US President Donald Trump makes one of the most protracted and painful world problems sound like he’s selling a condo between two parties. With cheesy easiness, he bluffs everybody gets a “great deal.”

“We want an agreement that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians.” Thus spoke Trump this week in announcing US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel.

The American property tycoon-turned-politician has shown again this week his vast ignorance of international relations. The trouble is that Trump’s rank foolishness risks inflaming the already combustible Middle East region and beyond.

READ MORE: ‘Declaration of war’: Trump’s Jerusalem decision lights Middle East powder keg

Arab nations, including some close American allies like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are furious at what they see as a historic “betrayal.” For Arabs and Muslims, Jerusalem – or at least the eastern half of the “old city” – is regarded as the spiritual capital of a future Palestinian state.

The ancient city is home to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, containing three unique religious sites. The eastern half of the city, which is legally Palestinian territory but under military occupation by Israel since the 1967 Six Day War, is where the ancient religious sites are located. Trump’s unilateral designation of Jerusalem as the Jewish capital is therefore as reckless as it is provocative.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/412340-trump-israel-jerusalem-palestinian/

As 2017 comes to a close, the warring parties in Syria are moving towards reconciliation—but the U.S. is not among them.

The Islamic State is all but defeated, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies are now closing in on the few remaining pockets occupied by other extremists, and Iranians, Russians, and Turks are mapping out the peace to come.

Then there’s America. Donald Trump may have hinted at changes up his sleeve, but he’s treading the same tired path as his predecessor on Syria.

Determined to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as a means to weaken Iran and re-establish U.S. regional hegemony, Barack Obama’s White House placed its bets on two pathways to this goal: 1) a military strategy to wrest control over Syria from the regime, and 2) a UN-sponsored and U.S.-backed mediation in Geneva to transition Assad out.

Washington lost its military gamble when the Russian air force entered the battle in September 2015, providing both game-changing air cover and international clout to Assad’s efforts.

So the U.S. turned its hand to resuscitating a limp Geneva peace process that might have delivered a Syrian political settlement sans Assad.

Instead, two years on, the tables have turned in this sphere, too. Today, it is the Iranians, Turks, and Russians leading reconciliation efforts in Syria through a process established in Astana and continued last week in Sochi—not Geneva. The three states have transformed the ground war by isolating key extremists, carving out ceasefire zones, and negotiating deals to keep the peace.

To nobody’s surprise, the Americans are neither part of this new initiative, nor have they offered any constructive counters. Meanwhile, the UN’s Geneva framework, after eight rounds of talks, has not once been able to bring the two Syrian sides face-to-face at the Big Table.

To illustrate, UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, who leads these talks, now says things like this with a straight face: “We have started very close proximity parallel meetings. In fact, I have been shuttling between two rooms at a distance of five meters from each other.”

In short, the U.S.’s Syrian efforts have hit a brick wall, while new regional and international power brokers have stepped in to pick up the slack.

Read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/in-syria-peacemaking-is-...

Will the US and/or its lackeys do something stupid like bombing Damascus, which the Israelis are presently "doing as if they were not doing it", possibly to provoke shit...?

“Our carefully considered military assessment is that Daesh is still present on both sides of the Euphrates River, and therefore Coalition surgical strikes continue on the East Bank of the Middle Euphrates River Valley in support of Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF),” a CJTF-OIR representative told Sputnik.

“We know that Russian and Syrian regime aircraft are continuing their strikes on the west bank of the Euphrates River, between the towns of Mayadin and Abu Kamal [Al Bukamal], so it is likely that [Daesh] has yet to be cleared from that area,” the spokesman added. He emphasized that the Pentagon disagrees with the Russian assessment.

The Pentagon also dismissed allegations that the US Air Force is hampering Russian military operations in the country, stating that only the actions of American pilots in Syria have had any meaningful success in defeating the terrorists there.

On Saturday, Russia’s defense ministry accused the US Air Force of interfering in its air operations over Syria. The Russian military cited one such interference, saying, that on November 23, a US F-22 fighter prevented two Russian Su-25 strike aircraft from bombing an IS base to the west of the Euphrates River.

“Most close-midair encounters between Russian and US jets in the area around the Euphrates River have been linked to the attempts of US aircraft to get in the way [of the Russian warplanes] striking against Islamic State terrorists,” Russian military spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov noted.

“Those claims are incorrect,” the Pentagon representative told Sputnik Saturday. “The US-led coalition, not the Russian Federation or Syrian Regime, is the only force that has made meaningful progress against [Daesh/ISIS].”

Russian Su-35 chased away rogue US F-22 jet: MoD blasts US Air Force for hampering #Syria ophttps://t.co/TVg8Lud4pvpic.twitter.com/94inYbmHw2

The spokesman’s statements are in line with the general American leadership perception of Washington’s role in defeating IS in Syria. The trend to diminish Russia’s achievements in Syria started earlier this year, when Ash Carter, the former Secretary of Defense under Barack Obama, accused Moscow of achieving“virtually zero” in Syria.

“They haven’t done anything,” Carter stated just weeks before Obama and his team left office. “They came in, they said they were going to fight ISIL, and they said they were going to help in the civil war in Syria… They haven’t done either of those things. As a consequence of course, we’re fighting ISIL ourselves.”

read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/412618-pentagon-meaningful-isis-progress/

Is the Western media going to glorify this US shit or tell the truth?... We shall see...

A Russian interceptor has been scrambled to stop a rogue US fighter jet from actively interfering with an anti-terrorist operation, the Russian Defense Ministry said. It also accused the US of provoking close encounters with the Russian jets in Syria.

A US F-22 fighter was preventing two Russian Su-25 strike aircraft from bombing an Islamic State (IS, former ISIS) base to the west of the Euphrates November 23, according to the ministry. The ministry’s spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov described the episode as yet another example of US aircraft attempts to prevent Russian forces from carrying out strikes against Islamic State.

The major general went on to say that “most close-midair encounters between Russian and US jets in the area around the Euphrates River have been linked to the attempts of US aircraft to get in the way [of the Russian warplanes] striking against Islamic State terrorists.” He also said that the US military officials provided no explanation for the November 23 incident as well as other, similar encounters.

The statement came as a response to the Pentagon’s claims about “an increase in unsafe behavior” by Russian warplanes. “We saw anywhere from six to eight incidents daily in late November, where Russian or Syrian aircraft crossed into our airspace on the east side of the Euphrates River,” Lt. Col. Damien Pickart, the spokesman for US Air Force Central Command, told CNN earlier on Saturday.

