Exponential Escalation: Biden Bombs Syria.
Democrats illegally bombed Syria before they raised the minimum wage to $15 or passed those $2,000 checks they promised everyone. The ruling class can always unite around war.
On the evening of February 25th, reports began to surface in the United States that President Joe Biden ordered the military to carry out air-strikes against militia groups in Syria that were allegedly backed by Iran, according to US officials. The air-strikes killed 22 people.
In a statement to the press following the strike, John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary told reporters that the bombing was carried out “at President Biden’s direction,” and that it was targeted against “infrastructure utilized by Iranian-backed militant groups in eastern Syria…in response to recent attacks against American and Coalition personnel in Iraq,”. Kirby also said the strike was an attempt to “de-escalate the overall situation”.
Now, anyone with a shred of common sense should be able to understand that dropping bombs on a country can never, under any circumstances be construed to mean de-escalation. Unilaterally deciding to bomb a sovereign country is an illegal act of war, it’s the epitome of escalation.
The ruling class is trying to frame this bombing as a necessary defensive move. However, in reality, the United States has been illegally occupying and fighting offensive wars in the region for decades. In fact, U.S. interference in the Middle East stems all the way back to 1953 when the CIA overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran. Mosaddegh was going to nationalize Iran’s oil, so the U.S. replaced Mosaddegh with the Shah, a brutal dictator who terrorized the Iranian public and open Iranian oil reserves up for plundering by American and British corporations. Theocratic forces overthrew the Shah in the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the United States has been trying to re-institute its dictatorship in Iran by occupying the Middle East and fueling proxy wars in the region ever since.
An interview with General Wesely Clark on Democracy Now helps to provide an idea of the foreign policy agenda of the United States. In the interview, General Clark explains what he found out at the Pentagon just 10 days after 9/11, and it exposes the fact that much of U.S. foreign policy is predetermined; carried out not to protect human rights, but to protect and expand markets for global capitalism. According to General Clark, a member of the joint chiefs of staff told him about a plan to invade seven counties in five years, starting with Iraq, then Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, Libya, and finally, Iran.
After years of the U.S. supporting Saddam Hussein in attempts to overthrow the theocracy and re-institute the U.S.-backed puppet regime in Iran, George H.W. Bush went to war with Iraq. His son, George W. Bush, became President in 2001 and invaded Iraq. Obama invaded Syria, Somalia, Sudan, and Libya. Furthermore, both Trump and Biden have taken actions to escalate tensions with Iran. So even though it’s taken more than five years, General Clark’s outline of U.S. foreign policy goals checks out pretty well, in fact, he left a few countries that the U.S. ended up invading out of his list
The United States has been supporting jihadists in Syria to carry out regime change against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for almost a decade. American occupations of Syria and Iraq are illegal under both U.S. and international law, and both countries have demanded that the U.S. leave, claiming their right to self-determination as recognized by the United Nations.
The bombing was carried out against an allegedly Iranian-backed militia that’s been fighting jihadists like ISIS and al Qaeda, both of whom have received support from the U.S. as part of its effort to carry out regime change in Syria. Not to mention, the weapons manufacturer Raytheon has previously added nearly $5 billion to its stock price as a result of air-strikes in Syria, and President Biden’s current Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, is a Raytheon lobbyist. Nothing about this bombing was defensive, this was an illegal act of war that people will undoubtedly profit off.
The United States has been interfering in the region for more than thirty years, but its ramped up military action in Syria the most over the last decade. Syria is an extremely oil-rich country and it’s in an important geopolitical location that the U.S. wants to control so that it can curb the influence of China and Russia in the Middle East. Syrian President Assad isn’t adversarial towards China and Russia and wants the U.S. to stop supporting regime change in Syria, so naturally, the U.S. wants him gone.
Starting under the Obama administration the CIA and Saudi Arabia began a covert program to overthrow Assad as part of operation Timber Sycamore. As part of the program, millions of dollars of arms were transferred into the hands of jihadist terrorist groups such as ISIS and al Qaeda so they could be used as proxy forces for the U.S. in their attempt to carry out regime change in Syria. Similar to Operation Cyclone, which was the CIA program to arm the mujahideen so they could be used as proxies to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Cyclone produced al Qaeda and Sycamore produced ISIS, both of which U.S. officials continue to use as excuses to justify a perpetual occupation of the region.
During an appearance on MSNBC in 2018 following Donald Trump’s bombing of Syria, the Director of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network at the UN, Jeffery Sachs said:
“We have been digging deeper…What we should do now is get out, and not continue to throw missiles, not have a confrontation with Russia. Seven years has been a disaster, under Obama continuing under Trump. This is what I would call the permanent state. This is the CIA, this is the Pentagon wanting to keep Iran and Russia out of Syria, but with no way to do that. So we have made a proxy war in Syria,”
After former President Trump ordered the bombing of Syria, Biden’s current press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted “what is the legal authority for strikes? Assad is a brutal dictator. But Syria is a sovereign country.”. Psaki questioned the legal authority of air-strikes when Trump did them, but something tells me she’ll be defending Biden’s choice to do the same thing.
Despite attempting to play the victim and acting like this bombing was a defensive act of de-escalation, history proves that the United States is the aggressor. The U.S. not only continues to occupy and bomb Syria in violation of both domestic and international law, but it also subjects the country to sanctions that deprive ordinary civilians of food and medicine.
The United States is claiming that it’s acting in the interests of protecting human rights by working to overthrow the Assad government, but the facts on the ground show that the U.S. is acting to protect the geopolitical interests of the empire and committing war crimes in the process.
The weekend before the bombing was ordered by President Biden, 60 Minutes aired a segment about how Assad was a brutal dictator who used chemical weapons against his own people. The final decree of the segment was that the United States needed to keep working to overthrow Assad because he was committing war crimes and abusing human rights. Nothing was mentioned about the fact that the U.S. has been supporting ISIS and al Qaeda in its efforts to overthrow Assad, and nothing was mentioned about the fact that the U.S. is perpetuating this conflict by continuing to illegally occupy the region.
Also, nothing was mentioned about the fact that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which was involved in investigating the chemical weapons attack at Douma has been accused of manipulating evidence to paint the Assad regime as responsible for the attack that prompted former President Trump to bomb Syria in 2018, according to The Grayzone. Unfortunately, we shouldn’t expect the media to question Biden’s decision to bomb Syria even though the last time we illegally bombed Syria it was based on faulty information. Corporate media loves war, it’s great for ratings and the defense contractors who do business with them. Call it “The Military-Industrial-Media-Complex”. They’re in it for the profits just as much as everyone else, corporate media isn’t trying to rock the boat.
More recently, reports have emerged that Iraqi resistance forces targeted the Al Assad military base in western Iraq with at least 10 rockets, resulting in the death of one U.S. contractor. This comes in response to Biden’s air-strike on Syria last week, but rather than allowing the situation to simmer down, yesterday the Biden administration announced that it was considering using more force in response to this latest attack. Anti-war activists have warned that these actions are disturbingly similar to actions taken a year ago under the Trump administration when the U.S assassinated Iranian General Quassem Soleimani, nearly leading the two nations to the brink of war.
If the United States truly wants to see de-escalation in the region they have to stop illegally occupying Iraq and Syria. They have to stop supporting jihadists as proxies in an attempt to overthrow Assad. Until the United States chooses to stop violating the sovereignty of the people of Iraq and Syria, the people of those countries have every right to fight back against U.S. aggression. We can’t allow the ruling class to frame those fighting against American imperialism as the enemy.