As the thirteenth anniversary of 9/11 draws closer so does the possibility that the United States and NATO will finally be able to realize their dream of direct airstrikes against the secular government of Bashar Al-Assad’s Syria.
After years of propaganda alleging Assad’s “brutality against his own people” and a recent volley of “ISIS is under the bed”-style hype, complete with beheadings, forced starvations, and other savagery, the American people remain utterly befuddled regarding the true nature of events taking place inside Syria, Iraq, and virtually every other country in the world, including their own. As a result, the buildup to a Western bombing campaign against Syria, while rejected by the general public only a year ago, will now likely move full steam ahead with the tacit support of the population.
Thus, as the thirteenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, U.S. President Barack Obama is planning to make a dramatic statement regarding his strategy to combat ISIS in both Iraq and Syria.
Although Obama has repeatedly stated that he will not commit U.S. troops to either Iraq or Syria, the possibility of “targeted airstrikes” or aerial bombardment is by no means off the table. Of course, it is also important to point out that Obama has already broken his promise regarding boots on the ground in Iraq with the deployment of at least 1,100 American personnel in the Middle Eastern nation.
Still, as the Detroit Free Press reports, “The plan is expected to involve an expansion of air strikes in Iraq that began in August. Obama is also likely to discuss a coalition of allies that has been assembled in opposition to the Islamic State, and to brace Americans for the possibility that the battle could take years.” In other words, Obama is once again channeling his inner George W. Bush in promoting war with no end against a sovereign state who is the victim of Anglo-American meddling and Western-backed terrorism.
The DFP also states that “In his speech, the president may also discuss the long-term potential for air strikes in Syria, though military action in that country is not considered imminent.”
In a recent interview with NBC’s Meet The Press, Obama stated that he expected Syrians to battle ISIS on their own land. Obama said “In terms of controlling territory, we’re going to have to develop a moderate Sunni opposition that can control territory and that we can work with. The notion that the United States should be putting boots on the ground, I think would be a profound mistake. And I want to be very clear and very explicit about that.”
Obama’s statement is quite interesting considering the fact that his administration claims to have been doing just that – developing a moderate Sunni opposition that can control territory and that we can work with – since 2011. So either his upcoming speech will simply be more repetition of tired talking points that serve to cover up the fact that the West is backing ISIS or it will be admission that there is no moderate opposition inside Syria which would reveal that the U.S. has been backing ISIS all along.
All of this, of course, will simply go over the heads of Americans more focused on “supporting the troops” and football stats than the slaughter of thousands of people overseas or a potential nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine.
There Are No Moderates In Syria
In reality, the so-called “opposition” in Syria is anything but moderate. As Tony Cartalucci wrote in his article, “In Syria, There Are No Moderates,”
. . . . . there were never, nor are there any “moderates” operating in Syria. The West has intentionally armed and funded Al Qaeda and other sectarian extremists since as early as 2007 in preparation for an engineered sectarian bloodbath serving US-Saudi-Israeli interests. This latest bid to portray the terrorists operating along and within Syria’s borders as “divided” along extremists/moderate lines is a ploy to justify the continued flow of Western cash and arms into Syria to perpetuate the conflict, as well as create conditions along Syria’s borders with which Western partners, Israel, Jordan, and Turkey, can justify direct military intervention.
Indeed, even the New York Times has been forced to admit that there are, as Cartalucci expertly argues in his article, no moderates in the ranks of the Syrian death squads. As Ben Hubbard wrote in April, 2013,
In Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, rebels aligned with Al Qaeda control the power plant, run the bakeries and head a court that applies Islamic law. Elsewhere, they have seized government oil fields, put employees back to work and now profit from the crude they produce.
Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government.
Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.[emphasis added]
ISIS Is Controlled By NATO
It is important to point out that the Islamic State is not some shadowy force that emerged from the caves of Afghanistan to form an effective military force that is funded by Twitter donations and murky secretive finance deals. IS is entirely the creation of NATO and the West and it remains in control of the organization.
As Tony Cartalucci writes in his article “Implausible Deniability: West’s ISIS Terror Hordes In Iraq,”
Beginning in 2011 – and actually even as early as 2007 – the United States has been arming, funding, and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and a myriad of armed terrorist organizations to overthrow the government of Syria, fight Hezbollah in Lebanon, and undermine the power and influence of Iran, which of course includes any other government or group in the MENA region friendly toward Tehran.
Image: ISIS corridors begin in Turkey and end in Baghdad. [image credit: Land Destroyer]
Billions in cash have been funneled into the hands of terrorist groups including Al Nusra, Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), and what is now being called “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” or ISIS. One can see clearly by any map of ISIS held territory that it butts up directly against Turkey’s borders with defined corridors ISIS uses to invade southward – this is because it is precisely from NATO territory this terrorist scourge originated.