Konashenkov said that any claims made by US military officials concerning the fact that there is “any part of the airspace in Syria that belongs to the US” are “puzzling.” Konashenkov also said that “Syria is a sovereign state and a UN member and that means that there… can be no US airspace ‘of its own.’ Unlike the Russian Air Force, the US-led coalition is operating in Syria without any legal basis,” he added.

Pickart also said that the US’ “greatest concern is that we could shoot down a Russian aircraft because its actions are seen as a threat to our air or ground forces.” Earlier, he also told the New York Times that it has become “increasingly tough for our [US] pilots to discern whether Russian pilots are deliberately testing or baiting us into reacting, or if these are just honest mistakes.”

The New York Times also listed several cases of what the US describes as “unsafe behavior” by the Russian jets, citing the data provided by the US air base in Qatar. The US accused the Russian pilots of“crossing into the airspace east of the Euphrates” and flying “dangerously close” to the “allied forces,” adding that such actions could be interpreted as “threatening” and the US pilots were “in their rights” to fire in “self-defense.”

Konashenkov said in response that the US Air Force should rather focus on destroying Islamic State in Iraq than provoking close encounters between the US and the Russian jets.

Pickart said to CNN that the US military regularly talk to their Russian counterparts “in the daily de-confliction calls.” However, the Russian military repeatedly pointed out that the US is reluctant to share its plans for combat aircraft operations, and acts secretively in Syria.

The US and the Russian military have traded jibes over various incidents involving both countries’ warplanes in the Syrian skies. Washington accused Russian jets of not carrying transponders allowing air-traffic controllers to identify them, while Moscow repeatedly said that the US military only “occasionally” indicate the time period and an approximate area of their air operations without even giving the types of aircraft and their affiliation.

Back in 2015, the US and Russia agreed upon the mutual flight safety memorandum regulating the flight paths and contacts of the countries’ air forces in Syria during an emergency situation. The two countries also set up a hotline for their militaries to discuss the approximate locations and missions of planes in an attempt to avoid operating in the same airspace at the same time.

However, both sides later repeatedly accused each other of being reluctant to use the instruments at their disposal to reconcile the issues related to their actions in Syria. Most recently, Colonel Jeff Hogan, deputy commander of the air operations center at the Qatar base, called the daily phone calls between the US and Russian military “contentious.” The US also said that the dialogue does not always reflect what happens in the skies over Syria.

In January, Konashenkov complained that the US officers often “simply cannot be found on the other side of the ‘hotline’ in Qatar, designed to discuss and resolve contentious issues” and urged them to “use this hotline more often and for its direct purposes.”

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/412590-russia-us-syria-air-force/

It is most likely that the Russian point of view is correct. The USA will do everything they can to impede the Russians in Syria without declaring war, though the US planes are violating the Syrian airspace since they have not been "invited" to be there by the Damascus government. 

The USA has been trying to protect "their" rebels (Al Nusra, Al Qaeda) from the Russian planes for quite a while — and the USA have increased troops numbers in their "self-designated" areas... All this is designed to stop the Assad government from controlling the whole of Syria as it should be able to, after the negotiations in Sochi between the Russians, Turkey, Iran and Syria. Impeding the development of peace is the present purpose of the USA presence in Syria.

Sputnik: What I understood from the report based on your and your colleagues’ visits to Syria is that your views were very different from the official position of the UK government on some key issues such as future of Bashar Assad and attitude to the so-called moderate opposition. So, I would be very grateful if you could describe briefly your views on that and also if you could share your views on what would be the right way forward for Syria.

[Baroness] Cox: Certainly. I think there are three concerns that I have expressed in Parliament.

Having been in Syria twice we met a wide range of people from the faith leaders the Syrian Patriarch, the Grand Mufti and other faith leaders in different parts of Syria and also local people like professionals, like doctors and intelligentsia, and musicians and artists, and writers, and politicians including members of the opposition parties. And they have got a very consistent concern over British foreign policy. British foreign policy has been committed to regime change and that’s the thing that people inside Syria really are very afraid of because they fear there is no moderate opposition left. Forced regime change would just lead to another catastrophe like Libya or Iraq. So that is the first concern that I raise quite often in the British Parliament.

The second concern is the funding that the British government has been giving to opposition groups and as we highlighted again there are no moderate armed opposition groups left so that is really just prolonging the war, prolonging  the suffering of Syrian people. There was an interesting “Panorama” program which is one illustration of British taxpayer’s money being given to the jihadist group in Syria and it showed the police and organizations involved or complicit with barbaric practices like stoning individuals.

And the third concern which has been raised wherever we went is the very devastating effect of sanctions on people which makes it very hard for them to get the medical supplies they need, the food they need and other things they need to begin rebuilding their land as they hope for the war to finish in the not too distant future.

And the fourth point that I would like to make particularly to you is the very real appreciation that is expressed by everyone in Syria of the support by Russia to help get rid of ISIS [Daesh] and get rid of all the other Islamist religious groups. That is really appreciated and I respect it. I think that Russia has done absolutely right thing there giving the priority to expelling from Syria ISIS [Daesh], Jabhat al-Nusra and all other Islamist terrorist groups.

Sputnik: What would you consider as the right way forward for Syria? Russia and the UK and other countries have very different, I would say, polarized views on that. So what would be the right thing to do for both UK and Russia, and for Syria itself? 

Cox: As I understand it, Russia’s proposals for the future are good: to bring together the different groups and I think the meetings in and in Sochi have been very important to help the Syrian people to move forward with a new constitution, with democratic elections, internationally supervised, and to invest very significantly in reconstruction, the reconstruction of schools, hospitals, infrastructure, factories to enable the people of Syria to return to their own country. 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201712281060353526-member-house-lords-r...

WASHINGTON — Thousands of Islamic State foreign fighters and family members have escaped the American-led military campaign in eastern Syria, according to new classified American and other Western military and intelligence assessments, a flow that threatens to tarnish American declarations that the militant group has been largely defeated.

As many of the fighters flee unfettered to the south and west through Syrian Army lines, some have gone into hiding near Damascus, the Syrian capital, and in the country’s northwest, awaiting orders sent by insurgent leaders on encrypted communications channels.

Other battle-hardened militants, some with training in chemical weapons, are defecting to Al Qaeda’s branch in Syria. Others are paying smugglers tens of thousands of dollars to spirit them across the border to Turkey, with an eventual goal of returning home to European countries.

The sobering assessments come despite a concerted effort to encircle and “annihilate” — as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis put it — Islamic State fighters in Raqqa, the group’s self-proclaimed capital, which fell in the fall, and pursue other insurgents who fled south into the Euphrates River Valley toward the border with Iraq.

