Syrian MP: US Deployment an Act of Aggression

Would US Allow Russian Ground Troops Into America Without Agreement?

While there’s been a lot of discussion about the Pentagon’s announced intention to send between 30 and 50 special operations troops into Syria from the perspective of no legal authorization within the US, and indeed on the wisdom of throwing a few dozen men at a huge ISIS caliphate at all, Syria sees a much bigger problem in all of this.

Syrian MP Sharif Shehadeh was critical of the US for deciding after five years to suddenly send the troops into Syria, particularly since they’d made the announcement without asking the Syrian government and indeed don’t intend to coordinate with Syria at all on the matter.

“Will America allow Russian ground troops to go into America without an agreement? I think the answer is no,” noted Shehadeh. Indeed, the most the State Department said on the matter was that the newly deployed troops are only intended to fight ISIS, and not the Syrian government itself.

That’s no small concession, as the US has been talking up intending to impose regime change on Syria for years, and seems to be shifting away from ISIS and toward backing rebels fighting the Syrian military once again, with an eye toward differentiating its war from Russia’s.

The US has often presented its “advisory” deployments as something short of direct acts of war by arguing they are supported by the governments of the various nations they’re involved in. In Syria, there is no pretense at all of this, however, and Syria objects to the move.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.