US prepares for “generational” war in the Middle East By Peter Symonds 17 September 2014
At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey set the stage for a massive and protracted expansion of US military operations in Iraq and Syria.
“This will require a sustained effort over an extended period of time. It is a generational problem,” Dempsey told the committee.
In his opening testimony, Dempsey contradicted President Obama’s pledge last week that there would be no American troops engaged in combat in Iraq or Syria. “To be clear,” he stated, “if we reach the point where I believe our advisers should accompany Iraqi troops on attacks against specific ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] targets, I will recommend that to the president.”
Obama has already authorised the deployment of 1,600 American military personnel in Iraq, including the placement of US troops with Kurdish peshmerga militia and Iraqi army forces fighting ISIL, more commonly known as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). Speaking on behalf of the US military hierarchy, Dempsey made clear that such advisers could not be confined to headquarters, but would be needed to provide “close combat advising” in complex operations such as dislodging ISIS from urban areas like Mosul.
In remarks bordering on insubordination, Dempsey implicitly criticised Obama when he explained that the president had already turned down the recommendation of Central Command chief, General Lloyd Austin, to deploy American troops as spotters to call in air strikes during last month’s offensive to retake the Mosul Dam from ISIS.
Dempsey’s public disagreement points to tensions with the White House and the degree to which the military and intelligence apparatus are calling the shots in the new US-led war in the Middle East. The real purpose of the military intervention, a revival of plans shelved last year, is the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. This will necessarily require a far greater American military commitment than currently acknowledged.
In the space of just over a month, what was initially announced as limited air strikes to protect the Yazidi minority in Iraq has been transformed into a full-blown war in Iraq and Syria involving the US and some 40 allies. Both Dempsey and Hagel reaffirmed yesterday that the air war that has already begun in Iraq would be taken into Syria. “This is an Iraq-first strategy… but not an Iraq-only one,” Dempsey said.
Hagel told the Senate Committee that Obama will meet with General Austin today at the Central Command headquarters in Tampa for a briefing on the war preparations. “The plan includes targeted actions against ISIL safe havens in Syria—including its command and control, logistics capabilities, and infrastructure,” he stated.
Hagel dismissed any notion of Syrian national sovereignty, declaring that “our actions will not be restrained by a border in name only. As the president said last week, ‘if you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.’”
As was the case in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Obama administration is launching an illegal war of aggression over the vocal opposition of the Syrian government, which is well aware that it is the real target.
While maintaining the pretext of destroying ISIS, Hagel put Assad squarely in the US cross-hairs. “As we pursue this program,” he declared, “the United States will continue to press for a political resolution to the Syrian conflict resulting in the end of the Assad regime. Assad has lost all legitimacy to govern, and has created the conditions that allowed ISIL and other terrorist groups to gain ground and terrorise and slaughter the Syrian population.”
The cynicism is staggering. For the past three years, the Obama administration and its allies, especially Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, have backed, financed and armed the anti-Assad militias to overthrow the Syrian government. Having turned a blind eye to atrocities carried out in Syria by ISIS and other reactionary Islamist forces, Washington has seized on the beheading of two American journalists to justify the launching of a war to oust Assad.
Along with US air strikes in Syria, Hagel detailed plans to “train, equip and resupply more than 5,000 [Syrian] opposition forces over one year. The package of assistance that we initially provide would consist of small arms, vehicles, and basic equipment like communications, as well as tactical and strategic training.”
Hagel’s claims that there will be “a rigorous vetting process” to ensure that “weapons do not fall into the hand of radical elements of the opposition” have no credibility. The very fact that the training will take place in Saudi Arabia, one of the chief backers of Islamist militias in Syria, including ISIS, makes clear that the “vetting” will be to ensure that the overriding commitment of these forces is to oust Assad.
In his remarks, Dempsey spoke of the need to “destroy ISIL in Iraq,” where it threatens the stability of the US puppet regime in Baghdad. But he set a more modest goal for Syria, where the Islamist organisation could still be called on as part of the regime-change operation against Assad. There he said the aim was to “disrupt ISIL.”
