Pax Syriana: Neither Vanquished, Nor All-Conquering

Submitted by Kamal Alam, military analyst and Fellow for Syrian Affairs at The Institute for Statecraft, and updated exclusively for Zero Hedge

Former British spy and diplomat Alastaire Crooke, writing in Consortium News over the weekend, correctly outlines a new Middle East trajectory based on Syria having weathered the storm of a six year long proxy war while remaining largely in-tact: "Plainly, Syria’s success – notwithstanding the caution of President Bashar al-Assad in saying that signs of success are not success itself – in resisting, against the odds, all attempts to fell the state suggest that a tipping point in the geopolitics of the region has occurred." At the same time, Foreign Policy predicts in its latest Syria analysis, headlined Israel Is Going to War in Syria to Fight Iran, that Israel will continue ramping up hostile actions against Syria as "Israeli officials aren"t shying from confronting Tehran"s forces - since no one else will."

Such desperation has increased due to the entirely new geopolitical order which has emerged as a result the Syrian state"s perseverance and which runs directly counter to Israeli plans in the region. As Crooke explains further, "But, aside from the geopolitics, the Syria outcome has created a physical connectivity and contiguity that has not existed for some years: the border between Iraq and Iran is open; the border between Syria and Iraq is opening; and the border between Lebanon and Syria, too, is open. This constitutes a critical mass both of land, resources and population of real weight." Crooke also assesses that Western officials have been "wrong on almost everything pertaining to Syria." Failed predictions, miscalculations, and an underestimation of the Syrian state"s resolve has defined much of both Israel"s and West"s approach to Syria throughout the war.

This is perhaps because missing in nearly all commentary from professional analysts and the so-called "experts" over the past years has been a thorough and systematic attempt to understand the nature of the Syrian Army and its relationship to the state, as well as the pre-2011 experience which forged the army over a period of decades facing insurgencies inside and outside of Syria (especially in Lebanon).

The Syrian Army has fought on now for more than six years without disintegrating as had been predicted by many commentators. Indeed it is the Army of the Syrian Arab Republic (al-Jaysh al-Arabi as-Suri) which has kept the state intact. The Syrian state institutions of which the Army is the foremost guarantor have held firm in the onslaught of all the non-state actors as well as regional neighbors. But how is it that the Syrian Arab Army has held together?

Contrary to what most observers say, the overwhelming factor in this has not been because this was an Alawite army. Had this been the case, it would not have been able to hang on for so long. The most prominent Chiefs of Staff and General Staff officers have been a combination of Sunni, Christian and Alawite. Nor was the army constructed along sectarian or ethnic lines. To take its three major contemporary personalities—Mustafa Tlass, Fahd Jassem Frejj and the late Daoud Rajiha—they are respectively Sunni and Greek Orthodox. The elder Tlass is now retired, but he was the man who shaped the Syrian armed forces with Hafez al Assad in the 1970s.

History, ethnicity and structure of the Syrian Army

However to understand how the Syria Army became what it is today one has to delve into the history of the Syrian state since independence and how the military shaped the state. Since March 1949, Syria has experienced sixteen army coups - nine of which were successful in overthrowing the incumbent rulers. The army had never really gone back to barracks before the arrival of Hafez al Assad.

After independence from the French, Syria had eight years of parliamentary rule (1945-1949) and (1954-1958).  After March 1963 members of the armed forces who were sympathetic to the Arab Socialist Party acted to bring in their version of parliamentary rule, backed by a strong military presence. This Army-Baath faction that has ruled Syria now for the last four decades was not an all-out dictatorship. Far from it: it has been a combination of a balance between rural and urban Syria, mercantile and tribal Syria, and the political families that have urged the army to intervene one way or another from Syria’s inception, whether these families were leftists, Nasserites, pan-Arabists or business-focused. These divergent business interests and feudal family politics converged on the armed forces, with the aim of ensuring that a strong stable Syria had some leverage over Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan.

While the French had only encouraged non-Arabs and non-Muslims to join the army in mandate-Syria, with the departure of the French came a change of policy. The Homs and Hama military academies took Sunnis of all backgrounds and it was Sunnis that made up the majority of the army elite in the 1970s and 1980s, and into today. According to the late scholar and historian of modern Syria Patrick Seale, the Syrian Army under Adib Shishakli, became an "unashamedly political instrument". However, it had done away with its mostly French policies of sectarian divisions within the army. Under Hafez this policy continued and a mixture of all classes and sects continued to join the army. Hafez did however begin the process of depoliticizing the Syrian army.

Bridging the gap

The Syrian Army has consistently bridged the gap and eased the friction between the rural and urban centers of Syria and the rich and the poor. It is first necessary to take a closer look at some of the ethnicity and religious affiliations of key figures that have shaped the Syrian Army in the run up to the takeover by Hafez al Assad. Colonel Haydar al Kuzbari was a Sunni who played a key role in ending the union between Egypt and Syria. General Abdel Karim Zahareddine was a Druze Chief of Staff of the military and took over after affairs settled once Syria had firmly established itself, out from under Egypt’s grasp. Ziad al Harriri was a Sunni head of the army and defense minister in 1963. Amin al Hafez was another Sunni head of army and presided when the Baathists crushed a Sunni uprising in Hama in 1964 through aerial bombing, including mosques.

Here, it should be noted, almost twenty years before Hafez al Assad’s raid on Hama (1982), is a Sunni head of army and state crushing an Islamist uprising. Furthermore in 1952 a prior Hama rebellion was crushed by Sunni officers under a Sunni from Hama, Adib Shishakli. Mustafa Tlass also testified to the non-sectarian nature of the crushing of three Hama rebellions by the Syrian Army spread over three decades. Abdel Karim al Nahlwai, who was also an officer in the army and instrumental in its decision to draw Syria out of Egypt’s clutches, was also a Sunni.

The Baathists took on the mantle of educating the army officers throughout the 1970s. The Syrian military ruled through a praetorian-patrimonial model rather than as an outright parliamentary executive power. The army had to adapt itself from not just being a military force to becoming the political guardian of the country. Assad turned the army into a unified force and set about professionalizing it. Ironically, it was also him who oversaw the chaos of Lebanon which was completely riven along sectarian fault lines. There were as many inter-Alawi intrigues as non-Alawi. The Syrian army lost political power during the regime of President Hafiz al-Assad, as he himself was a former officer and knew how to control the armed forces. 

Syria´s president Hafez al-Asad and Defense Minister Mustapha Tlass, during the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, at the Golan front. Wikimedia/The Online Museum of Syrian History. 

