfully manage and manipulate a region filled with people who are still tribal in perspective and are still holding grudges and settling scores from five thousand years ago were complete and total arrogant morons. Every single one of them. Up to the present moment.
Which gets me down to those brass tacks I alluded to at the beginning of my comment. Delusional crusades lead by arrogant morons always, always, always end up as ash heaps. So, I would suggest we all prepare for that rapidly approaching conclusion accordingly. For me, that means hitting my knees.
Midddle Eastern people are no more “tribal” or prone to holding grudges than any other people. Middle Eastern people have exhibited and practiced peaceful and tolerant living arrangements within several different contexts over the centuries. Iraq had a fairly thriving middle class and the Syrians are a cultured and educated people.
Syrian society is constructed very much within the construct of close family ties and a sense of a Syrian homeland. It is solely the business of the Syrian people to decide whether the socialist Ba’ath government functions according to their own sense of realities and standards. Some of those realities may include aspects of a necessitated national security state (necessitated by CIA and Israeli subterfuge) that prompts shills to immediately characterize the Assad government as “an authoritarian regime” … and of course that’s all you need to know. Part of what pisses the West off about the Syrians is that they are so competent, and that includes their intelligence and security services. One of the other parts is the socialist example of government functioning in interests of the general population, not selling out to vultures.
It bothers me that Mr. Lazare wrote: “Syria’s Baathist government is hardly blameless in this affair.” Really? Well the Syrian government can hardly be blamed for the vile strategy of using terrorist mercenaries to take or destroy a people’s homeland–killing horrific numbers of fathers, mothers, and children on the way to establish some kind of Wild West control over Damascus that can then be manipulated for the typical elite deviances. What was purposely planned and visited upon the Syrian people has had human consequences that were known and disregarded by the planners. It has been and continues to be a grave crime against our common humanity that should be raised to the roof of objection! People like Gambill should be excoriated for their crass appraisal of human costs….and for their contrived and twisted rationalizations and deceits. President Assad recently gave an interview to teleSUR that is worth a listen. He talks about human costs with understanding for what he is talking about. Gambill doesn’t give a damn.
This journalist and other journalists writing on some of my favorite Russian propaganda news websites, have reported the US empire routinely makes “deals with the devil”, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, if doing so furthers their goal of perpetual war and global hegemony. Yet, inexplicably, these journalists buy the US empire’s 911 story without question, in the face of many unanswered questions. Beginning in the 1990’s, neocons who would become W’s cabinet, wrote detailed plans of military regime change in Middle East, but stating they needed a “strong external shock to the United States—a latter-day ‘Pearl Harbor”, to get US sheeple to support increased militarism and global war. Few months after W took office, and had appointed those war mongering neocons to positions of power, Bin Laden (CIA staffer) and a handful of his men, all from close allied countries to the US, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, delivered the 2nd Pearl Harbor on 911. What a timely coincidence! We accept the US Empire provides weapons and military support to the same enemy, and worse, who attacked us on 911, but one is labeled a “conspiracy nut” if they believe that same US Empire would orchestrate 911 to justify their long planned global war. One thing about being a “conspiracy nut”, if you live long enough, often you will see your beliefs vindicated
You commented on what I was thinking, and that was, ‘remember when al Queda was our enemy on 911’? So now that bin Laden is dead, and his al Queda now fights on our side, shouldn’t the war be over? And, just for the record who did attack us on 911?
So many questions, and so much left unanswered, but don’t worry America may run out of money for domestic vital needs but the U.S. always has the money to go fight another war. It’s a culture thing, and if you ain’t into it then you just don’t pay no attention to it. In fact if your life is better off from all of these U.S. led invasions, then your probably not posting any comments here, either.
Knowing the Pentagon mentality they probably have an ‘al Queda combat medal’ to pin on the terrorists chest. Sarcasm I know, but seriously is anything not within the realm of believable when it comes to this MIC establishment?
I am glad you are still around Joe. I enjoy your comments.
You just made me feel good, and if even one of you discover some enjoyment from my comments then that’s a good thing. Thank you MEexpert, it is good to see your still here as well. Joe
The CIA was a key force behind the creation of both al Qaeda and ISIS. Most major incidents of “Islamic Terrorism” have some kind of CIA backing behind them. See this large collection of links for compiled evidence:
http://www.pearltrees.com/joshstern/government-supporting/id18814292
Thanks for this article and many others on this site.In Europe and in Germany you hardly hear,read or see any of these facts and their connections.It seems to be only of marginal interest.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/The-accidental-Zionist-504221
That Gary Gambill character “outed” himself as a Zionist on September 4 of this year. He appears to have mastered the propaganda associated with the breed. At the link see if you can find any mention of the murders, thefts, ethnic cleansing, or apartheid of his adopted nation.