Dempsey also indicated that the US was pressuring unnamed Sunni Arab nations with “very considerable” Special Forces to commit troops to assist anti-Assad militias on the ground in Syria. While he did not name specific countries, they likely include Qatar and Saudi Arabia, whose intelligence agencies have undoubtedly been active inside Syria.
A revealing exchange in the Senate hearing involving Republican Senator John McCain with Hagel and Dempsey underscored the purpose of the unfolding war. After declaring that it was a “fundamental fallacy” to rely on the Syrian opposition to prioritise fighting ISIS ahead of fighting Assad, McCain asked whether these militias would receive American air cover if attacked by the Syrian military.
The question came too close to the truth—that such an attack, real or fabricated, would provide a convenient pretext for unleashing devastating air strikes against the Syrian military. Responding to McCain, Hagel did not rule out the possibility, simply saying: “We’re not there yet, but our focus is on ISIL.”
Dempsey was more open, stating that “if we were to take [fighting] Assad off the table, we’d have a much more difficult time” persuading the Syrian opposition to join the US-led war. He said the administration had an “ISIL-first strategy”—meaning an open assault against Assad would soon follow.
Behind the backs of the American people and without even the fig leaf of congressional authorisation—which both parties would overwhelming provide, if asked—the Obama administration is embarking on a reckless and illegal war of aggression aimed at securing US hegemony over the Middle East and beyond. While Assad is the immediate target, the US is preparing for a confrontation with his backers—Iran and Russia—that threatens to trigger a far more devastating war.
Obama’s speech on ISIS: Perpetual war in Iraq, Syria and beyond 12 September 2014
In his speech Wednesday night to the American people, President Obama presented a perspective of open-ended and unlimited military conflict throughout the Middle East and beyond.
The threat of a terrorist group that few Americans could identify six months ago, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known as ISIL), is supposedly so great that it requires a major mobilization of US military and intelligence assets.
“This counterterrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist,” Obama said, thereby declaring that there is no geographical limitation to the new US military intervention. Besides Iraq and Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are all potential arenas for battle.
Moreover, given the roots of ISIS in the CIA-organized airlift of Islamist fighters and weaponry from Libya to Syria after the 2011 US-NATO war that overthrew Muammar Gaddafi, US military action across North Africa and the Sahara is a likely extension of Obama’s new stage in what the Bush-Cheney administration once called the “global war on terror.”
The media barrage over the grisly ISIS executions of two American journalists has no doubt had at least a temporary effect on US public opinion. However, the United States is not going to war to avenge James Foley and Steven Sotloff, or to express outrage over the beheading of innocents. Otherwise, the US target would be the barbaric monarchy of Saudi Arabia—the most important US ally in the Middle East, after Israel—which, according to one report, beheaded 113 prisoners during the time Foley was held captive by ISIS.
The real reasons for the new US intervention in the Middle East are the same as those that drove the Bush-Cheney administration in the previous round of bloodletting: the drive of American imperialism to control oil resources and maintain a dominant strategic position in the Middle East and, more broadly, the entire Eurasian continent.
In particular, the intervention against ISIS represents an effort by the White House to reverse the foreign policy debacle it suffered last year in Syria. Exactly one year ago, Obama pushed for air strikes against the government of Bashar al-Assad, with the goal of replacing it with a pro-US stooge regime. He was forced to pull back, in humiliating fashion, because of opposition from Russia, divisions within the US ruling elite, the failure of key US allies like Britain to join in the drive to war, and popular opposition.
The American ruling class responded by preparing the ground for a massive escalation in the Middle East, while organizing a coup in Ukraine targeting Russia, threatening to unleash a full-scale war with the second largest nuclear power in the world.
Obama’s explicit statement that the US is planning on bombing targets in Syria—“I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria as well as Iraq,” he said—underscores the determination of the ruling class to use the offensive by ISIS that began in June as a convenient pretext to finish what it started.
