Wake-Up Call On The Syrian Border: Time To End Washington’s Feckless Regime Change Policy and NATO, Too

Syria has been turned into the most wretched of neighborhoods on the planet by Washington’s neocons and liberal interventionists. From its pre-2011 population of 23 million, more than 6.7 million have fled to countries such as Lebanon (1 million), Jordan (700,000), Turkey (3.6 million), Europe and elsewhere.

At the same time, more than 6.5 million Syrians are internal refugees, driven from their homes and towns by a so-called "civil" war that wouldn’t have lasted more than a few months save for the billions of arms, training and walking around money that Washington and its Persian Gulf allies have supplied to the violent opposition.

Owing to these billions of aid to armed insurrection, however, the Syrian economy has been turned to shambles and its ancient cities and towns have been reduced to steaming piles of rubble. Disease, malnutrition, lack of safe drinking water and medical supplies and treatments stalk the land.

And Washington’s objective was exactly what?

Well, to remove from power the Assad family regime that had ruled Syria since 1978 with reasonable economic stewardship and a mildly authoritarian writ that was slightly better than par for the course by Middle East standards, and not because the Assads posed any threat to America’s homeland security whatsoever.

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‘We are waiting for war’: Lebanese say Israel has gone too far

Almost everyone in Lebanon appears to agree. “This time Israel went too far. In just two days, it bombed three countries,” I am told by a local UN staffer based in Beirut.

The same day, my local barber was talking like he saw it all, his voice full of sarcasm and determination:

“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing tough elections at home, while his wife is on trial for fraud. A bit of excitement during the evening news can only help his chances of regaining attention from his electorate. But we here have had enough; we are ready to fight for our countries.”

But ‘fighting for their countries’ could prove lethal, as Netanyahu threatened to attack Lebanon as a whole, if Hezbollah decides to retaliate.

My barber is not just a barber. He is a Syrian engineer, exiled in Lebanon. The entire region is dispersed, derailed and intertwined, after NATO and Israeli attacks, occupations and destabilization campaigns.  

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We're Listening to the Wrong Voices on Syria

Once upon a time, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard traveled to Syria and met with the strongman President Bashar Assad. She considered her willingness to engage all sides of the country’s bloody civil war to be an important step toward peace. For this bold action, she was widely pilloried at the time and considered by some an authoritarian apologist or outright traitor. The claim was repeated again recently by the ever-so-mainstream California Sen. Kamala Harris, a fellow Democratic presidential hopeful. The attacks on Gabbard’s Syria record have been quite regular among Washington insiders, who considered the congresswoman foolish. But was she? More than two years later, given events in Syria, one must conclude that she certainly was not. Indeed, Gabbard was right all along.

Recently, Assad’s Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has squeezed the anti-regime rebels in their last major stronghold of Idlib, in the country’s northwest. Thus, the latest phase of Syria’s civil war is nearly over. And Assad, along with his Russian and Iranian backers, have won. Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. Un-American blasphemy, right? Hardly.

For years, the West and its Gulf State theocratic partners decried the admittedly brutal Assad and sold their populations the fantasy that there were “moderate,” non-Islamist rebels. The reality is that the rebels were infused with, and quickly dominated by, various jihadist fighters from the very start. Yes, Assad is a veritable monster; but what of the Nusra Front (an al-Qaida franchise) and the even more extreme Islamic State—are they not equally deplorable, and, frankly, more of a transnational threat to the U.S.? Of course they are. Assad, at least, posed no serious threat to the United States (neither did his neighbor, Saddam Hussein, by the way) and both suppressed Sunni jihadism and protected Syria’s plethora of Christian, Allawi and other minority populations.

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Israel News Airstrikes Damascus Syria Iranian backed Hezbollah targets UPDATE January 2019

Washington Finally Acknowledges Defeat In Syria

In a succinct tweet on Wednesday, Donald Trump has announced a momentous policy decision that the Trump administration will soon be pulling out the US troops from Syria and Iraq. Although the current redeployment of American troops will only be limited to northern Syria to appease the US-ally Turkey where it has been a longstanding demand of President Erdogan that Turkey will not tolerate the presence of the US-backed Kurdish forces west of Euphrates River, it can be expected in the coming months that Washington will withdraw American forces from eastern Syria and Iraq as well.

President Trump said in the tweet, “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.” Thus, Washington has finally acknowledged its humiliating defeat in a country it never formally invaded, but where it waged a devastating proxy war for the last seven years that gave birth to myriads of militant groups, including the Islamic State. 

It is an irrefutable fact that the United States sponsors militants, but only for a limited period of time in order to achieve certain policy objectives. For instance: the United States nurtured the  It is an irrefutable fact that the United States sponsors militants, but only for a limited period of time in order to achieve certain policy objectives. For instance: the United States nurtured the Afghan jihadists during the Cold War against the former Soviet Union from 1979 to 1988, but after the signing of the Geneva Accords and consequent withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, the United States withdrew its support from the Afghan jihadists. 

