U.S. Bombs Assad Forces Openly

The U.S. has come to the aid of rebel forces in Syria once again, after they were attacked by Syrian regime forces trying to retake territory. Its latest armed intervention is direct, bloody and open.

The U.S. intent is reasonably clear, and it is definitely not self-defense. It is to secure the positions of anti-Assad forces. It is to allow anti-Assad forces to hold territory east of the Euphrates River, thereby effectively partitioning Syria. The area’s revenues then fall to the rebels and are denied Assad. This produces a proto-statelet in the region. That impedes Iran’s ground communication with Syria to some extent and weakens Assad.

Fundamentally, the U.S. is at war with Syria, a war being fought by degrees, with the U.S. seizing advantages where it can. Syrian victories elsewhere are not holding the U.S. back from muscling in to parts of Syria where it can.

The U.S. attack didn’t result in directly confronting Russia. In this case, Russia didn’t disallow or prevent the U.S. air attack, which took many lives of Syrian soldiers.

The U.S. has injected itself into the Syrian civil war since its inception, and even bears responsibility for inciting it in the first place. Sooner or later, even a lot later, the result is going to be increased retaliation in the form of attacks against Americans and American interests in Syria and elsewhere in the world, including continental America. No good will come to us as a consequence of this intervention. Another 9/11, only much worse, one that destroys an entire city or kills a hundred thousand or more Americans lies in wait for us unless the U.S. policy of world expansion is ended.

The U.S. attack is completely illegal under such international law as exists. The U.N. charter is very clear on that. No country is permitted to violate the territorial integrity of another country by its own military initiative or aggression. U.S. law is also being routinely violated, making a mockery of the Constitution.

Russia has not responded yet with a strategy to stop the U.S., but it recognizes clearly what the U.S. is up to. Three weeks ago at the U.N., Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said “The U.S. are trying to form … alternative bodies of authority on vast … parts of the Syrian territory. That is a fact and that does contradict their own obligations … to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Syria.”

The U.S. seems incapable of staying out of war. Wars are a magnet for the top echelon of American leaders. No sooner are soldiers taken out of Iraq, they are reassigned to Afghanistan. U.S. is attracted to trouble spots in Africa. The U.S. provides support to Saudi Arabia’s air force in Yemen, and also ramps up its own drone attacks there and everywhere. The U.S. looks for trouble with China and Russia. The U.S. doesn’t renounce a first strike with nuclear weapons and it considers that low-yield nuclear weapons are a viable battle option. War for the U.S. amounts to a compulsion built upon self-interest and reinforced by a false set of rationales.

One cannot help but reach the conclusion that something is dreadfully wrong in our system. Germany, Italy and Japan, when they were fascist-controlled, similarly launched expansionary and aggressive moves against various regions. The “something” that is wrong in America is that aggression and threats of aggression have become a systematic feature of government, supported by Congress and their establishment media, supported by ideology and fake threats, and not protested against by any significant anti-war contingents within the country. The empire has let the shell of the American republic and constitutional system remain standing, but inside it, there has been a transformation into currently ruling fascism.

This can be resisted, changed and stopped, but it’s not going to happen by itself.

While it’s clear that self-interest drives much of the aggression, what’s especially frightening is that there is also a large component of blind belief that these aggressions are justified and for the good of Americans and the world. Fervent and unthinking promotion of U.S. military interventions is scary in view of the power, especially nuclear power, in the hands of the government and its believers. This can only come to a very, very bad end unless it is curtailed and repudiated.

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9:26 am on February 8, 2018