Immediately after the speech, plans were announced for a flood of military aid and training for US-backed oppositional forces that have been engaged in a protracted civil war in the country. The aid is to be coordinated by Saudi Arabia, one of the main backers of Islamic fundamentalist forces battling Assad, and a regional opponent of both Syria and Iran.
In pursuing its objectives in the Middle East, Obama’s pledge not to resort to “boots on the ground” has zero credibility. Already, hundreds of US troops and advisors have been dispatched to the region. Even before Obama went on national television, his secretary of state, John Kerry, was telling a Baghdad press conference that US combat troops would not return to Iraq unless “obviously, something very dramatic changes.” As former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton, a fixture in the foreign policy establishment, observed, “That’s a loophole a mile wide.”
As always, decisions that impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people have been made behind closed doors by a small cabal, with plans drawn up in advance presented as a fait accompli to be rubber-stamped by Congress and sold by the media on the basis of lies.
In pursuing its objectives—what Obama referred to as the “core interests” of the United States—the ruling class operates without any legal constraint. Significantly, Obama admitted that there was no evidence that ISIS forces, which control much of eastern Syria and overran parts of western and northern Iraq during the summer, pose any threat to the United States. He argued instead, “If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region, including to the United States.”
This amounts to a full-scale embrace of the doctrine of preventive war, espoused by Bush and Cheney as the basis for the invasion and conquest of Iraq. This doctrine is in direct defiance of international law, which declares that a country can initiate a war only in self-defense and forbids any country from launching a war by claiming to be responding to a potential threat arising in the future. The launching of such wars is the principal crime for which the Nazi leaders were indicted and convicted at the post-World War II Nuremberg Tribunal.
White House officials have argued that Obama has “all the authority he needs” to escalate the war in the Middle East, citing the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) adopted by Congress after the 9/11 attacks. Here again, Obama follows in the footsteps of Bush and Cheney, who used the AUMF as an all-purpose justification not only for military action overseas, but also for mass surveillance and indefinite detention at home.
The implementation of the new war in the Middle East underscores the mortal danger confronting the working class—in the region, in the United States and around the world. The American ruling class has embarked on a permanent and ever-expanding war. Amidst an intensifying social and economic crisis, it is seeking to resolve its problems at home and abroad by asserting its domination in every region of the globe.
The logic of this drive is world war, a catastrophe that can be prevented only by the independent political intervention of the international working class and the abolition of the capitalist system.
US prepares for “generational” war in the Middle East By Peter Symonds 17 September 2014
At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey set the stage for a massive and protracted expansion of US military operations in Iraq and Syria.
“This will require a sustained effort over an extended period of time. It is a generational problem,” Dempsey told the committee.
In his opening testimony, Dempsey contradicted President Obama’s pledge last week that there would be no American troops engaged in combat in Iraq or Syria. “To be clear,” he stated, “if we reach the point where I believe our advisers should accompany Iraqi troops on attacks against specific ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] targets, I will recommend that to the president.”
Obama has already authorised the deployment of 1,600 American military personnel in Iraq, including the placement of US troops with Kurdish peshmerga militia and Iraqi army forces fighting ISIL, more commonly known as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). Speaking on behalf of the US military hierarchy, Dempsey made clear that such advisers could not be confined to headquarters, but would be needed to provide “close combat advising” in complex operations such as dislodging ISIS from urban areas like Mosul.
In remarks bordering on insubordination, Dempsey implicitly criticised Obama when he explained that the president had already turned down the recommendation of Central Command chief, General Lloyd Austin, to deploy American troops as spotters to call in air strikes during last month’s offensive to retake the Mosul Dam from ISIS.
Dempsey’s public disagreement points to tensions with the White House and the degree to which the military and intelligence apparatus are calling the shots in the new US-led war in the Middle East. The real purpose of the military intervention, a revival of plans shelved last year, is the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. This will necessarily require a far greater American military commitment than currently acknowledged.
