Tag: Syria

Trump Said It Out Loud: Take Syria’s Oil

I hope that no one still imagines that the US has military forces in Syria because we want to bring the people democracy.

The real story in such foreign interventions is always about American hegemony, American power, American exploitation of other nations’ resources.

That simple fact has always been apparent in Syria, but now it is undeniable.

The Washington Post recently published a major story detailing America’s permanent occupation of Syria’s oil fields. The article, written by Liz Sly, is titled “America’s Hidden War in Syria.”

Below is an excerpt:

U.S. troops will now stay in Syria
indefinitely, controlling a third of the
country and facing peril on many fronts.

RAQQA, Syria — This ruined, fearful city was once the Islamic State’s capital, the showcase of its caliphate and a magnet for foreign fighters from around the globe.

Now it lies at the heart of the United States’ newest commitment to a Middle East war.

The commitment is small, a few thousand troops who were first sent to Syria three years ago to help the Syrian Kurds fight the Islamic State. President Trump indicated in March that the troops would be brought home once the battle is won, and the latest military push to eject the group from its final pocket of territory recently got underway.

In September, however, the administration switched course, saying the troops will stay in Syria pending an overall settlement to the Syrian war and with a new mission: to act as a bulwark against Iran’s expanding influence. 

That decision puts U.S. troops in overall control, perhaps indefinitely, of an area comprising nearly a third of Syria, a vast expanse of mostly desert terrain roughly the size of Louisiana.

The Pentagon does not say how many troops are there. Officially, they number 503, but earlier this year an official let slip that the true number may be closer to 4,000. Most are Special Operations forces, and their footprint is light. Their vehicles and convoys rumble by from time to time along the empty desert roads, but it is rare to see U.S. soldiers in towns and cities.

The new mission raises new questions, about the role they will play and whether their presence will risk becoming a magnet for regional conflict and insurgency.

Read the entire article here.

The United States is a Lawless Empire that Regularly Bombs, Invades, and Kills with Impunity

Last week president Biden ordered more illegal airstrikes against Iraqi forces in Iraq and Syrian forces in Syria. The State Department issued a

Images released by the US military showing Syrian facility bombed

statement (more on that below) declaring that the US was merely exercising “its right to self-defense,” echoing Israel’s favorite excuse for its illegal bombings in Gaza.

Let’s recall several crucial facts, however:

One, US military forces in both Iraq and Syria are in those countries illegally. Both are sovereign nations, whether or not we like their governments. Both governments have told the US, in no uncertain terms, that they wanted US troops OUT of their countries long ago.

Thus, we are in both countries as an illegal invading/occupying power. Under international law, such military forces have no right to “self-defense.”

We are the illegal aggressors. It is the Iraqis and Syrians who have every legal, moral right to defend themselves against the unwanted US forces that have outrageously installed themselves in their countries.

Two, Iran in a neighbor to both Iraq and Syria. The US is not. The Iraqi and Syrian governments are free to seek military assistance from anyone they choose.

Given the hostility directed against Iran by the US, and the close regional, strategic affinities linking Iraq and Syria to Iran, it is hardly surprising that local militias fighting against the unwanted US presence would seek and accept Iran’s assistance in their struggle.

That assistance does not constitute a threat against the US.

Keeping those simple facts in mind, Glenn Greenwald offers an excellent

Independent, investigate journalist, Glenn Greenwald

analysis on Joe Biden’s war-mongering, which is actually a bipartisan, long-standing American practice.

It is not an accident that most of the people around the globe regularly say that the US poses THE greatest danger to the rest of the world.

Glenn’s article appears at SheerPost and is entitled, “Biden’s Lawless Bombing of Iraq and Syria Only Serves the Weapons Industry Funding Both Parties.” Below is an excerpt (all emphases are mine):

U.S. citizens derive no benefit, but instead suffer great loss, from endless war in the Middle East. But their interests are irrelevant to decisions of bipartisan Washington.

For the second time in the five months since he was inaugurated, President Joe Biden on Sunday ordered a U.S. bombing raid on Syria, and for the first time, he also bombed Iraq. The rationale offered was the same as Biden’s first air attack in February: The U.S., in the words of Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, “conducted defensive precision airstrikes against facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups in the Iraq-Syria border region.” He added that “the United States acted pursuant to its right of self-defense.”