In his book, The Policy of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa, Manfred Halpern presented the officers" corps as representing the new salaried middle class that emerged in the Arab world as the result of the modernization process. This class also includes teachers, administrators in the civil service and government apparatus, technicians, high school and university professors, journalists, lawyers and others. This explanation helps, at least in part, in understanding the Baath Revolution.

The Baath Party has continued to provide all the forces which play a role in Syrian politics with a common ideological and organizational base: the bureaucrats of the party, government and civil service, as well as senior army officers. It has branches in the army units and security forces, which send representatives to the senior Party institutions. Senior army officers are members of such institutions as the Central Committee al Lajna al-Markaziyya) and Regional Command (al-Qiyada al-Qutriyya), alongside party bureaucrats.

To further demonstrate the non-sectarian nature of the Syrian military high command, it is worth looking at a pivotal moment which defines the Syrian military to this day in the midst of the civil war in 2014. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s there was tremendous external pressure on Syria, none more so than from Iraq, Israel and Egypt. All three threats were different: Egypt wanted to subdue Syria through the guise of the Arab Union Republic. Iraq and its Ba’th wing were supporting several different factions within Syria. Israel was and still remains in a state of war with Syria. Amidst all this there were the coups and counter coups within the military and government. Hafez al Assad and Mustafa Tlass decided that given the external threats, the army above all must have a nationalist agenda and an institution devoid of politics. It was this ideological agreement between Tlass and Assad that led to the complete purging of politics from the military and a separation of powers not seen before in Syria.

Hafez al Assad also brought senior members of the Syrian Air Force into the military high command. Naji Jamil (Sunni) served as Air Force commander from 1970 to 1978 and was promoted to General Staff committee overseeing defences on the Iraq border. Another Air Force commander was Muhammad al-Khuli who till 1993 held onto coveted logistic positions between Damascus and Lebanon. These commanders, at the peak of their careers at the time of Hafez al Assad’s death, included the Air Force Security Administration headed by Ibrahim Huwayji and non-airforce commanders Hasan Khalil, Ali Duba, Ali Mamlouk and Hikmat Shihabi. Other prominent officers above the rank of Brigadier in military and civil defence positions post-2000 were Sunnis, and include Rustum Ghazaleh, Hazem al Khadra and Deeb Zaytoun. Since 1973, the strategic tank battalions of the 70^th armoured brigade stationed near al-Kiswah near Damascus have had rank and file Alawis under the command of Sunni officers.

Mustafa Tlass and Gamal Abdel Nasser in Cairo

By the time Hafez al Assad passed on the army to his son Bashar, the Syrian Army had firmly erased its sectarian beginnings, which were very much a legacy of French colonial rule. The deft play between rural and urban, tribal and religious sects was evened out through an education system played along on party lines rather than those of religion. The stage had also been set for the removal of army officers from mainstream politics. Instead the family structure of Syria would be co-opted into the Party while the army would remain stable and neutral.

Few Arab countries have armies based on professionalism. Most are based on a tribal structure, given the importance of family lineage and religion. In Syria however the last forty years have shown that the Army is not a sectarian army. Most of the internal politics within the army has been rooted in power, promotion and performance on the field. Even during the most critical time of the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a good balance of Sunni and Alawi officers. Not all the Alawis supported Salah Jadid whilst prominent Sunni officers such as Lietuenal Colonel Ahmad Suwaydani from Houran supported Jadid. The most revealing test came when Hafez al Assad lay sick and his brother tried to make a move for power. Hafez categorically left day to day affairs in the hands of an all-Sunni cast, with Mustafa Tlass, Abdallah Al Ahmar, Hikmat Shihabi, Abd al Rauf al Kasm and Zuhayr Mashariqah. And prominent Alawis at the time, such as Ali Hayder, Ibrahim Safi and Ali Douba, decided not to take sides with Rifaat al Assad, despite his offers of shared power.

Syria"s counter-insurgency lessons

As we saw the Syrian Army battle its way to victory in key towns such as Qusayr and Yabroud in 2014, along with this year"s major strategic victories in Aleppo and the suburbs of Damascus, it is once again important to look at how and where the Syrian Army honed its fighting skills.

The Syrian Army along with its military and civilian intelligence have mastered the art of dividing its opponents (insurgents) unlike any other Army. Syria dominated Lebanon for decades not through brute force but cunning real politics and with an understanding of geography and history.  Take into account three important 2014 battles of Qusayr, Yabroud and Maloula. All three held their strategic and symbolic values. Two were the supply route towards Lebanon and the Mediterranean as well as being great vantage points, while the other was the most important Christian town for Arabs along with Bethlehem. In Maloula, the local residents joined in the fighting on the side of the Syrian Army against the rebels. This meant clearing the area of foreign insurgents.

This was a tactic straight out of the Syrian Army’s days of operating in Lebanon, where they cleared areas with the tacit approval of local people, whether they were Christian, Sunni or Shi’a. In Qusayr, despite the presence of Hezbollah, it was the Syrian Army that did the bulk of the fighting. Hezbollah were only there to protect the Shi’a villages on the Lebanese side, and then they crossed into Syria where there were Shi’a civilians. This again demonstrated how the Syrian Army units are always embedding locals into their operations. But the roots of these modern battles lay in the Syrian Army’s performance in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Lessons from Lebanon: fighting the Israelis

Israel’s main political objective for going into Lebanon was to crush the PLO. In that it succeeded, with overwhelming odds and with ease. However its second objective - to remove the Syrian military presence in the Bekaa Valley and reduce its influence in Lebanon - was its greatest and only failure since its inception in 1948.

The Israeli plan for Lebanon to combat Syria called for the seizing of Lebanese territory up to and including Beirut, which would be taken in a coordinated operation with the Phalange  forces; an advance beyond the Beirut-Damascus highway, which would cut off Beirut from the main Syrian forces;  and the expulsion of Syrian units from the Bekaa  valley. One would expect such a plan to entail deep penetrations, landings north of Beirut and the Beirut-Damascus  highway, and other tactical maneuvers of the type espoused in IDF doctrine.

The careful study of key strategic battles that then took place between the Israelis and the Syrians will help us understand the Syrian Army’s performance over the past years in the current war.

In 1982 the Syrian presence in Lebanon had diminished from three divisions in 1976 to one division and one mixed brigade which amounted to 30,000 men.  The 1st Armored Division in the Bekaa, commanded by Rifaat al Assad (the brother of Syrian President Hafez al Assad), was deployed in defensive positions in depth.  Both Syrian formations and doctrine followed the Soviet model, and defensive doctrine called for combined-arms operations, combat teams whose structure was fixed in advance, and a defence based on massive firepower.