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/04/world/middleeast/isis-syria-al-qaeda.html

What the NYT does not tell you, unlike the Russian media, is that the US LET SOME OF THE DAESH FIGHTERS THROUGH deliberately... Why? These "fighters" (terrorists) will be useful to unseat Assad in a new push Daesh revival (read Saudi Sunni secret offensive) — under whatever name to make sure that these terrorists "become" moderate... Read from top.

President Trump’s unexpected pledge last week to pull U.S. troops out of Syria “very soon” has occasioned predictable wailing in predictable places. 

The president also faced unsurprising pushback from his national security team, forcing him to clarify this week that the 2,000 troops there now will stay only until the mission to defeat ISIS, which is “coming to a rapid end,” is finished. Of course his military advisors and many of his aides disagree.  

A Pentagon spokesman has warned that ISIS is looking for “any opportunity to regain momentum.” Anonymous military officers speak of fumbling the ball “on the two yard line.” Officials tell reporters that while the group is “almost completely defeated,” a string of renewed ISIS attacks could signal a resurgence. 

Regardless of the outcome in Washington, Trump’s instincts on Syria deserve discussion.

Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, the operation in Syria has cost us very little blood and treasure, at least so far. Special operations forces (SOF) and “other government agencies” ably partnered with our largely Kurdish proxies to break the back of ISIS’s nascent state. The group’s conventional military power has been destroyed. Howev er menacing officials make it sound, it’s been estimated that the Islamic State has fewer than 1,000 fighters left on the battlefield. Mosul, its largest city, was retaken by Iraqi security forces, while its de facto capital Raqqa was conquered by the Kurds. Palmyra and Deir ez-Zor are back in government hands. Areas of ISIS control are tough to even find on a map of the Syrian conflict.

For all these successes, however, we have been walking a knife’s edge in Syria ever since openly intervening there in 2014. Deconfliction with Russia has not been flawless: Turkey shot down a Russian plane in 2015 and U.S. firepower reportedly killed hundreds of Russian mercenaries earlier this year. That knife’s edge has only gotten sharper over the past two months, as Turkish troops invaded the Afrin region of northern Syria. Turkey’s “Operation Olive Branch” exposed the elephant in the room: America’s only successful proxy, the Syrian Kurds, are linked to Turkey’s PKK, which Turkey, the European Union, and the U.S. have declared a terrorist group. Our NATO ally is now openly at war with our Kurdish partner, as American advisors do their best to stay off the frontline. In 2008, Vice President-Elect Joe Biden bluntly told Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai: “Pakistan is 50 times more important for the United States than Afghanistan.” The same obvious wisdom applies in spades to Turkey and Syria respectively.

Read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/isis-is-finished-so-we-s...

See also:

http://yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/32727

Read from top.

The US president has given the clearest hints yet about rumors of his Pentagon chief's possible departure.

In an interview for the CBS Sunday program 60 Minutes, Donald Trump said that while he does not know if Secretary of Defense James Mattis is going to step down, "it could be that he is."

"Well, I don't know. He hasn't told me that," Trump said when asked by CBS's Lesley Stahl about rumors of Mattis's possible firing or resignation.

"I have a very good relationship with him. I had lunch with him two days ago. I have a very good relationship with him. It could be that he is. I think he's sort of a Democrat, if you want to know the truth," the president said.

Characterizing the Pentagon chief as a "good guy," and reiterating that they "get along very well," Trump repeated: "He may leave. I mean, at some point, everybody leaves. Everybody. People leave. That's Washington."

Mattis dismissed reports of his departure from the Pentagon late last month after US media reported, citing unnamed sources, that Trump was considering replacing him with someone more openly supportive of his foreign and defense policies after the midterm elections. "Of course I don't think about leaving, I love it here," the general said.

The relationship between Trump and Mattis entered the media spotlight after the release of journalist Bob Woodward's book on the Trump administration last month. Woodward quoted Mattis as saying that Trump had the mindset of a "fifth or sixth-grader" on Korea policy, and claimed that the Pentagon head disobeyed Trump's orders to "f***ing kill" Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2017. Mattis characterized Woodward's book as a "product of a rich imagination."

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201810141068875836-trump-mattis/

Read from top.

Until recently the United States viewed the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, as a major threat to regional stability in the Middle East. Barack Obama made it a mission to roll back ISIS’s territorial and propagandistic gain, and Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to “kick ISIS’s ass.” The United States expended considerable effort, both military and political, in a campaign to defeat the terror group in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Syria. 

But there is also no doubt that the bulk of the effort came from Iran, not the United States. Without Iranian involvement, ISIS would still have a formidable presence in both Iraq and Syria.  

ISIS was born out of the ashes of the American invasion of Iraq. Their rise was the logical extension of a process that saw the fabric of secular Sunni society torn asunder by an American occupier unwilling to further empower a Sunni ruling elite that had been loyal to Saddam Hussein. Washington failed to understand the resentment engendered within the Sunni community when Iraq’s Shia, some of whom were beholden to Iran, came to power.

Traditional Sunni tribal power structures were eviscerated as a result, only to be replaced with radicalized Sunni youths beholden to only themselves. Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was al-Qaeda in name only—its mission wasn’t to export jihad to the West, but to free Iraq from the grips of an American and Iranian occupation.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/iran-deserves-credit-fo...

read from top.

The Trump administration will withdraw all of the approximately 2,000 American troops in Syria, according to a US official, as the White House declared victory in the mission to defeat Islamic State militants there.

• Mr Trump's decision came after a phone call with Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan
• Turkish forces wish to wipe out Kurdish forces, allied to the US, from their border with Syria
• Mr Erdogan said Mr Trump gave a "positive response" to Turkish military plans

All US State Department personnel are being evacuated from Syria within 24 hours, said the official, who was not authorised to publicly discuss military planning and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Pentagon said the process of withdrawal had already begun but did not provide further details.

President Donald Trump said American forces were no longer needed in Syria, which has been torn apart by a long-running civil war.

Mr Trump has said since he was a presidential candidate that he wanted to bring back troops from the Middle East, but officials have said in recent weeks that pockets of IS militants remain.

On Wednesday, Mr Trump tweeted: "We have defeated ISIS in Syria."

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-20/us-to-withdraw-troops-from-syria-as-trump-declares-is-victory/

Read from top (note date of published toon)

From Eric Zuesse

At 11:52AM on Wednesday, December 19th, CBS News headlined “White House orders Pentagon to pull troops from Syria immediately” and reported that, “Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a veteran of the US Air Force who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and now serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said it’s ‘simply not true’ [which Trump, had said there, that] ISIS is defeated in Syria.”

CBS News didn’t indicate which political Party Kinzinger represents, but he is a Republican, and he represents the rural Illinois 16th Congressional District, where Donald Trump had beaten Hillary Clinton by a 17% margin in 2016. So, Kinzinger is an anti-Trump Republican on this matter. He’s credible about that, not partisan about it.

