U.S. and Russian troops are still in Syria

Submitted by gjohnsit on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 11:15pm

Most people seem to have forgotten that the U.S. still has around 900 troops in Syria, illegally occupying roughly a third of the nation alongside our Kurdish allies.
On the other side is Russia, which sent in its forces to prop up the Assad government when it appeared that al-Qaeda and ISIS were about to take over. Our mission there is hopelessly damaged by our conflicted allies and enemies.

Since the US is facilitating the transfer to the Syrian Kurds of the oil of the al-Omar field, Ankara sees them as an enemy, even though the US and Turkey are supposedly NATO allies.
...Alarmed at Erdogan’s invasion plans, Russia, for which Syria is a major military theater of operations and client state, sent s surveillance helicopters and fighter jets to Qamishli airport in eastern Syria to observe the Turkish border. US troops are deployed near Qamishli, according to the pan-Arab daily al-Sharq al-Awsat (The Middle East).

Qamishli is the new dangerous flashpoint. A few days ago Syrian forces blocked a U.S. convoy, not for the first time.

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While the presence of Russian troops is dangerous, it is our Kurdish allies that complicate things the most.

Erdogan has repeatedly said over the past weeks that he’s planning a major military operation to create a 30-kilometer (19 mile) deep buffer zone inside Syria along Turkey's border, through a cross-border incursion against U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish fighters — an attempt that failed in 2019.
On the ground, the situation has been tense with near daily exchanges of fire and shelling between the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters on one side and Turkish forces and Turkey-backed Syrian opposition gunmen on the other.

Turkey's 2019 invasion didn't fail. It was aborted. Our Kurdish allies have made it clear that they are aware that the U.S. troops will eventually leave, so they must eventually come to terms with the Assad government.

The United States-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have said that they will turn to the Syrian government for support if Turkey decides to launch a new military operation against them in northern Syria.
The SDF is largely made up of the YPG, which is the Syrian branch of the PKK, a group Turkey, the European Union and the US consider a “terrorist” organisation.

Everyone except for the U.S. is ramping up forces in preparation for this invasion by Turkey. While the mission of the U.S. is regime change, the mission of Turkey (our NATO ally) is eliminating Kurdish forces near their border (our ally).
An invasion by Turkey would turn everything upside down. The Kurds would switch sides and join with Assad. Suddenly our forces would have almost no allies, and be deep inside enemy territory. Our NATO ally, Turkey, would be invading Syria with al-Qaeda aligned forces, which we are supposed to be against (but aren't).

A spokesman for the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army (SNA – previously known as the Free Syrian Army) said Russia was reinforcing positions near Tal Rifaat, Manbij, the southern outskirts of Kobane, and Ain Issa – all towns within 40km (25 miles) of the Turkish border.

On the other side, Turkey and it's jihadist allies are preparing for invading Kurdish-held Syria.
In fact these al-Qaeda related, Turkish-backed groups have already been ramping up actions in formerly Kurdish-held territory against other al-Qaeda related groups.

Militant group Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has captured a number of villages belonging to Turkish-backed fighters in northern Syria as tensions, disagreement and conflict between rebel groups continue to rage.

The group, a former al-Qaeda affiliate that rules much of northwestern Syria, took control of the villages of Basufan, Qabasin and Fafertin in the southern Afrin region on Saturday night and sent military reinforcements on Tuesday, according to military sources.

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Submitted by Lookout on Wed, 07/06/2022 - 7:29am
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just like Trump admitted.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEh3qEOwNSE]
(1 min)
A convoy of U.S. troops stationed in Syria smuggled tons of Syrian oil in 55 tankers, transporting it through the illegal al-Mahmoudiya crossing point from northeastern Syria into Iraq, Syrian Arab News Agency reported on Monday. The Syrian authorities have repeatedly accused the U.S. and the armed militias of controlling 90 percent of northeast Syria's crude oil resources. They condemned the U.S. for being "just like pirates" by stealing their oil and food resources, further exacerbating the humanitarian disaster by causing severe economic losses.

the mission of the U.S. is regime change

Proving we lost our 1st proxy war with Russia and are rapidly losing another.

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Submitted by QMS on Wed, 07/06/2022 - 8:15am

@Lookout

how could this be? Wink

Remember when we abandoned our *allies* the Kurds in Iraq?
And it gets more complicated when Turkey, a NATO state, is
fighting the US backed fighters in Syria.