To provide that firepower, the Syrians depended on air defense in depth from various SAM sites reinforced by anti-aircraft guns, and a ground defence characterized by a profusion of anti-tank weapons and units. The defense would depend on intensive fortifications and the exploitation of natural obstacles to a depth of 20-30 kilometers. The 85th Brigade was deployed in the Beirut area in the role of an armed presence, with the additional task of guaranteeing the security of the Beirut-Damascus highway.

In addition to the main armies of Syria and Israel, Lebanese militias would become involved in the fighting. The Israelis expected the Christian Lebanese Forces, some 10,000 strong, to fight as allies against the PLO. As war approached, the opponents consisted of some seven divisions and two independent brigades of the IDF, 60,000-78,000 strong, arrayed against 15,000 PLO fighters, one Syrian armoured division, and one Syrian brigade. The outcome of the main battle at the end of the war depended on how well the Syrians and Israelis would manage their allies in the form of irregular forces.

The main battles of 10 June, 1982 were fought in the Eastern Sector, between the IDF and the Syrian 1st Armoured Division. On the ground, Syrian resistance had been stiff. The Syrians defended a series of strong points along the winding roads. Each strong point conducted a separate, integrated defense with obstacles, mines, tanks, and commandos using Saggers and RPG"s; at times, such as in the defense of the crossroads near Lake Qaraoun, the defense was supported by artillery and by Gazelle helicopters using HOT missiles.

At dawn, Syrian commandos attacked. APC"s and tanks were hit and caught fire. Men were killed trying to rescue the wounded from burning vehicles. Finally, Brigadier Menachem Einan ordered a cessation of rescue attempts and the column retreated in reverse gear. Around 2300 hours,  this  force approached  Ein Zhalta, some eight kilometers from the Beirut-Damascus highway but more than twenty by road. Unknown to the Israelis, the area around Ein Zhalta was defended by a brigade-strength Syrian force consisting of a few dozen tanks and commando units. After passing through the villages, the Israelis started descending a steep slope with tanks in the lead when the Syrians opened fire with tanks from the opposite ridge and RPG’s and Saggers from the surrounding wadis.

The Israeli attacks on Syrian positions in the Bekaa brought Syrian reaction in the west. There, Syrian forces had remained in Beirut and out of the fighting, but now the 85th Brigade began to deploy tank and commando teams south and east of Beirut, around Khalde and the hills south of Beirut and along the Shemlan ridge area.

In June 1982 the Israeli Air Force had jammed and destroyed the Syrian radar and bombed the surface-to-air missiles (SAM) sites in the Bekaa Valley. However despite the overwhelming odds, the Syrian Army fought bravely. The Israeli charge from the south was checked with ferocity when the IDF came into contact with Syrian positions. The IDF reported heavy obstacles inch for inch. An IDF armored column was halted in a fierce tank battle in the village of Sultan Yacoub. This prevented the Israelis from taking the vitally strategic Beirut-Damascus highway that cut across the Bekaa Valley. The IDF were also halted towards the southern approach to Beirut at Khalde. The Syrian Army backed different groups to obstruct the Israeli advance east of Beirut. Al Saiqa fighters and other Shia-Sunni groups backed by regular units from the Syrian Army fought the IDF to a standstill in 1983. The Israelis retreated to the Litani River and from then on wanted to avoid the Syrians at all cost.

These battles have been forgotten in western military literature. But for Syrians today and their General Staff officers they formed the basis to prepare for the next war with Israel through the use of irregular forces. Hence the performance of the Syrians during the current war was a culmination of the study of 1980s battles which joined irregulars and the main Syrian Army. Syria never suffered from lack of courage or the will to fight on. Even though they knew they could not stand up to IAF in 1982 they flew near-suicide missions with great valor and skill.

The American appraisal of Syrian troops summarized that the Syrians had returned to Beirut after the withdrawal of the Israelis, but had been no more able to establish order there than were the Americans and Israelis before them. In fact, however, it may be that Syrian power in Lebanon will be the one thing which prevents any radical change to Lebanon"s form of government. For despite Syrian support for Iran in its conflict with Iraq, Syria had no interest in seeing a Shiite Islamic government in Lebanon but preferred to maintain some form of  the status quo. The Americans saw Syria as the only party with whom they could deal concerning Lebanon and that situation was better served than having factional anarchy, for the Israelis as well as for the Lebanese.

The Syrian Army as a non-conventional force: the best in the region? 

The Israeli assessment of the Syrian Army"s control of Lebanon was similar to that of the Americans. The Israelis came to the early conclusion that they had nothing to gain in destabilizing Syria under Assad (in the 1980s); it would bring a Sunni Islamic government to power. It would only prolong a war in which there would be no zero sum option but rather one in which both sides lost relative ground and ability to operate. After being outdone in Lebanon by Syrian forces and its proxies, the Israelis then saw the wisdom of letting Syria have hegemony to maintain the status quo of the Golan Heights. This doctrine was further entrenched after the 2006 war in Lebanon.

In the aftermath of the 33 day war in 2006, Syria sent commandos and artillery units to the border and the IDF raised its level of alertness to the maximum in ten years and doubled its deployment on Mount Hermon. Syria had also doubled its commando units in 2007 and started preparing for urban guerrilla warfare training. One of the 12 divisions of the Syrian army was made up of 10,000 elite commandos and the same unit doubled its number of rockets.

The Israeli view was that though the Syrian forces achieved surprising advances against the Israelis in the Golan in 1973 and resisted the Israeli advance in 1982, their power had subsequently been corrupted preventing them from mounting any sort of fighting force. However their helicopters would prove to have significant proficiency and their commando units have thrown back all that has been waged at them. The remarkable success gained by Hezbollah in 2006 confirmed the transition of Syrian forces from a conventional fighting force to asymmetric warfare and irregular forces, which were aimed at compensating for the conventional superiority of the IDF and its vulnerability to irregular warfare techniques.

The Israeli strategic expert Ephraim Inbar has remarked, on ‘the recent strategic acumen of the Syrian military’ saying that since, "Israel has absolute superiority in several fields in warfare, so Syria is investing in fields where it can have an edge. It has invested in recent years in anti-aircraft weapons, rockets missiles and bunkers. The war in Lebanon proved to the Syrians that they were right to do so."

The grudging respect the Israelis have had for the Syrian armed forces trumps all other armies in the region with respect to threats to Israel. The Israelis not only saw the irregular forces that Syria could unleash but also the negative consequence of removing the Syrian state and army. When Silvan Shalom, the Israeli Foreign Minister in 2004, suggested to Ariel Sharon that they destabilize Syria, Sharon replied by saying “No way” as that would mean either an extremist Sunni government in Syria, or an unstable democracy, both of which were a threat to Israel.