Who is telling the truth, Trump’s “We have defeated ISIS in Syria” or Kinzinger’s contrary, and what explains the contradiction between the accounts by Trump and Kinzinger?

As the CBS News report says, “Two weeks ago, Special Envoy Brett McGurk said the end of ISIS will be a long-term initiative, and “nobody is declaring mission accomplished.” CBS’s report, however, fails to note that McGurk is an Obama appointee and has been consistently dedicated to America’s defeating Russia and replacing the leadership in all nations that are allied with (or even friendly toward) Russia, including, most especially, Syria and Iran.

At a deeper level, the question is: Which nations are primarily the cause of the considerable reduction in ISIS forces in Syria? If ISIS has been defeated in Syria, then, nonetheless, is it true for Trump to claim, “We have defeated ISIS in Syria,” or is the United States not even the main force which has done that?

On 30 September 2015, CNN headlined “Russia launches first airstrikes in Syria” and reported that, “Claiming to target ISIS, Russia conducted its first airstrikes in Syria, while US officials expressed serious doubts Wednesday about what the true intentions behind the move may be.” The next day, on October 1st, PBS bannered “Mike Morell, former deputy director of the CIA, talks about why Russia deployed airstrikes in Syria”, and Morell, who had always been speaking and writing against Russia and against any Government that is at all allied with Russia, said:

President Putin believes that if President Assad were to depart the scene, there would be even more instability in Syria and, with that greater instability, ISIS would have more running room, and you could actually end up with ISIS in Damascus. So that is the primary reason he’s doing what he is doing. Now, the question is why doesn’t he just attack [only] ISIS then because President Assad is under attack from a variety of different groups? ISIS is one, al-Nusra [Al Qaeda in Syria] is one, and the moderate opposition is another. So in order to prop up Assad to keep him in control, to make sure you don’t have more instability, he wants to attack all of those groups, right. But his fundamental focus is on ISIS.”

But, then, he argued for US President Barack Obama’s position, against Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria:

If we were to have a transition from Assad to another government that everybody can agree on, then we’re actually going to have more stability in Syria. And I think the President probably argued that as long as Assad is around, he is a magnet for fighters to join ISIS, to join al-Nusra to fight Assad. And you can’t ultimately defeat ISIS and defeat al-Nusra without getting rid of President Assad in the process. 

So: Morell acknowledged that Putin’s main target was ISIS, but Morell said that Obama was correct to oppose Russia’s bombing campaign there, because “you can’t ultimately defeat ISIS and defeat al-Nusra without getting rid of President Assad in the process.” Then, he said, of Putin, “this guy is a thug. This guy is a bully.” But he said that, unfortunately, America must deal with that “bully”: “first thing we have to convince the Russians of is that you can’t successfully deal with ISIS and al-Nusra without Assad going away. We have to be able to convince them of that. We really believe that. We really believe that. We really believe that he is a magnet for drawing people to ISIS and to al-Nusra.” He was saying that Assad had caused ISIS, which was trying to overthrow and replace him.

On 9 October 2015, investigative journalist Tony Cartalucci bannered “The Mystery of ISIS’ Toyota Army Solved” and he documented that ISIS had gotten its Toyota pickup trucks from the US-backed Free Syrian Army, whom Obama called moderate rebels. Whether the FSA had ever had those trucks wasn’t known.

Then, on 14 October 2015, the Financial Times bannered ”Isis Inc: how oil fuels the jihadi terrorists” and reported that,

Oil is the black gold that funds Isis’ black flag — it fuels its war machine, provides electricity and gives the fanatical jihadis critical leverage against their neighbours. … Selling crude is Isis’ biggest single source of revenue. … While al-Qaeda, the global terrorist network, depended on donations from wealthy foreign sponsors, Isis has derived its financial strength from its status as monopoly producer of an essential commodity consumed in vast quantities throughout the area it controls.”

Then, on 16 November 2015, the New York Times bannered “US Warplanes Strike ISIS Oil Trucks in Syria” and reported that:

United States warplanes for the first time attacked hundreds of trucks on Monday that the extremist group [ISIS] has been using to smuggle the crude oil it has been producing in Syria, American officials said. … Until Monday, the United States refrained from striking the fleet used to transport oil, believed to include more than 1,000 tanker trucks.”

Two days later, on November 18th, the Pentagon said at a press conference, that “This is our first strike against tanker trucks” of ISIS.

Moreover, on November 24th, Zero Hedge bannered “’Get Out Of Your Trucks And Run Away’: US Gives ISIS 45 Minute Warning On Oil Tanker Strikes” and reported that the US Government were doing this oil-tanker-truck bombing only for show, because Russia had actually started the serious effort to conquer ISIS in Syria, and so the US needed to do something, for PR purposes.

Yet, further evidence also exists that the US Government supported ISIS against Syria’s Government:

On 24 March 2013, the New York Times bannered “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From CIA”, and reported that “From offices at secret locations, American intelligence officers have helped the Arab governments shop for weapons,” and that “‘A conservative estimate of the payload of these flights would be 3,500 tons of military equipment,’ said Hugh Griffiths, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, who monitors illicit arms transfers.”

The US Government tried to hide its involvement in this, by doing it through allied “Arab governments,” which were named in this news-report: “Qatar and Saudi Arabia had been shipping military materials via Turkey,” and all four of these Governments (US, Sauds, Turkey, and Qatar) were trying to overthrow Syria’s Government. Then, on 8 September 2014, AFP headlined “Islamic State fighters using US arms: study”, and they reported that the US Government was supplying ISIS. On 1 September 2017, Russian Television reported that the US Government was secretly supplying weapons to ISIS and that an anti-Assad fighter had even quit the CIA-backed New Syrian Army because of that.

US President Barack Obama started the US policy to arm ISIS, and it was continued under the current US President.

There is considerable other evidence that the US Government has invaded, and been occupying, parts of Syria, solely in order to replace Syria’s Government by one that would be controlled by the Saud family, who own Saudi Arabia.

It is definitely a lie for Trump to say: “We have defeated ISIS in Syria.”

A big turn in these events had been the failed 15 July 2015 coup-attempt, to overthrow Turkey’s Government, and which Turkey’s President, Tayyip Erdogan, says was engineered by the Gulen organization headquartered in the US, which is connected to and protected by the CIA. After July 15th, Turkey increasingly has allied with Russia’s Government, against America’s Government.

Later on December 19th, Reuters headlined “US State Department personnel being evacuated from Syria — US official” and reported that, “All US State Department personnel are being evacuated from Syria within 24 hours, a US official told Reuters.”