Embedded in this formulaic Pentagon statement is so much propaganda and so many euphemisms that, by itself, it reveals the fraudulent nature of what was done. To begin with, how can U.S. airstrikes carried out in Iraq and Syria be “defensive” in nature? How can they be an act of “self-defense?” Nobody suggests that the targets of the bombing campaign have the intent or the capability to strike the U.S. “homeland” itself. Neither Syria nor Iraq is a U.S. colony or American property, nor does the U.S. have any legal right to be fighting wars in either country, rendering the claim that its airstrikes were “defensive” and an “act of self-defense” to be inherently deceitful.

The Pentagon’s description of the people bombed by the U.S. — “Iran-backed militias groups” — is intended to obscure the reality. Biden did not bomb Iran or order Iranians to be bombed or killed. The targets of U.S. aggression were Iraqis in their own country, and Syrians in their own country. Only the U.S. war machine and its subservient media could possibly take seriously the Biden administration’s claim that the bombs they dropped on people in their own countries were “defensive” in nature. Invocation of Iran has no purpose other than to stimulate the emotional opposition to the government of that country among many Americans in the hope that visceral dislike of Iranian leaders will override the rational faculties that would immediately recognize the deceit and illegality embedded in the Pentagon’s arguments.

Beyond the propagandistic justification is the question of legality, though even to call it a question dignifies it beyond what it merits. There is no conceivable Congressional authorization — none, zero — to Biden’s dropping of bombs in Syria. Obama’s deployment of CIA operatives to Syria and years of the use of force to overthrow Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad never had any Congressional approval of any kind, nor did Trump’s bombing of Assad’s forces (urged by Hillary Clinton, who wanted more), nor does Biden’s bombing campaign in Syria now. It was and is purely lawless, illegal. And the same is true of bombing Iraq. The 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) in Iraq, which the House just last week voted to repeal, has long since ceased to provide any legal justification for ongoing U.S. troop presence and bombing campaigns in that country.

In its statement justifying the bombing raids, Biden’s Pentagon barely even bothered to pretend any of this is legal. It did not cite either the 2002 AUMF for Iraq or the 2001 AUMF authorizing the use of force against those responsible for 9/11 (a category which, manifestly, did not include Iran, Iraq or Syria). Instead, harkening back to the days of John Yoo and Dick Cheney, the Biden Defense Department claimed that “as a matter of international law, the United States acted pursuant to its right of self-defense,” and casually asserted that “as a matter of domestic law, the President took this action pursuant to his Article II authority to protect U.S. personnel in Iraq.”

Those claims are nothing short of a joke. Nobody seriously believes that Joe Biden has congressional authority to bomb Syria and Iraq, nor to bomb “Iranian-backed” forces of any kind. As The Daily Beast‘s long-time War on Terror reporter Spencer Ackerman put it on Sunday night, discussions of legality at this point are “parody” because when it comes to the U.S.’s Endless Wars in the name of the War on Terror, “we passed Lawful behind many many years ago. Authorization citations are just pretexts written by lawyers who need to pantomime at lawfulness. The U.S. presence in Syria is blatantly illegal. Such things never stop the U.S.”

That is exactly right. The U.S. government is a lawless entity. It violates the law, including its own Constitution, whenever it wants. The requirement that no wars be fought absent congressional authority is not some ancillary bureaucratic annoyance but was completely central to the design of the country. Article I, Section 8 could not be clearer: “The Congress shall have Power . . . to declare war.” Two months after I began writing about politics — back in December, 2005 — I wrote a long article compiling the arguments in the Federalist Papers which insisted that permitting the president unchecked powers to wage war . . . 

The rest of the article appears here.

Biden Continues US Imperialism in the Middle East

A few days ago I wrote here about the hypocrisy of US (and Israeli) military exploits in the Middle East. It was titled “A Tale of Two Missile Attacks.”

Today we learned that president Biden approved several new attacks in Syria. The ABC news headline reads, “US carries out airstrike against Iranian-backed militia in Syria.”

As I was preparing another post on this unfolding situation, I discovered Caitlin Johnstone’s article covering the same ground, in fine form. Her piece is titled “US Bombs Syria and Ridiculously Claims Self Defense.”

I remain ashamed to be an American today.

I have excerpted her article below, or you can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above:

On orders of President Biden, the United States has launched an airstrike on a facility in Syria. As of this writing the exact number of killed and injured is unknown, with early reports claiming “a handful” of people were killed.

Rather than doing anything remotely resembling journalism, the western mass media have opted instead to uncritically repeat what they’ve been told about the airstrike by US officials, which is the same as just publishing Pentagon press releases. . . 

