Four current articles against Deep State policy in Syria

Four articles strongly critical of Deep State policy in Syria may be moving the focus of world attention toward peace and against planetary suicide. I know that's a strong statement, but I feel there is reason to hope that common sense and clear research are gaining attention.

I have not finished reading each of these articles, but I hope we can increase our knowledge and confidence in a future without annihilation by studying them and carrying them forward.

https://consortiumnews.com/

The Memo That Helped Kill a Half Million People in Syria
January 13, 2019
By Daniel Lazare

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/01/14/entering-major-regiona...

ALASTAIR CROOKE | 14.01.2019
Entering a Major Regional Re-set – The Syria Outcome Will Haunt Those Who Started This War

https://harpers.org/archive/2019/02/american-involvement-in-syria/

“Tell Me How This Ends”
America’s muddled involvement with Syria

HARPERS Magazine - From the February 2019 issue

By Charles Glass

https://ejmagnier.com/2019/01/02/trump-bows-to-domestic-pressure-by-dela...

TRUMP BOWS TO DOMESTIC PRESSURE BY DELAYING HIS WITHDRAWAL FROM SYRIA; A STORM IS GATHERING IN THE LEVANT

Posted on 02/01/2019 by Elijah J Magnier

Here is an excerpt from Middle East journalist, Elijah Magnier:

https://ejmagnier.com/2019/01/02/trump-bows-to-domestic-pressure-by-dela...

... “Indeed the Levant is returning to the centre of Middle East and world attention in a stronger position than in 2011. Syria has advanced precision missiles that can hit any building in Israel. Assad also has an air defence system he would have never dreamed of before 2011 – thanks to Israel’s continuous violation of its airspace, and its defiance of Russian authority. Hezbollah has constructed bases for its long and medium range precision missiles in the mountains and has created a bond with Syria that it could never have established – if not for the war. Iran has established a strategic brotherhood with Syria, thanks to its role in defeating the regime change plan.

NATO’s support for the growth of ISIS has created a bond between Syria and Iraq that no Muslim or Baathist link could ever have created: Iraq has a “carte blanche” to bomb ISIS locations in Syria without the consent of the Syrian leadership, and the Iraqi security forces can walk into Syria anytime they see fit to fight ISIS. The anti-Israel axis has never been stronger than it is today. That is the result of 2011-2018 war imposed on Syria”.

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Big Al's picture

Appreciate the articles but the one by Glass was hard to read, so I didn't. Made my eyes "glass" over.

I've never bought into the Syria "withdrawal" being anything other than a tactic in the imperial game. Nothing they say, and that includes Trump, especially Trump, can be trusted at face value. One thing Trump was consistent on during his campaign and his hires and actions has been Iran, the last country on the "seven country list" that Wes Clark revealed as the agenda.

They aren't going to stop. I believe we need an antiwar, anti-imperialism movement more than ever.

Here's an excerpt from an article (Is Trump Starting His Own War?) worth reading also:

"Suffice to say, the current discourses regarding Trump and Syria stem from what one can only call a tunnel vision. The ‘big picture’ remains elusive unless the ramifications of the NATO Mission in Iraq are properly understood. Reports suggest that the US is stepping up deployments to Iraq. The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just made “surprise visits” to Erbil and Baghdad. He was plainly dismissive that "there's no contradiction whatsoever" in the shifting US strategy on Syria. Simply put, Trump hopes to expand the scope of the Syrian war by bringing Iraq into it and drawing the western alliance system into the enterprise."

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Azazello's picture

@Big Al
I read Harper's, been a subscriber for years.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

Big Al's picture

@Azazello I just had a hard time trying to get thru his verbiage. It's not like I can't do it, I was a technical classification specialist responsible for reading things like "the scat practices of Northern Bark Snails in the Pacific Northwest" and trying to condense that into classification summaries.
But I'm not getting paid for this.

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@Big Al for the snail shit reference!
YaaaayBO!

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Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

@Big Al
is causing your eyes to glaze over because of what?

https://harpers.org/archive/2019/02/american-involvement-in-syria/

… Rebel training became the province of US and British agents, and the Turks allocated weapons. But there was no control over fighters when they infiltrated Syria, where many joined Salafist brigades. A British trainer told me that the program was benefiting religious fanatics more than any moderate, secular oppositionists.