Upon the death of Hafez al Assad, Vice President `Abd-al Halim Khaddam, serving as temporary acting president, promulgated two decrees, announcing the appointment of Bashar al-Assad, the late president"s son, as the general commander of the Syrian Army in addition to his being promoted to the rank of Fariq, the most senior rank in the army, which his father had held. Several hours later, Bashar received members of the senior officers’ corps, headed by Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass and Chief of the General Staff (CGS) Ali Aslan. They had come to offer their condolences on the death of his father, and to pledge their loyalty and complete support. Had the Syrian Armed Forces been a sectarian unit, you might have expected the Sunni Tlass to provoke trouble. However it was precisely the two main Sunnis in the regime i.e. Khaddam and Tlass, who oversaw the smooth transition to Bashar al-Assad.

Conclusion

"If a Lebanese woman gets pregnant they say the Syrians did it, if a bird falls out from the sky over Beirut it is said to have been attacked by the Syrian eagle" (saying from Mustafa Tlass" The Mirror of My Life, 1991).

Of course the eagle and the lion have come to symbolize the Levant for the last four decades in the shape of the Syrian state built by Hafez al Assad, and the one being kept alive by his son Bashar.

What has furnished the Syrian Army and the State with a motive to resist all that has been thrown at it in the last six years? For this the answer lies in the formidable network built by Hafez’s army in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq, the very same network we have seen at play in Iraq post 2003 and in Lebanon post 1976. It is worth lingering over Henry Kissinger’s famous words, ‘you can"t make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can"t make peace without Syria.’

As commentators continue to struggle to become experts on Syria and its regime, few have bothered to look at the performance of the Syrians in Lebanon post 1976. It was a great relief to the Americans and the Israelis that the Syrian Army sanctioned by the Arab League marched into Lebanon in 1976 on behalf of the Christian community there to fight the Palestinians who had earlier destabilized Jordan and were perceived to be doing the same in Lebanon.

It was the Syrian Army that along with Israel had a tacit agreement that anything north of the Litani River belonged to the Syrian sphere of influence and the rest to Israel. So we move on to the 80s and 90s and Syria becomes the guarantor of peace not just in Lebanon but also the greater region.

Next we see how the Syrian Army and intelligence skilfully played off one group against the other in Lebanon to bring about their mastery over the country and then replayed the same in Iraq post 2003. In Iraq, Syria’s Army and intelligence successfully outwitted the coalition forces and indeed Iran in backing both the Sunni insurgents who came to fight from the North and East of Syria. At the same time, the Syrians maintained excellent relations with the Shi’a Sadr brigades of Southern Iraq.

This was the same Syrian Army that throughout the 1970s and 1980s kept a precarious balance between the different Lebanese Christian families of Chamoun, Gemayael and Frangieh. It was the same Syrian Army that actually ideologically supported the Amal party of the Shia’as, and not Hezbollah. The greatest Christian general of Lebanon, Michel Aoun, who was the quintessential anti-Syrian of the 1990s, became the Syrians’ biggest ally post 2005. So the dexterity displayed at deflecting all allegations of assassinations and being the root cause for all problems in Lebanon and Iraq have served the Syrian Army well in the ongoing conflict in Syria. When Aoun bothered the Syrians, they simply backed other Christian warlords in Mount Lebanon and thus fragmented the Lebanese Christians, and as a result came out on top.

In analysing all this, we can begin to understand the Syrian Army’s policy of ‘neither  vanquished, nor all-conquering.’ As we saw the drift of the Syrian rebels in the current war into splinter groups of hundreds of factions, and even saw other reports of how the Syrian Army paid al Nusra for the flow of oil, these are lessons all too familiar for those who have watched the Machiavellian politics of the Syrian Army at work. The chess game played out in the Levant, first termed the ‘Syrian Belt’ by Seymour Hersh, is one whose actors primarily include the Syrian security forces. From Mount Lebanon to Damascus, there is a history of Syrian state and army engaged in real politics on the ground. Hafez bequeathed this military legacy to his son and his wily commander.

Alan George in his book on Syria under the al Assads concludes that although the hopes of reform invested in the young President Assad were probably exaggerated, "he might yet succeed in launching a program of limited political reform if the west, through support for an aggressive Israel and swaggering threats against Syria, does not perpetuate the conditions that allowed the most anti-democratic wing of the Syrian regime to prevail over the pro-democracy activists."

With the onslaught of the 2011 war in Syria, Bashar al Assad never had time to continue what he started in 2000 i.e. the gradual reform of a system that many western experts witnessed up close between 2000 and 2010. The Syrian Army has evolved into a unified non-sectarian army over the last four decades. As most observers point to the undoubted prowess of Hezbollah in the battlefield, it is worth noting as I argue here, that Syria’s army has been fighting the Israelis and other actors long before Hezbollah came into being. All the major battles in Lebanon were fought before 1985 and the coming of Hezbollah.

The Syrian Army remains a formidable force as witnessed by its greatest foe: the IDF. It has evolved as an institution to outlast sectarian faultlines and negative foreign influences. But it is almost as if, since this conflict began, outsiders have wanted to portray this as a sectarian army from the minute the first shot was fired. One of the best Syrian experts (Nikolas Van Dam, author of The Struggle for Power in Syria) has himself acknowledged that foreigners are always eager to look at the divisive issues and highlight them, rather than look at the Syrians themselves.

Syria's President Exposed A Flaw In US Foreign Policy That No One Wants To Talk About

Authored by Darius Shahtahmasebi via TheAntiMedia.org,

In an interview with RT in 2015, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad uttered perhaps one of his most intriguing statements since the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011. Assad stated:

“Western propaganda has, from the very beginning, been about the cause of the problem being the president. Why? Because they want to portray the whole problem in Syria lies in one individual; and consequently the natural reaction for many people is that, if the problem lies in one individual, that individual should not be more important than the entire homeland. So let that individual go and things will be alright. That’s how they oversimplify things in the West.”  [emphasis added]

He continued:

“Notice what happened in the Western media since the coup in Ukraine. What happened? President Putin was transformed from a friend of the West to a foe and, yet again, he was characterized as a tsar…This is Western propaganda. They say that if the president went things will get better.” [emphasis added]

Putting aside Assad’s vast and extensive list of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Assad highlighted one of the major flaws in Western thinking regarding America’s hostile policies toward a number of independent states.

