Ongoing fighting between the CIA and the Pentagon over who the US is actually at war with in Syria appears to have dragged the US State Department in as well, with reports emerging that “dozens” of top State officials have signed a document “protesting” US policy in Syria for being focused on fighting ISIS.
Described as the “dissent channel cable,” the document appears to mirror the CIA’s own narrative, which is that in attacking ISIS the US is fighting the wrong war in Syria, and instead demands that the US shift focus entirely to militarily imposing regime change on the Syrian government.
Though the State Department document is still secret, it appears to simply echo the CIA’s supposition that ISIS can’t be defeated while Syria has a “weak” government, and that therefore destroying what’s left of Syria’s government might conceivably help.
Among the many problems with this strategy is that it is directly in contradiction to the strategy the US has publicly endorsed in recent months, and the one that they got through the UN Security Council, which is that the strategy to defeat ISIS is to unite the Syrian government and the secular rebels.
While talks to that effect haven’t gone well, having the US suddenly go off the reservation and launch yet another war inside Syria, this time against the Assad government, would likely cause a massive backlash, not just from Russia, which is backing the government, but from the rest of NATO, which has complained that the reason the talks haven’t worked is that the US has cut them out of the negotiation process and is just arguing with the Russians.
Secretary of State John Kerry was leading the charge for a war against Assad years ago, only to have it foiled by Syria agreeing to the demand to destroy all their chemical weapons. At this point, with Russia deeply involved in the war, attacking Assad is all but impossible, meaning the State Department “protest” is mostly meaningless, and simply puts those officials on the record as not being happy with the losing war they’re already fighting.
The publication of the mid level employees at the State Department about engaging in one more war of aggression and regime change should be considered suspicious at best and alarming at worse. The article mentions some fifty signed the letter and that they were involved in Syria policy making. Without knowing the names and their respective positions, it seems that a minor country such as Syria should consume so many employees. It also begs the question as how knowledgeable these individuals are about Syrian history or whether they have agendas relating to other foreign nations who seek the destruction of Bashar al-Asad.
But the very premise of their complaint that only a strong Syria could assist in the destruction of ISIS raises the issue of what if Syria’s neighbors, the Arab oil sheiks and the United States and its allies had avoided providing any and all aid to the rebels from the very start of the rebellion in March 2011? The revolt would have ended and the Syrian government and army would have remained in tact. Given Asad would not allow any other challenges to his rule, what would be the likelihood that al Qaeda would have set up shop? What would be the likelihood that ISIS would have taken over large swathes of Syrian territory?
It was the financial, diplomatic and military assistance from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the USA, Britain and France that weakened the Syrian nation. By feeding the rebellion it led directly to decade plus civil war resulting in massive destruction, hundreds of thousands of causalities, and a mass exodus of people fleeing the battles. It also allowed the regrowth of al Qaeda which had little or no support before being chosen as the instrument to remove Iran’s ally in Damascus. It also released ISIS on the world.
The State Department incorrectly assessed the consequences of aiding and abetting the Syrian revolt was a monumental failure. These bureaucrats would now compound their errors by advocating expanding the war. These fifty desk bound champions of regime change will not be the ones doing the actually fighting and dyeing. The clean war they are pushing have repercussions that could involve not just Syria but Russia as well. Having helped to create this mess, these “experts” should go back to pushing papers and hopefully avoid any future quagmires to drag us into.
It also puts those officials on record as being a bunch of neocon-puppet scum that needs to be purged from State stat. No surprise about the CIA, it’s always wrong about everything ever since it got into the torture-and-kill business instead of intelligence.
One has to take a serious look at people like Nuland without any doubt a NEOCON hellbent on starting a war with Russia and will do anything to do so! She has been active in the waging of war in Both Syria and Ukraine!
And WHO was her boss? Oh Yeah, Hillary! When she wins, champagne will be flowing on Wall Street and in Tel Aviv.
Get together, forget your partisan domestic politics, and do something to stop it. The rest of the world is shitting their pants over the prospect of either one of them. Maybe Sanders? Maybe even Romney? Both the R’s and the D’s show cracks in their armor!
