By Eric Zuesse
August 23, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - On Monday, August 22nd, the United States
government — which demands the overthrow of the
internationally-recognized-as-legal government of Syria — officially announced
that America’s military forces in Syria will continue to occupy Syrian land, no
matter what the Syrian government says, and will shoot down any Syrian planes
that fly over U.S. forces there.
As reported on Monday by Al-Masdar News:
The Pentagon has announced that the USA is ready to
down Syrian and Russian planes that they claim threaten
American advisers who by international law are illegally operating
in northern Syria.
On Friday, Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis
claimed that US jets attempted to intercept Syrian planes to
protect the American advisers operating illegally with Kurdish forces
in Syria after Syrian government jets bombed areas of Hasakah when
Kurdish police began an aggression against the National Defense Force.
On Monday, another Pentagon spokesman, Peter Cook,
said,
“We would continue to advise the Syrian regime to
steer clear of those areas.”
“We are going to defend our people on the ground, and
do what we need to defend them,” Cook told reporters.
This means that the U.S. government will not allow the
Syrian government to expel or otherwise eliminate U.S. forces in Syria. The
Syrian government never invited U.S. forces into Syria, but the U.S. now
officially dares the Syrian government to assert its sovereignty over the areas
where America’s troops are located.
Al-Masdar
continued:
When pushed further about Russia, Cook made it clear
that the US would make the same aggression against Russian jets who
are operating legally with the Syrian government’s approval and
coordination.
“If they threaten US forces, we always have the right
to defend our forces,” Cook said.
This means that the U.S. not only is at war against
the legitimate government of Syria, but that the U.S. government will also be
at war against Russia if Russian forces (which the Syrian government did invite
into Syria) defends Syrian forces from attacks in Syria by U.S. forces — forces
that are illegally there.
These U.S. forces number only 300, of whom 250 were sent
to Syria on April 24th to
serve as advisors to other illegal military forces in Syria.
The vast majority of the illegal military forces in
Syria are jihadists who had been hired by the Saudi government and the Qatari
government, and supplied with U.S. weapons, to overthrow the Syrian government.
Most of the other illegal forces in Syria are Kurdish forces, supported by the
U.S. government to break Syria apart so as to create a separate Kurdish state
in the majority-Kurdish far north-eastern tip of Syria.
The primary U.S. goal in Syria is to overthrow the
Syrian government, which is led by the Baath Party, Syria’s secular Party. Many
Arabs insist upon Sharia, or Islamic law, but Syria’s Arabs
are an exception; the Baath Party is and has always been supported by the
majority of the Syrian people, including by most of Syria’s Arabs. Most Syrians
are strongly opposed to Sharia law. Syria is the most secular nation in the
Middle East.
For example, when Western-sponsored polls were taken
in Syria, after the start in 2011 of the importation of jihadists into Syria,
those polls showed that 55% of Syrians
want Bashar al-Assad (the current leader of the Baath Party) to remain as
Syria’s President,
and “82% agree ‘IS
[Islamic State] is US and foreign made group’.” Furthermore, only “22% agree ‘IS is a positive
influence’,” and that 22% was the lowest level of support shown by Syrians for
any of the presented statements, except for, “21% agree ‘Prefer life now than
under Assad’” — meaning that Syrians believe that things were better before the
U.S.-sponsored jihadists entered Syria to overthrow Assad.
Clearly, when ”82% agree ‘IS [Islamic State] is
US and foreign made group’,” very few people in Syria support the 300 U.S.
forces there. Not only is the U.S. an invader, but it (and especially the
forces that the U.S. supports in Syria — most especially the jihadists, who are
the vast majority of these forces) made life far worse (and far shorter) for
virtually all Syrians.
Furthermore, that same poll found: “70% agree ‘Oppose
division of country’.” Consequently, the Kurdish separatists are likewise
opposed by the vast majority of Syrians.
The Syrian government, from now on, is in the
uncomfortable position of having invaders on its territory, and of being warned
that one of them — the U.S. — will be fully at war against Syria if Syria tries
to expel them.
Russia too is now under warning from the United
States, that, if Russia, an ally of Syria, takes any action to expel or kill
any of the U.S. invaders in Syria, then the U.S. will also be at war against
Russia.
The U.S. government is now also daring the Russian
government. Perhaps the U.S. strategy here is to force Russia’s President,
Vladimir Putin, either to back down, and abandon its Syrian ally, or else to
launch a nuclear strike against the United States. If Putin backs down, that
would greatly diminish his support from the Russian people, which is above 80%
in all polls, including Western-sponsored ones. Perhaps this is the strategy of
U.S. President Barack Obama, to drive Vladimir Putin out of office — something
that might occur if the U.S. drives Bashar al-Assad out of office.
“the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, then [in the summer of 2013] led by General Martin
Dempsey, forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to chaos
and, potentially, to Syria’s takeover by jihadi extremists, much as was
then happening in Libya,”
and so Dempsey quit, and Lieutenant General
Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, was fired over the
matter.
“The DIA’s reporting, he [Flynn] said, ‘got enormous
pushback’ from the Obama administration. ‘I felt that they did not want to
hear the truth.’”
Flynn is now a foreign-affairs advisor to the
Republican Presidential candidate, Donald Trump, who is being criticized by the
Democratic Presidential candidate, for being soft on Russia and insufficiently
devoted to the U.S. goal of overthrowing Assad.
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