Blaming the victim may be this fellow’s specialty. Sample:
“Official Washington helped unleash hell on Syria and across the Mideast behind the naïve belief that jihadist proxies could be used to transform the region for the better, explains Daniel Lazare.”
What a load of old rubbish, naïve belief indeed. it is difficult to believe that anyone could write this stuff with a straight face.
Incompetence and stupidity are their only defense because if anyone acknowledged that trillions of dollars have been made by the usual suspects committing these crimes, the industrialists of war would face a justice symbolized by Nuremberg.
There is a volume of evidence that the war criminals in our midst were arming and training “jihadists.” See link below.
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2016/10/the-evidence-of-planning-of-wars.html
All these western imperial geostrategic planners are certifiably insane and have no business anywhere near the levers of government policy. They are the number one enemy of humanity. If we don’t find a way to remove them from power, they may actually succeed in destroying life on Earth.
The article does not support the sub-headline. There is no evidence provided, nor is there any evidence to be found, that Washington’s policy in the region was motivated by anything other than geopolitical objectives.
I think that phrasing may point to the hand of editor Robert Parry. The incredible value of CN notwithstanding, Parry in his own pieces (erroneously in my eyes) maintains a belief that Obama somehow meant well. Hence the imputation of some “naïve” but ultimately benevolent motive on the part of the U.S. genocidaires, as the whole Syria catastrophe got going on Obama’s watch.
The imputation of naivete works to avoid accusation of a specific strategy without sufficient evidence.
Although I am no fan of Obama, and most especially the continuation of the warmongering for his 8 years, he did balk at the “Red line” when he found out he was being set up, and it wasn’t Assad who used chemical weapons. I don’t think he “meant well” so much as he knew the exact length of his leash. His bragging about going against “The Washington playbook” was of course laughable; just as his whole hopey/changey thing was laughable with Citigroup picking his cabinet.
Off topic but you can listen to some of Obama’s banking handiwork here:
https://sputniknews.com/radio_loud_and_clear/201712091059844562-looming-government-shutdown-will-democrats-fight-trumps-pro-rich-plan/
It starts at about minute 28:14. It explains the whole reaction by Obama and Holder to the banking fiasco in my mind. Sorry but I had to get it from the evil Rooski radio program.
The use of Islamist proxy warriors to help achieve American geo-political ends goes back to at least 1979, including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Libya, and Syria. One of the better books on 9/11 is Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed’s “The War On Truth: 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism”. The first section of that book – “The Geopolitics of Terrorism” – covers, across 150 well-sourced pages, the history and background of this involvement. It is highly recommended for anyone who wishes to be better informed on this topic.
One disturbing common feature across the years have been US sponsored airlifts of Islamist fighters facing defeat, as seen in Afghanistan in late 2001 and just recently in eastern Syria. In 2001, some of those fighters were relocated to North Africa, specifically Mali – the roots of the Islamist insurgency which has destabilized that country over the past few years. Where exactly the ISIS rebels assisted some weeks ago were relocated is yet unknown.
Jaycee, actually you have to go back much further than that to WW2. Hitler used the marginalized Turkic people in Russia and turned them into effective fighters to create internal factions within the Soviet Union. After Hitler lost and the Cold War began, the US, who had no understanding of the Soviets at the time radicalized and empowered Islamist including the Muslim Brotherhood to weaponize Islam against the Soviet Union.
Hence the birth of the Mujaheddin and Bin Laden, the rest is history.
The article raises a very serious charge. Up till now it appeared that suppling weapons to Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria was just another example of Pentagon incompetence but the suggestion here is that it was a concerted policy and it’s hard to believe that there was no one in the Pentagon that was privy to that policy who wouldn’t raise an objection. That it conformed with Israeli, Saudi and CIA designs is not surprising, but that there was no dissension within the Pentagon is appalling(or that Obama didn’t raise objections). Clark’s comment should put him on the hot seat for a congressional investigation but, of course, there is no one in congress to run with it. The policy is so manifestly evil that it seems to dwarf even the reckless ignorance of preceding “interventions”.
There WAS dissension within the Pentagon, not only about being in a coalition with the Gulf States and Turkey in support of terrorist forces, but about allowing ISIS to invade Ramadi, which CENTCOM exposed by making public that U.S. forces watched it happen and did nothing. In addition, CENTCOM and SOCOM publicly opposed switching sides in Yemen.
The DIA report released by Gen. Flynn in 2012 predicted the Islamic State with alarm. That is why Flynn was fired as Director of DIA. He objected to the insane policy of supporting the CIA/Saudi madness and saw it as not only counter-productive but disastrous. His comments to AlJazeera in 2016 reinforced this position. Gen Flynn’s faction of the American military has been consistent in its opposition to CIA support of terrorist forces.
Thanks, I never read anything about it in the MSM(perhaps Aljazeera was an exception?). However, this doesn’t explain Gen. Flynn’s tight relationship with Turkey’s Erdogan who clearly backed the Al Qaeda affiliated rebels to the point of shooting down a Russian jet over Syria.