The present withdrawal of the US Government from Syria is actually due to the success of Vladimir Putin’s and Tayyip Erdogan’s plan (which I described on 10 September 2018, and which they jointly announced a week later, on September 17th) for Turkey to handle the military task of conquering the jihadists in Syria’s Idlib province and of Turkey’s forces then moving eastward from Idlib to compel the US Government to end its occupation of northeastern Syria — that nation’s crucial oil-producing region. If Russia’s troops, instead of Turkey’s, were to do that task, killing US troops, it would risk bringing on a US-Russia war, but, since Turkey is still in NATO, that danger doesn’t exist when Turkish troops and armor (backed by Russian air-power) do that highly sensitive job. Turkey’s forces would likely have needed to kill at least some US troops if Trump didn’t take this decision now to evacuate them; so, he did what he had to do, in order to avoid an extremely embarrassing US military defeat.

Instead of “We have defeated ISIS in Syria,” the truth, from the US Government, would be “We have been defeated in Syria,” or (more precisely) “We have surrendered in Syria.”

However, Putin (and Erdogan, and maybe even Assad) will not be crowing about their victory. (Erdogan, however, already is.) In any case, Syria’s Government has successfully resisted the US Government’s effort, since 2009, to replace Syria’s Government by one that would be controlled by the Sauds. When Russia entered that war on 30 September 2015, at the invitation of Syria’s Government, in order to kill ISIS and all of the other jihadist forces in Syria (including al-Nusra and America’s other proxy-forces who were America’s boots-on-the-ground fighters killing and dying there), Obama’s dream, of handing Syria as a vassal-state to the Sauds, was doomed to failure. Trump’s effort to win what Obama could not, has now likewise finally failed.

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/12/20/we-have-defeated-isis-in-syria-is-tr...

Read from top...

Thank you Mr Trump and pox on all the Western media that still want war in Syria... 

Read from top. And let's not forget that the USA "protected" by special evacuation the military brass of ISIS. This was an Obama cock-up from start to finish and Trump would have had to see that. Hillary would have bombed Damascus, Iran and Crimea by now, just to show she had more balls and a bigger dick than Trump.

Read also:

Of course, we have to be cautious. Trump’s announcement of a troop withdrawal from Syria, for now at least, is just words. We need to see evidence of soldiers leaving before we start to celebrate. We need to read the small print with a large Sherlock Holmes-style magnifying glass.

Even so, it’s a positive development as it marks a further winding down of the conflict. Some though don’t see it that way.

We knew neocons would be upset by the news. They want the US to be in Syria forever. We knew Britain and France – who have invested so much in trying to bring down the Assad government – wouldn’t be happy either. But it’s the reaction of Hollywood liberals which is the interesting thing.

I’m old enough to remember when liberals hummed Pete Seeger songs and marched against wars and illegal occupations of global south countries. When they denounced imperialism and the racist attitudes which underpinned it.

Today, they seem to support imperialism, war and military occupations.

They’ve gone from being anti-war to anti anti-war. The bogus doctrine of ‘humanitarian interventionism’, promoted by warmongers to sell old fashioned wars of plunder, and rampant Russophobia, which blames the ‘Evil Putin’ for just about everything, have clearly addled quite a few brains.  

Mia Farrow is worried that a US exit from Syria “benefits Russia, ISIS-still active, Iran and Assad’ and is also concerned that the Donald did not “consult the Pentagon.”

Would she have had such complaints if the US president had ordered an immediate withdrawal from Vietnam in 1968?

For good measure Mia also retweets hard-right neocon South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham who calls withdrawal of US troops from Syria, a “huge Obama-like mistake” and a “stain on the honour of the United States”. I can think of quite a few things in recent years which have been a ‘stain on the honour of the United States’: removing troops from Syria is not one of them.

Jay Gatsby may have been ‘great’, Mia, Lindsey Graham most certainly isn’t.

Bette Midler meanwhile says that Trump is pleasing “TWO dictators with one move” in bringing home US soldiers and is ‘abandoning’ Syria to the Russians.

Talk about the wind beneath one’s wings.

These Hollywood ‘progressives’ are the first to denounce Trump‘s ‘racism‘ when it comes to his hardline policies on immigration and refugees. They love to virtue signal on that. But at the same time they seem to think the US has a divine right to occupy Syria!    

As Caitlin Johnstone has pointed out, all the objections to a US withdrawal from Syria are based on the premise that Syria is America’s property. Just how supremacist/exceptionalist is that?

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/447067-hollywood-syria-liberals-withdrawal/

Read from top.

The US Air Force is condemned to defeat if it confronts the Syrian Arab Army, which now has in its possession Russian anti-air materials, the best in the world. The US’s only viable option is to leave, sparing itself any humiliation. 
History is repeating itself. Once before, in Iraq, the United States had used Kurdish combattants, promising them a State before letting them be massacred by Saddam Hussein. Today the US lets other Kurds to whom it has also promised a State, face up to Turkey alone. _ In a few months the war will be over. After eight years of fighting and tens of thousands of Islamist mercenaries being sacrificed, Nato’s dream of destroying Syria’s state structures will have failed.

A week ago, two S-300 rocket missiles were deployed in Deir Ez-zor, in East Syria. Immediately after, the intensity of the US-led coalition flights decreased by 80% in North East Syria. Since 18 September 2018, the Israeli Air Force has not carried out any more raids in Syria’s airspace.

A delegation from the Israeli army, led by General Major Aharon Haliva (Head of Operations), went to Moscow for talks with Major General Vasily Trushin (Joint Chief of Operations of the Russian Army). Relations between the two armies have deteriorated after the destruction of the Russian airplane IL-20 during the attack on Syrian targets near the Russian air base of Hmeymim by the Israeli F-16.

The Israeli delegation went to Moscow because it had not succeeded in finding the gaps in the no fly zone, imposed by the new system of Syrian Defense delivered by Russia. The Israelis thought they could coax the Russians to obtain the security codes for Syrian missiles. Russia, quite clearly, refused to give these codes to them.

What are the elements of the automatized management of the Syrian air space that prevent the Israelis and Americans from acting? Syria has received 6 to 8 S-300/PMU2 missiles, with an action range of 250 km. The missiles guarantee the security of planes and Syrian military land targets. However, they are not the most important element.

Management is assured by the automatized management system, Polyana D4M1. The role of the automatized management system is a necessary interface for the Syrian air units and anti-Air Defense apparatus to work at the same time. Polyana D4M1 can cover an area of 800 km2, following 500 air targets and ballistic missiles and establishing 250 of them. It is thanks to the Polyana D4M1 that command centres of the army of the Syrian Air Force also receive external information from the Russian airplane A-50U (AWACS) and Russian satellites of surveillance.

