Friday, April 7, 2017

Asking The Wrong Questions About Syria

In the wake of Trump's criminal attack on Syria last night, this essay has an urgent relevancy:

But who and why (re: the "gas attack" in Khan Sheikhoun) are the wrong questions. The third question – the right question – is: Why is the US involved in this war?

The Assad regime has not attacked the US, nor has Congress declared war on Syria. There’s simply no defensive – or for that matter even legal – rationale for a US military presence in Syria. Whatever horrors the civil war there may entail, American military adventurism makes them worse, not better. It perpetuates instability rather than bringing peace.

Donald Trump ran for president on a platform of reducing US military meddling in other countries’ affairs. It’s time for him to follow through and order a US withdrawal from Syria.

You can read the rest @
http://original.antiwar.com/thomas-knapp/2017/04/06/were-asking-the-wrong-questions-about-syria/

Unfortunately, such a withdrawal is not going to take place. Presidents who are in trouble frequently launch wars to dig themselves out of a hole. Apparently this is what Trump decided to do.

By the way, if (as suggested by the timing) Stephen Bannon was removed from the NSC because he opposed this attack, I salute him.

4 comments:

  1. Maybe Trump picked last night for the attack in commemoration of this:

    http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/04/06/army-commemorates-100th-anniversary-us-entering-wwi.html

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  2. "With the cruise missile attack on Syria, the United States has opened up a new chapter in its war for global hegemony that it began more than a quarter century ago with the invasion of Iraq.

    "The claim that this attack is a response to the Syrian government’s use of poison gas is a transparent lie. Once again, as in the air war against Serbia in 1999, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, and the attack on Libya in 2011, the United States has concocted a pretext to justify the violation of another country’s sovereignty.

    "The bombing of Syria is a unilateral abrogation by the US of the agreement negotiated with Russia in 2013, which resulted in the calling off of a long-planned direct military intervention by the US in the on-going civil war."

    You can read the rest @
    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/07/pers-a07.html

    And this is NOT a "civil war". It's a proxy war of aggression by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

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  3. This sham report claims that Trump's strike has united Congress:

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-07/trump-unites-congress-us-lawmakers-largely-support-syria-air-strikes

    Sorry, that's not good enough. The Nazi legislature was united in support of Hitler's war crimes, too.

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  4. I guess Bannon DID oppose the Syria strike:

    https://sputniknews.com/politics/201704081052442141-pentagon-attack-syria-bannon/

    Bully for him. But he's now on the way out, so Trump will have NO mitigating influences on the NSC. Bad for us.

    ReplyDelete