Obama Escalates In Syria; Stars and Stripes Runs Accurate Warning

Unnamed U.S. officials said, Sunday, that President Obama has decided to allow U.S. airstrikes in support of U.S.-trained rebels no matter who brings them under fire, even if it comes from the Syrian army. White House National Security Council spokesman Alistair Baskey told Reuters that only the U.S.-trained forces were being provided a wide range of support, including “defensive fire (in layman’s terms, airstrikes) support to protect them” and pointed to the July 31 U.S. airstrikes as proof, in support of the rebel group Division 30 when it came under attack from Al Nusra.

Reuters notes the possibility that U.S. forces might come into direct confrontation with Syrian government forces cannot be ruled out. Indeed, some might argue that Obama’s policy makes such a clash inevitable, despite the stipulation that U.S. policy is aimed only at ISIS, and the administration’s failure to get Congress to support a direct attack on the Assad government in the late summer of 2013.

Historian Stephen R. Weissman, writing in an Aug. 2 op-ed in U.S. military newspaper Stars & Stripes, argues that in fact, the Obama Administration is following a pattern that was first set in the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 when President Lyndon Johnson deceived the American public about the presence of U.S. military forces in Southeast Asia. The result was war that devastated Vietnam, the U.S. military and U.S. foreign relations. That pattern, however, has continued ever since.

Weissman particularly points out the U.S./NATO attack on Libya in 2011, which was promoted as protection of civilians, but was really about regime change.

What began as a program to train armed opponents of the Assad government has morphed into a program to target ISIS. U.S. officials were then hinting that they might extend U.S. involvement to include “protection” of the forces the U.S. is training as they integrate with existing rebel groups in Syria.

Further potential expansion comes with the discussions of establishing a safe zone inside Syria along the Turkish border.

Indeed, Moscow, Monday, warned that U.S. attacks on Syrian troops will only further destabilize the situation. Moscow has “repeatedly underlined that help to the Syrian opposition, moreover financial and technical assistance, leads to further destabilization of the situation in the country,” Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said, adding that IS terrorists may take advantage of this situation.

And the Obama Administration, Weissman notes, is doing all of this without a plan for bringing the war to a satisfactory conclusion and without consulting with or authorization from the U.S. Congress.