-by- Stephen Lendman

Except for Turkey’s Erdogan ordering the downing of a Russian bomber, complicit with Washington, Moscow’s campaign has been casualty-free after conducting 5,240 sorties since September 30.

Pantsir-S1, one of Russia’s formidable and highly original weapons. Originally Soviet strategic missile systems had been placed in fixed, hardened sites. Newer systems such as the S-300PS/PM (SA-10/20) on the other hand was much more mobile which reduced its vulnerabilities to attack, However, once the S-300 unit was found by enemy forces it was still very vulnerable to precision weapon systems. One of the roles for the Pantsir-S is to provide air defence to the S-300 missile systems.[21] It was also decided that a wheeled chassis would be better suited for the Pantsir-S rather than a tracked chassis. The reasoning being that wheeled vehicles are faster, less prone to breakdowns, easier to maintain, and cheaper to produce. (Click on image)

Russia’s military is a formidable force to be reckoned with, matching America’s best at a small fraction of the cost, using its resources judiciously, prompting US Air Forces in Europe commander General Frank Forenc to call its qualitative and quantitative capability “alarming.”

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu salutes as he takes part in a rehearsal for the Victory Day military parade on Moscow’s Red Square on May 7, 2015. Russia celebrated the 70th anniversary of the 1945 victory over Nazi Germany on May 9. Shoigu is an extremely capable man. AFP PHOTO / KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP/Getty Images)

Its competency is exceptional, using powerful state-of-the-art weapons with precision accuracy, including from hundreds of miles away.

They’re able to launch them from aerial, ground, sea and subsurface locations, maybe space, with ability to destroy what’s aimed at. 

Pentagon commanders are forced to admit respect, perhaps with second thoughts on ever confronting a force equalling or exceeding its own capability.

Russia’s effective Syrian anti-terrorism campaign enters its fourth month this week, devastating ISIS positions, facilities, operations and personnel – Putin proving his longterm commitment to combat a common scourge.

He wants ISIS and other takfiri terrorists groups battled abroad, preventing them from gaining a foothold on Russian territory, his main reason for getting involved, intent on staying the course, no matter the duration.

Obama initially mocked him disgracefully, saying “(a)n attempt by Russia and Iran to prop up Assad and try to pacify the population is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire and it won’t work.”

He’s waging real war on terror, polar opposite Obama’s phony campaign, supporting the scourge he claims to oppose, aiming for regional hegemonic control, Russian influence shut out – a losing strategy after three months of Moscow successes.

Except for Turkey’s Erdogan ordering the downing of a Russian bomber, complicit with Washington, Moscow’s campaign has been casualty-free after conducting 5,240 sorties since September 30.

The Sukhoi_T-50_in_2011. Russia’s fifth-generation PAK FA T-50 fighter jet is a “flying robot, a smart plane,” advisor to Director General of Radio Electronic Technology Concern, Vladimir Mikheyev said.

Moscow-based analyst Vasily Kashin notes the relatively moderate $1 – 2 billion annual cost, easily sustainable indefinitely, as long as it takes to get the job done.

A newly released Pentagon report reveals its astonishment at the success of Moscow’s campaign, saying:

“Russia has begun, and over the next decade will make large strides in fielding a 21st century navy capable of a dependable national defense (and) an impressive but limited presence in more distant global areas of interest…”

Its current aerial and naval prowess is awesome, proved effective in combat. Pentagon commanders are worried. Have they met their match? Will they dare confront an adversary able to defeat them, humiliating the world’s self-styled sole super-power?

Since the end of the Cold War, notably post-9/11, the Pentagon consistently underestimated Russia’s military capabilities – no longer.

Its navy once derisively called “more rust than ready,” now commands respect – as do its formidable air and ground forces, structured for defense, able to effectively counter any offensive threat.

Pentagon commanders are awestruck. America’s NATO allies can’t match its impressive Syrian campaign. 

Moscow continues proving its critics wrong. The best strategy against it is waging peace, not war, anathema to US imperial objectives. An eventual showdown increasingly looms, the devastating possibility of nuclear war.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.  His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III." (http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html ) Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

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Ring of Steel

=By= Thomas Gaist

The year 2015 will be remembered as a year of expanding global warfare and militarism. It began with discussions of the possibility of “total war” against Russia over the Ukraine crisis, saw new provocations against China in the South China Sea, and draws to a close amid the escalation of the US and European war in Iraq and Syria and the spread of conflict to Yemen, Libya and other parts of Africa.