Similarly, the United States lent its support to the militants during the Libyan and Syrian proxy wars, but after achieving the policy objectives of toppling the Arab nationalist Gaddafi regime in Libya and weakening the anti-Israel Assad regime in Syria, the United States relinquished its blanket support to the militants and eventually declared a war against a faction of Sunni militants battling the Syrian government, the Islamic State, when the latter transgressed its mandate in Syria and dared to occupy Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in June 2014 from where the US had withdrawn its troops only a couple of years ago in December 2011. 

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Pat Buchanan Responds to Trump Pulling Syria Troops

Never Let Anyone Call You Crazy For Doubting Establishment War Narratives

There has still been no retraction or correction of The Guardian‘s demonstrably false and completely indefensible claim that two normal antiwar Twitter accounts were controlled not by real people but by bot programs based in Russia.

This is the sort of environment that has been created by the ongoing Russia panic that is plaguing the western world: one wherein mainstream news outlets can openly lie about dissenting voices and antiwar activists, refuse to retract or apologize for those lies, and suffer no consequences.

And yet they still have the gall to paint anyone who expresses doubt about the narratives they advance about Russia and Syria as crazy, kooky conspiracy theorists. Google the words “conspiracy” and “Syria” right now and you’ll come up with countless editorials with headlines like “Syria war: The online activists pushing conspiracy theories“, “Disinformation and Conspiracy Trolling in the Wake of the Syrian Chemical Attack“, and “SYRIA GAS ATTACK CONSPIRACY THEORIES FUELED BY TUCKER CARLSON AND FAR-RIGHT FRINGE“.

They’re using the highly stigmatized label “conspiracy theories” to paint healthy, normal skepticism of a notoriously untrustworthy power establishment as mentally unsound paranoia.

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Washington forces its allies to accept a bipolar world

By firing missiles on Syria with its French and British allies, the strange President Donald Trump has managed to force the Western powers to accept the end of their unilateral domination of the world. The insignificant result of this demonstration of force drags NATO back to reality. Without having made use of its weapons, Russia now succeeds the Soviet Union in the balance of world power.

Over the last few weeks, and for the first time in their history, the United States and Russia have mutually threatened one another with a World War. The totally disproportionate character of the crisis in terms of the subject of the dispute demonstrates that what is at stake here today no longer has any connection with what has been happening in the Greater Middle East since 2001, but exclusively with an attempt to maintain the current World Order.

After the gigantic massacre of millions of people over seventeen years, from Afghanistan to Libya, the manner in which about fifty people in East Ghouta (Syria) are said to have died seems almost ridiculous. And yet on 14 April, this was the pretext chosen by Washington, Paris and London to launch a three-party aerial attack.

Let’s avoid getting distracted by the circumstances, and get straight to the heart of the matter – the Western powers are attempting to maintain their domination over the rest of the world, while Russia and China are breaking free of it.

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US Mercenaries, Iraqi Highways and the Mystery of the Never-Ending ISIS Hordes

While the US and European media provided little explanation as to how militants from the self-titled Islamic State (IS) managed to appear, expand and then fight for years against the combined military power of Iraq, Syria, Iran and Russia, it was abundantly clear to many analysts that the IS organization was not only receiving state sponsorship, but it was receiving reinforcements, weapons and supplies from far beyond Syria's and Iraq's borders.

Maps of the conflict stretching over the last several years show clear corridors used to reinforce IS positions, leading primarily from Turkey's southern border and to a lesser extent, from Jordan's borders.

However, another possible vector may be desert highways in Iraq's western Anbar province where US military contractors are allegedly to "provide security" as well as build gas stations and rest areas. These highways contributed to the current conflict and still serve as a hotbed for state sponsored terrorism. Whether these US-controlled and improved highways pose a significant threat for a reorganized effort by the US and its regional allies to divide and destroy Iraq and Syria seems all but inevitable.

US Mercenaries "Guarding" Iraqi Highways 

Al Monitor in an April 2017 article titled, "How Iraq is planning to secure key border road," would claim:

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The Syrian Test of Trump-Putin Accord

The immediate prospect for significant improvement in U.S.-Russia relations now depends on something tangible: Will the forces that sabotaged previous ceasefire agreements in Syria succeed in doing so again, all the better to keep alive the “regime change” dreams of the neoconservatives and liberal interventionists? 

 Or will President Trump succeed where President Obama failed by bringing the U.S. military and intelligence bureaucracies into line behind a cease-fire rather than allowing insubordination to win out? 

 These are truly life-or-death questions for the Syrian people and could have profound repercussions across Europe, which has been destabilized by the flood of refugees fleeing the horrific violence in the six-year proxy war that has ripped Syria apart. 

 But you would have little inkling of this important priority from the large page-one headlines Saturday morning in the U.S. mainstream media, which continued its long obsession with the more ephemeral question of whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would confess to the sin of “interference” in the 2016 U.S. election and promise to repent. 

 Thus, the headlines: “Trump, Putin talk election interference” (Washington Post) and “Trump asks Putin About Meddling During Election” (New York Times). There was also the expected harrumphing from commentators on CNN and MSNBC when Putin dared to deny that Russia had interfered. 