In the space of just over a month, what was initially announced as limited air strikes to protect the Yazidi minority in Iraq has been transformed into a full-blown war in Iraq and Syria involving the US and some 40 allies. Both Dempsey and Hagel reaffirmed yesterday that the air war that has already begun in Iraq would be taken into Syria. “This is an Iraq-first strategy… but not an Iraq-only one,” Dempsey said.
Hagel told the Senate Committee that Obama will meet with General Austin today at the Central Command headquarters in Tampa for a briefing on the war preparations. “The plan includes targeted actions against ISIL safe havens in Syria—including its command and control, logistics capabilities, and infrastructure,” he stated.
Hagel dismissed any notion of Syrian national sovereignty, declaring that “our actions will not be restrained by a border in name only. As the president said last week, ‘if you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.’”
As was the case in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Obama administration is launching an illegal war of aggression over the vocal opposition of the Syrian government, which is well aware that it is the real target.
While maintaining the pretext of destroying ISIS, Hagel put Assad squarely in the US cross-hairs. “As we pursue this program,” he declared, “the United States will continue to press for a political resolution to the Syrian conflict resulting in the end of the Assad regime. Assad has lost all legitimacy to govern, and has created the conditions that allowed ISIL and other terrorist groups to gain ground and terrorise and slaughter the Syrian population.”
The cynicism is staggering. For the past three years, the Obama administration and its allies, especially Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, have backed, financed and armed the anti-Assad militias to overthrow the Syrian government. Having turned a blind eye to atrocities carried out in Syria by ISIS and other reactionary Islamist forces, Washington has seized on the beheading of two American journalists to justify the launching of a war to oust Assad.
Along with US air strikes in Syria, Hagel detailed plans to “train, equip and resupply more than 5,000 [Syrian] opposition forces over one year. The package of assistance that we initially provide would consist of small arms, vehicles, and basic equipment like communications, as well as tactical and strategic training.”
Hagel’s claims that there will be “a rigorous vetting process” to ensure that “weapons do not fall into the hand of radical elements of the opposition” have no credibility. The very fact that the training will take place in Saudi Arabia, one of the chief backers of Islamist militias in Syria, including ISIS, makes clear that the “vetting” will be to ensure that the overriding commitment of these forces is to oust Assad.
In his remarks, Dempsey spoke of the need to “destroy ISIL in Iraq,” where it threatens the stability of the US puppet regime in Baghdad. But he set a more modest goal for Syria, where the Islamist organisation could still be called on as part of the regime-change operation against Assad. There he said the aim was to “disrupt ISIL.”
Dempsey also indicated that the US was pressuring unnamed Sunni Arab nations with “very considerable” Special Forces to commit troops to assist anti-Assad militias on the ground in Syria. While he did not name specific countries, they likely include Qatar and Saudi Arabia, whose intelligence agencies have undoubtedly been active inside Syria.
A revealing exchange in the Senate hearing involving Republican Senator John McCain with Hagel and Dempsey underscored the purpose of the unfolding war. After declaring that it was a “fundamental fallacy” to rely on the Syrian opposition to prioritise fighting ISIS ahead of fighting Assad, McCain asked whether these militias would receive American air cover if attacked by the Syrian military.
The question came too close to the truth—that such an attack, real or fabricated, would provide a convenient pretext for unleashing devastating air strikes against the Syrian military. Responding to McCain, Hagel did not rule out the possibility, simply saying: “We’re not there yet, but our focus is on ISIL.”
Dempsey was more open, stating that “if we were to take [fighting] Assad off the table, we’d have a much more difficult time” persuading the Syrian opposition to join the US-led war. He said the administration had an “ISIL-first strategy”—meaning an open assault against Assad would soon follow.
