US officials and analysts have been warning Syria’s Civil War could quickly devolve into a proxy war between Russia and the United States, but to hear them talk lately, that proxy war has been going on for some time already, and they’re not liking America’s chances.
With both sides fighting ISIS, officials have previously sought talking points complaining that Russia was doing it wrong. Lately, however, the US narrative has shifted toward ousting the Syrian government, and since Russia isn’t doing that, it’s a “proxy war.” And since Syria’s government is in a less precarious position than they were a year ago, America is “losing.”
These over-simplistic goals and interpretations of an increasingly complex war quickly break down on further analysis. The primary targets of Russia and Syria have been al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and ISIS. Nusra hasn’t lost significant ground in the year since Russia began its involvement, and if anything has gained major territory in Aleppo at the expense of minor losses in Latakia and Homs. ISIS, on the other hand, has lost territory, including around Palymra, which was indisputably the major Syrian military gain in 2016. Syrian forces have also held off ISIS advances in Deir Ezzor, strengthening their position.
In the simplistic version, Assad is stronger and that’s bad, and the CIA wants to send more missiles to rebels to change that. In reality, however, Assad’s gains are coming predominantly against ISIS, meaning effectively the US is seeing ISIS’ losses as America’s losses in this proxy war.
Underpinning this preposterous shift in priorities is the ongoing discussion of joint US-Russia coordination against Nusra Front. It’s unsurprising, given their views, that so many intelligence officials oppose this coordination. After all, if they see anti-Assad forces like ISIS as de facto US proxies, the same inevitably applies to Nusra, which is a lot closer tied to directly US-armed factions.
Officials seem to be gambling that this more honest discussion of the proxy war view of Syria will undercut the Russia coordination talks in a way that wild allegations of the whole State Department-proposed effort being a “ploy” by Vladimir Putin ever could. At the same time, it changes America’s war-fighting priorities dramatically, and in ways that a lot of higher-ranking administration officials probably aren’t going to be eager to publicly acknowledge.
Hoist a toast to Putin and Assad. The U.S. has been fostering ISIS and other “moderate terrorist groups.” Israel has been treating the terrorists in their hospitals and once they have recovered, send them on their merry way. The War On Terror is nothing more than a flimsy cover for a Greater Israel. The two main countries that Israel would love to see the regimes of Syria and Iran go the way of the Do Do Bird. The American government is directly responsible for the deaths of a million civilians and hundreds-of-thousands wounded. This does not factor in the tens-of-millions refugees that have fled the horrors of that “war.” Western Europe is being deluged by Muslims because of it. When it comes to hypocrisy America has the patent on it. When Shillary is President you can be rest assured that a nuclear war is quite possible with Russia.
And lose they shall. America doesn’t win anymore because it is immoral and rightfully loathed across the world.
The garbage in Washington is playing with fire but they will not stop until we’re all burned.
When the US starts a war and gets many, many, many people killed, then later the reasons for the war always sound silly. (Or are revealed to be outright lies).
So, the US wants to kill many, many, many people in Syria. The US wants to arm and train terror groups in Syria. And we are told that not only that its because the US made up in its own pointy little head the fantasy that the fight in Syria is really a contest between the US and Russia, its that all of these people have to die and we had to make the terror problem worse just because we couldn’t stand the idea of losing even this fantasy battle to the Russians.
When the first kids from your block start to come home in body bags, make sure you remember why. They are starting wars because of fantasies in their heads.
Why won’t our pure evil foreign policy based on lies work?!? I don’t understand.