Just look at the current to-and-fro-ing between North Korea and the United States to gather an accurate picture of what is being referred to here. The problem of North Korea is consistently portrayed in the media as caused by one person (current leader Kim Jong-un), a narrative that ultimately ignores the role America and its allies have played in this current crisis. As Anti-Media previously highlighted:

“…the problem [North Korean crisis] is constantly framed as one caused by North Korea alone, not the United States. ‘How to Deal With North Korea,’ the Atlantic explains. ‘What Can Trump Do About North Korea?’ the New York Times asks. ‘What Can Possibly Be Done About North Korea,’ the Huffington Post queries. Time provides 6 experts discussing ‘How We Can Solve the Problem’ (of North Korea). ‘North Korea – what can the outside world do?’ asks the BBC.”

What the media is really advancing here - particularly when one talks about a military option as a response to dealing with North Korea’s rogue actions - is the notion that if the U.S. could only take out Kim Jong-un, the problem of North Korea would disappear.

Would the death of one man rid every single North Korean of the hostility and hatred they harbor toward the United States when many know full well that in the early 1950s the U.S. bombed North Korea so relentlessly they eventually ran out of targets to hit — that the U.S. military killed off at least 20 percent of the civilian population?

If Kim Jong-un is removed, will North Koreans suddenly forget that nearly every North Korean alive today has a family relative that was killed by the United States in the 1950s?

In the simple corporate media narrative, yes they will. Killing that one person and removing them from office will not only save the country they brutalize but will also provide security and stability for the rest of the world.

Never mind that prior to the U.S.-NATO onslaught of Libya in 2011, Libya had the highest standard of living in the African continent. The Times once admitted that its healthcare system was the “envy of the region.” Now, the country has completely collapsed, with well over two million children out of school, countless migrants drowning in its waters, extremism running unchecked and unchallenged, and traders openly selling slaves like a commodity.

Let’s suppose every single accusation against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was true (they weren’t); how can it be said that destroying a country’s infrastructure and assassinating its leader in flagrant disregard of international law is a realistic solution to any problem? If you oppose Donald Trump, would a Russian-led military intervention solve your problems with the country he rules over?

Forget what you think you know about Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Kim Jong-un, Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin, and Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro – the narrative Western governments and their media mouthpieces have promulgated for the last few decades remains completely nonsensical. You can’t solve Syria’s or Venezuela’s problems by removing their current leaders, especially if you attempt to do it by force. Anyone who claims this is possible is lying to you and is also too naïve and indolent to bother researching the current situations in Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Iraq – to name a few.

The fact that the U.S. evidently doesn’t want to solve any problems at all – that it merely seeks to overthrow leaders that don’t succumb to its wishes – is a topic for a separate article but is certainly worth mentioning here as well.

The same can ultimately be said of Donald Trump. Since his election victory, many celebrities, media pundits, and members of the intelligence community have sought to unseat and discredit him. Yet Donald Trump is merely a horrifying symptom of America’s problems; to think he alone caused them and that by removing him from office the U.S. would suddenly become a safe-haven of freedom and liberty is nothing short of idiotic.

If you agree with the latter sentiment, you must also concede that the problems facing North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, and elsewhere could never be solved by the U.S. forcibly removing their leaders.

If Assad was removed from Syria, would extremism disappear or would it thrive in the political vacuum as it did in Iraq? Could Syria’s internal issues — which are much more extensive than the corporate media would have us believe — be solved by something as simple as removing its current leader? Can anyone name a country where this has been tried and tested as a true model for solving a sovereign nation’s internal crises? Anyone who truly believes a country’s problems can be solved in this facile way needs to do a bit more reading.

If you can recognize this dilemma, you can agree that it’s time for the media to completely undo the simplicity in its coverage of these issues and start reporting on the genuine diplomatic options that could be pursued, instead.

Russia To Stay In Syria For The Next 50 Years

While the Trump administration appears set to withdraw US troops from Syria in the not too distant future, as hinted by the recent decision to reverse the Obama-era decision to stop arming "moderate rebels" fighting the Assad regime, Vladimir Putin has a slightly different strategic vision for the proxy war-torn nation.

On Wednesday, the Russian president signed a law ratifying a deal with the Syrian government allowing Russia to keep its air base in Syria for almost half a century, Reuters reported.

Under the original deal signed in this January in Damascus, Russia can use its Hmeymim air base in Latakia Province which it has used to carry out air strikes against forces opposing President Bashar al-Assad, Russia could modify the terms of its presence in the country. So with the US on its way out, Putin made it clear that clear that Russia isn"t going anywhere from the one nation that has emerged as a key regional presence for Russia in the middle-east.

The Russian president approved the agreement on Wednesday, after the two chambers of the Russian parliament backed it earlier this month, according to the government"s official information portal. The document says Russian forces will be deployed at the Hmeymim base for 49 years with the option of extending that arrangement for 25-year periods.

The Hmeymim airbase has been at the heart of Moscow"s military foray since it intervened in the conflict in September 2015, helping turn the tide in favor of Assad, as well as disrupt key ISIS oil supply lines which have resulted in the imminent collapse of the Islamic State.

Why The EU's Policy Towards The Syrian Conflict Is A Disaster?

Via GEFIRA.org,

The European Union has to understand finally that idealism is simply magnifying human suffering and endangering the security of all parties. There is the realist alternative, which focuses on one’s own interest instead of morality. However, such foreign policy has a highly ethical purpose, i.e. peace and stability. The EU member states have made many mistakes during Syria’s civil war, which decreased their prestige, influence and security. Through the realist lens it’s important to make a serious assessment, which side in the conflict should be supported, and to remember that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

The realists don’t refrain from bold proposals and suggestions when it comes to foreign policy. In 2012 Kenneth Waltz argued that Iran should have access to nuclear weapons. Three years later Stephen Walt pointed that in case of ISIS’s victory in Syria, the international community should learn how to live with it’s potential new member.Right now there are voices among realists, according to which the attempts to overthrow the al-Assad government were a mistake. Those examples result from a distinctive view of morality’s place in international relations.

According to realists, no country can be certain about other states’ intentions. That’s why security may be guaranteed by maximization of one’s power, so potential enemies are effectively deterred. States’ leaders should focus mainly on national interests. Realists assume that morality results in unnecessary suffering and endangers state’s importance in international relations. This is the reason why such analysts criticize humanitarian intervention, which jeopardizes the most important element of the state’s power, i.e. its citizens, and may cause a long-term involvement in affairs of a country that has no direct strategic meaning. Realists opposed the intervention in Libya in 2011, which was considered needless and conducted in an inept way. They were also against the intervention in Vietnam, which they viewed as doomed to fail, and the war in Iraq in 2003, which was perceived as destabilizing the whole region (and it turned out it was a correct assessment!).

