While Pentagon officials confirmed last week that the US air war in Syria would end after
the withdrawal of troops from the country, airstrikes by the coalition
have continued apace, and the statements from the coalition show no
signs of slowing down.
Following the most recent salvos, the coalition issued a statement saying that ISIS “presents a very real threat to the long-term stability in this region.” This certainly doesn’t give the impression that strikes are going to be done in a matter of weeks.
Indeed, in the context of the US opening new bases in Iraq, immediately
along the Syrian border and very close to the site of the strikes, there
seem to be reasons to question whether the air war will actually be
ending, as previously said.
At the same time, the US airstrikes depend heavily on targeting support from Kurdish forces attacking ISIS towns. With the Kurds seeking new allies, its likely their targeting intelligence, such as it is, will be going elsewhere as well.
I think they’re just trying to get rid of all the evidence.
Might as well help out a little here.
With the Bush/Cheney invasion and overthrow of Saddam, and the subsequent de-Baathification/de-Sunnification of the Iraqi government, the leadership of Saddam’s army/intelligence/police retreated across the border to sanctuary in Eastern Syria, while an extremist resistance remained behind to form al Qaeda in Iraq.
Then, in 2011, the Arab Spring emerged, and with breathtaking strategic incompetence, the CIA regime-change effort in Syria, in the works by Bush/Cheney from 2006, went “full-kenetic”. The attack forced Assad to pull back from the upper Euphrates Valley of eastern Syria, to defensive positions around the Damascus population centers in the west. This created the power vacuum that later enabled the rise of ISIL in eastern Syria. As 2011 worked toward 2014, arms, fighters, and money poured into Syria through Turkey, courtesy of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the CIA rat line from Libya. Libya having been destroyed by HRC et al in 2011.
With Assad occupied defending his heartland in the West, ISIL bulked up in the east. Establishment tool Obama had been persuaded by the Deep State to fake the war against ISIL, as a means to keep the pressure on Assad to step down.
By June of 2014, ISIL controlled all of Eastern Syria. On the 4th of June ISIL fighters swept into Iraq’s Anbar Province. ISIL and aligned forces captured several cities and other territory, beginning with an attack on Samarra on the 4th of June, followed by the seizure of Mosul on the 10th of June, and Tikrit on the 11th. On the 29th of June ISIL declared the Caliphate. At that point ISIL “owned” Western Iraq and Eastern Syria, with an area of 40,000 square miles, approximately the area of Ohio, and a population under their control of between 7 and 8 million.
Up to that point the war had gone badly for Assad. In 2015, with defeat looming, Assad called on Russia to assist in Syria’s defense. Russia complied, and their air power, intelligence, and tactics then reversed the tide of the war, and within two years ISIL was in full retreat. By January 2016, Obama’s phony war against ISIL was revealed, briefly embarrassing the US. Trump then won the 2016 presidential election, campaigning on a promise to destroy ISIL, assumed the presidency in January of 2017, and proceeded in the next two years to fulfill his campaign promise.
Which is where we are today. The Caliphate as a territorial reality has been destroyed.
However, the consequences of Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq remain. Bush defeated and removed Saddam Hussein’s Sunni government and then turned the country over to the Shia majority. The predictable result was an Iraq that immediately allied with neighboring Iran. The victory of Assad’s Shia government in Syria then completed the “Shia Arc” stretching from the Straits of Hormuz to the Mediterranean.
Which is where we are today.
This catastrophe for US and Israeli strategic interests was entirely the accomplishment of a feckless Bush/Cheney administration, under Neoconservative-directed foreign policy It was a gift to Iran. But in no way was it due to Iranian aggression.
Meanwhile, the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, followed by the comprehensive disenfranchisement of Sunni Islam throughout Iraq and Syria, virtually guarantees a chronic low-level insurgency by the remnants of ISIL in the Upper Euphrates Valley and Anbar.
This is the new reality in the Mideast.
As Karl Rove put it:
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”
This is the “reality” that Bush, Cheney, and the Neocons have created.
After posting my piece, I came across this Max Blumenthal article from The Consortium News:
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/12/27/critics-of-syria-withdrawal-fueled-rise-of-isis/
Much more thorough than my short treatment, it explains in near comprehensive detail, the US role in enabling and then husbanding ISIS.