The fighter shoot-down incident was before Erdogan’s reversals in Syria policy.
Sam F,…what’s not clear is WHEN Flynn became an”advisor” on Erdogan’s payroll. It is of course possible that he worked to change Turkish policy toward the Russian initiative for a peaceful settlement in Syria(which would be commendable), however, the paradox remains as Erdogan’s son was involved in refining ISIS oil in Turkey(reported on RT)and Erdogan himself was a prime player favoring the removal of Assad. Another paradox is Kushner’s relations with Flynn. Kushner is clearly an acolyte of Netanyahu, who instinctively would oppose a Russian peace initiative, but I have seen no indication of any friction between Kushner and Flynn(other than the current efforts of the Mueller investigation to turn one against the other). Of course, all this could be ascribed to the contradictions in Trump’s own ignorance of foreign policy, but the paradox remains.
Erdogan was doing US/NATOs dirty work in the middle east until the coup attempt, July 15, 2016. So, until then, it was not necessary to pay for a lobbyist to extract Gulen, which was Flynn’s job. Nothing gets done in DC without a lobbyist, why is Erdogan’s relationship with Flynn any more nefarious than any other lobbyist relationship? Because Flynn swore to take down the CIA and they can hang him with innuendoes.
turk151…good point!…however, I never understood why Erdogan was so hopped up to get Gulen. Did Gulen actually have such a large following in Turkey to challenge his power?
I see Gen. Flynn as a whistleblower. The 2012 report he circulated saw the rise of the Salafist Islamic state with alarm.
Thank you. Gen Flynn also urged coordination with Russia against ISIS, so it doesn’t take much to see why he was targeted. Ironically, the MSM is now going bananas over his support for nuclear power in the region, which he had tied to desalination of sea water, toward alleviating that crucial source of conflict in the area.
I believe Wesley Clark told Amy Goodman that he was handed the classified memo regarding the U.S. overthrowing seven countries in five years starting with Iraq and ending with Iran, in 2001, not 2006. He said it was right after 9/11 when he visited the Pentagon and Joint Chief of Staff’s office and was handed the memo.
@ ” Up till now it appeared that supplying weapons to Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria was just another example of Pentagon incompetence …”
I don’t think that ever had strong Pentagon backing. Congress imposed it with a half-billion-dollar appropriation, secret in its first year but publicly when renewed. Prior to that, the Arms for Al Qaeda operation was run by the CIA, which is much more closely aligned with the Israeli right-wingers. The appropriation was for arms and training. But the Pentagon seemingly sandbagged on that mission and produced only a handful of trained fighters after the first year, who promptly after being sent into Syria defected to the takfiris.
An August 2012 DIA report (written when the U.S. was monitoring weapons flows from Libya to Syria), said that the opposition in Syria was driven by al Qaeda and other extremist groups: “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.”
The “deterioration of the situation” was predicted to have “dire consequences” for Iraq, which included the “grave danger” of a terrorist “Islamic state”.
Some of the “dire consequences” are blacked out but the DIA warned one such consequence would be the “renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena.”
The heavily redacted DIA memo specifically mentions “the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”
http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf
To clarify just who these “supporting powers” were, mentioned in the document who sought the creation of a “Salafist principality,” the DIA memo explained:
“The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.”
The DIA memo clearly indicates when it was decided to transform US, Saudi, and Turkish-backed Al Qaeda affiliates into ISIS: the “Salafist” (Islamic) “principality” (State).
NATO member state Turkey has been directly supporting terrorism in Syria, and specifically, supporting ISIS.
In 2014, Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle’s reported “‘IS’ supply channels through Turkey.” DW exposed fleets of hundreds of trucks a day, passing unchallenged through Turkey’s border crossings with Syria, clearly bound for the defacto ISIS capital of Raqqa.
Starting in September 2015, Russian airpower in Syria successfully interdicted ISIS supply lines.
The usual suspects in Western media launched a relentless propaganda campaign against Russian support for Syria. The Atlantic Council’s Bellingcat disinformation operation started working overtime.
The propaganda effort culminated in the 4 April 2017 Khan Shaykhun false flag chemical incident in Idlib. Bellingcat’s Eliot Higgins and Dan Kaszeta have been paraded by “First Draft” coalition media “partners” in a vigorous effort to somehow implicate the Russians.
In a January 2016 interview on Al Jazeera, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn admitted that he “paid very close attention” to the August 2012 DIA report predicting the rise of a “declared or undeclared Salafist Principality” in Syria.
Flynn even asserts that the White House’s sponsoring of terrorists (that would emerge as Al Nusra and ISIS) against the Syrian regime was “a willful decision.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6Y274U7QIs
Flynn was interviewed by British journalist Mehdi Hasan for Al Jazeera’s Head to Head program.