Yup, after Ukraine she should have been removed and charged with something or other.
It is mind-boggling to me that presidents/secretaries tolerate nests of rogue rats all over the government doing and undoing as they please with no accountability.
You’re in a very small minority Rick. The US government is doing what the people ask of them. You are to blame and you don’t know how to break the cycle. Your stupid partisan politics of hate and racism prevented you from noticing what Sanders was accomplishing in being a third party candidate.
Please. No one among the American people is asking the government to invade, occupy, torture, kill, enrich the rich at the expense of everyone else, etc. etc. etc. Those who support that are the small minority.
Sanders? No thanks.
No candidate is voicing an antiwar agenda and no candidate’s followers are asking for it. Foreign policy is an unspoken element and you know that. Trump has come closest with his ‘make America great again’ which can be taken to have the meaning the lemmings want to take out of it. First, the suggestion to make a quick end to all opposition in the ME is the message for the hawk supporters. Second, the message that he will bring the troops home, which is meant for those who don’t want to pay the bills anymore. Nobody has interpreted it as antiwar, or if they have then they haven’t spoken it or asked Trump to confirm it.
Clinton is going to wipe the floor with this asshole but that’s no consolation prize for we who are antiwar.
Clearly, you haven’t listened to Trump’s foreign policy speech where he declared his intention to kick the Neocon war-mongers out. You seem also to have missed his comment about cooperating with Russia in Syria. You seem also to have missed his comment about not automatically resorting to war to solve every “issue”, nor his comment to the effect that it didn’t seem constructive US policy to make adversaries out of Russia and China.
Yes, he wants to destroy ISIS, but then, who doesn’t? Oh, wait,… that would be Obama, Hillary, the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Dept, every Neocon on the planet, Israel, Turkey, the Saudis, and the Qattaris.
It’s easy to dislike Trump: just listen to the smear machine and pay scant attention to who he really is, what he has really done in life, and what he says he will do.
Trump is a builder not a destroyer, he is Guiness-book-of-world-records ***EFFECTIVE***, and if he is true to his word, he will restore quality employment, and with it dignity, to the American working man and woman.
The parasite political class promises and then betrays. Donald Trump delivers. Let’s see what he delivers over the next four and a half months.
Clearly you haven’t listened to both sides of Trump where he contradicts everything he says in order to appeal to the audience he’s screaming at. You wicked, stupid, ignorant people. You are being led down the garden path by a shyster of the caliber of a used car salesman and you don’t even recognize it for what it is. Fortunately, brighter minds will take control and keep Trump away from the red button and other adult toys. Go play in the traffic, the adults are talking.
Having Hillary with her extreme Russophobia in control of the red button may actually be even more dangerous. But clearly your mind is closed to such rational thinking.
You’ve been lied to so often that when someone tells you the truth it makes your head hurt. It’s Kool-Aid withdrawal, and you want more of the old lies to stop the pain. Soldier on an get your head straight.
Trump is quite consistent, and he’s a builder not a destroyer. The smears that have been leveled against him are the deliberate attack of an establishment that sees its control of the country challenged. That challenge has been building for some time now, from voters across the political spectrum. Ron Paul, last time, and Trump, this time, on the right; Sanders on the left.
The history of phony politicians is legion — “Change you can believe in”….. not! — so it’s easy to believe that Trump is yet another political con man. What is real and what is illusion? We are immersed in the electoral spectacle — and what a spectacle this time around! We live in “interesting times”, and the next four and a half months should be interesting indeed.
Good luck.
