Thousands Of US Troops Amass On Syrian Border For Military ‘Drill’

Thousands of U.S. Marines arrived in Jordan at around the same time the United States, the United Kingdom, and France were organizing a direct military strike on Jordan’s neighbor, Syria.  Shortly after the US-led bombing of Syria over alleged chemical weapons use, the Marine took part in military drills.

According to Antimedia, nearly 3,600 U.S. troops, including roughly 1,800 Marines with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, arrived in Jordan for the start of an almost two-week training exercise known as Eager Lion.

Thousands of Marines and U.S. troops kicked off a major military training exercise that is reportedly set to include civilian evacuation operations, as well as chemical and biological drills. The drills followed the U.S.-led Anglo-alliance’s assault on neighboring Syria, which was allegedly in retaliation for a chemical attack in the Syrian city of Douma.

It will be a rare display of allied firepower, reported the Marine Corps Times.  It also couldn’t come at a more tense time as U.S. Navy warships are steadily building a presence in the Mediterranean in preparation for what analysts presume will be a Tomahawk cruise missile strike on Syria.

Last year, satellite photos indicating a massive buildup of military armored vehicles sent alarm bells through Iran, Syria’s ally in its nearly eight-year civil war, prompting media speculation about a pending invasion. The build-up was nothing more than the start of Eager Lion. Eager Lion was then launched from the Zarqa Jordanian military base, located near the Syrian border and roughly 100 miles from the Syrian capital of Damascus. The exercise has routinely been viewed as a pretext for an invasion of Syria by analysts and countries aligned with the Syrian regime.

“Eager Lion is a major training event that provides U.S. forces and Jordan Armed Forces the opportunity to improve their collective ability to plan and operate in a coalition-type environment,” according to a press release from U.S. Central Command published April 2nd. “A wide variety of scenarios – from long-range bomber missions to maritime security operations to a ground force attack of a fictitious adversary – will occur throughout Jordan during the event.”

Departing Augusta Bay, Italy, just before the US-led attack was the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock New York which has onboard Marines and Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron VMM 162 (Reinforced), according to a post from the 26th MEU’s Facebook page.

The timing of this “event,” both this year and last, however, is incredibly unsettling.  Both came at a time when the US had decided that the Syrian government had conducted a chemical weapons attack against their own citizens.  Neither chemical attack had any evidence, and in fact, there’s more evidence to suggest the attacks didn’t even happen. 

While the media delivered a stunning performance on its coverage of Trump’s strikes on the Syrian government, as the Marine Corps Times notes, “little has been made of the fact that thousands of U.S. and Jordanian troops will be training a short skip away from the Syrian border with armored vehicles and military aircraft.”

Thanks to Trump, 50K US Troops May Soon Be Fighting Side-by-Side With ISIS/Al-Qaeda

If President Trump’s National Security Adviser, Gen. H.R. McMaster has his way, up to 50,000 ground troops will be deployed in Syria; but that would constitute a remarkable escalation in hostilities — particularly after Trump catapulted the U.S. directly into the fraught conflict with the launch of 59 Tomahawk missiles against a Syrian air base in retaliation for an alleged chemical weapons attack on civilians.

It isn’t as if tens of thousands of American troops would be well-received by President Bashar al-Assad, whose ally, Russia — actively fighting an intricate web of terror groups for control of the nation — has been embroiled in a volatile proxy war with the United States.

Antiwar.com’s Jason Ditz explains,

“When President Trump took office, Syria had only about 300-400 US troops present, and while that number has grown significantly (exact figures are no longer provided by the Pentagon), a 50,000 troop deployment would be both shocking and have a huge impact on the region, likely sparking a major backlash from Syria, who has not invited US troops to operate in their territory in the first place.”

A troop deployment of that magnitude could also risk putting Washington in direct conflict with Moscow — feasibly acting as the catalyst for world war. Not to mention, it would be a substantial departure from Trump’s statement to Fox Business News,

“We’re not going into Syria.”

And as Bloomberg reports, McMaster’s strategy hasn’t necessarily been well-received by others in the Trump administration:

“McMaster himself has found resistance to a more robust ground troop presence in Syria. In two meetings since the end of February of Trump’s national security cabinet, known as the principals’ committee, Trump’s top advisers have failed to reach consensus on the Islamic State strategy. The White House and administration officials say Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford and General Joseph Votel, who is in charge of U.S. Central Command, oppose sending more conventional forces into Syria. Meanwhile, White House senior strategist Stephen Bannon has derided McMaster to his colleagues as trying to start a new Iraq War, according to these sources.”