Flynn made it clear that the policies that led to the “the rise of the Islamic State, the rise of terrorism” were not merely the result of ignorance or looking the other way, but the result of conscious decision making:
Hasan: “You are basically saying that even in government at the time you knew these groups were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it, but who wasn’t listening?”
Flynn: “I think the administration.”
Hasan: “So the administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?”
Flynn: “I don’t know that they turned a blind eye, I think it was a decision. I think it was a willful decision.”
Hasan: “A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?”
Flynn: “It was a willful decision to do what they’re doing.”
Holding up a paper copy of the 2012 DIA report declassified through FOIA, Hasan read aloud key passages such as, “there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”
Rather than downplay the importance of the document and these startling passages, as did the State Department soon after its release, Flynn did the opposite: he confirmed that while acting DIA chief he “paid very close attention” to this report in particular and later added that “the intelligence was very clear.”
Lt. Gen. Flynn, speaking safely from retirement, is the highest ranking intelligence official to go on record saying the United States and other state sponsors of rebels in Syria knowingly gave political backing and shipped weapons to Al-Qaeda in order to put pressure on the Syrian regime:
Hasan: “In 2012 the U.S. was helping coordinate arms transfers to those same groups [Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda in Iraq], why did you not stop that if you’re worried about the rise of quote-unquote Islamic extremists?”
Flynn: “I hate to say it’s not my job… but that… my job was to… was to to ensure that the accuracy of our intelligence that was being presented was as good as it could be.”
Flynn unambiguously confirmed that the 2012 DIA document served as source material in his own discussions over Syria policy with the White House.
Flynn served as Director of Intelligence for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) during a time when its prime global mission was dismantling Al-Qaeda.
Flynn’s admission that the White House was in fact arming and bolstering Al-Qaeda linked groups in Syria is especially shocking given his stature.
The Pentagon’s former highest ranking intelligence officer in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden confessed that the United States directly aided the Al Qaeda terrorist legions of Ayman al-Zawahiri beginning in at least 2012 in Syria.
Mehdi Hasan goes Head to Head with Michael Flynn, former head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency
Full Transcript
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/headtohead/2016/01/transcript-michael-flynn-160104174144334.html
“Flynn would later tell the New York Times that this 2012 intelligence report in particular was seen at the White House where it was ‘disregarded’ because it ‘didn’t meet the narrative’ on the war in Syria. He would further confirm to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that Defense Department (DoD) officials and DIA intelligence in particular, were loudly warning the administration that jihadists were leading the opposition in Syria—warnings which were met with ‘enormous pushback.’ Instead of walking back his Al Jazeera comments, General Flynn explained to Hersh that ‘If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic.’ Hersh’s investigative report exposed a kind of intelligence schism between the Pentagon and CIA concerning the covert program in Syria.
“In a personal exchange on his blog Sic Semper Tyrannis, legendary DoD intelligence officer and former presidential briefer Pat Lang explained […] that the DIA memo was used as a ‘warning shot across the [administration’s] bow.’ Lang has elsewhere stated that DIA Director Flynn had ‘tried to persuade people in the Obama Administration not to provide assistance to the Nusra group.’ It must be remembered that in 2012 what would eventually emerge as distinct ‘ISIS’ and ‘Nusra’ (AQ in Syria) groups was at that time a singular entity desiring a unified ‘Islamic State.’ The nascent ISIS organization (referenced in the memo as ‘ISI’ or Islamic State in Iraq) was still one among many insurgent groups fighting to topple Assad.
“In fact, only one year after the DIA memo was produced (dated August 12, 2012) a coalition of rebels fighting under the US-backed Revolutionary Military Council of Aleppo were busy celebrating their most strategic victory to date, which served to open an opposition corridor in Northern Syria. The seizure of the Syrian government’s Menagh Airbase in August 2013 was only accomplished with the military prowess of fighters identifying themselves in front of cameras and to reporters on the ground as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.
“Public embarrassment came for Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford who reluctantly confirmed that in fact, yes, the US-funded and supplied FSA commander on the ground had personally led ISIS and Nusra fighters in the attack (Ford himself was previously filmed alongside the commander). This after the New York Times publicized unambiguous video proof of the fact. Even the future high commander of Islamic State’s military operations, Omar al-Shishani, himself played a leading role in the US sponsored FSA operation.”
Obama and the DIA ‘Islamic State’ Memo: What Trump Gets Right
By Brad Hoff
https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/07/01/obama-and-the-dia-islamic-state-memo-what-trump-gets-right/
Very interesting. Yes, I remember the photo of Ford with the FSA commander.