The memory of the Polyana D4M1 computer servers stock the radar imprint of all the air targets including the cruise missiles and the allegedly “invisible” F-35 plane.

When an air target is detected by a radar in Syria, the automatized system Polyana D4M1 posts information for all the detection radars and systems for guiding planes and Syrian and Russian anti-air artillery. Once identified, the air targets are automatically assigned to be struck down. This automatized system ensures that the oldest Syrian missiles of the Soviet era (S-200, S-75, S-125, etc.) become almost as precise as the S-300 missile.

The Polyana D4M1 network also includes the following: 
• the Krasukha-4 for jamming the radars on the ground 
• AWACS aircrafts 
• reconnaissance planes with or without pilots.

The network also uses the Zhitel R-330ZH systems for interfering with NAVSTAR (GPS), the apparatus of navigation. This equips the means of attack (planes, helicopters, cruise missiles, guided bombs, etc.).

What is the consequence of Russia implementing the automatized management of the Syrian air space?

The US military air bases in Syria consist essentially of troops for special operations. By this we mean a light infantry, without any armour or support. They could not therefore ward off any land attack carried out by the Syrian army supported by the Air Force. Having understood that the US Air Force will not be able to pass the Syrian anti-air barrage without unacceptable losses, any US intervention becomes inappropriate. This is why the US has just announced that it will start to withdraw 2,000 soldiers from Syria [1]. At the same time, Turkey, supported by Russia, is getting ready to launch a new offensive against the YPG in Northern Syria. These new circumstances ensure the Syrian Army will fight on the side of Turkey. The YPG, trained and supported by the United States, is quickly losing all the territories that it had taken from the Islamic State which itself had taken from Syria.

Translation 
Anoosha Boralessa

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article204433.html

News about US Defence Secretary James Mattis’s resignation broke only a day after President Donald Trump announced the decision to withdraw all 2,000 troops from Syria, having declared victory over Daesh. Is this a coincidence?

In an extensive resignation letter, Pentagon chief Jim Mattis wrote that Donald Trump had the right to have a Defence Secretary “whose views are better aligned with yours”, thus leaving many puzzled over the reason behind his sudden decision to leave the White House.

READ MORE: Pentagon Chief Mattis to Leave White House in February

While he never mentioned directly that his departure was linked to Trump’s decision to pull US forces out of Syria, many started speculating that 45’s announcement was the last straw.

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201812211070903432-mattis-resignation-reason/

It is quite possible that the USA has more than 2,000 troops in Syria and this withdrawal is a smoke screen. But Valentin Vasilescu (read above comment) hit the nail on the head. Either way the US are going to"loose". The remnants of Daesh will be easier to eliminate without the US presence. Trump is doing the only decent thing and all the monkeys in the USA loose their trousers.

Read from top.

Read also:

Neither the mainstream left or the interventionist right is willing to admit that Trump is capable of cogent policy. Sometimes they’re right – on Syria, they’re wrong!

"Impulsive, irresponsible, and dangerous." Such was the way, just this morning on CNN, that Democratic Representative, and House Minority Whip, Steny Hoyer described President Trump’s recent announcement that he’s bringing home the 2,000 U.S. troops currently in Syria. Last night, Republican Senator Lindsay Graham – a true hawk’s hawk – declared on the Senate floor that Trump’s decision is a "disaster," and a "stain on the honor of the United States." Two points here, one minor, one major – let’s begin with a semantic quibble: when maintaining national "honor" becomes a last ditch argument for continuing indecisive, perpetual war, perhaps it really is time to leave. And, more importantly, there’s this: anytime that Steny Hoyer and Lindsay Graham are in agreement and share a disdain for a foreign policy decision – even a Trump decision – well, then, the president might just be on to something.

My point is this: the bipartisan interventionist/militarist consensus of centrist Dems and hawkish Republicans has brought only disaster, death, humanitarian crisis, exploding debt and endless war for nearly two decades. For ample evidence see Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, etc. So, why are we still listening to these folks? Well, partly because the United States is an increasingly militarized (ostensible) republic in which a world-leading domestic arms industry all but owns Congress and the corporate media. Then there’s the matter of Trump – a man that the bipartisan Washington establishment simply loathes. Indeed, The Donald can do no right as far as these folks are concerned. Now, few authors – especially serving on active-duty in the military – have been as (constructively) critical of this president as I have, but occasionally the man demonstrates good sense, especially in foreign affairs. Fairness demands that we recognize this, whatever we think of the president’s general personality.

Let us return, then, to Syria, and take Representative Hoyer’s assessment apart one piece at a time. In point of fact there was nothing particularly "impulsive" about President Trump’s announcement. More than six months ago, in May, he announced that the US military would be withdrawing from Syria "like, very soon." In fact, arguably the only reason American troops have remained in the country as long as they have can be attributed to poor advice from the last "adult-in-the-room," Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Candidate Trump ran on a largely anti-interventionist platform, and – during the Obama presidency – regularly tweeted that the US should "stay out" of Syria. So there’s nothing exceptionally impulsive or surprising about Trump’s latest decision on troop withdrawal.

Read more:

https://original.antiwar.com/Danny_Sjursen/2018/12/20/giving-credit-wher...

He’s a wily one, that Vladimir Putin. Consider all that he’s managed to accomplish over the last 24 hours, according to the geopolitical wizards on Twitter. At Putin’s behest, President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced a withdrawal of American troops from Syria. That’s now cleared the path for Russia to exert control over Damascus, the Middle East, indeed the world itself, because Moscow has at last secured the jewel in its neo-Soviet empire… a strip of chaotic desert in northeastern Syria.

If that’s actually Putin’s thinking, then he’s not playing checkers or chess so much as 13 Dead End Drive right before the chandelier falls on his head. Yet that was the gist of the analysis from America’s smart set yesterday. Think tank functionaries and journalists and right-wing radio hosts were all united in furious opposition to Trump’s Russia-influenced absconding from Syria. Somehow they’ve yet to muster similar unanimous outrage over our massive national debt or our loneliness-cum-opioid crisis, but I’m sure that’s just a matter of time. Until then, the Syria page of Washington’s mad-lib book yields all the usual buzzwords: “adversaries,” “strength,” “surrender.”

So far as Putin goes, he isn’t trying to flip Syria behind some newly hung Iron Curtain. His aim is a return to the pre-civil war status quo: a friendly Assad regime, a safe Russian naval base in Tartus, and an end to jihadist-fueled instability across Syria. That latter one is especially important to understanding the Russian psyche. Putin fears nothing more than a weak state besieged by armed rogues, a result of his formative experiences in chaotic Dresden after the Berlin Wall came down and later amid uprisings in Chechnya. Hence the desire to protect Assad, who will keep the mob from the Tartus door. The real disruptive change, then, won’t come if Putin “wins”; it will come if the United States were to somehow realize its original delusion of overthrowing Assad, which would (further) tear open a power vacuum that would be filled at least in part by jihadists.