And in her spare time, she is fomenting chaos in Macedonia, where she is trying to stir up ethnic hatreds between Albanian majority and Slavic Macedonians. To do it, she has a puppet opposition, and staging already well known protest gimmicks. There is just one problem. Majority of people are so fed up, that they came out in massive protest to dwarf Nuland’s staged ones. The saga is going on. Where the government they are trying to unseat has the popular support — and the “opposition” has only street shows, it has become the theater of the absurd. That is, the opposition DOES NOT WANT ELECTIONS, and the scheduled elections are not to be held as Ms. Nuland will not have it. Why? Guess what. There are “no conditions for election”. I love the neocon fibs. No conditions. Of course, your guy CANNOT WIN. So, instead of elections to settle the political chaos, she wants chaos. Too bad for Macedonian economy, too bad for the kids mouths to be fed. She wants the existing government out. But why? She will not have Chinese Silk Road spread across Balkans, from the Chinese port in Greece, across Macedonia, Serbia and on to Hungary. From Hungary, on to the rest of Europe. Trade, infrastructure, manufacturing — these are her enemies. People who have something to live off — cannot be forced to do what is against their own interest. Worse yet, China has a plan to connect via canals the Greek coast via rivers Vardar and Morava to Danube, that links many European countries. And as she cannot do much at present to Serbia — it has already been beaten down enough over Kosovo, she thinks that Macedonia is a weak link. And indeed it is. She already tried the Albanian minority card. There was a terrorist attack on a Macedonian police station in a town of Kumanovo. But Macedonian authorities had them killed. It turned out, majority came from nearby Kosovo, and they returned there to hero funeral. And that is under NATO noses, and large US military base, Camp Bondsteel.
Who knows what else is coming out of her kitchen! Her kin, Robert Kagan just published with his cohorts a fantasy version of US foreign policy. Neocon throughout — defending the LIBERAL world order. They had to — Trump has a foreign policy document that is a paradigm breaking document. it is a black swan event, and this is why they are panicking. Problem is — liberal minded people who are not pleased with the empire, are too easily swayed from paying attention to Trump policy documents.
Sure, he did not write it — but somebody did. He may be a wrecking ball that can demolish State Department ossified neocon establishment. But he has obviously people with the knowledge who can build it anew.
Check press releases, April 2016. Foreign Policy Document on Official web site.
And have a legislation introduced with death penalty for anyone supporting Wahhabi cults anywhere in the world, by funding, arming or giving them political support. Now these deranged neocon scum want to outright help Saudi Wahhabi cults take over Syria.
All their “moderates’ are murderers with a specific fundamentalist cult ideology, which Obama, Hillary and neocons dare not identify, as it would make them accomplices. If this is not a treason, I do not know what is. Just as this religious-industrial complex used another unstable individual to pledge allegiance to their cult and kill Americans, here comes the State Department, all their panties all tied up in knots — hurrying Obama to attack Syrian Army and Syrian people — to give their favorite thugs the freedom to destroy Syria, just as they have destroyed Libya. Twisted minds thought they would give Saudi Arabia more elbow room to keep more Middle East population under their cruel and very much un-Islamic feudal caliphate. Time to stop running after the worker bees of these proliferating cults, but go after the Queen Bee — Saudi Arabia. Once the ideology, money and arms stop coming, the cult and all of its various editions around the world — will die.
Here are Hillary and Obama — arguing about taking guns away from US citizens, but they are arming FOR YEARS the cult zombies that pray on all vulnerable and identity-challenged, adolescent or just angry — to commit crimes around the world in the name of Islam! Good job! Republicans are no better. Only Trump has insisted that our officials FESS UP and tell us exactly the nature of the cult we are dealing with. Once it is clear, one can deal with it — militarily were appropriate, by punishing all suppliers of money, arms or religious leaders, and by engaging community in US. Also, one can engage Moslem communities, and give parents appropriate TOOLS to work with children, to spot dangers. Schools need to pay attention to that — as they do today with gangs, and it will be easier on poor Moslem kids that feel somehow guilty, but do not know what for.
Neocons love the ambiguity of “war on terror”, because they can keep all Moslems on tenterhooks, and make it as unclear as possible THE KEY CHARACTERISTICS OF the cult that is spreading world wide via Saudi-US religious-military complex. This is the way to continue arming them anywhere in the world in the defense of “democracy”, while having one group — ISIS — to be the one and only bad guy. They love the ambiguity because of the ongoing mess of Israeli occupation — by keeping Americans busy with the “Islamists”, they can take all the liberty of abusing Palestinians. Saudi Arabia has so much dirt on us — that I doubt that any politician will touch them — unless ready to break the relationship. Since they are now our ONLY Arab ally — it does look rather grim. So, neocons to the core — think it is better to destroy Assad, give Saudis a bone, and live goes on for a few more years of chaos and insane spending. And if Americans die, oh well, those bad Moslems…
The entire State Department needs revamping from basement up. And all missions around the world that represent us very arrogantly and incompetently. Instead of being our eyes and ears, they act as imperial overseers, damaging our reputation and making enemies of peoples wherever they go. But that may be their goal — the more enemies, the better for their patron’s coffers.
