Eric Zuesse

On Monday, April 25th, the AP headlined, "US general in Afghanistan suggests Russia arming the Taliban” and reported that U.S. Pentagon chief James “Mad Dog” Mattis was accusing Russia of violating the sovereignty of unnamed nation(s) and was supplying weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan — the very same group that the U.S. back in 1979 had begun arming in Pakistan so that the Taliban would invade Afghanistan and lure Soviet forces into Afghanistan, so as to make the Soviets “bleed” there, as the U.S. itself had bled in its Vietnam War. The U.S. National Security Advisor at that time went to Pakistan and rallied the Taliban there by saying “Your cause is right, and God is on your side!”

Mattis was also quoted in this news-report as saying, “We're going to have to confront Russia where what they're doing is contrary to international law or denying the sovereignty of other countries.”

The United States has, in fact, invaded Syria — routinely violating the sovereignty of that country. It’s aggression, in order to overthrow Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad, who is allied with Russia. The U.S. also has been protecting any jihadist group in Syria that cooperates with Al Qaeda to overthrow Assad. (The U.S. never abandoned the Cold War, but Russia did; and, ever since Russia did, in 1991, the U.S. government has secretly had a plan in place to bring every country that was allied with or part of the Soviet Union, except for Russia itself, into NATO or otherwise under control by the American aristocracy, and finally to take over Russia itself.) The U.S. has even preferred to help ISIS defeat Assad, over helping Assad defeat ISIS. Syria consequently requested Russia to assist in defending the survival of its internationally-recognized-as-legal government, so as to prevent its downfall and replacement by the jihadist forces that the U.S. and its Saudi, Qatari and Turkish allies have been trying to replace by imposing a fundamentalist-Sunni, Al Qaeda approved, regime. Whereas the presence of Russia’s military in Syria was requested by the legal government and is therefore legal, America’s is not — the U.S. is instead officially an “invader” there — and yet Mattis is saying that the U.S. will impose international law against Russia, for vague allegations by Mattis of Russia's “denying the sovereignty of other countries” — which the U.S. routinely does, and which it did excruciatingly in Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, and Syria since 2011, just to mention a few of the nations that the U.S. has recently destroyed. The U.S. government has long been in the regime-change business, especially to replace any ally of Russia, by an enemy of Russia.

However, Mattis, rabid as he is, is less rabid than is U.S. President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster. On April 13th, Eli Lake of Bloomberg News bannered "Trump Said No to Troops in Syria. His Aides Aren't So Sure.” He reported that,

"Trump's top advisers have failed to reach consensus on the Islamic State strategy. The White House and administration officials say Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford and General Joseph Votel, who is in charge of U.S. Central Command, oppose sending more conventional forces into Syria. Meanwhile, White House senior strategist Stephen Bannon has derided McMaster to his colleagues as trying to start a new Iraq War, according to these sources. … Two sources told me one plan would envision sending up to 50,000 troops. … Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, opposed sending conventional forces into a complicated war zone, where they would be targets of al Qaeda, the Islamic State, Iran and Russia. In Flynn's brief tenure, he supported a deal with Russia to work together against the Islamic State and al Qaeda's Syria affiliate, similar to a bargain Obama's secretary of state, John Kerry's tried and failed to seal with Moscow."

The reason that Kerry “failed to seal [the deal] with Moscow” is that the deal was reached on 9 September 2016 by Kerry and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, but was destroyed by Obama eight days later by his bombing Syria’s army at Der Zor to allow ISIS to overrun the place.

Trump is taking over where Obama left off.

Russian Television reported (and U.S. ‘news’ media refused to report) U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, on April 6th, two days after the alleged sarin attack, as essentially demanding Putin’s capitulation, regarding the Syrian war:

“'It is very important that the Russian government consider carefully their support for Bashar al-Assad.’ Tillerson added. Asked if the US will lead a regime change effort in Syria, Tillerson said that 'those steps are underway.'”

Russians got the message, even if Americans did not. In other words, they know that the Trump Administration is continuing what had originally been the Obama Administration’s objective, prior to Russia’s entry into the war on Assad’s side on 30 September 2015: regime-change in Syria. The Trump Administration is apparently willing to go to war against Russia in order to remove Assad and replace him with a leader who is supported by the U.S., Sauds, and America’s other allies in the war to replace Syria’s existing government.

It’s not only Mattis who is “rabid.” So is his President, Trump; and, if the even more rabid H.R. McMaster gets his way, so too will be the entire world.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, and of Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.
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