Meanwhile, Conflict Armament Research has reported that Obama basically outfitted ISIS:
“Evidence collected by CAR indicates that the United States has repeatedly diverted EU-manufactured weapons and ammunition to opposition forces in the Syrian conflict. IS forces rapidly gained custody of significant quantities of this materiel,” it said.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/isil-weapons-traced-saudi-arabia-171214164431586.html
I really wish I knew the power dynamics in the Obama Administration behind the decision to support the jihadis. I suspect, of course, the clearly demonic figure of Samantha Power. But I don’t know whether she played as great a role as say, Hillary Clinton, or John Brennan. Of course, all the perps skated. Never mind a nation destroyed and hundreds of thousands dead, Obama’s reputation should, if there were any justice, be in ashes by now.
“one first needs to understand what has happened in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries in recent years. The original plan of the US and Saudi Arabia (behind whom stood an invisible Israel) was the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad and his replacement with Islamic fundamentalists or takfiris (Daesh, al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra).
“The plan involved the following steps:
– sweep away a strong secular Arab state with a political culture, armed forces and security services;
– generate total chaos and horror in Syria that would justify the creation of Israel’s ‘security zone’, not only in Golan Heights, but also further north;
– start a civil war in Lebanon and incite takfiri violence against Hezbollah, leading to them both bleeding to death and then create a “security zone”, this time in Lebanon;
– prevent the creation of a “Shiite axis” of Iran/Iraq/Syria/Lebanon;
– continue the division of Syria along ethnic and religious lines, establish an independent Kurdistan and then to use them against Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
– give Israel the opportunity to become the unquestioned major player in the region and force Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and everyone else to apply for permission from Israel in order to implement any oil and gas projects;
– gradually isolate, threaten, undermine and ultimately attack Iran with a wide regional coalition, removing all Shiite centers of power in the middle East.
“It was an ambitious plan, and the Israelis were completely convinced that the United States would provide all the necessary resources to see it through. But the Syrian government has survived thanks to military intervention by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. Daesh is almost defeated and Iran and Hezbollah are so firmly entrenched in Syria that it has driven the Israelis into a state of fear bordering on panic. Lebanon remains stable, and even the recent attempt by the Saudis to abduct Prime Minister Saad Hariri failed.
“As a result, Saudi Arabia and Israel have developed a new plan: force the US to attack Iran. To this end, the ‘axis of good”’ (USA-Israel-Saudi Arabia) was created, although this is nothing new. Saudi Arabia and the other Arab States in the Persian Gulf have in the past spoken in favor of intervention in Syria. It is well known that the Saudis invaded Bahrain, are occupying it de facto, and are now at war in Yemen.
“The Israelis will participate in any plan that will finally split the Sunnis and Shiites, turning the region into rubble. It was not by chance that, having failed in Lebanon, they are now trying to do the same in Yemen after the murder of Ali Abdullah Saleh.
“For the Saudis and Israelis, the problem lies in the fact that they have rather weak armed forces; expensive and high-tech, but when it comes to full-scale hostilities, especially against a really strong opponent such as the Iranians or Hezbollah, the ‘Israel/Wahhabis’ have no chance and they know it, even if they do not admit it. So, one simply needs to think up some kind of plan to force the Shiites to pay a high price.
“So they developed a new plan. Firstly, the goal is now not the defeat of Hezbollah or Iran. For all their rhetoric, the Israelis know that neither they nor especially the Saudis are able to seriously threaten Iran or even Hezbollah. Their plan is much more basic: initiate a serious conflict and then force the US to intervene. Only today, the armed forces of the United States have no way of winning a war with Iran, and this may be a problem. The US military knows this and they are doing everything to tell the neo-cons ‘sorry, we just can’t.’ This is the only reason why a US attack on Iran has not already taken place. From the Israeli point of view this is totally unacceptable and the solution is simple: just force the US to participate in a war they do not really need. As for the Iranians, the Israeli goal of provoking an attack on Iran by the US is not to defeat Iran, but just to bring about destruction – a lot of destruction […]
“You would need to be crazy to attack Iran. The problem, however, is that the Saudis and the Israelis are close to this state. And they have proved it many times. So it just remains to hope that Israel and the KSA are ‘crazy’, but ‘not that crazy’.”
The Likelihood of War with Iran
By Petr Lvov
https://journal-neo.org/2017/12/09/the-likelihood-of-war-with-iran/
Remember General Wesley Clarke relating in 2003 that the USA/Pentagon had listed the seven nations the USA would attack:
Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Somalia,Libya , and Sudan.
On 24 October 2017, the Intercept released an NSA document unearthed from leaked intelligence files provided by Edward Snowden which reveals that terrorist militants in Syria were under the direct command of foreign governments from the early years of the war which has now claimed half a million lives.
https://theintercept.com/2017/10/24/syria-rebels-nsa-saudi-prince-assad/
Marked “Top Secret” the NSA memo focuses on events that unfolded outside Damascus in March of 2013.
The US intelligence memo is evidence of internal US government confirmation of the direct role that both the Saudi and US governments played in fueling attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, as well as military targets in pursuit of “regime change” in Syria.