The TOWs from Benghazi shifted the balance on the ground in favor of the rebels, especially the better-armed and highly motivated jihadis. Assad’s tanks and helicopters were no longer invulnerable. Phil Gordon refused to discuss the issue of covert assistance, but he noted that the administration “started to publicly say in the spring or maybe June of 2013 that we were providing direct support to the opposition, including military support.” The support was a program, and the program had a name: Timber Sycamore.

Speaking in his office at Washington’s Middle East Institute, Charles Lister recalled,

"Sometimes they [the insurgents] suddenly found themselves wearing nice uniforms, new camouflage fatigues. And it pretty quickly emerged that, at the end of 2012, weapons, mostly from [the] former Yugoslavia, had started to be shipped in through Amman into the south. And then some of that started to appear in northern Syria. I don’t know exactly when an open channel was established, but it wouldn’t have been any later than the spring of 2013. Certainly [by] December of 2012, those first weapons appeared in the south. And it subsequently became clear the reason why that had started was because the CIA had received clearance, I assume from the White House, to run a pretty substantial Title 50 covert program of assistance to the vetted Syrian opposition."

CIA operatives in Turkey and Jordan screened rebels to weed out fundamentalists. Vetting, however, proved futile.

The net effect was not, as Phil Gordon hoped, to “accelerate the process of Assad’s departure.” In fact, Gordon conceded, it was the opposite: “I think that what we saw was that the more we did for the opposition, the more the backers of the regime did for the regime.” Iran’s Lebanese surrogate, Hezbollah, sent more fighters from Lebanon to back Assad. The Russians came to Assad’s rescue with troops and air power, while the Iranians introduced units of Iraqi and Afghan Shias.

On the opposition side, jihadis from Chechnya, Afghanistan, Algeria, China, and Europe joined the fight. Together with indigenous fundamentalists, they reduced the FSA to irrelevance. “We didn’t have a great understanding of who was doing what on the ground,” Phil Gordon said, “and couldn’t control it. So, you would be running the risk that, almost the inevitable risk that, in a revolutionary situation, the worst guys were the ones that would take and use the weapons.” The most extreme elements, the Al Qaeda offshoots Jabhat al-­Nusra and the Islamic State, not only used the weapons but also advertised them in videos that included beheadings, the hurling of gay men off towers to their deaths, the murder of American journalists and British aid workers, and the rape of Yezidi women.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Linda Wood

He saw how Reagan got away with arming the Contras and knew that he could get away with arming the people who we were told we were fighting. But tell this to people who 'miss' him and you'll be called a racist.

I'd really like to know how the troops feel about working with the people who killed the troops in the other countries where we fought them. Of just in general. "Hey. How do you feel about your country arming and paying the people that you were sent here to fight?"

Are we still fighting AQ in Afghanistan and Iraq? With so much BS information released its hard to keep up.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

It is concise and nails down what happened in Syria, 2012-2014.

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/01/13/the-memo-that-helped-kill-a-half-m...

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@out of left field
Aren't these folks supposed to be experts on history, historical case-studies of diplomacy etc.? Based on this article, and the ultimate outcome, it's clear they have no business near power. None. Whatsoever. Ever.

An example:

It was “a low-cost high-payoff approach,” the memo says, that would eliminate one enemy, weaken two more, and generate such joy among ordinary Syrians that peace talks between Damascus and Tel Aviv will spring back to life. The risks appeared to be nil. Since “the Libyan operation had no long-lasting consequences for the region,” the memo supposes, referring to the overthrow of strongman Muammer Gaddafi six months earlier, the Syrian operation wouldn’t either. In a passage that may have influenced Clinton’s policy of a no-fly zone, despite Dunford’s warning, the memo says:

“Some argue that U.S. involvement risks a wider war with Russia. But the Kosovo example [in which NATO bombed Russian-ally Serbia] shows otherwise. In that case, Russia had genuine ethnic and political ties to the Serbs, which don’t exist between Russia and Syria, and even then Russia did little more than complain. Russian officials have already acknowledged they won’t stand in the way if intervention comes.”

So, there was nothing to worry about. Sixty-five years of Arab-Israeli conflict would fall by the wayside while Russia remains safely marginalized.

And this is followed by what subsequently happened--the consequences of these policies being adopted. It's criminal IMO.

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@peachcreek

for posting this. My software is so out of date I can only read Consortium News on my phone right now, and I don't know how to copy/paste etc., but I'll try. The comments to this article are also worth reading.

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