The imperialist powers are determined to make 2016 an even bloodier and more dangerous year. Germany and Japan are openly remilitarizing, as their governments seek to whitewash and rationalize the crimes of the World War II era. All of the imperialist powers have seized on the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino to place their populations and economies on a war footing.

The most dangerous factor is the US drive for global domination. The United States has its hands in virtually every country, employing drone assassinations, Special Forces operations and a network of military bases and agreements aimed at establishing unchallenged military domination over the planet, along with cyberspace and outer space.

More plans are afoot. Washington is preparing to expand its global basing system through the addition of a “larger network envisioned by the Pentagon,” which will include at least four new Special Forces hubs and numerous new “spoke” bases, according to a New York Times article published Monday.

The commando network will be centered on Eurasia and Africa but will be global in scope, according to Pentagon officials. Among the new bases will be a permanent establishment in Afghanistan, which will function as “a hub for Special Operations troops and intelligence operatives throughout Central and South Asia.”

The record of the US special units, which have emerged as the spearhead of the so-called “war on terror” since 2001, makes clear the murderous nature of the escalating commando war. US Special Forces have been granted a general license to carry out violence and mayhem in every part of the world with total disregard for international law. Thousands of US commandos are already operating in between 85 and 130 countries worldwide, according to varying estimates by US media sources.

The enlarged Special Forces network is only one element of a broader strategic escalation by Washington. US weapons manufacturers are collaborating with the government to channel an expanding war chest of arms to allied governments and proxy forces, with American weapons sales surging in recent years. In 2014, total US arms sales jumped by $10 billion to a total of $35 billion, giving US corporations control over 50 percent of the world weapons market, according to a congressional report released last week.

The intensified drive for a redivision affects every region of the world.

European Expansion

Washington is pre-positioning military equipment and deploying conventional forces and military “advisors” and trainers throughout Europe in preparation for war against Russia.

The US Army plans to double the number of tanks it has deployed to Europe, sending another full armored brigade to the continent, accompanied by infantry fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons as well as an additional full Army division dedicated to joint operations with NATO and European militaries.

In Ukraine, US Army forces are training five battalions of active-duty forces and US Special Forces are partnering with the Ukrainian military to develop Ukraine commando units.

Asia Pacific Expansion

South Korea, a country that has been tapped to serve as a staging area for US war preparations against China, was the leading importer of US arms in 2014, purchasing nearly $8 billion worth of American-made weaponry.

In December, the Obama administration approved the sale of $1.8 billion worth of weapons to Taiwan, including warships previously used by the US Navy and several advanced missile systems. The sale was the first weapons transfer to Taiwan in years and was clearly intended as a provocation against Beijing.

In the Pacific, the US Army’s “Pacific Pathways” program is coordinating joint operations with Asia-Pacific militaries. In the course of 2015, the program saw the US conduct joint drills with units from Australia, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Mongolia, South Korea and Thailand.

Middle East Expansion

Leading purchasers of US weapons in 2014 included the ultra-reactionary regimes of Saudi Arabia, which purchased $4 billion worth of TOW missiles, and Qatar, which purchased $9.8 billion worth of US arms. Qatar has been a major backer of Islamist forces in Syria in the US-backed civil war against Assad.

The US has spearheaded a new imperialist carve-up of the entire region, with Britain, France and Germany piling into the wars in Iraq and Syria toward the end of 2015 and Saudi Arabia leading a US-backed war in Yemen.

Africa Expansion

Total arms sales to Africa—particularly in the oil-rich regions—increased by 50 percent between 2010 and 2014 over the previous five-year period. Cameroon and Nigeria, which are collaborating with the growing US intervention in West Africa in the name of the “fight against Boko Haram,” were among the leading importers of weapons. Preparations are underway to relaunch military operations in Libya, already devastated by the US-NATO war that overthrew and murdered Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Cyber and outer space expansion

Even cyberspace and outer space are not exempt from the US-led militarization drive. In November, the US was one of only four countries to vote against a United Nations resolution, “No First Placement of Weapons in Outer Space,” which was supported by more than 120 member states. In a presentation earlier this year, US Undersecretary of Defense Robert Work outlined Pentagon plans to deploy a range of space weapons, which Work claimed are necessary to ensure military dominance over Russia.