Israel’s support for terrorist forces in Syria is well established. The Israelis and Saudis coordinate their activities.
thumbs up to you Abe – the same sort of mis-direction
pertains to ‘hasbara’ spooks who carry-out assassinations
of the characterizers (assassination-of-character) of Truth
why did the Rothschild’s so viciously murder the Romanoffs?
except They (Rothschilds) are of the Talmudists’ Tribes of Pharisees
and Scribes, which are those Leaders what leads into worship of beasts:
Palestinians will be Slaughtered & Mowed Down in TurkeyShoot
of Ballistic Weapons the administer Swift Death to all those/they
Who struggle to live under a Government of repression
in Public Repeat of trail-of-tears forced pilgramage as in
the massacre of Buffalos as the way to StarveOut the
Indigenous Tribes of North America as you’ve done
and do in all the world, from sea to sea and ocean to ocean
into worlds beyond
The Earth is the Lords’
& the fullness thereof;
the Just shall live by
faith in God, because
“The Liar” is-on-the-loose
& the truth/sets free…
A month ago, “Mild – ly Facetious” claimed to have “no clue what or who is Hasbera [sic]”
In fact, “Mild – ly Facetious” has been actively promoting both Conventional Hasbara (overtly pro-Israel) propaganda and Inverted Hasbara (false flag “anti-Israel / “anti-Zionist” / “anti-Jewish”) propaganda gobbledygook.
See the Nov 12-14 comment interaction with “Mild – ly Facetious” here:
The Balfour Declaration’s Century of Turmoil (November 11, 2017)
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/11/11/the-balfour-declarations-century-of-turmoil/
Now equal opportunity Hasbara enthusiast “Mild – ly Facetious” is muttering about “worship of beasts” and spewing some Inverted Hasbara (false flag “anti-Semitic”) spiel about “Talmudists’ Tribes”.
Take your Hasbara “thumb” and get lost.
” “Mild – ly Facetious” is muttering about “worship of beasts” and spewing some Inverted Hasbara (false flag “anti-Semitic”) spiel about “Talmudists’ Tribes”.
Mild-lie Fecesious cannot leave drivel out of his posts in the same way Trump cannot resist dissemenating his narcissistic bi-polar tweets.
Abe plus ,initially, Turkey and Qatar.
@ Abe December 8, 2017 at 6:24 pm
Even that article has it wrong. The author, Murtaza Hussain, seems to believe the baloney about Assad’s forces shooting unarmed peaceful protesters; they were, mostly, but were infiltrated by snipers and other armed terrorists, who killed a considerable number of Syrian policemen (just like they did in Maidan, Ukraine).
The US set up a base in Jordan in 2009 to start to train Syrian insurgents, with the objective of overthrowing Assad.
Murtaza Hussain also seems to have been taken in by propaganda that the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ was a spontaneous Arab thing – it wasn’t, it was a Western plot to rearrange the Regimes in the area – just another ‘Regime Change’ plot.
Of course, most of the crowds in the streets didn’t know they were being played by outside players, in fact by their deadliest enemies, the US and Israel.
Oh Jerusalem: Requiem for the two-state solution… (Gas masks required)
https://electronicintifada.net/content/oh-jerusalem-requiem-two-state-solution/22521
Optimistically, perhaps no realistically we could end up with a ONE STATE solution with a Palestinian majority and no more zionist aggression.
When evil people with evil intentions set out to do something in the world, the result is evil. Like Libya, or Iraq, or Syria. Why do I call these people who killed millions for their own selfish greed for power evil? If you have to ask that, then you just don’t understand what evil is – and you have a lot of company, because many people believe that evil does not even exist! Such sheeple become the perfect victims of the evil ones, who are destroying our world.
Correction, Mike. The public do believe that evil exists but they sincerely think that Putin and Russia are the evil ones’
One of the ways to avoid recognizing evil is to ascribe it to inappropriate, incorrect sources usually as a result of believing misleading propaganda. Another common maneuver is to deny evil’s presence in oneself, and believe it is always “out there”. Or one can feel that “evil” is an outmoded religious concept that is only used to hit at those one does not like.
mike k December 8, 2017 at 5:34 pm
Indeed, Ayatollah Khomeini was not kidding when he called the US ‘the Great Satan’.
Their ‘leaders’ (and the puppeteers who control them) literally are Luciferian.
That is why there is so much child abuse, torture and child sacrifice, as well as mass sacrifices to Lucifer in their provoked wars.
George HW Bush, on a trip to Australia on Air Force 1, had to stay on the plane due to mass protests at the airport about his sickening paedophilia. Gerald Ford, Cheney, a couple of Canadian Prime Ministers and a Mexican President were also ‘at it’, as well as King Saud.