So we are being told that the United States launched an airstrike on Syria, a nation it invaded and is illegally occupying, because of attacks on “US locations” in Iraq, another nation the US invaded and is illegally occupying. This attack is justified on the basis that the Iraqi fighters were “Iranian-linked”, a claim that is both entirely without evidence and irrelevant to the justification of deadly military force (emphasis mine). And this is somehow being framed in mainstream news publications as a defensive operation.

This is Defense Department stenography. The US military is an invading force in both Syria and Iraq; it is impossible for its actions in either of those countries to be defensive. It is always necessarily the aggressor. It’s the people trying to eject them who are acting defensively. The deaths of US troops and contractors in those countries can only be blamed on the powerful people who sent them there.

The US is just taking it as a given that it has de facto jurisdiction over the nations of Syria, Iraq, and Iran, and that any attempt to interfere in its authority in the region is an unprovoked attack which must be defended against. This is completely backwards and illegitimate. Only through the most perversely warped American supremacist reality tunnels can it look valid to dictate the affairs of sovereign nations on the other side of the planet and respond with violence if anyone in those nations tries to eject them.

 

It’s illegitimate for the US to be in the Middle East at all. It’s illegitimate for the US to claim to be acting defensively in nations it invaded. It’s illegitimate for the US to act like Iranian-backed fighters aren’t allowed to be in Syria, where they are fighting alongside the Syrian government against ISIS and other extremist militias with the permission of Damascus. It is illegitimate for the US to claim the fighters attacking US personnel in Iraq are controlled by Iran when Iraqis have every reason to want the US out of their country themselves.

Even the official narrative reveals itself as illegitimate from within its own worldview. CNN reports that the site of the airstrike “was not specifically tied to the rocket attacks” in Iraq, and a Reuters/AP report says “Biden administration officials condemned the February 15 rocket attack near the city of Irbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish-run region, but as recently as this week officials indicated they had not determined for certain who carried it out.”

This is all so very typical of the American supremacist worldview that is being aggressively shoved down our throats by all western mainstream news media. The US can bomb who it likes, whenever it likes, and when it does it is only ever doing so in self defense, because the entire planet is the property of Washington, DC. It can seize control of entire clusters of nations, and if any of those nations resist in any way they are invading America’s sovereignty. . . 

. . . This sort of nonsense is why it’s so important to prioritize opposition to western imperialism. World warmongering and domination is the front upon which all the most egregious evils inflicted by the powerful take place, and it plays such a crucial role in upholding the power structures we are up against. Without endless war, the oligarchic empire which is the cause of so much of our suffering cannot function, and must give way to something else. If you’re looking to throw sand in the gears of the machine, anti-imperialism is your most efficacious path toward that end, and should therefore be your priority.

The US Supplies an Air Force for ISIS and AL Qaeda

Last night president Trump bombed Syria without any congressional debate or approval.  Though you would not know it by watching our mainstream media, this is actually a big problem.  Here’s why.

First, the US Constitution prohibits the president from taking such unilateral military action.

Second, there is still no evidence that a gas attack took place in Ghouta, much less that Assad would have been involved.

If you did not know this, please listen to this analysis from Max Blumenthal (an independent, investigative journalism who focuses on the Middle East) who carefully unpacks the many falsehoods underlying the mainstream reporting on this matter.

Also, listen to James Jatras, a former U.S. Foreign Service Officer with the US Department of State, make similar observations explaining how the US has effectively become the Air Force for Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Third, the AUMF (Authorization for the Use of Military Force), passed after the 9/11 attacks and now being used to justify whatever aggressive military action the US wants to take around the world, has become a blank check for perpetual war.

This cannot be allowed to stand.  Bombing Syria has nothing to do with “keeping America safe from terrorism.” If anything, it continues to have the opposite effect.

Fourth, we need to ask why the president ordered this attack one day before a team of independent investigators, who were already on the ground in the area, were scheduled to begin their study of the alleged gas attack?

Why couldn’t the president at least have waited a few days?  Is he hiding something?

Is this another “way the dog moment” where a president uses military action to distract from his domestic problems? (I am no fan of Rachel Maddow, but here she is asking very pertinent questions.)

Check out this frightening study that correlates Trump’s Twitter activity with the airing of the Fox program, “Fox & Friends” (also here, here and here on the Trump/Fox feedback loop).

Is it only accidental that Fox & Friends suggested that Trump should bomb Syria in order to distract from the release of James Comey’s new anti-Trump book?

Fifth, this attack on Syria is one more example of American hypocrisy.  Let’s not forget that we happily support, finance and arm oppressive dictators around the world when it suits our purposes.  Think of el-Sisi in Egypt, Santos in Columbia or Hernández in Honduras. (In all three cases, the US encouraged, supported and financed the military coups that put

Supporters of ousted Honduras’ President Manuel Zelaya protest outside the entrance to the international airport in Tegucigalpa, Sunday, July 5, 2009. After the Organization of American States, OAS, suspended Saturday night Honduras’ participation in the organization because of last week coup, (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

these men in power).