An invasion by Turkey would turn everything upside down. The Kurds would switch sides and join with Assad. Suddenly our forces would have almost no allies, and be deep inside enemy territory. Our NATO ally, Turkey, would be invading Syria with al-Qaeda aligned forces, which we are supposed to be against (but aren't).

Oh, what a tangled web of lies we weave.

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Submitted by snoopydawg on Wed, 07/06/2022 - 10:18am
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@Lookout

We’ve been stealing Syria’s wheat too and everything that we don’t steal we have put grueling sanctions on them. Shitlibs once were against our stealing their oil, but that was only because Trump was doing it. But sure let’s make fun of those who call out America’s deadly imperialism.

Kos goes after Caitlin and totally lies about what she said. Others make his shit list. I remember when shitlibs were actually against our murderous imperialism and obscene amounts of money given to the military+ industrial complex. It’s sad seeing my anti war uncle getting thoroughly behind Ukraine because of his Russiaphobia. And never a thought for people in the Donbas that have been attacked for 9 years now. I find it hard to be around him anymore because of his views and closed mind.

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Submitted by CB on Wed, 07/06/2022 - 11:32am
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@snoopydawg
use of ISW for all their reporting on America's wars. Their followers lap it up without a thought because they have been conditioned to totally believe lies about Russia (and China).

That is why the ban hammer came down on me in 2016 - I dared to argue Russia was no longer a 'gas station masquerading as a country' and it would eventually be a formidable counter to American hegemonic interests (just as I had also predicted China's rise to power). The common theme was that these countries were 3rd rate and had a poorly educated populace which could only produce shoddy materials and would never amount to much. How times have changed in less than a decade!

A case study in American propaganda
What is the Institute for the Study of War? And why do America’s elite media outlets trust it for all of their on-the-ground Ukraine information?
June 12, 2022

Here’s a joke I recently heard a Russian tell:

A Russian is on an airliner heading to the US, and the American in the seat next to him asks, “So what brings you to the US?” The Russian replies, “I’m studying the American approach to propaganda.” The American says, “What propaganda?” The Russian says, “That’s what I mean.”

If you don’t get the point, I can help. A few weeks before I heard this joke, I heard a Russian make the point explicitly: Yes, Russia’s state-controlled media is full of propaganda, but at least most Russians are aware of that and take the prevailing narrative with a grain of salt; Americans, in contrast, seem unaware that their own prevailing narratives are slanted.

I think there’s some truth to this, and I think the Ukraine war is a case in point. I don’t just mean that mainstream media’s coverage of the war is biased (though I think it is, as tends to be the case during wars). I mean this coverage exemplifies the difference between American and Russia propaganda—and so helps explain the difference, asserted by that joke, between American and Russian attitudes toward propaganda.
...
But there are two things about the Institute for the Study of War that you may not know.

First is the extent of its influence. Since war broke out in February, ISW has been the elite media’s go-to think tank for information and analysis. Barely a day goes by that it isn’t cited by a reporter in either the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Wall Street Journal. In the past six days—the first six days of this month—it has been cited in at least ten articles that appeared in one of those outlets.

The second thing you may not be aware of is how ideological the academic-sounding Institute for the Study of War is. It has neoconservative roots and is run and staffed by pretty extreme hawks. Over the years it has gotten funding from various corners of the arms industry—General Dynamics, Raytheon, lesser known defense contractors, and big companies, like General Motors, that aren’t known as defense contractors but do get Pentagon contracts.
...
The president and founder of the Institute for the Study of War is Kimberly Kagan, a military historian who is married to Frederick Kagan, who is also a military historian and does work for ISW. Frederick is a well-known neoconservative, though not as well-known as his brother Robert. In the 1990s, Robert Kagan, along with Bill Kristol (who is on ISW’s board), founded the Project for a New American Century, which in the view of some observers played an important role in convincing George W. Bush to invade Iraq.
...
Robert Kagan’s wife, Victoria Nuland, is the state department official who very publicly supported Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan Revolution—the overthrow of pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych, which led Russia to seize Crimea and give military support to secessionist rebels in the Donbass. Nuland also played a behind-the-scenes role in this transition of power that, according to some of her detractors, amounted to orchestrating a coup.

And as long as we’re going down rabbit holes: The Kagan-Kristol Project for a New American Century was funded by arms makers, thanks largely to the work of Lockheed Martin executive Bruce P. Jackson, who became a director of PNAC. Jackson had earlier organized the US Committee to Expand NATO, which successfully lobbied for what its name suggests it lobbied for. Some people think NATO expansion—in particular George W. Bush’s 2008 addition of Ukraine to the list of future members—helped cause the Ukraine war, but in any event NATO expansion has over the past quarter century made lots and lots of money for Lockheed Martin and other arms makers.