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Paul Craig Roberts "Putin Is All That Stands In The Way Of Israel Destroying Syria & Iran."

White House Prepares Another Chemical Weapon False Flag Attack in Syria

Fmr Top CIA Agent Ray McGovern Makes Clear ISRAEL IS NO FRIEND TO THE UNITED STATES!

Donald Trump Opens Pandora's Box - WW3

“Newspeak” and the Duplicity of Mainstream Journalism

We are faced by a shocking fact these days: the profession of journalism, and I speak of mainstream media journalism, has descended into truly toxic levels of printed and broadcast disinformation. One can now virtually count on the fact that what is being said on any topic of political significance, will be a carefully scripted trotting-out of government and corporate propaganda. 

That is not journalism. That is what George Orwell called ‘Newspeak’.

It is a dangerous game which these news hacks are playing. They are witnessing one event and describing it as quite another event. Let me amplify this by looking at the stories emanating out of the Middle East.

It must be obvious to most of us by now that Russia, via Putin, is being held responsible for pretty much everything which is no longer working well for Western engineered neoliberal/neocon globalism. In fact, the stream of accusations against Putin’s Russia have descended into near or actual farce, due mainly to the fact that they are not backed by any factual evidence. We are all simply supposed to ‘know’ that Mr Evil is at it again and that the West must ready itself to take action against his ‘tyrannical activities’.

Aleppo: BBC reports that returning pro Assad Syrian army troops are raping and murdering the civilian population of this once beautiful city in Northern Syria. That thousands are trying to flee the massacre going on night and day at the hands of Assad’s army, supported by Russia and Iran. That a systematic bombardment of the citizens of West Aleppo is being perpetrated by the liberating Syrian army. That children are being killed in schools and that all this is being done with cold blooded ruthlessness at the hands of the liberators.

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Russian Ambassador Shot Dead: What They're NOT Telling You

Israel’s Defense Minister Outlines Plan to Divide Syria and Iraq along Sectarian Lines

Israel’s “defence” minister Avigdor Liberman in an article for Defense News penned an article to explain his regime’s struggles in a trobulant Middle Ease.

In a similiar tone to those of the Israeli politicians, Liberman waste no time to call the legitimate forces of Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon as terrorist forces.

He says, “The massive convulsions that in recent years have swept through North Africa and erupted in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and elsewhere throughout the region, and which have seen the empowerment of semi-territorial terrorist organizations such as ISIS, Hamas and Hezbollah, represent an earthquake of historic proportions. Multi-ethnic states such as Libya, Syria and Iraq have descended into chaotic civil wars as many aspects of the region’s enduring political order, whose origins lie in the aftermath of World War One, disintegrate.“

Liberman goes on to draw three conclusions as the solutions for ending the crisis in the Middle East. The second conclusion is clearly a call to attack the sovereignty of the independent countries.

Liberman says, “many of the countries in the Middle East were established artificially, as a result of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and based on colonial considerations that did not take into account the pattern of inhabitance and the deep sectarian rifts within the respective societies.

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President Assad: Syria is ready to co-operate with Donald Trump

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian and Russian allies have welcomed the news Donald Trump will be the 45th President of the United States Getty

Embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is “ready” to cooperate with the US President-elect Donald Trump, one of Mr Assad’s advisers has said.

Speaking to US media group National Public Radio on Thursday – just after Mr Trump’s seismic victory in the US general election – Bouthaina Shaaban said any collaboration on Syria’s almost six-year-long civil war will depend on “whether Mr Trump’s policies meet expectations.”

“I think the American people have sent a great, a very important message to the world,” she added.

The US has tacitly supported rebels in the war both logistically and financially and has been committed to the idea that Mr Assad must be removed from power in order to bring peace to the conflict which has killed more than 400,000 people to date.

Mr Trump has indicated that his foreign policy stance will be less interventionist than his predecessors’. He has stated in the past that regime change only causes more instability in the Middle East and while Mr Assad is not exactly a welcome partner, shoring up his regime is the best way to stem the extremism that has flourished in the chaos of Syria’s civil war.

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Syria: Their War, Not Ours

The debacle that is U.S. Syria policy is today on naked display.

NATO ally Turkey and U.S.-backed Arab rebels this weekend attacked our most effective allies against ISIS, the Syrian Kurds.

Earlier in August, U.S. planes threatened to shoot down Syrian planes over Hasakeh, and our Iraq-Syria war commander, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, issued a warning to Syria and Russia against any further air strikes around the city.

Who authorized Gen. Townsend to threaten to shoot down Syrian or Russian planes — in Syria?

When did Congress authorize an American war in Syria? Is the Constitution now inoperative?

That we are sinking into a civil war where we sometimes seem to be fighting both sides is a tribute to the fecklessness of the Barack Obama-John Kerry foreign policy and the abdication of a Congress that refuses to either name our real enemy or authorize our deepening involvement.

Our Congress appears again to have abdicated its war powers.

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ISRAEL STRIKES SYRIAN TARGETS AFTER GOLAN HEIGHTS MORTAR EXPLOSION