Trump’s first national security adviser, Ret. Lt. General Michael Flynn, had — as many others — sought to avoid increased troop presence in Syria’s complex war, as it would pit U.S. personnel against militants of the Islamic State and iterations of al-Qaeda, as well as the Russian and Syrian militaries.

McMaster’s opponents feel an amplified version of former President Obama’s plans to fight ISIL — airstrikes in conjunction with special forces operations, including the training of local fighters — presents the most efficacious strategy to deal with Syria’s murky morass of hostile entities.

Bloomberg notes top Pentagon brass seek to loosen rules of engagement for special forces, including providing them additional air support, such as attack helicopters, for future operations against the self-proclaimed caliphate.

But that would require reliance on groups with personal agendas in Syria — like Kurdish militias.

Retired four-star U.S. Army General Jack Keane — who is close to McMaster but did not speak for the general — told Bloomberg’s senior national security correspondent, Eli Lake, that while the Kurds have indeed actively fought ISIL, Arab forces have been primarily focused on fighting the Assad regime.

“Our special operations guys believe rightfully so that this was a proven force that could fight,” Keane told Lake of the Kurdish fighters. “While this makes sense tactically, it doesn’t make sense strategically. Those are Arab lands, and the Arabs are not going to put up with Syrian Kurds retaking Arab lands. Whenever you select a military option, you have got to determine what political end state will this support. Regrettably this option puts us back to the drawing board.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has expressed marked ambivalence over the U.S. arming and training to Syrian Kurds — whom he believes allied with Turkey’s Kurdish separatist rebels — as those assets could hastily be turned against the Turkish government. And that perception is high-risk for the U.S. military, which requires access to Turkey’s Incirlik air base to fly sorties against the Islamic State in Syria and elsewhere in the region.

Keane feels the U.S. would be better served accepting the assistance of Sunni Arab coalition forces in fighting the Islamic State. But that could further exacerbate tensions with Shi’a fighters, as well as with the Assad regime.

Although two unnamed and unverifiable sources told Lake the 50,000 troops figure is being debated behind closed doors, an explosive report circulated widely online, which cited that figure as 150,000 troops, is wildly exaggerated and not at all legitimate.

Every possible solution to the issue of Syria — where the U.S. seeks to depose Assad, while combating the insidious Islamic State — is now being deliberated.

With Trump’s schizophrenic amplifications of tension peppered with an almost dismissive tone on the threat presented by Assad remaining in power, whether or not McMaster’s desired 50,000 U.S. military personnel will actually be deployed to war-ravaged Syria remains an open — and crucial — question.

Congresswoman Introduces Bill to Stop Further U.S. Ground Invasion of Syria

(COMMONDREAMS) In response to the Pentagon’s deployment of about 400 American ground troops to Syria, U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) is introducing a bill Friday that would block the Defense Department from putting any more “boots on the ground” in the ongoing conflict.

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“The bill I am introducing today prohibits the Department of Defense from funding any attempt by the administration to expand our presence in Syria by putting U.S. combat boots on the ground,” Lee told The Hill in a statement.

Lee was famously the only member of Congress to vote against the authorization of military force (AUMF) in the wake of the September 11 attacks. As Lee predicted at the time, the AUMF has now been used to bypass Congressional approval for seemingly endless U.S. military assaults throughout the Middle East.

Lee and other members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) on Thursday roundly condemned the deployment of additional ground troops to Syria. “Today’s revelation that about 400 additional forces, including Marines, are being sent to Syria is concerning and signals mission creep,” said Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), CPC co-chair. “After years of war and hundreds of thousands of civilians killed, it is clear that increased U.S. military action will not solve the crisis in Syria.”

“It is our constitutional duty as members of Congress to place a check on the executive branch in matters of war and peace,” Lee added to The Hill. “We owe it to our brave service members to live up to our constitutional duty.”

The outlet reports:

“Under Lee’s bill, the Pentagon would be prohibited from using funds to send troops to Syria for ground combat operations, award a contract to a private security firm for ground activity, or otherwise establish or maintain a presence of U.S. troops or a private security contractor in Syria.

“The bill would allow for exceptions to “protect, rescue, or remove” U.S. personnel.

“Lee had tried to introduce similar language as an amendment to the defense spending bill passed by the House on Wednesday, but was blocked by the House Rules Committee.

“The language in the new bill is even stricter; the amendment to the spending bill would have allowed for special operations forces.”

“I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me in preventing this president from sending our troops into yet another unchecked, ill-advised war without a full and robust debate from Congress,” Lee said.