But I digress. Back to the Institute for the Study of War.
...
So are you ready for my big reveals about glaring bias in ISW analysis? There aren’t any! That’s part of my point: The bias imparted by ISW is subtle. Its incremental effects are barely perceptible, but they add up over time. And what they add up to, basically, is The War According to Our Side. Little shadings here and there create more or less the picture of the war that the Ukrainian government is trying to present.
...

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Submitted by CB on Wed, 07/06/2022 - 10:29am
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@Lookout

US occupation steals 40 truckloads of Syrian wheat from Al-Jazira region
On Jun 18, 2022

The US occupation forces on Saturday brought out a convoy of 40 trucks carrying stolen Syrian wheat from the Syrian Al-Jazira region to the Iraqi territories through Al-Waleed illegal crossing in Al-Yaroubiya countryside, northeast of Hasakah province, local sources told SANA.

The new looting crime is part of the violations being committed by the US occupation and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) separatist militia against the Syrian citizens rights and national resources.

In the same context, the sources said that the US occupation also brought out a convoy of 36 damaged military vehicles from the Syrian territories to the Iraqi territories via Al-Waleed crossing.

The sources added that the convoy came from Tal Hamis area in the southern countryside of Qamishli before it arrived at Al-Walid crossing.

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Submitted by QMS on Wed, 07/06/2022 - 10:42am

@CB

is a pretty apt description of US foreign policy.
Unlawful in international treaties, BTW.
And about those illegal sanctions ..
mostly affecting the citizens

We are not the good guys

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Submitted by gjohnsit on Wed, 07/06/2022 - 10:54am

@QMS
Stealing resources from another nation is something that old colonial powers did.
We wouldn't do something like that.

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Submitted by snoopydawg on Wed, 07/06/2022 - 11:28am
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@gjohnsit

everything that we fought the British over. Pretty much the only right that is still standing is the 2nd, but it’s being chipped away now too. Gee apparently Chicago has a red flag law that didn’t stop the recent shooter from buying a gun. I’ll look for the link.

It’s gone, but this article says that he was ‘known to the police' and that they once took away a lot of knives from him because he was threatening to kill lots of people. The Parkland high shooter was also very well known to the cops.

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Submitted by QMS on Wed, 07/06/2022 - 11:30am

@gjohnsit

The Iraq war will pay for itself?
Supposedly they were going to *give* us their oil
in appreciation of liberating their country.
How did that work out?

The Iraq War has cost the US nearly $2 trillion as of 2020

Meanwhile, about 4.1 million post-9/11 war veterans are receiving medical care and disability and other compensation. Roughly half the spending for those veterans is Iraq related, with the total nearing $199 billion.

~

And since there have been no Iraq War taxes and very few war bonds issued to finance the post-9/11 wars, we should add another $444 billion in interest on borrowing to pay for Pentagon and State Department spending.

It would take a lot of oil to cover that!

https://www.militarytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2020/02/06/the-iraq-war...

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Submitted by snoopydawg on Wed, 07/06/2022 - 10:42am
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American troops are in Ukraine after all and are fighting against Russia.

The Times interviewed Andrew Milburn, a retired Marine Corps Special Operations colonel on the ground in Ukraine, who declared that his actions and those of the dozens of American soldiers “are executing U.S. foreign policy in a way the military can’t.”

Speaking by phone from a village about 15 miles from the front lines in eastern Ukraine, Mr. Milburn said his efforts supported US goals while insulating the United States from involvement. “I’m plausible deniability,” he said. “We can do the work, and the U.S. can say they have nothing to do with us.”

Significantly, the US officers are “helping to plan combat missions,” serving as a critical conduit for US direction of the war effort.

The Times reports of the existence of a so-called “Mozart group” of dozens of US soldiers who are actively engaged in training thousands of Ukrainian troops on how to use weapons provided by the United States, such as javelin anti-tank missiles.

The Times report does not constitute investigative reporting but rather a controlled release of information designed to condition the American population to accept the unthinkable: A “hot war” between nuclear-armed powers.

Bit by bit, Biden’s lying claim that the United States is not at war with Russia is being replaced with the reality that the United States is, in fact, at war with the world’s second largest nuclear power. The American population is simply to be presented with a fait accompli and accept the facts on the ground that they are at war.

Color me surprised.

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Submitted by humphrey on Wed, 07/06/2022 - 12:24pm

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