Foreign Terrorists?
Hillary Clinton and CIA director David Petraeus had a brilliant idea: they would fund, arm, and train a proxy army in Syria, overthrow the regime of strongman Bashar al-Assad, and jump on the rapidly moving train of the “Arab Spring” to extend US influence in the region. What could go wrong?
Plenty.
The “Free Syrian Army” created by Washington is today, fighting alongside al-Qaeda and its Salafist allies, filling the vacuum left behind by the “Islamic State”/ISIS as it contracts under fire from Russian war planes and the Syrian army. As Middle East specialist Juan Cole points out:
“[E]ven as Daesh has been set back, al-Qaeda has recovered some of the territory lost to the SAA earlier this year southwest of Aleppo.
“Al-Qaeda is allied with the Freemen of Syria (Ahrar al-Sham) and the Jerusalem Army among another hard line Salafi Jihadis. These groups are in turn allied with remnants of the old Free Syrian Army (mostly Muslim Brotherhood) that are supported by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. That is, the US-backed groups are battlefield allies of the allies of al-Qaeda. US and Gulf-supplied weaponry routinely makes its way to al-Qaeda.”
Those geniuses in Washington thought they could take advantage of the jihadist siege of Syria to create the conditions for a three-sided civil war in which Assad would be overthrown, the Islamic State would be decimated, and their “vetted” sock puppets would wind up in the saddle. Indeed, it was the same strategy the neoconservatives envisioned in Iraq, where the Shi’ite majority and the Sunni minority would supposedly be sidelined by Ahmed Chalabi and his “vetted” Iraqi National Congress – except, for some reason, things didn’t turn out that way.
What happened instead is that Chalabi – a marginal figure, who had no support inside Iraq, and was an Iranian agent from the get-go – defected, the Shi’ite majority took state power and the Sunnis rose up, embroiling the country in a vicious civil war that eventually generated ISIS.
A parallel process is unfolding in Syria: the US-created “Free Syrian Army” had no real support on the ground in Syria and was soon marginalized and absorbed by battle-hardened jihadists. Succored by the Turks, the Qataris, and the Saudis, this third force wasn’t the result of US manipulations, but the consequence of a split in the jihadist ranks, pitting ISIS against the old-line followers of Osama bin Laden in al-Qaeda. So that, today, we see US-supported Syrian rebels fighting on the same side as those who took down the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
Not that this obscenity wasn’t anticipated by Washington. Indeed, Gen. Petraeus has long been an advocate of openly allying with “moderate” fighters within al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, the al-Nusra Front. This strategy is an extension of his “surge” operation in Iraq, where the US military allied with Sunni tribes in what was deemed the “Arab Awakening” – the very tribesmen who later morphed into ISIS and crossed the border to wreak havoc in Syria.
I have to laugh when I hear Donald Trump declare that we shouldn’t become involved in the Syrian civil war by arming the rebels because “we don’t know who they are.” We know precisely who they are – and that is the great crime at the heart of our policy.
The Obama administration has taken the same course set out by the neoconservatives who were at the helm during the Bush years: instead of going after the Sunni jihadists who are the core of al-Qaeda and ISIS, they have been intent on eradicating the last remnants of the old secular despots like Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi and Assad, empowering the Sunnis, and working to whittle down the “Shia crescent” in preparation for a final assault on Tehran. And if they have to ally with the perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to do it, well then so be it.
Standing behind this Orwellian turn in US policy are our allies in the region: the Saudis, the Gulf emirates, and the Israelis. The motives of the first two are ideological: Riyadh and Doha are engaged in a holy war against what they see as the rising influence of Shi’ite Iran, and are determined to stop Tehran by any means necessary. That’s why they have been funding, arming, and directing the jihadist armies currently decimating what is left of Syria.
The Israelis, who have long schemed to overthrow their old enemy in Damascus, are motivated by strategic concerns: they much prefer to see Syria in chaos rather than under Assad’s control. Their target is, as always, their principal enemy, Iran, which is aiding Hezbollah in Lebanon and sending fighters to prop up Assad. In the religious war that is tearing the Muslim world apart, they have clearly taken the side of the Sunnis: in covert alliance with the Saudis, their American lobby has been agitating for US intervention in Syria for years.
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