The escalation of U.S. involvement in Syria comes as the Pentagon also considers deploying 1,000 additional troops to Kuwait — and as independent monitoring shows U.S. coalition airstrikes have already killed over 2,500 civilians in Iraq and Syria, as Common Dreams reported.

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Hundreds of US Boots On The Ground In Syria

(ANTIMEDIA) A number of leading outlets, including the New York Times, are now reporting that the U.S. is sending more and more ground troops into Syria. According to the New York Times, the U.S. just sent an additional 400 troops to Syria to help prepare for a looming fight in Raqqa, ISIS’ supposed capital in Syria.

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The majority of the public will likely shrug this off as a minor development in the global war on terror because that is how the media presents the story. However, there are a number of issues with U.S. troops being deployed to Syria — issues the corporate media refuses to acknowledge.

War needs a legal basis. A country can’t just send troops to another country because they feel like it. The only check the world currently has to protect itself from unjust wars is a combination of domestic and international legal systems that severely restrict the conditions under which a war can be launched. In the case of the United States, the superpower is bound not only to the international legal principles surrounding war, but also to a number of domestic principles that require congressional authorization to be given first. In the case of Libya in 2011, Barack Obama famously bypassed Congress and launched air strikes on the Libyan government. This was rarely questioned by the mainstream media.

Without permission from the Syrian government, which — whether we like it or not — holds the seat at the U.N. and was elected in 2014, the U.S. cannot legally launch troops into its territory.

Because the media rarely touches on the legality of the U.S.-led war on terror, there seems to be a widespread sentiment that even though the legal implications are quite damning, these operations are still the right thing to carry out given the context. For example, people often ask, “So what should we do? Nothing?” in response to the terror that ISIS has wreaked across Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen.

So what can one say in response? First, it was U.S. policies that created ISIS in the first place by disbanding the Iraqi army in 2003, leaving hundreds of thousands of military officers without jobs. It was Obama’s policies that put ISIS in Libya and that helped ISIS grow in Iraq and Syria. A good example of this can be seen in the instances where ISIS took its major strongholds in Iraq and Syria while the U.S. completely sat on their hands and did nothing.

Leaked audio of former Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed the U.S. was purposely watching ISIS grow so the terror group could put pressure on the Syrian government to come to the negotiating table. The U.S. clearly cannot claim the moral high ground regarding the war on terror.

Trump’s original travel ban heavily targeted Syria and its refugees. His new travel ban, which removes Iraq but leaves in Iran, still puts heavy restrictions on refugees fleeing Syria. In order to see the point of this statement, just reverse the countries in your head and picture the following scenario: Syria, a rich and wealthy tourism hotspot, has barred citizens of the United States from entering its country. On top of this, Syria is sending trained assassins into the United States without any legal basis.

One country bans the other but sends ground troops to invade its territory at the same time. Sound fair?

In October of last year, Anti-Media reported on the possibility that the current U.S.-backed offensive in Mosul was just an excuse to push ISIS back into Syria for an upcoming offensive on Raqqa, which would give the U.S. more of an excuse to conduct operations in Syrian territory. The intention of this is, of course, to put added pressure on the Syrian regime, which made significant advances in Aleppo last year with the assistance of Russian air power.

ISIS reinforcements fleeing Mosul and arriving in Syria are putting greater pressure on the Syrian regime. The United States was fully aware of this, but it did not seem to be of any concern to the American air force, which has done nothing but watch it unfold.

In tandem with the arrival of American troops, Saudi Arabia has also expressed its intention to send ground troops into Syria with the express purpose of ensuring that liberated areas of Syria do not fall into the hands of the Syrian regime, Hezbollah, or Iran.

Make no mistake. These operations are laying the groundwork for a direct confrontation with Syria and/or Iran — two countries that have the backing of the Russian air force and have close ties to China and North Korea.

“The upshot is that it’s still unclear who will take Raqqa when Mosul falls,” said one senior official involved in discussions, as reported by the Guardian. “The Americans are still hedging on the Kurds, even though the Turks are adamantly opposed. The Russians want the Syrian army and the rebels to do it, under their tutelage.”

Whose interests are being served here? Certainly not the people of the Middle East, and certainly not the American public, either.

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While some people naively looked to Trump as a powerful revolutionary who could stand up to the corporate elite, it has become increasingly clear that even if Trump wanted to change America’s foreign policy strategy, his hands have already been tied. Trump’s expansive military budget should quash any discussion on this issue as he seeks to increase the size and scope of the already massive American military.

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