Frankly, I was surprised that so many normally namby pamby Foreign Service officers were willing to put their name on such a “controversial” document. It goes to show that what used to be thought of as neoconservative has become near universal inside-the-Beltway thinking.
No chance. Russian Air Defense forces will swat anything thrown at Assad out of the sky.
Unlikely in spite of extreme chest-thumping. Syrian air defense can’t even interdict Israeli warplanes coming in for leisure bombing runs.
Also “Gee, I wonder who could be behind this dissent channel cable” definitely applies.
This is Israeli policy we’re listening to. The only people on earth with the influence to make the State department stump for something so completely insane are the Israelis. And those “dozens” of state officials would no doubt include a who’s-who of dual citizens.
It’s been Israel’s policy for years that the current enemy, whoever it is, has to be destroyed, as payback for old wounds. Create Hamas to destroy the PLO, for example. Destroy Syria at all costs, and leave the field completely open for ISIS. No matter; Syria used to shoot at Israel, back in the 60’s. They must pay. And the are paying.
Israel won’t rest until the black flag flies over Damascus. Then they’ll be happy. Until ISIS comes for them.
60 miles s the crow flies from the Golan Heights to Jerusalem and roughly 30 miles from Jerusalem in what is the easiest way into Jerusalem from Damascus is ait for it Armageddon!
The US government and then the American people are to blame for what Israel is allowed to do. You people just can’t find a way to stop it. There’s just not enough interest in doing that and the opportunity for a third party candidate in Sanders was squandered. The major parties won’t allow a close call like that to happen again.
Israel does what it can get away with. It’s US support of Israel that is the problem and the direction to point the finger of blame. Stop pretending that Israel is serving America’s purpose.
The syphilitic swamp rat, Benjamin Netanyahu might be secretly issuing ultimatum to those officials.
This is not the CIA, but the zionist clandestine Infiltration unit within the CIA, Mossad Agents, only the zionists benefit from regime change in Syria.
Of course. AIPAC demands that we do.
Ahh, the sweet smell of success. This sounds like what the Washington ignoramuses did in Iraq. Regime change followed by holy war, bombs, and more holy war.
Signed by the radical Israel government and AIPAC.
After Obama all will be in agreement once again for going to war with Syria and then Iran. Or in reverse order maybe because of the Russian deterrent in Syria standing strong.
If there had been a real antiwar movement in the US, Americans could have embraced what Obama tried to do instead of squandering the opportunity. Now, maybe some of the more perceptive ones will see the difference when Clinton becomes president and starts making plans for war.
The only restraint on the US will be Putin and that’s a big one this time. Putin is going to stand his ground for his country.
Who are the fifty? Names, please. How many Neocons are there in the State Dept? How complete is the subversion?
I perfectly agree. This bunch of neocons placed in the State Department by Hillary Clinton and its AIPAC allies are fighting the Pentagon because they want to implement the neocon plan, i.e. to destroy any country hostile to Israel with US military assets. In this case, it’s Syria.
They are salivating at the thought that warmonger Hillary Clinton could be back in the While House. If Donald Trump reaches the White House, all these neocons would probably be fired on day one.
When did Congress declare war against the Assad government?
How many of these 51 “dissenters” are actually CIA officers working under diplomatic cover?
Bashar al-Assad is the only Middle-Eastern leader with his head screwed on straight. All this nonsense / war scenario in Syria is because Assad refused Saudi Arabia the right to run a pipeline through his country. The West is insane with their warmongering ideas.
We should change the State Department name to the War Department and put it under the Pentagon. It’s lost any credibility as a diplomatic agency long ago.