ISIS was harbored on NATO territory, armed and funded by US CIA agents with cash and weapons brought in from the Saudis, Qataris, and NATO members themselves. The “non-lethal aid” the US and British sent including the vehicles we now see ISIS driving around in.
They didn’t “take” this gear from “moderates.” There were never any moderates to begin with. The deadly sectarian genocide we now see unfolding was long ago predicted by those in the Pentagon – current and former officials – interviewed in 2007 by Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran journalist Seymour Hersh.
Hersh’s 9-page 2007 report, “The Redirection” states explicitly:
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
“Extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam” and are “sympathetic to Al Qaeda” – is a verbatim definition of what ISIS is today. Clearly the words of Hersh were as prophetic as they were factually informed, grounded in the reality of a regional conflict already engineered and taking shape as early as 2007. Hersh’s report would also forewarn the sectarian nature of the coming conflict, and in particular mention the region’s Christians who were admittedly being protected by Hezbollah.
While Hersh’s report was written in 2007, knowledge of the plan to use death squads to target Middle Eastern countries, particularly Syria, had been reported on even as far back as 2005 by Michael Hirsh and John Barry for Newsweek in an article entitled “The Salvador Option.”
Regardless, Cartalucci states in a separate article, “NATO’s Terror Hordes In Iraq A Pretext For Syria Invasion,”
In actuality, ISIS is the product of a joint NATO-GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] conspiracy stretching back as far as 2007 where US-Saudi policymakers sought to ignite a region-wide sectarian war to purge the Middle East of Iran’s arch of influence stretching from its borders, across Syria and Iraq, and as far west as Lebanon and the coast of the Mediterranean. ISIS has been harbored, trained, armed, and extensively funded by a coalition of NATO and Persian Gulf states within Turkey’s (NATO territory) borders and has launched invasions into northern Syria with, at times, both Turkish artillery and air cover. The most recent example of this was the cross-border invasion by Al Qaeda into Kasab village, Latikia province in northwest Syria.
Cartalucci is referring to a cross-border invasion that was coordinated with NATO, Turkey, Israel, and the death squads where Israel acted as air force cover while Turkey facilitated the death squad invasion from inside its own borders.
Airstrikes Will Be Directed At Assad
Despite all the browbeating by the Western media suggesting that any targeted airstrikes would be strikes against ISIS, the truth is that the airstrikes are actually aimed at the Syrian government. The United States allowed ISIS to conquer Iraqi territory so as to justify the eventual invasion of Syria in addition to the reinvasion of Iraq. Indeed, any deployment of American troops, airstrikes, or any other type of US military force, will necessitate a battle against ISIS inside Iraq as well as “cross-border” strikes against the organization in Syria. Such “cross-border” strikes would likely be met with apathetic support from the American people since any restraint regarding borders will be presented and then viewed as placing “handcuffs on the troops.”
Make no mistake, however, any military action taken across the border inside Syria will not be taken for the purposes of eliminating ISIS. The truth is that such military action will be nothing more than a backdoor attempt at establishing the “buffer zone” that NATO so ardently desired early on in the Syrian conflict. With the establishment of this “buffer zone,” a new staging ground will be opened that allows terrorists such as ISIS and others the ability to conduct attacks even deeper inside Syria.
ISIS Attack On Taqba Airbase – The Precursor To A NATO Attack On Syria
Keeping in mind that ISIS is controlled and directed by NATO and Western intelligence, the fact that the death squads have recently focused on the Taqba Airbase in Raqqa province is significant. Particularly when viewed in context of the recent “debate” taking place in front of the American public by the Obama administration on whether or not to engage in targeted airstrikes inside Syria.
For those who may not see the pattern – while the United States and NATO deliberated engaging in targeted airstrikes in Syria and the Syrian government subsequently states its opposition to those attacks and its intentions to shoot down the planes delivering those strikes if they do not coordinate with the Syrian government, death squads have effectively eliminated the air defense capability of the Syrian government in the east of the country.
After all, the Pentagon even stated that one of the biggest threats to an airstrike operation in Syria is the Syrian government’s air defenses. Thanks to ISIS, those air defenses no longer exist in the east of Syria.
This was the end game of the ISIS battle to take over Taqba from the start – eliminate air defenses so that the NATO powers can launch airstrikes against the Syrian military and thus freeing up a launching pad for the terrorists to conduct attacks even deeper into Syria.
With the James Foley beheading video being largely understood as a staged propaganda ploy as well the fact that ISIS and its related terrorist organizations are funded, directed, and trained by the United States and NATO, it is imperative that the American people speak out and oppose the impending strike on Syria.
So far, on this particular issue, American apathy has largely contributed to preventing a war.
Unfortunately, with slightly more clever propaganda narratives, that apathy has been converted over to the benefit of the world oligarchy.
Thus, while apathy may have prevented the desire for a fight the first time around, that same apathy may well serve to allow one the second.
