Joseph Thomas -- What Washington Really Wants in Syria

19.10.2016 Author: Joseph Thomas

What Washington Really Wants in Syria

Column: Politics

Region: Middle East

Country: Syria

When the United States announced that it would be abandoning “peace talks” with Russia regarding the ongoing conflict in Syria, many had already dismissed them as disingenuous.

The Washington Post in an article titled, “U.S. abandons efforts to work with Russia on Syria,” would claim:

U.S.-Russia relations fell to a new post-Cold War low Monday as the Obama administration abandoned efforts to cooperate with Russia on ending the Syrian civil war and forming a common front against terrorists there, and Moscow suspended a landmark nuclear agreement.

The Washington Post would also admit however, in regards to Russian allegations that the US categorically failed to separate militants it has been backing in the 5 year long conflict and universally-designated foreign terrorist organisations, that:

Russia’s version of the sequence of events mandated by the deal is “explicitly not true,” a senior administration official said. “Separation was not step one,” but was supposed to occur after seven days without major violence. The Russians, the official said, have “constantly tried to move the goal posts.”

This admission made by US policymakers, politicians and the Western media all but admits that the US has never prioritised confronting terrorism in Syria and has been using the presence of terrorist organisations merely as a pretext for more direct Western military intervention. In fact, by acknowledging that Western-backed militant groups are indistinguishable and inseparable from designated terrorist organisations including Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, Jabhat Al-Nusra, the US is all but admitting it is intentionally arming and equipping the terrorists themselves.

This explains the apparently inexhaustible resources terrorist organisations like Al-Nusra possess and why they have risen to prominence above so-called “moderate rebels” the US and its allies have repeatedly claimed they were funding hundreds of billions of dollars throughout the conflict.

It appears that the answer to the question as to how Al-Nusra could rise to prominence in Syria despite “moderates” receiving hundreds of billions in aid from the US and its allies is that there were never any moderates to begin with, and that the US and its allies were arming and funding terrorist organisations, including Al-Nusra, since the conflict began.

It also appears to be no coincidence that this scenario now openly unfolding in Syria fulfils warnings published by Western journalists as early as 2007 (Seymour Hersh, The Redirection) in which it was revealed that the US was already at that time providing material support to extremist organisations “sympathetic to Al Qaeda” toward the end goal of overthrowing the governments of both Iran and Syria.

While the US now claims Russia has sabotaged US efforts to bring an end to hostilities in Syria, Washington is also illogically attempting to argue that the failure of its feigned “peace talks” has also somehow prevented the US from targeting terrorists organisations in Syria, the alleged pretext of America’s presence in Syria to begin with.

Despite strained relations with Russia, the US is still cooperating with Moscow regarding the use of Syrian airspace to avoid unintentional confrontations. While the cessation of hostilities may have collapsed, is there really any excuse as to why separating designated terrorist organisations from militant groups the US and its allies are providing billions in weapons and equipment to is still not an absolute and urgent priority?

The answer is, no — there is no excuse. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say, it is simply an excuse for the US to continue funnelling men and materiel into Syria Washington knows with absolute certainty will end up in the ranks of Al Qaeda, whom the US admittedly intended to use as early as 2007 to overthrow the Syrian government with.

What Washington Really Wants in Syria 

Beginning in 2001, the United States has systematically destroyed the nations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, while either directly or indirectly laying waste to the nations of Sudan and Somalia. The nation of Iran was also subjected to multiple attempted provocations and US-driven subversion since 2001.

While the United States has created narratives for the public to serve as apparently “unique” and independent justifications for each and every one of these conflicts, often predicated on averting a “humanitarian disaster” or pursuing “terrorists” and even preventing “weapons of mass destruction” from being used against the West and its allies, America’s serial blitzkrieg across North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia are part of a singular, admitted agenda.

US Army General Wesley Clark, in a 2007 Flora TV talk titled, “A Time to Lead,” would reveal this singular agenda by relating a conversation he had as far back as 1991 with then US Under Secretary of Defence for Policy, Paul Wolfowitz, by stating (our emphasis):

I said Mr. Secretary you must be pretty happy with the performance of the troops in Desert Storm. And he said, well yeah, he said but but not really, he said because the truth is we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and we didn’t. And this was just after the Shia uprising in March of 91′ which we had provoked and then we kept our troops on the side lines and didn’t intervene. And he said, but one thing we did learn, he said, we learned that we can use our military in the region in the Middle East and the Soviets wont stop us. He said, and we have got about five or ten years to clean up those all Soviet client regimes; Syria, Iran, Iraq, – before the next great super power comes on to challenge us. 

And indeed, even from 1991 onward, the goal of US intervention across the planet has been to establish deeply-entrenched global hegemony before another rising world power could balance American geopolitical domination.

Fast forward to today, with the US on the brink of war with Russia in Syria, and with China in the South China Sea, the United States has run out of time and finds the leading edge of its hegemonic ambitions chaffing against a reemerging Russia and a rising China.

So while Washington has concocted an array of excuses as to why it is involved in Syria’s conflict, running the full gambit from  fearing “weapons of mass destruction” to fighting terrorists to addressing humanitarian concerns, the reality of America’s involvement in Syria boils down to the pursuit of the latest and most desperate leg of its rush to dominance before emerging world powers reintroduced balance and limits to Western hegemony.

It is therefore incumbent upon the world to reject Washington’s various excuses for intervening in Syria, expose the truth driving its involvement in (and responsibility for) the conflict, confront Washington regarding its state sponsorship of terrorist organisations it itself has designated as such and bring the Syrian conflict as well as America’s latest “growth spurt” to an abrupt end.

Global peace and stability depends on bringing this decades-long global power-grab to an end, in an atmosphere of conflict and confrontation many fear may even lead to a direct confrontation between nuclear-armed states.

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

http://journal-neo.org/2016/10/19/what-washington-really-wants-in-syria/