Confirming once again that the entire US Middle-East campaign over the past 4 years has been one ongoing plan to destabilize and eliminate Syria's president Bashar al-Assad from power - certainly including the involvement of ISIS which as we reported a year ago was "created" and facilitated by the Pentagon as a tool to overthrow Assad, an analysis which yesterday gained renewed prominence - overnight the WSJ reported that dozens of State Department officials this week protested against U.S. policy in Syria, signing an internal document that calls for "targeted military strikes against the Damascus government and urging regime change as the only way to defeat Islamic State."
In other words, over 50 top "diplomats" are urging to eliminate Assad in order to "defeat ISIS", the same ISIS which top US "diplomats" had unleashed previously in order to... eliminate Assad.
While one can understand the US state department's relentless eagneress to create yet another failed state led by a US puppet ruler, one wonders if at least the boilerplate justification could not have used some more fine tuning.
Amusingly, the whole thing is wrapped in a narrative that the State Department is ready and willing to "mutiny" against Obama's pacifism, because you see it was Obama who has been so successful in extricating and removing US troops from harm's way in both the middle east and Afghanistan. Oh wait...
Here are the full details from he WSJ:
The “dissent channel cable” was signed by 51 State Department officers involved with advising on Syria policy in various capacities, according to an official familiar with the document. The Wall Street Journal reviewed a copy of the cable, which repeatedly calls for “targeted military strikes” against the Syrian government in light of the near-collapse of the ceasefire brokered earlier this year.
The views expressed by the U.S. officials in the cable amount to a scalding internal critique of a longstanding U.S. policy against taking sides in the Syrian war, a policy that has survived even though the regime of President Bashar al-Assad has been repeatedly accused of violating ceasefire agreements and Russian-backed forces have attacked U.S.-trained rebels.
More spin: why has Obama been so "against" unleash a full blown invasion on Syria? "Obama administration officials have expressed concern that attacking the Assad regime could lead to a direct conflict with Russia and Iran."
Oh so that's why the nuclear arms race is now officially back, just a few weeks after the US launched a ballistic missile shield over Europe, in the process shifting the entire post-cold war nuclear proliferation balance of power. Got it.
Meanwhile, the attempt to paint Obama as a liberal, peace loving dove continue:
“It’s embarrassing for the administration to have so many rank-and-file members break on Syria,” said a former State Department official who worked on Middle East policy. These officials said dissent on Syria policy has been almost a constant since civil war broke out there in 2011. But much of the debate was contained to the top levels of the Obama administration. The recent letter marked a move by the heart of the bureaucracy, which is largely apolitical, to break from the White House.
Oh, if only Obama would be more willing to install even more pro-US puppet regimes... like in Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq, Ukraine and so on, and so on... Clearly all of these have turned out so well, that certainly things would be so much better in the middle east. Well, maybe not, but at least that damn Qatari pipeline would finally start flowing.
So why leak this now:
The internal cable may be an attempt to shape the foreign policy outlook of the next administration, the official familiar with the document said. President Barack Obama has balked at taking military action against Mr. Assad, while Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has promised a more hawkish stance toward the Syrian leader. Republican candidate Donald Trump has said he would hit Islamic State hard but has also said he would be prepared to work with Russia in Syria.
The cable warns that the U.S. is losing prospective allies among Syria’s majority Sunni population in its fight against the Sunni extremist group Islamic State while the regime “continues to bomb and starve” them. Mr. Assad and his inner circle are Alawite, a small Shiite-linked Muslim sect and a minority in Syria. In Syria’s multisided war, the regime, Islamic State and an array of opposition rebel groups are all battling each other.
It gets better: “Failure to stem Assad’s flagrant abuses will only bolster the ideological appeal of groups such as Daesh, even as they endure tactical setbacks on the battlefield,” the cable reads, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
But wait, as the Pentagon itself admitted, the "Daesh" was carefully bred by the US government precisely for this reason: to overthrow Assad. Don't believe us? Read the following line from the leaked document:
“… there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”
Does not compute.
There is more: "The cable asserts Mr. Assad and Russia haven’t taken past cease-fires and “consequential negotiations” seriously and suggests adopting a more muscular military posture to secure a transitional government in Damascus."
The Russian-led force is also pushing toward Raqqa from the south, making the march on the Islamic State stronghold a strategic and symbolic competition between the rival coalitions. Islamic State is also being rolled back in Iraq, where U.S.-allied government forces have retaken major cities and are advancing in Fallujah, the first city the extremists fully occupied back in 2014
Well, sure: with Russia's backing of a sovereign nation, why should Assad fold to relentless US pressure. Actually that may well be the point: the US is humiliated that a small, feeble middle-eastern nation dares to defy it for years, just because it has the backing of the Kremlin. We don't need to explain the ugly optics of this.
Perhaps the real reason why the cable has "emerged" now is because due to Russian intervention, ISIS will soon be history:
Although Islamic State is losing ground to multiple, U.S.-backed offensives in Syria, Iraq and Libya, Western diplomats say they worry the group has embedded itself so deeply in the population that it will be a major influence for years to come, eventually going underground as its quasi-army is defeated.
And finally, one last reason emerges: the US is merely pandering to Saudi demands, something it has clearly done very well ever since the Sep 11 attacks which covered up Saudi involvement:
The cable also echoes the growing impatience among U.S. Gulf allies with the lack of military intervention targeted at the Damascus government to force Mr. Assad to resign and make way for a transitional government. Peace talks between Syria’s government and opposition collapsed in April over Mr. Assad’s fate, with the regime insisting he should stay in power, while the negotiated cease-fire continued to disintegrate. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have pressed the U.S. to provide more sophisticated weapons to rebels. But Washington has resisted.
In other words, if the US does fold and proceeds with military strikes, i.e. full blown invasion and war, on Assad, it will once again be Saudi Arabia that is running US foreign policy, and pushing the US nation into what may be a state of open war with Russia.
We can only hope the American people wake up and stop this travesty before Saudi Arabia's favorite presidential candidate is elected president.
Credit to Zero Hedge
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