Syrians reject Pentagon's hollow justification

For all the hype about American occupying forces allegedly fighting Daesh in Syria, the majority never saw combat during the terror group’s Medieval rule.

Never looking for a way out, even now that Daesh has been defeated by the allied forces of Syria, Iran, Russia and Hezbollah, the US troops are still largely focused on working with disillusioned separatist and terror proxies to impose regime change in Damascus if possible. To that end, the US occupying troops are issuing statement after statement claiming unashamedly that their airstrikes against Syrian government forces along the Euphrates River are in “self-defense.” Light on details, they accuse pro-Syrian forces of attacking the “headquarters” of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), where US troops are stationed.

No doubt such strikes could have substantial ramifications. They reflect the reality that, after the defeat of Daesh, the US has said troops are there primarily with an eye toward imposing regime change, and picking fights with Syrian allies. Mind you, Iranian forces are there at the invitation of the Syrian government – just like their Russian counterparts. Besides, they are not there to help increase influence in Mesopotamia and the Levant. This has nothing to do with occupying the country either, but everything to do with fighting the remnants of Daesh and Al-Qaeda, including those proxies who swear loyalty to the American-Israeli-Saudi regimes.

The same is true in Iraq. Iraqis have not forgotten the support of the Iranians in the war against the Daesh terrorists that were occupying the northern city of Mosul and with it almost a third of Iraq for some years. Iran sent military advisors to Baghdad and Erbil to present leaders with vital advice, while the US, by delaying its response, allowed the Daesh terrorists to reach the doors of Baghdad. When the religious leaders in Najaf called for the formation of the “Popular Mobilization Units”, Iran supported them and made sure they would be a force to be reckoned with when it came to dislodging Daesh forces from key areas throughout the country.

Meaning, Iran’s policy is to promote peace and security across the region and beyond, and to send a message to the US establishment that Iran will never tolerate the presence of terror proxy forces along its borders. To that end, Iran embraced the UN Charter and International Law, and this is the nature of the Iranian establishment, which dislikes regional instability and chaos. All that and more offers the US forces no excuse whatsoever to occupy parts of northern Syria forever, let alone create a split among its war-torn communities.

War-party Washington is not happy, on the contrary. Acting against International law and the will of Syrian people; the US wants to remain in the post-Daesh country to dissuade national unity against all dangers, increase its chances at the forthcoming elections. The Americans are there also to give a political advantage to its terror proxies, plunder Syria’s energy resources, and preserve the regional status quo – even if that generates the anger of local people with close ties to Iran, several months after the defeat of Daesh and al- Qaeda allied terror proxies.

In fact, it is now clear that war-party Washington has lost some of its prestige after the failed regime-change campaign, and that Syrians will have the courage to reject its colonial demands in the future. It is also very clear that the people of Syria blame the US, its allies and their terror proxies for all the ominous things that have happened to their country. They challenge the US because it hasn’t yet learned enough about the Syrian mentality and culture which opposes foreign occupation and meddling.

In Syria today, there are subtleties the American leadership surprisingly ignores. Few Syrians like to see US warplanes targeting Syrian government troops and Iranian-Russian allies. They complain about the hollow justification the Pentagon regime and American leadership have all been offering thus far. Many of these people believe the US has been financing and supporting Daesh and other terror proxy groups anyhow, therefore post-Daesh Syria is better off without them.

US warplanes and artillery batteries carried out an unprovoked massacre of up to 100 pro-government troops in the northeastern province of Deir Ezzor only recently, signaling the initiation of a new and far more dangerous stage in the more than three-year-old direct US military intervention in Syria. The Syrian government denounced the attack as a “war crime” and “direct support to terrorism,” insisting that its forces came under US attack as they were carrying out an operation against Daesh elements between the villages of Khasham and al-Tabiya on the eastern side of the Euphrates River. While the Pentagon proudly claimed to have killed 100 pro-government fighters, Damascus announced that the US strikes claimed “the lives of dozens, injuring many others and causing massive damage in the area.” Whatever the precise number of casualties, the incident marks a major escalation of US aggression against Syria. This time around, the US military claimed that it was exercising its “inherent right of self-defense” in attacking the forces of a government whose territory American troops are occupying without either its consent or any mandate from the United Nations.

The official story from the Pentagon is that a column of 500 pro-government fighters, including tanks and artillery, had attempted to take control of territory east of the Euphrates River that had been seized by the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the US proxy ground force that is overwhelmingly dominated by the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia. It accused the government forces of launching “an unprovoked attack on a well-established SDF position,” where US Special Forces “advisors” who direct the Kurdish fighters were deployed. Russia’s Defense Ministry added in a statement that the American attack once “again showed that the US is maintaining its illegal presence in Syria not to fight the Daesh terrorist group, but to seize and hold Syrian economic assets.”
The area where the fighting took place is a center of Syria’s oil and gas fields. The village of al-Tabiya is the site of the Conoco gas plant, which was previously run by ConocoPhillips until the energy corporation turned it over to the Syrian government in 2005. After the area fell under Daesh control, the terrorist group used gas and oil exports to secure much of its financing. Washington is determined to deny the Syrian government control over these resources and to that end has sought to carve out a US zone of control covering roughly 30 percent of the country, while cutting off its borders with Turkey and Iraq.

Until launching the anti-Daesh assault on Syria in 2014, Washington had sought the ouster of the government of President Bashar al-Assad by means of supporting and arming the Al Qaeda-linked militias out of which Daesh itself emerged. This sparked the bloody seven-year-long war that has claimed the lives of some 350,000 Syrians, while displacing millions of others.

Since invading the country over three years ago, the US military has relied primarily on the Kurdish YPG as its proxy ground force, but it also continues to arm and train terrorist groups. During the US-backed siege of Raqqa and other formerly Daesh-occupied towns, the US military and its Kurdish proxies organized the evacuation of large numbers of Daesh terrorists and their redeployment to Deir Ezzor in order to turn them against the Syrian government forces advancing on the province’s strategically vital oil and gas fields.

To the west, the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish-controlled enclave of Afrin, which came in response to US plans to organize a 30,000-strong “border security force” based largely on the Kurdish YPG. It also aimed at creating what Ankara sees as a de facto Kurdish state on its border, posing a threat to escalate into a direct conflict between the US and Turkey, ostensible NATO allies.

The reality is that many Syrians expect to see more bloodshed by the American forces in various circumstances which indicate that the US is now looked at as the wrong party to be dealing with the Syrian politicians. They consider repetitive US attacks against the government forces and its allies an unwise move and a direct challenge to Syrian official authority, integrity, sovereignty, and political future.

That was from an analytical article by Bill Van Auken, a politician and activist who was a presidential candidate in the U.S. presidential election of 2004, coupled with recent ground realities concerning US bloody adventurism in the Middle East, Syria in particular.

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