We also happily tolerate and encourage chemical attacks – when they truly do happen! – as long as they are carried out by our allies.  Don’t forget that the US supplied Saddam Hussein with the chemical weapons he used mercilessly against Iranian forces during the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988).

In all those years, the US never stopped the flow of nerve agents we supplied to the Iraqi army.

Furthermore, the US does not bomb countries for “humanitarian” purposes but for geo-political reasons.  American neoconservative leaders began looking for ways to overthrow Assad’s government in Syria long before the last Iraq war (see here, here, here and here).  Why?  Neoconservatives are closely allied to the Likud party in Israel, the party of president Benjamin Netanyahu.  In effect, the US is acting as a proxy for the Israeli government in Syria.

So, the US has just bombed Syria for the very same reasons that it says and does nothing about Israel’s crimes against humanity now being committed against the people of Gaza.

Finally, people who say that they follow Jesus Christ are called to be advocates for peace and diplomacy.  Disciples don’t adopt this position because we think America is a Christian nation (it’s not), or because God is guiding US foreign policy (no one but God can know this), or because Trump is God’s chosen leader (if he is, then he was sent to punish America in the way that Assyria and Babylon were sent to punish ancient Israel).

Disciples of Jesus will always insist on honesty and fair play.  But these qualites are entirely absent from the American conversation on Syria right now, as the interviews (see above) with Blumenthal and Jatras reveal.

For now, America continues its clumsy tumble towards the junk heap of has-been empires.  The most pressing question now is how much damage, death, confusion and chaos will our struggle to maintain our historic, global dominance cause for the rest of the world?

The American church, especially its so-called “evangelicals” (that is, disciples who surrender themselves to be dominated by the Good News of Jesus’ life, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension), people who truly want to be like Jesus – which has always been the center of real Christianity – must ask themselves,

Why have we become cheerleaders for a modern-day Caligula; a licentious ego-maniac drunk with power; a man without conscience, entranced by the shiny baubles of war?

When the author of the New Testament book of Revelation described the whore of fall of Babylon and her fall – which was also Rome, which was also every subsequent world empire, including the United States of America – he warned those claiming to be Christian,

“Come out of her, my people, so that you do not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.” (Revelation 18:4-5)

When will American evangelicalism stop its complicity in US war crimes?

When will it rip off the blinders of patriotic nationalism and see this world through the eyes of Jesus Christ?

A line is being drawn between the true church and the false, between the wheat and the tares, between the church militant and the church acquiescent, between disciples with their eyes firmly fixed on Jesus (Hebrews 12:2) and those blinded by the “worries and deceits of this world” (Mark 4:18-19) whose cheer-leading for wickedness reveals that they have abandoned their seat at the Messiah’s banquet table (Luke 14:15-24).

Stop the US March to War with Russia

As I posted yesterday, we are entering perilous times in the Middle East, and most of the American people are completely unaware of the false information being fed to them.  The similarities to the government lies about WMDs that “justified” the Second Iraq War are too close to ignore.

Take a moment to watch this analysis by Peter Ford, a former U.K. ambassador to Syria, as he explains why he does not believe that the so-called chemical attack in Ghouta ever occurred.  It is entitled:

Former UK Ambassador to Syria: Syrian Chemical Weapons Attack Was STAGED By Islamic Jihadi Propagandists, It Is Likely No One Died

Remember the run up to the last Iraq War?  Do not forget that our government lies to us all the time. Lying is one of the things all governments do in this world.

Of course, Mr. Ford may be wrong.  BUT AT THE VERY LEAST, President Trump has no business ordering a retaliatory strike against Assad before an independent investigation has been conducted!

Please, call your Congressional representatives (at 202-225-3121) urging them to sign the bipartisan Lofgren-Amash letter, reminding the president that, according to the War Powers Act, he must receive congressional approval before launching a strike against Syria.

Also tell them to insist on an independent investigation into the claims of a gas attack.  It still is not too late.

