The Trump foreign policy team has been all over the map on what to do next in
Syria
— topple the regime, intensify aid to rebels, respond to any new
attacks on innocent civilians. But when pressed, there is one idea
everyone on the team seems to agree on: “The defeat of
ISIS,” as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson put it.
Well, let me add to their confusion by asking just one question: Why?
Why
should our goal right now be to defeat the Islamic State in Syria? Of
course, ISIS is detestable and needs to be eradicated. But is it really
in our interest to be focusing solely on defeating ISIS in Syria right
now?
{...}
America’s goal in Syria is to create enough pressure on Assad, Russia,
Iran and Hezbollah so they will negotiate a power-sharing accord with
moderate Sunni Muslims that would also ease Assad out of power. One way
to do that would be for NATO to create a no-fly safe zone around Idlib
Province, where many of the anti-Assad rebels have gathered and where
Assad recently dropped his poison gas on civilians. But Congress and the
U.S. public are clearly wary of that.
So what else could we do? We could dramatically increase our military aid to anti-Assad rebels,
giving them sufficient anti-tank and antiaircraft missiles to threaten
Russian, Iranian, Hezbollah and Syrian helicopters and fighter jets and
make them bleed, maybe enough to want to open negotiations. Fine with
me.
What else? We could simply back off fighting territorial ISIS in Syria
and make it entirely a problem for Iran, Russia, Hezbollah and Assad.
After all, they’re the ones overextended in Syria, not us. Make them
fight a two-front war — the moderate rebels on one side and ISIS on the
other. If we defeat territorial ISIS in Syria now, we will only reduce
the pressure on Assad, Iran, Russia and Hezbollah and enable them to
devote all their resources to crushing the last moderate rebels in
Idlib, not sharing power with them.
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US ‘Deep State’ Sold Out Counter-Terrorism To Keep Itself in Business
Since 2001, senior Pentagon and CIA officials
have sacrificed American interests in weakening al-Qaeda to pursue their
own interests
Gareth Porter April 24, 2017
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman outraged many readers when he
wrote
an opinion piece on 12 April calling on President Trump to ”back off fighting
territorial ISIS in Syria”. The reason he gave for that recommendation was not
that US wars in the Middle East are inevitably self-defeating and endless, but
that it would reduce the “pressure on Assad, Iran, Russia and Hezbollah”.
That suggestion that the US sell out its interest in counter-terrorism in the
Middle East to gain some advantage in power competition with its adversaries
was rightly attacked as cynical.
But, in fact, the national security bureaucracies of the US – which many have
come to call the “Deep State” – have been selling out their interests in counter-terrorism
in order to pursue various adventures in the region ever since George W Bush
declared a “Global War on Terrorism” in late 2001.
The whole war on terrorism has been, in effect, a bait-and-switch operation
from the beginning. The idea that US military operations were somehow going
to make America safer after the 9/11 attacks was the bait. What has actually
happened ever since then, however, is that senior officials at the Pentagon
and the CIA have been sacrificing the interest of American people in weakening
al-Qaeda in order to pursue their own institutional interests.
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