And what about if the United States withdraws? Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is likely to attack the Kurds, which he sees as a threat to his homeland. (Though even there, the crystal ball is murky. As Joshua Landis pointed out on Twitter yesterday, the Kurds helped fight off Arab rebel militias, and Assad may decide he needs them as allies in post-war Syria.) Some combination of Assadists and Russians will then move in against the straggling rebel and ISIS remnants, the latter of which are still committing horrific atrocities but largely defeated and shut out of major population centers. Syria after that will be changed, tense, bloodstained, aggrieved. But it will be more stable, at least, than it was during the war, perhaps enabling the trickle of refugees returning home to become a gush. And even if that scenario proves too rosy, even if Turkey and Syria somehow end up skirmishing, what is America supposed to do? What justifies the expenditure of another dollar or soldier in a conflict as intractable as that? What net good do we accomplish by planting ourselves in front of a powerful NATO nation on the other side of the globe?

We’ve heard a lot this week about the capital we’re sacrificing by pulling out of Syria: in power, in allies, in something called “credibility” that hawks seem to think functions like Monopoly money. But what about those two resources I just mentioned: dollars and lives? Why do those get so little attention? The United States since 2001 has spent nearly $6 trillion on wars in the Middle East, according to Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs. In Syria, that money has often gone towards gilded banana peels that we then promptly trip over, including two plans to arm rebels that ended up feeding weapons to jihadists and a $500 million program to train fighters that produced about five graduates before being shut down. Meanwhile, America’s infrastructure crumbles. Why shifting money into domestic needs at times such as this is considered “populist” rather than just commonsense, I will never understand.

Then there’s the toll in blood. American soldiers have been killed in Syria, have been put in harm’s way, all for a mission that is both unclear and undeclared. So stark is the contrast between the vague purpose of our wars and their real human losses that it’s become a paramount political issue. Don’t forget what J.D. Vance said to our own Rod Dreher back in 2016 about why working-class voters were swooning for Trump: “Unsurprisingly, southern, rural whites enlist in the military at a disproportionate rate. Can you imagine the humiliation these people feel at the successive failures of Bush/Obama foreign policy?” We can’t be sure how great a role our failed wars played in Trump’s election but they were certainly a factor. I’ll never call it “war weariness,” which has always seemed to me to contain a grain of condescension: just take a nap, dear, and you’ll be ready to nation-build again. But certainly we are fed up with a foreign policy elite that never accomplishes its missions yet whose appetite for military action seems only to grow.

That’s why the silliest thing anyone has written about Syria this week came on Wednesday in a Commentary column by Noah Rothman. Condemning Trump’s troop pullout, Rothman pronounced, “Political commentators and anti-interventionist ideologues will note that withdrawing America’s modest footprint from Syria is popular with the public. But what would you expect? Precisely no one in the political class is making a case for sustained and substantial American intervention in this conflict zone.” Ummm. Maybe I’m just high on the sweet, sweet appeasement, but I don’t think that’s the problem. Lindsey Graham and Jeb Bush argued for intervention in Syria during the Republican presidential primaries; they were crushed. Hillary Clinton went hawkish on Assad; she lost. Their vanquisher, Donald Trump, promised instead to smash ISIS and then get out. You don’t have to like Trump (I don’t) to understand the frantic signal flare that his voters were trying to send up.

Yet on and on the elite freak-out goes, deaf to any message that contradicts its line. “Why didn’t Trump listen to the generals?!” they wail. Because we have a civilian executive, for one, not a military junta. But let’s re-ask that same question, only slightly expanded: “Why doesn’t Trump listen to the military men and women who have fought the wars of the past 17 years?” Were he to, he would find disdain for overseas nation building—55 percent of active duty troops oppose more of it, according to a Military Times poll from 2016. He would hear stories of disillusionment and confusion. He would read laments like that of Dan Grazier, who served in both Fallujah and Afghanistan: “Looking back after more than a decade, it is hard to convince even myself that my platoon helped achieve any lasting contribution in a strategic sense.”

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/washington-melts-down-o...

Read from top.

See also:

really?... 

and by the way... 

The spokespersons for the White House and the Pentagon, Sarah Sanders and Dana White respectively, have confirmed that President Donald Trump had a conversation with his Turkish Partner Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, after which he gave the orders for US personnel to evacuate Syria.

The Department of State personnel will leave this country in less than 24 hours. The personnel of the Department of Defense - around 4000 men of which only 2000 are present in an official capacity – will evacuate in under 100 days. The US military forces have been illegally occupying Syria for four years. The Syrian government has asked several times for their withdraw, a response to which no response was received.

The new US Ambassador for Syria had indicated that his country’s troops would be maintained for so long as: 
(1) Daesh continued to exist 
(2) Iranian troops were present in Syria 
(3) There was no political solution to the Syrian Crisis.

However now: 
(1) The Pentagon has implemented a battle against Daesh, presenting it as decisive; 
(2) There are no Iranian soldiers in Syria, only military advisers; 
(3) Henceforth, the White House would be ready to recognize the legitimacy of the Syrian Government.

Prior to the announcement of the US withdrawal, the Turkish President announced launching a military operation in the near future against the pro US pro Independence Kurds that are stationed in North East Syria.

Translation 
Anoosha Boralessa

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article204445.html

Read from top.

THE RESIGNATION of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis propelled a bipartisan wave of anxiety across Washington and many other world capitals, and for good reason. Mr. Mattis was a rock of stability in an otherwise chaotic administration, and his anounced departure followed a pair of precipitous and reckless decisions by President Trump: the removal all U.S. forces from Syria and a 50 percent force reduction in Afghanistan. Combined with his wild swings between accepting a budget compromise and forcing a partial government shutdown on the weekend before Christmas, Mr. Trump appears unhinged and heedless of the damage he might do to vital national interests.

In his resignation letter, Mr. Mattis soberly laid out some of the stakes. He stressed the importance of “our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships” and of “treating allies with respect.” The contrast with Mr. Trump’s tweets claiming that the United States gains “NOTHING” by “protecting others who . . . do not appreciate what we are doing” was stark.

Mr. Mattis rightly said the United States must be “clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors,” including China and Russia, which, he said, “want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model.” That was a response to the president’s unfounded dismissal of the continuing threat posed by the Islamic State and his persistant toadying to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin — who, for his part, was quick to praise the Syria pullout.