Here are a few additional headlines from today:

ASSAD ADVISER: SYRIA AND ALLIES PREPARING FOR POSSIBLE WAR (Jerusalem Post)

Trump says Syria attack “could be very soon or not so soon at all” (Reuters)

Jerusalem Responds to Russia: Iranian Aggression Is Destabilizing Syria – Not Israel (Haaretz)

Israel on High Alert, Prepares for Possible Iranian Retaliation After Strike on Syrian Air Force Base (Haaretz)

Top Israeli Defense Officials Push for Offensive Approach in Syria Against Iran (Haaretz)

Trump is Threatening Another War, which is Only One of Many Reasons No Christian Should Be Supporting Him

Once again, our president is threatening to bomb another country.  This time it’s Syria.  In the not-too-distant past it’s been North Korea, Iran and Russia.  The New York Times reports (4/11/18) that President Trump now promises to launch a military strike against Syria and has threatened Russia not to intervene.

It’s one thing to be a bully in private life.  (The numerous allegations of Trump’s sexual assault against women and his criminal business dealings have been amply documented for many years. [Read David Kay Johnson’s books, The Making of Donald Trump and It’s Even Worse Than You Think]).

It is another matter altogether to be a public, presidential bully who imagines the nation’s military, armaments and treasury to be his own personal play things.

We do not need a blustering businessman in the White House – can we finally bury this foolishness once and for all about the importance of electing business people into government?!  We need a diplomat, an intelligent, well-educated person who understands the issues, or at least a leader who believes in the priority of diplomacy and detests war.

Tragically, Donald Trump is not that person.  He is an extraordinarily undiplomatic war-monger.

I believe that every American who professes to follow the resurrected Jesus should take advantage of the democratic mechanisms at our disposal (at least, for the moment) and voice our opposition to our government’s love of war-making.

Here are several things we can do:

  1. Call your Congressional representatives (at 202-225-3121) and ask them to sign the bipartisan Lofgren-Amash letter, reminding the president that, according to the War Powers Act, he must receive congressional approval before authorizing a strike against Syria. No US president has the authority to use military force unilaterally.
  2. While you have them on the phone, tell your elected representatives that you vehemently oppose any further military action in Syria. In fact, urge them to tell the president to implement his earlier plan for withdrawing all US forces from Syria.  As both Trump and Putin acknowledged last year, there is no military solution to this conflict.  Only a cease-fire and diplomacy will help the Syrian people.
  3. Tell your representatives to insist on an independent investigation into the apparent gas attack in Syrian eastern Ghouta. Tell them that our U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley (another neoconservative always in favor of another war), must stop her pro-war saber
    U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley vetos an Egyptian-drafted resolution regarding recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem, during the United Nations Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, including Palestine, at U.N. Headquarters in New York City, New York, U.S., December 18, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid – RC19707F9890

    rattling and cooperate with the UN Security Council’s desire to investigate these charges.

  4. Educate yourself, sharpen your critical thinking skills and hone your skepticism. For instance:
  • Did you know that there is no solid, empirical evidence that Syrian president Assad or his troops had anything to do with the supposed “gas attack” in eastern Ghouta? Do not swallow the wall-to-wall reporting fed to us from the corporate media saying otherwise.  For instance, here is an excerpt from a lengthy report from an independent journalist who visited the scene of this “attack”:

“I was told by people I spoke with, in Erbin (a city in eastern Ghouta), that the terrorist factions had carried out the attacks on civilians in that district in order to blame it on the Syrian government, army and Russia.

“While there is no way to fully verify these on the ground reports, it must raise the question – why do western media repeat the narrative fed to them by western backed & financed groups like the White Helmets who are proven to be closely affiliated to extremist groups including Al Qaeda…?”

  • Israel has been lobbying the United States to go to war against Iran for many years. Israel has exploited the current situation in order unilaterally to attack Iranian forces in Syria.  (By the way, Iranian troops are in Syria by invitation.  Ours are not.)
  • Iran is now threatening a counter strike against Israel.  The only reason Israel has not continued its attacks is because of Vladimir Putin’s intervention, insisting on de-escalation.  Yes, Russian is acting as the peace-maker in this situation.
  • John Bolton, Trumps’ new National Security Adviser, is a psychopathic war-monger and a rapid pro-Zionist who has been doing Israel’s bidding for years, insisting on war with Iran.  In fact, Bolton has “promised” that he will effect regime change in Iran before the end of this year!
  • Russia has promised to “return fire” if American attacks Assad’s forces.
  • With Syria, the United States, Russian, Israel and Iran (let’s not forget Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, if things fall apart) all fired up, feeling aggressive, threatened and defensive, we have a frightening stew of international ingredients for a major war.

It is long past time for American evangelicals to stand for peace not war.  Please, make the call today.

Make your arguments.  Demand an accounting.

Let them know that you will not vote for a senator or representative who supports anymore needless destruction in our fragile world.