As Trumps Standing in the Polls Crumbles, the U.S. Attacks Syria with 60 Cruise Missiles –

circled area – region around Homs where the Tomahawk cruise missile attack took place.

The timing of the Cruise missile attack closely followed up by the ISIS attack on the Shayrat air base suggest a high level of coordination between the Trump Administration – and as implausible as it might sound to American ear – ISIS itself. This has all the earmarks of a coordinated strategy, coming as it does only a few weeks after a major strategic gathering in Jordan that included the main backers (known or unknown) of the mercenaries fighting the Syria government. Present at the meeting were representatives from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, Turkey, the Emirates, Jordan and the United States.As Trumps Standing in the Polls Crumbles, the U.S. Attacks Syria with 59 Tomahawk Cruise missiles.

What is not worth explaining because most of you know anyhow – and have it down pat…

• That like in so many other U.S-led military misadventures in decades past – that you, the U.S public has been lied to
• That one of the goals of the operation, is to take the attention off of Trumpty-Dumpty’s domestic blitzkrieg on any federal program that is environmentally or socially useful, anything whatsoever that might help Americans of poor or modest means, women, off of the racist garbage against Latinos, Moslems, Jews, Hindus, and moderate Christians…this is a diversion, an awful, horrid, bloody diversion.

Most of what needs to be said about this air strike, was said so eloquently by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. He issued a statement Friday following President Donald Trump’s missile strike in Syria Thursday night. Sanders expressed his concern over the airstrikes, calling them “disastrous” and urging peace and stability.

“If there’s anything we should’ve learned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which the lives of thousands of brave American men and women and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians have been lost and trillions of dollars spent, it’s that it’s easier to get into a war than out of one,” Sanders said. “I’m deeply concerned that these strikes could lead to the United States once again being dragged back into the quagmire of long-term military engagement in the Middle East. If the last 15 years have shown anything, it’s that such engagements are disastrous for American security, for the American economy and for the American people.”

The U.S. fired Tomahawk missiles Thursday night into a government-controlled air base in Syria following a deadly chemical attack against civilians that left more than 100 people dead and 300 injured. Trump said the retaliation was a “vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of nuclear weapons.” The U.S. attack had bi-partisan support including from Democrats close to Hillary and Bill Clinton and the New York Times. Times writer Michael Gordon, along with Judith Miller, accused during the Iraq war of providing false information about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, continued in that tradition in these Syrian articles.

Some of the same Democrats – politicians and the media – who so oppose Trump’s domestic policies are simply falling in line with the president on the Cruise missile, attack and more generally, Trump’s war policy in the Middle East. As British Guardian writer, Owen Jones, notes:

A press he [Trump] denounced as liars and “enemies of the people” are now eating out of his hands, tiny or otherwise. “I think Donald Trump became President of the United States,” cooed CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria in response to the bombing. Trump “reacted viscerally to the images of the death of innocent children in Syria,” declared Mark Sandler in the New York Times. The original headline on that article, since amended? “On Syria Attack, Trump’s Heart Came First.”

And so the man who once bragged to a baying audience that he would tell five-year-old Syrian refugees to their faces that the US would not offer them safety, is now driven by his heart. Touching indeed. The “moral dimensions of leadership” had penetrated Trump’s Oval Office, declared the Washington Post’s David Ignatius.

MSNBC’s Brian Williams described the missile launches as “beautiful” three times in the space of 30 seconds.

But it is more than that…

Now before getting into what the attack was about…let me make one thing crystal clear…because I am already hearing bizarre, but I suppose predictable accustation that somehow “the Russians!!!” are behind this attack.

Nonsense…

What did happen and how can it be explained. What do we know..

We know that an extraordinarily large number -59 – of cruise missiles were fired from the guided-missile destroyers USS Ross and USS Porter in the eastern Mediterranean – at an airbase at Shayrat, near Homs, was targeted. The initial reports suggest that the attack killed at least 50 people and destroyed five Syrian Mig fighter jets on the ground. A careful study of the attack suggests that beyond “revenge” , that the cruise missile attack had no strategic value whatsoever.

As it is described in the media – from left to right – the Cruise missile attack was an American response to a chemical weapons attack in Irbid, Syria (northern Syria near the Turkish border) in which dozens died. As it has done in the past (2013), the Administration (first the Obama, and now Trumpty-Dumpty) accused the Syrian government of purposely attacking opposition positions with nerve gas.  Then and now, however, no evidence has been provided that could verify this allegation, and a growing amount of evidence – more recently provided by Seymour Hersh – that it was ISIS and like groups that were behind both attacks.