Mr. Trump claims he was acting on a campaign promise by ordering troops home from the Middle East, but that ignores the reality that for two years he pursued a very different policy at the unanimous urging of his national security team. His abrupt shift came without any process of internal deliberation, or consultation with allies, or, it would seem, serious consideration of the potential consequences. These could be far-reaching: the revival of the Islamic State; the rise of Iran and Russia as masters of the Middle East; a serious deterioration of Israel’s security; and the collapse of an Afghan government that the United States has spent 17 years fostering and defending.

It’s understandable that, having tried and failed to dissuade the president acting on his destructive impulses, Mr. Mattis would separate himself from the administration. But his advice to Mr. Trump to find a defense secretary “whose views are better aligned with yours,” may be hard to follow. At least two of the candidates who have been talked about as possible successors to Mr. Mattis, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and retired Gen. Jack Keane, condemned the Syria withdrawal. Anyone qualified to lead the Pentagon would find it hard to support a decision to abandon military missions and betray U.S. allies with so little consideration.

A bipartisan chorus of senators joined Mr. Cotton in calling the Syria withdrawal “a costly mistake,” and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pronounced himself “distressed” at Mr. Mattis’s departure. He urged Mr. Trump to find a new secretary who shared the veteran general’s principles. Perhaps the Republican Senate caucus can use its advise and consent powers to push the president back toward responsible national security policies. Failing that, the United States could be headed toward a series of foreign disasters.

Read more:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/with-mattis-leav...

Read from top.

Strangely or not, Trump has done the right thing...

In a stark warning, Jordan’s King Abdullah told French reporters that Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) is regrouping and is on the rise in the Middle East. The reason for this resurgence is simple: the manifestation of the political division that exists in Syria and Iraq brought on by the US-led effort to push back on Iranian influence in the region. This division has led to the collapse of the US military position in northeastern Syria brought on by last year’s military incursion by Turkey, and the recent cessation of US-led anti-IS operations in Iraq in the aftermath of the fallout from the US assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian military commander who orchestrated Iran’s anti-IS efforts in Iraq and Syria.  

This is a far cry from February 2019, when President Trump announced that the US had defeated “100 percent” of the physical territory once held by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. 

While that announcement proved to be premature (IS pockets held out for months longer), the gist of Trump’s braggadocio was true — the physical “Caliphate” that had once existed under IS was gone. What remained — so-called “sleeper cells” of insurgents embedded within the disaffected Sunni populations of Syria and Iraq—were slowly being rooted out by the combination of a US-led anti-IS coalition, and a combined Russian-Syrian-Iranian force operating separate from the US effort.

Now, King Abdullah rightly fears the collapse of US influence in both Syria and Iraq. “My major concern,” the King noted in his interview, “is we have seen over the past year the re-establishment and rise of ISIS, not only in southern and eastern Syria, but also in western Iraq. So if there is a split in Iraqi society as there is today, we have to deal with the re-emergence of ISIS.”

King Abdullah has every reason to be personally worried about an Islamic State resurgence. 

When the Islamic Caliphate first emerged as a viable geographical entity in 2014, its leaders swore to take over Jordan and slaughter the King and his family. Middle East experts assessed Jordan, with a sizable population of economically and politically disenfranchised persons for whom an Islamic Caliphate might appeal, as being readily susceptible for recruitment by IS. While the Caliphate has been defeated, the ideology which underpinned it has not, and the threat to Jordan remains.

Jordan had served as a bulwark against the rising tide of IS, contributing considerable military and economic resources to a multi-national coalition, led by the US, whose ostensible mission was to defeat the Caliphate, but whose purpose appeared more geared toward overthrowing the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. As such, the anti-IS campaign often had the unintended consequence of bolstering IS by weakening the Syrian government. IS was eventually defeated, and this defeat brought with it a recognition of the conditions that led to the rise of it, namely a major societal split in nations like Iraq and Syria where the ideology underpinning IS had taken root. 

Unspoken by the King was the reality that in each of the countries where the ideology of IS took hold, the common cause for the societal divisions that serve as a womb for Islamic extremism wasn’t internal dysfunction so much as the chaos and anarchy that followed in the wake of external interventions such as the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, the US-led NATO intervention in Libya in 2011, or the US-led effort to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad from 2011 until today. 

In each of these incidents, US intervention resulted in a loss of central authority over large swaths of territory and served as a catalyst for the creation of radicalized resistance groups operating outside the traditional societal bonds that had governed prior to being disrupted and/or destroyed by the US occupier. IS thrived in the vacuum created by these foreign interventions, providing both the justification and opportunity for a generation of angry young men (and women) to embrace the opiate of an Islamic Caliphate.

While President Trump could brag that the US-led anti-IS coalition had destroyed 100 percent of the physical Caliphate, the reality was — and is — far different. The notion of Islamic State is, first and foremost, more about the hearts and minds of populations so inclined to embrace it; the physical Caliphate only emerges when a critical mass of believers coalesces together in a geographic region capable of sustaining it. 

As King Abdullah fears, the consequences derived from the US collapse in both Syria and Iraq are potentially catastrophic. In the aftermath of the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, Iraqi society is fracturing along ideological lines that threaten to mirror the conditions that led to the creation of IS in the first place. The political vacuum that is being created by this rift is an ideal incubator for the kind of extremism upon which IS thrives.

What would a resurgent IS look like? Void of a catastrophic collapse in centralized governance in the levant, the prospects of IS reconstituting the physical Caliphate are virtually nil. The new IS will operate from the shadows, thriving in the nooks and crannies of societal neglect where suicidal religious extremism can take hold and prosper, both in the Middle East and without. IS is a virus of the mind and soul, the spread of which is virtually impossible to prevent so long as there is a host willing to embrace its message. As such, the orgy of violence that is the hallmark of its proponents will not be limited to the Middle East, but rather expand to Europe, Asia, Africa and beyond. Defeating an idea is a multi-generational problem, which means IS and its attendant death and destruction will be around for some time to come.  

King Abdullah rightly points out the threat posed by a resurgent IS. However, the party most capable of preventing this resurrection is also the party most responsible for the conditions that facilitate this rebirth — the US. So long as the US pursues policies that generate conflict in the Middle East, IS will never truly be defeated. 

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/478227-trump-islamic-state-america/

Read from top.

Meanwhile:

The social media behemoth didn’t just remove independent journalist Dan Cohen’s ‘In the Now’ segment, “How ‘good guy’ Soleimani became US media’s ‘bad guy,” from the show’s page on Tuesday – it demonetized In the Now entirely, citing the typical unspecified violations of “community standards.” The move comes amid an alarming escalation in the platform’s crackdown on political speech that runs contrary to US foreign policy, a wave of censorship that has not been limited to Facebook.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/478382-cohen-soleimani-video-censored-facebook/