US and Turkey Behave Like Arsonists in Syria

For the first time, the United States has begun launching manned airstrikes from a base in Turkey allegedly against ISIL forces in Syria.

The use of bases in Turkey follows Ankara breaking a three-year truce with the Kurds –and the US government is not stopping that. While Kurdish forces have been quite effective in fighting ISIL, the Turkish government continues to offer a logistical base for the foreign mercenaries.

In Washington, however, the air is thick with lies and half-truths, and President Obama’s goals continue to grow every time he gives a speech. His goals have gone from protecting Kurdish populations to training, protecting and weaponing “trusted” terrorists, and now to creating a no-fly zone in northern Syria.

President Obama insists ground troops aren’t being considered, but the credibility of that claim is very much in doubt, given thousands of US Marines are already stationed in Iraq. Besides, Pentagon says ground troops will be needed to support the air war – which Obama insists will be a long campaign.

It is now an open secret that the ISIL menace is one created by Washington and its regional allies. The terrorist group has been significantly strengthened over the past year by the US program to train and weaponise “moderate” terrorist groups fighting against Syrian people and Syrian government. Without US support in Syria, ISIL would not be overrunning Iraq now.

As ISIL butchers its way through giant regions of Iraq and subjects the survivors to a more brutal totalitarianism than the US-allied dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, Washington has now decided to bomb Syria to address the humanitarian crisis that it caused in the first place.

But air war threatens blowback. The shock and awe campaign will only make the situation worse. The Pentagon cannot help Syrians caught in an open-ended war by dropping bombs on them. In addition, military intervention will deepen the major social, ethnic, religious and political divisions in Syria and the wider region.

It’s a wake up call. For years, US bombing has created more terrorists than it has killed. The bogus “War on Terror” failed to destroy al-Qaeda and even spawned a multitude of splinter groups. If Obama is going to risk US involvement in Syria, it will be hard to confine the war to one small part of the multi-national battlefield.

It is time for the US and Turkey to recognize that the not so hidden agenda of settling for nothing less than regime change in Damascus is dangerous and deadly. It is hard to look at their actions and still believe the decision to calibrate their tactics and brand Syria “a hostile state” is humanitarianism. Simply put, they are feeding chaos and behaving like arsonists.

Their criminal obsession has absolutely nothing to do with humanitarianism and everything to do with power play and keeping a military footprint in Syria. The professional warmongers will never admit it on the record – but the perverse essence of this messy intervention is completely based on a cynical calculation meant to protect their illicit interests throughout the region. No doubt this will get much uglier – with cataclysmic consequences.

FNA

R.S