The Syrian government’s version is that their air force bombed an ISIS arms depot that, it turns out, contained chemical weapons as well as chemical weapons-making factory. In the ensuing explosion, the chemical weapons stored there exploded too, releasing the poison gas. This is far different from arguing that Damascus bombed the site with chemical weapons. Keep in mind that after the 2013 attack, international monitors watched as the Syrian government destroyed its supplies of poison gas. At the same time, it has been repeatedly documented that ISIS-al Nusra types possess and have used poison gas, most recently in Mosul, Iraq where the U.S. said not a word about its use.

If the versions of what the serin attack at Irbil are diametrically different, and the stakes so high, why did the Trump Administration rush to judgement to almost immediately launch this devastating Tomahawk Cruise missile attack? The answer is not hard to discern – they were just looking for a pretext to bomb Syria. Nor is it just the Trump Administration which put out the word that the Assad government was behind the attack, but much of the mainstream American media swallowed the accusation – and marketed it – virtually without question.

In the case of Obama, in 2013 it was clear that a number of military circles, neo-cons and liberal interventionists, including two former University of Denver colleagues using “humanitarian intervention” as a pretext, tried to push Obama to attack. Obama had the good sense not to take the bait and pulled back from the abyss of war. I might add that Obama’s caution, along with the Iran Nuclear Deal, were to two bright spots in an otherwise confused and directionless Middle East policy.

Downplayed in the mainstream media is the fact that within hours of the Cruise missile attack on Shayrat Air Base, Al Nusra – ISIS forces attacked the airbase and tried to occupy it. Despite the heavy damages inflicted by the Cruise missile attack, Syrian government forces were able to repel the attackers and the base remains in Damascus-government hands. Before the war begin in 2011, Homs, was Syria’s third largest city with a population then of around 650,000. It is located about half-way between Damascus and Aleppo very close to the Syrian border with northern Lebanon, an area known to be a stronghold for ISIS militants who could easily cross over from Lebanon into Syria.

The timing of the Cruise missile attack closely followed up by the ISIS attack on the Shayrat air base suggest a high level of coordination between the Trump Administration – and as implausible as it might sound to American ear – ISIS itself. This has all the earmarks of a coordinated strategy, coming as it does only a few weeks after a major strategic gathering in Jordan that included the main backers (known or unknown) of the mercenaries fighting the Syria government. Present at the meeting were representatives from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, Turkey, the Emirates, Jordan and the United States.

Nor is this the first time that such efforts – U.S. (and/or) Israeli airstrikes coordinated with ISIS-al Nusra ground offensives (or defensive situations). There have been a half-dozen or more times when Syrian government forces, on the verge of inflicting serious defeats on Al Nusra, ISIS and the like have been bombed from the air by U.S. air strikes – and this in the past six months alone.

The difference between the Shayrat air strike and the others is interesting. On the other occasions, the U.S. military issued statements that the attacks on Syrian government positions were “accidental” or “mistakes” (issued of course without apologies). This time, with much fanfare and publicity, the Trumpty-Dumpty administration openly admitted that they were militarily targeting Syrian government forces.

What can be concluded at this time about the attack. There are a few preliminary themes that emerge. Including

1. Using sixty (OK – only 59) Tomahawk Cruise missiles to unsuccessfully try to destroy a Syrian air base was a classic example of military overkill – the signature kind of operation carried out by General John “Mad Dog” Mattis in a seris of operations in Iraq (Fallujah, in particular, but not only). The operation has all the marks of a false flag operation, a pretext for deeper U.S. direct military involvement in the Syrian conflict.
2. The overkill was “meant to send a message” that the United States will be more directly militarily in the war in Syria and as it does, it will do so with the kind of brutal force exhibited in this attack. The objective is to shift the balance of forces between the Syrian government and the (U.S. backed) mercenary militias (ISIS, al Nusra, etc) back to where it was prior to the liberation of Aleppo from those militias.
3. The re-emergence of the United States – who already has Special Forces on the ground – as a direct major military force in Syria – is a result of the failure of U.S. allies (the usual suspects cited just above) to accomplish the goal of dismembering and partitioning Syria. American allies in the region have failed to accomplish the program – and there is a program – initialed and signed at Doha in 2012 to partition Syria – to partition Syria.
4. The U.S. led plan to partition Syria remains alive and well – to do to Syria what the United States (and allies) did to Iraq and Libya – remains very much alive. The Trump Administration is not interested in a peaceful negotiated settlement…and as there will be no military solution to the Syrian conflict, only a political solution, which the U.S. refuses to seriously consider…the conflict will drag on

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Links:

The Guardian: Donald Trump Has Jumped Into A Quagmire With His Eyes Shut.