Realism focuses on cold-hearted calculation. However, such foreign policy isn’t immoral. The competition for power and the balance that is its effect are the means to a highly ethical end, i.e. peace. It’s this mechanism that made the bipolar system so stable, made the sense of security for both parties and prevented the world from another global war.

Having in mind the mentioned issues, the question arises how the EU member states should act towards the Syrian crisis. It’s argued they ought to abandon their current foreign policy based on human rights ideology and altruism, and focus on their own security and ability to influence the future of the region. What’s the most important, in the case of Syria the radical solutions are the only and the best ones.

The prominent international relations scholar and the creator of modern realist school of thought – Hans Morgenthau – has written a few decades ago why the invasion in the Bay of Pigs had to fail. In the decision-making process both interest and the rule of non-intervention based on moral assumptions were taken into account. This resulted in a limited scope of intervention as the US feared the loss of prestige. The defeat was an effect of a policy that manoeuvred between security and ideas. In the end the goal wasn’t accomplished and the American prestige suffered. The Syrian case is somehow similar and that’s why the EU’s actions are bound to be inefficient.

Leaders of the EU member states assume that al-Assad isn’t and can’t be a partner in negotiations as he should be held responsible for his crimes and his regime should be overthrown.At the same time the West’s intervention, conducted mainly by the U.S., France and Great Britain, is still limited in its scope. Attacks on al-Assad’s forces aren’t handicapping his capabilities and simply protract the stalemate. The rebels are armed by the West, but not in the way that they can gain a strategic advantage.  As a result the conflict is prolonged, the Syrian people’s suffering is increasing and the refugee and migration crisis is escalating. Except that no-one should be surprised that the Syrian president decided to fight until the end as the West stated blatantly he has to go.

What would a realist suggest? There are two radical options. One is the military intervention, which will change the balance of power in the war theatre and will result in overthrowing the government. However, such a scenario would result in a deep crisis between the West and Russia. What’s more, the West would have to count on Moscow’s withdrawal. At the same time the transformation would have to be conducted and if it was to succeed, there would be a necessity to create a new stable administration, i.e. a new satellite regime managed by the West. This, however, would require a long-term involvement in the reconstruction of the Syrian state. It is both risky and expensive.

The second possibility is to assume that al-Assad will win the war. It means that Europe may support him or at least withdraw from operations in Syria, so that other powers may have an influence on the country’s future. The first option is unthinkable for the West because of prestige and ideological factors. The other seems reasonable, though it won’t ensure stability as fast as Europe would expect.

EU member states have to acknowledge the fact that at the moment it doesn’t matter who will rule in Syria. For the EU the consolidation of power is important as it may contain the migration crisis. The opponents of al-Assad will surely point to the fact that his survival will relate to further incidents of political purges. But do we really believe that the internally divided opposition, which consists of democratic forces, government runaways and jihadist militias, won’t fight for the domination after al-Assad’s fall and won’t be responsible for other atrocities? We’ve been there before. In Libya, the West supported the rebel groups that had been fighting between each other for six years already since al-Kaddafi was murdered.

Policy-makers who base their diplomacy on moral issues, may argue that al-Assad’s staying in power is simply unethical. Yet, the bringing down the authoritarian governments in Baghdad and Tripoli resulted in a political vacuum, the destabilization of the region and suffering of the whole societies. At the same time the interventions weren’t conducted where it would be quite cheap and could actually protect human rights, for instance in Rwanda. Especially when you consider the fact that the West, and France in the first place, probably knew about the planned carnage and there are even reports it supported Hutu organisations.

For many the most important problem is the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian president. However, as Stephen Walt argued excellently, such crime attracts more attention. Those heinous acts result in our moral considerations about intervening. However, such dilemmas don’t occur in politicians’ minds when the bombing of civilians takes place.

Except for the aforementioned matters, we have to remember that pre-war Syria was in the Russian sphere of influence. Bashar al-Assad was perceived by the West as an enemy not because he violated human rights, but because he was Moscow’s and Tehran’s ally and because of his anti-Israel attitude, which was against the U.S.-Israel alliance. However, when the favourable circumstances emerged, France during the presidency of right-wing Sarkozy tried to end with al-Assad’s isolation and the French president stated that the Syrian leader was irreplaceable in the process of conflict-resolution in the Middle East. The U.S. under the democratic rule also considered the Syrian government as a potential partner in the period before the Arab spring. For example, the then senator and later secretary of state John Kerry stressed that America and Syria have common interests and al-Assad’s government is an essential player in the Middle East. When the revolution started, the West was thinking possibly that the chance to get rid of the inconvenient actor is at hand. Yet, the intervention on the side of the opposition is nothing more than meddling in another dominant power’s sphere of influence. What’s more, such involvement isn’t motivated by any crucial interest. A realist remembers that balance of power, which is related to assuring stability in one’s own sphere, allows to keep the international order and peace. The West shouldn’t hinder Russia’s operations aiming at restoring status quo ante and ensuring security.

The EU member states, which support the rebels, seem to not understand not only Russia’s role in the conflict but also Turkish interests. Ankara was repeatedly accused of backing up ISIS. If it was true, it would be possibly nothing more that cold-hearted calculation, i.e. the desire to create a dependent state or at least a state that would be a partner. The Turkish administration quickly realised that the balance of capabilities in Syria suggests that al-Assad is the strongest party. That’s why it wasn’t problematic for Turks to talk about Syria’s future with President Putin. Especially considering the fact that Syrian government’s preservation would be useful in maintaining Turkish territorial integrity and the smashing Kurdish rebellion.

How did the Western Europe act in the meantime? In 2016 the deal related to migration control was signed and it was expected that Turkey would provide shelter for Syrian refugees. At the same time France is reconfirming support for Kurdish demands as it has during last couple of years, which is a direct blow against Turkish interests. Germany is doing just the same as it decided to cooperate with PYD and YPG. When the West is aiding opposition forces, it’s protracting war at the Turkish gates and it’s threatening Ankara’s sense of security. Did we really anticipate that under such conditions Erdo?an will keep his promises? A realist wouldn’t be surprised by such a policy of the Turkish government, which is focused mainly (as every other administration!) on security and survival.

EU member states intervene hesitantly and follow the human rights ideology. It results in resigning from the place at the negotiating table, which is an act against Turkey’s and Russia’s interests of, the countries that seem to be ready to work together on the shape of post-war Syria. Therefore, EU is losing prestige, signalling to other powers that it is weak and is unable to protect its interests. Hans Morgenthau noticed correctly that states may gain if they end wars that are doomed to fail.