Scum really does rise to the top; they serve Lucifer, and ‘hi’/’it’ rewards them with earthly power. But as Jesus said, ‘Waht doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?’
Jesus did not speak lightly; it was more than a rhetorical question.
What we have occurring right now in the United States is a rare divergence of interests within our ruling class. The elites are currently made up of Zionist-militarists. What we’re now witnessing is a rare conflict between the two factions. This particular internecine battle has reared its head in the past, the Dubai armaments deal comes to mind off the top of my head.
Trump started the Jerusalem imbroglio because he’s concerned about Mueller’s witch hunt.
The military-industrial-complex sicced Mueller on Trump because they despise his overtures towards rapprochement with the Kremlin. The military-industrial-complex MUST have a villain to justify the gigantic defense [sic] spending which permeates the entire U.S. politico-economic system. Putin and Russia were always the preferred demon because they easily fit the bill in the minds of an easily brainwashed American public. Of course saber rattling towards Moscow puts the world on the brink of nuclear war, but no matter, the careerism and fat contracts are all that matter to the MIC. Trump’s rhetoric about making peace with the Kremlin has always mortified the MIC.
Since Trump’s concerned about 1.) Mueller’s witch hunt (he definitely should be deeply concerned, this is an out of control prosecutor on mission creep), and 2.) the almost total negative coverage the press has given him over the last two years, he’s made a deal with the Zionist Power Configuration; Trump, effectively saying to them: “I’ll give you Jerusalem, you use your immense influence in the American mass media to tamp down the relentlessly hostile coverage toward me, and perhaps smear Mueller’s witch hunt a bit…”.
This is a rare instance of our elites battling it out behind the scenes, both groups being reprehensible power hungry greed heads and sociopaths, it’s hard to tell how this will end.
How this all eventually plays out is anyone’s guess indeed. Let’s just make sure it doesn’t end with mushroom clouds over Tehran, Saint Petersburg, Paris, Chicago, London, NYC, Washington and Berlin.
Yes, mushroom clouds over DC and NYC are enough.
Trump’s purported deviation from foreign policy orthodoxy regarding both Russia and Israel was a propaganda scam engineered by the pro-Israel Lobby from the very beginning.
As Russia-gate fiction is progressively deconstructed, the Israel-gate reality becomes ever more despicably obvious.
The shamelessly Israel-pandering Trump received the “Liberty Award” for his contributions to US-Israel relations at a 3 February 2015 gala hosted by The Algemeiner Journal, a New York-based newspaper, covering American and international Jewish and Israel-related news.
“We love Israel. We will fight for Israel 100 percent, 1000 percent.”
VIDEO minutes 2:15-8:06
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiwBwBw7R-U
After the event, Trump did not renew his television contract for The Apprentice, which raised speculation about a Trump bid for the presidency. Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015.
Trump’s purported break with GOP orthodoxy, questioning of Israel’s commitment to peace, calls for even treatment in Israeli-Palestinian deal-making, and refusal to call for Jerusalem to be Israel’s undivided capital, were all stage-managed for the campaign.
Cheap theatrics notwithstanding, the Netanyahu regime in Israel has “1000 percent” support from the Trump regime.
If Trump were totally and completely subservient to Netanyahu he would have bombed Damascus to remove Assad and would have bombed Tehran to obliterate Iran. Of course thus far he has done neither. Don’t get me wrong, Trump is essentially part and parcel of the Zionist cabal, but I don’t quite think he’s 1,000% under their thumb (not yet?).
I don’t think the Zionist Power Configuration concocted Trump’s policy of relative peace with the Kremlin. Yes, the ZPC is extremely powerful in America, but Trump’s position of detente with Moscow seemed to be genuine. He caught way too much heat from the mass media for it to be a stunt, it’s almost torpedoed his presidency, and may eventually do just that. It was actually one of the very few things Trump got right; peace with Russia, cordial relations with the Kremlin are a no-brainer. A no-brainer to everyone but the military-industrial-complex.
Russian.
Missiles.
Lets be clear: The military-industrial-complex wants plenty of low intensity conflict to fuel ever more fabulous weapons sales, not a really hot war where all those pretty expensive toys are falling out of the sky in droves.
Whether it was “bird strike” or something more technological that recently grounded the “mighty” Israeli F-35I, it’s clear that America isn’t eager to have those “Inherent Resolve” jets, so busily not bombing ISIS, painted with Russian SAM radar.
Russia made it clear that Trump’s Tomahawk Tweet in April 2017 was not only under totally false pretenses. It had posed a threat to Russian troops and Moscow took extra measures to protect them.
Russian deployment of the advanced S-400 system on the Syrian coast in Latakia also impacts Israel’s regional air superiority. The S-400 can track and shoot down targets some 400 kilometers (250 miles) away. That range encompasses half of Israel’s airspace, including Ben Gurion International Airport.
In addition to surface-to-air missiles installations, Russian aircraft in Syria are equipped with air-to-air missiles.
