Eric Zuesse

U.S. aim is a failed Syrian state, so Russia will lose an ally. Thus, on October 13th, Brandon Turbeville headlined, As Russia Bombs ISIS, US Bombs Syrian Civilian Power Stations.”" The U.S. aims to destroy Syria; Russia wants to salvage Syria. So: while Russia bombs ISIS and other jihadists, U.S. bombs Syria’s infrastructure. A nation without the infrastructure to hold it together is a failed state — America’s goal.

The U.S. doesn’t announce this as its goal. Instead, the U.S. says simply, that Syria’s President, Bashar al-“Assad must go,” or, “the time has come for President Assad to step aside” so that there will be “a new government, without Bashar Assad.” This is like George W. Bush’s constant demands for “regime change in Iraq.” Who gave the U.S. the right to replace nations’ leaders and still claim that doing this doesn’t constitute an international crime, of aggression, if not of aggressive invasion — the war-crime for which Nazis were hung at Nuremberg?

The Sauds, who own Saudi ArabiaThanis, who own Qatar, want to take over Syria, so as to become enabled (by their ISIS allies) to pipeline oil and gas into Turkey and thus the EU. That’s been blocked by Assad’s Syria. The U.S. goal in Syria is a failed state where the local warlords — who will be ISIS, al-Nusra, and other jihadists — will share the oil-and-gas profits with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which will build through Syria pipelines into Europe, thereby replacing Russia’s supplies of oil and gas. This is Obama’s goal, and not only that of King Saud, the Qatari Emir, and the other direct economic beneficiaries of the plan.

The great investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed headlined in the Guardian on 30 August 2013, "Syria intervention plan fueled by oil interests, not chemical weapon concern,” and another great investigative journalist Christof Lehmann headlined on 7 October 2013 at his nsnbc news site, “Top US and Saudi Officials responsible for Chemical Weapons in Syria.” Lehmann opened: “Evidence leads directly to the White House, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, CIA Director John Brennan, Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar, and Saudi Arabia´s Interior Ministry,” as planners of the attack. (The U.S. has been allied with the Saudi royal family since 1945.) Lehmann discussed the chemical-weapons attack “in the Eastern Ghouta Suburb of Damascus on 21 August 2013,” which attack .S. President Barack Obama was citing as his reason for planning to bombU to bring down Assad, whom Obama was blaming for the chemical attack — an attack that his own team might more likely have planned. In fact, an MIT study of the evidence found that Obama (and his Administration) had clearly lied, and that, "the US Government’s Interpretation of the Technical Intelligence It Gathered Prior to and After the August 21 Attack CANNOT POSSIBLY BE CORRECT.” The Administration never offered any answer to that study, because its evidence was unchallengeable. The sarin rocket had actually been fired from territory that was controlled by the U.S.-equipped rebels, not by Syrian government forces. This sarin gas attack is what’s called in the intelligence community a “false flag attack,” meaning one that’s designed to be blamed on the opposite side, which one wants to attack. It’s a way to treat one’s own public as suckers, instead of as citizens. This was the U.S. government's way when George W. Bush warned of “mushroom clouds” and “Saddam’s WMD”; and it’s also the way Barack Obama has been dealing with Syria.

The New York Times eported, on 5 December 2012,r that America’s bombing campaign in Libya had been planned in conjuction with the Thanis, the owners of Qatar, who supplied weapons to the jihadist rebels who were doing the actual fighting to bring down Gaddafi. And then, once he was killed, the U.S. continued using the Qataris to supply arms to those jihadists in Libya. However, this U.S. aid to jihadists disturbed secularist leaders in Libya. "Mahmoud Jibril, then the prime minister of the Libyan transitional government, expressed frustration to administration officials that the United States was allowing Qatar to arm extremist groups opposed to the new leadership, according to several American officials. … The United States … provided little oversight of the arms shipments.” Obama merely wanted to overthrow Gaddafi, who was allied with Russia. And he was allied with the Sauds and Thanis. Also, supplying Islamists in Libya, instead of secularists there, meant that the arms-flow to Islamists in Syria would continue. So, Obama really had no reason to object to what the Qataris were doing there.

In fact, as yet another great investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, reported, on 17 April 2014, Obama had arranged for weapons in Libya to be sent to jihadists in Syria, these forces being al-Nusra, or Syria’s Al Qaeda branch (Obama calls them “moderate rebels”). "By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria. A number of front companies were set up in Libya, some under the cover of Australian entities.” So: these are the types of fighters that Russia is now bombing. This is why, when Russia’s President Putin asks America’s President Obama to join forces with the Syria-Russia-Iraq-Iran coalition, Obama says no: he’s actually trying to defeat that coalition.

This is consistent with Obama’s National Security Strategy 2015, which names Russia 17 of the 18 times it charges “aggression.” For example, it doesn’t mention Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or the United States itself, even once, as being “aggressive” or using “aggression.” That’s like Hitler in the 1930s claiming to seek peace while he charged Poland and then England as being aggressors. What’s even more amazing is that most Americans are still suckered by such a scam. Perhaps Goebbels’s operation is even being outdone in today’s U.S. After all, America is now the longtime world champion in “PR”opaganda. Instead of being on FDR’s side now, America is more on Hitler’s. The ghost of Hitler has come to haunt America’s White House. Hitler’s “Deutschland über alles,” or “Germany above all,” has even become Obama’s “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation.” Hitler thought that Germany was. Same type of nation, same nationalistic supremacism, just a different era.

Echoing, again, Goebbels, Hillary Clinton said on 18 August 2011, when the United States was starting its remove-Assad operation: “We understand the strong desire of the Syrian people that no foreign country should intervene in their struggle, and we respect their wishes.” But she actually rejects their wishes. When America’s ally the Qatari regime, which funds al-Nusra, hired a polling firm in 2012 to survey Syrians, the finding was that 55% of Syrians wanted him to remain as President. Then, as I reported on 18 September 2015, “Polls Show Syrians Overwhelmingly Blame U.S. for ISIS,” and those recent polls were from a British firm that has ties to Gallup. The West no longer polls Syrians about whether “Assad must go.” They know that the only way it can happen is the way Obama has been and is trying: bombing, and overthrow. Till Syria becomes a failed state. That would be victory, for Obama, Clinton, and the rest of the U.S. establishment.

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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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