In one of his books John J. Mearsheimer pointed out that the democratic states use the liberal lie, i.e. they refer to the Western values, to intervene in other countries when the need to secure interests appears. It seems that in the case of Syria, the EU isn’t pursuing its interests and is driven by moral principles. As a result, it is suffering from loss of prestige and is endangering its own security. The Finnish president stated in 2016 properly that EU has a dilemma: should it protect its people and values or should it meet its international obligations. A realist has no second thoughts that every state should focus on guaranteeing its own survival and should concentrate on keeping citizens safe.

The presented reasoning doesn’t imply that the al-Assad government should be treated as a partner after the war ends. Yet, for Europe it is important to attain one goal after another. Firstly, we need to end the civil war and migration crisis, no matter what the cost. After that we may try to influence the government in Damascus, so that there is a power transition or power transition.

The al-Assad’s survival is crucial for the region as Syria was an important element of the balance of power and at the same time it helped to keep the peace. Europe is proceeding with a disastrous policy, which protracts the conflict. Thucydides wrote in “The History of the Peloponnesian War” that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Europe should show its full power by conducting government change or negotiating with other powers if the first proposal is impossible. The policy of indecisiveness is nothing more than a sign of EU’s weakness and a suggestion to other players that they can test its patience constantly. The West should face the fact that, as John J. Mearsheimer stated, its social engineering aiming at overthrowing the governments failed and it would be better for everyone if it simply withdrew.

Brandon Smith Warns The Next World War "Will Be Economic... Not Nuclear"

The elite appear to have a great deal in store for President Trump’s first four years... quite a few tricks up their sleeves, if you will. As SHTFplan.com"s Mac Slavo notes, the wars are already being manifested; but the larger elements of financial upheaval may take years to play out, even if there are a number of chaotic events, a bit of panic, and more of the great squeeze that is sucking the vitality of the country dry. Depending upon how things play out, people could end up better or than four years ago, or much, much worse. Theoretically, no one knows for sure which way that will go, but it appears that the global agenda is stilling rolling slowly forward, inch by inch, and about to take a big bit out of Syria, North Korea and beyond. Get ready for some big potential downturns.

The Real Dangers Behind The Syrian Crisis Are Economic

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

Back in 2010/2011 when I was still writing under the pen-name Giordano Bruno, I warned extensively about the dangers of any destabilization in the nation of Syria, long before the real troubles began. In an article titled Migration Of The Black Swans, I pointed out that due to Syria’s unique set of alliances and economic relationships the country was a “keystone” for disruption in the Middle East and that a “revolution” (or civil war) was imminent. Syria, I warned, represented the first domino in a chain of dominoes that could lead to widespread regional warfare and draw in major powers like the U.S. and Russia.

That said, my position has always been that the next “world war” would not be a nuclear war, but primarily an economic war. Meaning, I believed and still believe it is far more useful for establishment elites to use the East as a foil to bring down certain parts of the West with economic weapons, such as the dumping of the U.S. dollar. The chaos this would cause in global markets and the panic that would ensue among the general public would provide perfect cover for the introduction of what the globalists call the “great financial reset.” The term “reset” is essentially code for the total centralization of all fiscal and monetary management of the world’s economies under one institution, most likely the IMF. This would culminate in the destruction of the dollar’s world reserve status, its replacement being the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights basket currency system.

Eventually, the SDR basket system would act as a stepping stone towards a single global currency system, and its final form and function would probably be entirely digital. This would give the globalists TOTAL push-button control over even the smallest aspects of normal trade. The amount of power they would gain from a single centralized digital currency system would be endless.

Syria in itself is just one layer upon many in the process of deliberate global instability, but it seems to be vitally important to the elites given that they continually make new attempts to draw the American public into support for so called “regime change.”

Mainstream media publications like The New York Times overtly press the narrative that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has a long history of war crimes including the use of chemical weapons against civilians. Yet, neither The New York Times nor anyone in government has produced a single piece of compelling concrete evidence that Assad is guilty of such acts, including the latest chemical attack which the Trump administration as used as a rational for cruise missile strikes against Syrian military targets and rhetoric calling for the ousting of Assad.

Not that I necessarily have much faith in the Assad regime, but we saw this same exact model used under the Obama administration in 2013: A chemical attack against civilians which the White House then immediately, without evidence, uses to implicate Assad and call for regime change. This tactic to seduce the American public into war fever failed, even with many acting serving military, and Obama backed away (in part) from a full blown invasion of Syria. Now, it would appear that the establishment hopes they’ll get a better response using the same con-game under Trump.

There are far more advantages in the Trump scenario, however.

It has been my longstanding belief since the middle of last year that Trump would undoubtedly be president of the U.S., because the international banking cabal needs a scapegoat for the ongoing economic crisis they have been engineering for many years. The Syrian strategy is a win/win for the elites under Trump because, with Trump, there is no need for moderation. If they can influence him to rampage without concern for the repercussions in the region, then their scapegoat implicates all conservatives in general with little effort on their part.

George Soros‘ prediction that Trump “will fail” because he is “unpredictable and unprepared” and that he will “end up bad for the markets” will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I warned the liberty movement over and over again after Trump’s cabinet selection that he was surrounding himself with establishment ghouls that would either run the White House in spite of him, or, that he was gladly cooperating with them. His recent high tension rhetoric against the Syrian government and against North Korea only seems to confirm my suspicions.

So, where is this all headed? Nowhere good…

First, consider the fact that every time it appears that the Syrian government seems to be making headway in destroying ISIS, there is suddenly another chemical attack which places Assad under suspicion. Anyone who read my article ISIS Is Being Aimed At The West By Globalists — Here’s What We Can Do About It, published in 2015, has seen the extensive evidence I outlined which shows U.S. government complicity and even direct aid in the creation of ISIS. I compared the rise of ISIS to Operation Gladio, a massive false flag project undertaken by U.S. and European governments in Europe from the 1950s to the 1990s.

ISIS is useful as a perpetual boogeyman, and sadly, the Muslim religion has one foot stuck in the dark ages and will remain fertile ground for generating extremist groups for decades to come. The elites have every intention of protecting certain factions of ISIS in Syria, which means that ISIS will continue to spread from the area into the EU and the U.S. and terrorist attacks will continue to multiply.

Second, we have learned that the Trump administration is perfectly willing to fast-track certain longstanding establishment projects that involve kinetic action (i.e. destruction and death). If they were happy to move so quickly to strike Syria without supplying any evidence to support the measure, then it should come as no surprise if they are willing to strike North Korea, a country with ACTUAL means to threaten American targets or our interests in the Pacific. A precedent is being set today for an ongoing program of fast moving preemptive strikes. I believe this will go even beyond Barack Obama’s notorious penchant for trigger pulling to destabilize regions.