Those weapons are part of an calculus of Israeli aggressionin the region.
Of course, there’s much more to say about this subject.
Here’s a good one from Hedges (for what little good it will do).
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/zero-hour-palestine/
Surely, Drew, even the brain washed sheep otherwise known as the American public can’t seriously believe that their government armed head choppers in a bid to bring peace to the region, can they?
Yup Mr. Wilson. It’s too much cognitive dissonance for them to process. After all, we’re the exceptional nation, the beacon on the hill, the country that ONLY intervenes abroad when there is a ‘right to protect!’ or it’s a ‘humanitarian intervention.’ As Ken Burns would say: Washington only acts “with good intentions. They’re just sometimes misplaced.” That’s all. The biggest global empire the world has ever seen is completely out of the picture.
I do not believe than anyone in the civil or military command ever believed that arming the jihadists would bring any sort of stability or peace to the region. I do not believe that peace was ever an interest of the US until it has once again gained hegemonic control of central Asia.
This is a fight to retain US global domination – causalities do not matter. The US and its partners or co-rulers of the Empire the Saud family and the Zionist oligarchy will slaughter with impunity until someone stops them or their own corruption defeats them.
The Empire can not exist without relentless ongoing slaughter it has been at it every day now for 73 years. It worked for them all that time but that time has run out. China has already set the date for when its currency will become fully freely exchanged, less than 5 years. When that happens the world will return to the gold standard + Bitcoin possibly and US dollar hegemony will end. After that the trillion dollar a year military and the 20 trillion debt take on a different meaning. Before that slaughter non-stop will continue.
Really, Baby-lon, your first short paragraph sums this piece by Lazare perfectly and makes the rest of his blog seem rather pointless. Even the most stupid person on earth couldn’t think that the US was using murdering, butchering head choppers in a bid to bring peace and stability to the middle East. The Neocons and the other criminals that infest Washington don’t want peace at any price because its bad for business.
Babyl-on and John Wilson: you have nailed it. The last thing the US (gov’t.) wants is peace. War is big business; casualties are of no concern (3 million Koreans died in the Korean War; 3 million Vietnamese in that war; 100’s of thousands in Iraq [including Clinton’s sanctions] and Afghanistan). The US has used jihadi proxies since the mujahedeen in 1980’s Afghanistan and Contras in Nicaragua. To the US (gov’t.), a Salafist dictatorship (such as Saudi Arabia) is highly preferable to a secular, nationalist ruler (such as Egypt’s Nasser, Libya’s Gaddafi, Syria’s Assad).
So the cover story of the jjihadi’s has changed – first they are freedom fighters, then terrorists. What does not change is that in either case they are pawns of the US (gov’t.) goal of hegemony.
(Incidentally, Drew Hunkins must be responding to a different article.)
Exactly Baby right on, Either USA strategistsare extremely ignorant or they are attemping to create chaos, probably both.
Perhaps not continuously but surely frequently the USA has promoted war prior to the last 73 years.
Native Genocide , Mexican Wars, Spanish War, WWI ( USA banker repayment war)
Exactly Babylon! Looks like consortiumnews is turning into another propaganda rag. Assad was allied with Russia and Iran – that’s why the U.S. wanted him removed. Israel said that they would preferred ISIS in power over Assad. The U.S. would have happily wiped out 90% of the population using its terrorist proxies if it thought it could have got what it wanted.
CN tends to make moderate statements so as to communicate with those most in need of them.
One must start with the understandings of the audience and show them that the evidence leads further.
Sam F, no, it’s a DELIBERATE lie in support of U.S. foreign policy. The guy wrote: “the NAIVE belief that jihadist proxies could be used to TRANSFORM THE REGION FOR THE BETTER.” It could have been written as: “the stated justification by the president that he wanted to transform the region for the better, even though there are often ulterior motives.”
It’s the same GROTESQUE caricature of these wars that the mainstream media always presents: that the U.S. is on the side of good, and fights for good, even though every war INVARIABLY ends up in a bloodbath, with no one caring how many civilians have died, what state the country is left in, that civilian infrastructure and civilians were targeted, let alone whether war could have been prevented. For example, in 1991, shortly after the first Gulf War, Iraqis rose up against their regime, but George H. Bush allowed Saddam to fly his military helicopters (permission was needed due to the no-fly zones), and quell the rebellion in blood – tens of thousands were butchered! Bush said that when he told Iraqis to rebel, he meant the military generals, NOT the Iraqi people themselves. In other words, the U.S. wanted Saddam gone, but the same regime in place. The U.S. never cared about the people!
Either Robert Parry or the author wrote that introduction. I suspect Mr Parry – he always portrays the president as having a heart of gold, but, always, sadly, misinformed; being a professional journalist, he knows full well that people often only read the start and end of an article.
Richard, yes death is USA’s main export.