The US has been dropping bombs, sanctioning and refusing to assist the reconstruction of earthquake shattered, civil war torn Syria for nine years. The US jumped into the 2011 Syrian civil war in September, 2014, with bombs instead of peace proposals. Why? America saw its chance to change out the regime of hated Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who’s aligned with 2 major US enemies, Russia and Iran.
We even gave the greenlight, including weapons and moral support, to Assad opponents, some of whom are anti US extremists. “Not to worry,” US officials claimed. “These are moderate bad guys we can control.” Right.
Once Assad largely prevailed in the civil war with ally Russia’s help, the US refused to end its quest to oust Assad. We’ve kept 900 troops in northeast Syria to control the oil fields we stole from Syria, effectively keeping a third of Syria from Assad’s control.
US intervention and occupation is a decade long war crime on the Syrian people. Unlike the Russo-Ukraine war, it’s almost totally ignored by mainstream media. It did pop up a week ago when unknown fighters attacked a US outpost there, killing a contractor and injuring 5 US soldiers. The Biden administration was outraged, ordering immediate retaliatory attacks against groups thought to be involved. At least 19 were killed which satisfies the required high US kill ratio in such responses. Whoever was killed, guilty or innocent, doesn’t matter. Revenge for attacking our invading army is all that counts.
When asked if the attack on US troops will cause President Biden to re-evaluate his commitment to stay in Syria, spokesman John Kirby replied “Here’s what’s not going to change … the mission and ISIS is not going to change. We have under 1,000 troops in Syria that are going after that network, which is, while greatly diminished, still viable and still critical. So we’re going to stay at that task.”
Since ISIS will always have a few imagined bad guys in Syria, Kirby might have will said, “Here’s what’s not going to change. We’re staying in Syria till we achieve our sole mission…changing out the regime of President Assad, the people of Syria be damned.”
Walt Zlotow became involved in antiwar activities upon entering University of Chicago in 1963. He is current president of the West Suburban Peace Coalition based in the Chicago western suburbs. He blogs daily on antiwar and other issues at www.heartlandprogressive.blogspot.com.
Disgusting. We already utterly destroyed the country killed tens of millions there. Assad is still very much in power. Let’s get the hell out of Syria and give them their land back!
So it goes for the “white house on the hill”.
The US, UK, France, Germany and many other nations need regime change. The people have to fight for change to throw out their misleaders. In the USA, people will have to fight the rigged Democratic and Republican Duopoly. Voting for 3rd Party Candidates is not enough.
“These are moderate bad guys we can control.” From Assange with love: https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/23225 That’s one of the reasons they want him to die in jail.
The U.S. didn’t jump into the Syrian civil war, it fomented it. There were legitimate demonstrations against Assad because of his callous attitude toward farmers and others who asked for help because of a major water shortage (caused by the climate crisis, BTW). But like in Ukraine, Hong Kong, and other places, the U.S. saw this as an opportunity, and quickly dispatched the CIA to help foment a rebellion, which turned into this civil war. The U.S. has always hated the Assads, because they wouldn’t do what the U.S. wanted, unlike lackey leaders in the Middle East. As usual, the U.S. is on the wrong side here, and even worse, the U.S. sided with literal terrorists like al Qaeda and al Nusra in order to fight Assad. And the U.S. is occupying a large portion of Syria and stealing it’s oil and wheat, as bragged about on camera by Trump when he was president.
How’s that for disgusting?