Third, I think many people also forget that Syria continues to maintain a mutual defense pact with Iran. Why does this matter? Syria is NOT Libya; Assad is not going to go down like Gaddafi at the hands of insurgent groups like ISIS. Regime change in Syria is going to require numerous U.S. boots on the ground. This, in turn, will invite hundreds of thousands from the Iranian Guard to intercede. If you study military preparedness around the world you know that a country like Iran or North Korea will offer far greater resistance than what we saw in Afghanistan or Iraq.

While they are still very poor nations militarily (in terms of defense spending), they are still relatively well-trained, and the technology gap is less expansive. Many American men will die in such a fight. If ground invasion becomes an option in Syria, expect Iran to be next, and expect the option of a new “draft” to return to the U.S.  Also keep in mind that Americans will never accept military conscription today unless we suffer a massive attack on U.S. soil, or on U.S. forces abroad.  So, expect some shock and awe to occur in short order...

Fourth, there is, of course, the ongoing question as to when U.S. and Russian forces will “stumble” over each other and someone on either side gets killed? The majority of analysts in the liberty movement expect that this is inevitable. I suppose I agree, but I do not believe the elites have been entrenching billions of dollars in control grid technology in every major city in the world just to vaporize them in a chain of mushroom clouds (this control grid includes Russian cities — just look up Putin’s Yaroslavl laws, which might make the NSA envious).

It seems to me that the natural progression of these tensions will end in economic retaliation from the East against the West, not nuclear retaliation. The thing is, this is actually the worst case scenario.

With nuclear conflagration comes immediate loss of full spectrum awareness for the elites. They lose their surveillance grid, they lose the means to maintain a healthy standing military, they lose the means to dictate the narrative because the mainstream media will not be functioning at that point, etc. During an economic crisis, they can shift wealth easily to safe havens, they can weaken certain militaries while strengthening others. They retain their control grid apparatus and use it effectively against the citizenry as long as there is not substantial civilian resistance, and the list goes on.

With nuclear war there would be total chaos. With economic crisis there is controlled chaos. The establishment prefers the latter option.

Eastern nations and their allies still hold considerable U.S. Treasury bonds in their coffers, and they still use the dollar for the most part as the world reserve currency (though they have been preparing the ground for a dollar dump since at least 2008). On top of this, many of these nations also have the option of dumping the dollar as the petro-currency and crushing our monopoly on how oil is traded globally. If any of these measures are taken by countries like Russia, China and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. economic structure will lose the last pillar holding it above water. We will effectively move into third-world status in the course of a few years.

These are not hypothetical dangers, these are very real dangers which have already been mentioned publicly by Eastern interests in their own media. They are also dangers which SERVE the globalist agenda in the long run. As I have noted time and time again in the past with ample evidence, Eastern governments including Russia and China openly and avidly support the International Monetary Fund and continue to call for the IMF to take over global management of all monetary policy to form a single world currency system. They may be “anti-U.S." in rhetoric, but they are NOT anti-globalist.

Syria remains a highly useful catalyst for the globalists to achieve the crisis they need to push their great reset forward. Being that they have tried to thrust Americans into that quagmire so many times over the past few years, I think it is safe to say they plan to use Syria as trigger point whether we cooperate or not.

An Unhinged McCain Calls for More War in Syria, Says Russia is Guilty of War Crimes

John McCain was on Face the Nation today, getting his neocon on, discussing the next steps that needed to be taken in Syria -- dealing with Assad.

He approved of the President"s strikes -- calling it a good "first step." But, he wants MOAR -- accusing both Syria and Russia of war crimes, in addition to blaming Assad for the rise of ISIS. You cannot make this stuff up.
 

"And I think it was important. But it is now vitally important we develop a strategy, we put that strategy in motion, and we bring about peace in the region. And that obviously means that there has to be a cessation of these war crimes.
 
John, dropping, using chemical weapons is a war crime, but starving thousands of people in prisons is also. Barrel bombs which indiscriminately kill innocent civilians, precision strikes done by Russians on hospitals in Aleppo are war crimes as well.
 
So there’s a lot of war crimes that are taking place. And another area -- aspect of this that I do not agree with the secretary is that you have to just concentrate on ISIS.
 
We will take Mosul. We will take Raqqa. And we better have strategies as to how to handle those places once we have won it. But they are not disconnected from Bashar al-Assad and the al Qaeda and the war crimes that have been taking place.
 
You can’t -- to a large degree, Bashar al-Assad, by polarizing the Syrian people, have also given rise to ISIS and al Qaeda. So they are both connected. And I believe that the United States of America can address both at the same time. We can walk and chew gum.
 
We have the capability to do both. And, yes, we want a negotiated settlement, but the only way that that will happen is if it is not in their interests to continue what they have been successful at for over eight years. And that is why I thought, symbolically and psychologically, the president’s action was very important, but now we better follow it up. And, by the way, we should have cratered the runways."

 
Seemingly ignoring the fact that ISIS and US backed "rebels" in the region are responsible for the majority of civilian deaths in Syria, McCain carried on as if Assad was merely bombing civilians and not actually in the midst of a long, drawn out, civil war -- which was started by ISIS. McCain wants the U.S. military to set up a "safe zone" in Northern Syria.
 

"And also, when you see these crimes that are being committed, they are horrifying. John, I also believe that a grieving mother whose child has been killed isn’t too concerned whether it is a chemical weapon or a barrel bomb. He is still slaughtering people. And we may stop the chemical weapons.
 
But we have also got to stop the other indiscriminate, inhumane war crimes that are being committed as well. And that means, obviously, trying to set up some kind of safe zone, so that these refugees can have a place where they can be. And, also, that would help with the refugee flow issue."

 
In response to President Trump"s strike on the Syrian airbase, McCain thinks we should"ve done more.
 

"Well, I think the fact that we acted was very important, and I support the president’s action.
 
And I have been told that there was some recommendations to take out all six places that the Syrian air force operates out of. But now that they are flying again, basically, within 36 hours is not a good signal.
 
But I would point out, taking out their -- all their support facilities doesn’t let them fly with any consistency. But it -- the signal that they are able to fly almost right away out of the same facility indicates that I don’t think we did as thorough enough job, which would have been cratering the runways.
 

McCain is fucking crazy. pic.twitter.com/t7bzYJUD4I

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) April 10, 2017

 
And somebody will say, well, then they can fill in the runways. Yes. And we can crater them again too."

Has it ever dawned on McCain and the other neocons in America that maybe, just maybe, Russia would respond to our attacks on their ally, in an effort to protect Russian soliders on the ground? Has the concept of "mutually assured destruction" gone by wayside somehow -- the ultimate quagmire which has kept America out of a war with Russia for the past 70 years?

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com