Behind the backs of the American people and without even the fig leaf of congressional authorisation—which both parties would overwhelming provide, if asked—the Obama administration is embarking on a reckless and illegal war of aggression aimed at securing US hegemony over the Middle East and beyond. While Assad is the immediate target, the US is preparing for a confrontation with his backers—Iran and Russia—that threatens to trigger a far more devastating war.
It only took Obama, Reid, Pelosi and Tonko 13 years to realize that we are fighting a Global War on Terror. The news finally sunk in that terrorists sucker punched us on 9-11-2013 and they (Obama, Reid, Pelosi and Tonko) stopped their endless fundraising long enough to realize that President George W. Bush was right all along, that freedom isn't free and the price of freedom is eternal vigilance against freedom's enemies.
Vote for Jim Fischer for Congress in 2014 and elect a Republican Senate to serve along side the Republican House to finally get America back on the right path again.
George Amedore & Christian Klueg for NYS Senate 2016 Pete Vroman for State Assembly 2016[/size][/color]
"For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest that is sleeping in the unplowed ground." Lyndon Baines Johnson
It only took Obama, Reid, Pelosi and Tonko 13 years to realize that we are fighting a Global War on Terror. The news finally sunk in that terrorists sucker punched us on 9-11-2013 and they (Obama, Reid, Pelosi and Tonko) stopped their endless fundraising long enough to realize that President George W. Bush was right all along, that freedom isn't free and the price of freedom is eternal vigilance against freedom's enemies.
How/where did something happen on 9/11/2013 ?? Did I miss that news?
We are advised NOT to judge ALL Muslims by the actions of a few lunatics, but we are encouraged to judge ALL gun owners by the actions of a few lunatics. Funny how that works.
How/where did something happen on 9/11/2013 ?? Did I miss that news?
typo -- 9/11/2001
George Amedore & Christian Klueg for NYS Senate 2016 Pete Vroman for State Assembly 2016[/size][/color]
"For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest that is sleeping in the unplowed ground." Lyndon Baines Johnson
and 10 years later we can add ISIS to the list!!!!! they just want us the hell out of their countries and to stop manipulating their governments and killing their innocent!!!!!
U.S. Department of State Washington, D.C. April 30, 2003
Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations
Abu Nidal organization (ANO) Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade Armed Islamic Group (GIA) ‘Asbat al-Ansar Aum Supreme Truth (Aum) Aum Shinrikyo, Aleph Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA) Communist Party of Philippines/New People's Army (CPP/NPA) Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group, IG) HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement) Harakat ul-Mujahidin (HUM) Hizballah (Party of God) Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) Jemaah Islamiya (JI) Al-Jihad (Egyptian Islamic Jihad) Kahane Chai (Kach) Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK, KADEK) Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LT) Lashkar I Jhangvi (LJ) Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK or MKO) National Liberation Army (ELN)—Colombia Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) Al-Qaida Real IRA (RIRA) Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) Revolutionary Nuclei Revolutionary Organization 17 November (17 November) Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C) Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path or SL) United Self-Defense Forces/Group of Colombia (AUC)
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
and 10 years later we can add ISIS to the list!!!!! they just want us the hell out of their countries and to stop manipulating their governments and killing their innocent!!!!!
No you are wrong. Isis wants us out because they want to be in control of who gets killed . Their PRIMARY mission is to selectively kill christian/catholic arabs. They are called Chaldeans.
No you are wrong. Isis USG wants to be in control of who gets killed . Their PRIMARY mission is to selectively kill christian/catholic arabs all who don't bend to their rules, economically and politically. They are called Chaldeans Freedom Fighters.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Go grab a rifle and save the Chaldeans, since you've talked to them. I'm guessing you are willing to lay your life down for them.
Loose interpretation of US interests.
Viet Nam, the idiots bought up the threat BS.
Iraq, same thing.
Even a coalition of attackers that never found the WMDS that they claimed they went for.
2014, same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was.
Convincing propaganda that always turns out to be bull shhit.
The threats are justification to invade country after country, and rebuild the countries after we destroy them, charging them a king's ransom for the rebuild.
Logged