***

The experience of the Obama administration has underscored the impossibility of opposing imperialist war outside of a struggle against the capitalist system and all of its political representatives. Having won office in 2008 as an antiwar candidate, presenting himself as an opponent of the war in Iraq and an antidote to the militarism of the Bush administration, President Obama has presided over an escalation of the war in Afghanistan, wars for regime change in Libya and Syria, and a new war in Iraq.

Obama’s talk about ending the war in Afghanistan has been exposed by his decision to keep thousands of US troops in the country and the plans to establish permanent US bases there. All of his pledges of “no ground troops” or “boots on the ground” in Iraq and Syria have been exposed as lies.

The divisions that exist within the US ruling elite and the state over foreign and military policy concern the focus and methods of US efforts to dominate the territory and resources of the world, with the Obama White House arguing for a concentration on the struggle against China and his opponents demanding a larger commitment of troops and weapons to turn the Middle East into a de facto US colony. But there is no “peace faction” within the corporate and political establishment, or either of the two big-business parties.

One side of the global crisis is the slide toward a new world war. The other is the development of revolutionary struggles by the working class. Vast resources are allocated to destruction and war, while growing sections of the US population are pushed into poverty and forced to struggle for basic necessities such as housing, education, nutrition and health care.

The struggle against war can be conducted only on the basis of the independent mobilization of the working class in the US and internationally against imperialism on the basis of a socialist and internationalist revolutionary program.

Source
Article: WSWS
Lead Graphic: US Army providing humanitarian assistance to Iraqi army. U.S.Army.

---

 

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The Ugly Americans

=By= William Astore

The Reaper in action.

The United States is a peculiar sort of empire.  As a start, Americans have been in what might be called imperial denial since the Spanish-American War of 1898, if not before.  Empire — us?  We denied its existence even while our soldiers were administering “water cures” (aka waterboarding) to recalcitrant Filipinos more than a century ago.  Heck, we even told ourselves we were liberating those same Filipinos, which leads to a second point: the U.S. not only denies its imperial ambitions, but shrouds them in a curiously American brand of Christianized liberation theology.  In it, American troops are never seen as conquerors or oppressors, always as liberators and freedom-bringers, or at least helpers and trainers.  There’s just enough substance to this myth (World War II and the Marshall Plan, for example) to hide uglier imperial realities.

Denying that we’re an empire while cloaking its ugly side in missionary-speak are two enduring aspects of the American brand of imperialism, and there’s a third as well, even if it’s seldom noted.  As the U.S. military garrisons the planet and its special operations forces alone visit more than 140 countries a year, American troops have effectively become the imperial equivalent of globetrotting tourists.  Overloaded with technical gear and gadgets (deadly weapons, intrusive sensors), largely ignorant of foreign cultures, they arrive eager to help and spoiling for action, but never (individually) staying long.  Think of them as the twenty-first-century version of the ugly American of Vietnam-era fame.

The ugliest of Americans these days may no longer be the meddling CIA operative of yesteryear; “he” may not even be human but a “made in America” drone. Think of such drones as especially unwelcome American tourists, cruising the exotic and picturesque backlands of the planet loaded with cameras and weaponry, ready to intervene in deadly ways in matters its operators, possibly thousands of miles away, don’t fully understand.  Like normal flesh-and-blood tourists, the drone “sees” the local terrain, “senses” local activity, “detects” patterns among the inhabitants that appear threatening, and then blasts away.  The drone and its operators, of course, don’t live in the land or grasp the nuances of local life, just as real tourists don’t.  They are literally above it all, detached from it all, and even as they kill, often wrongfully, they’re winging their way back home to safety.

Imperial Tourism Syndrome

Call it Imperial Tourist Syndrome, a bizarre American affliction that creates its own self-sustaining dynamic.  To a local, it might look something like this: U.S. forces come to your country, shoot some stuff up (liberation!), take some selfies, and then, if you’re lucky, leave (at least for a while).  If you’re unlucky, they overstay their “welcome,” surge around a bit and generate chaos until, sooner or later (in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, much, much later), they exit, not always gracefully (witness Saigon 1975 or Iraq 2011).

And here’s the weirdest thing about this distinctly American version of the imperial: a persistent short-time mentality seems only to feed its opposite, wars that persist without end.  In those wars, many of the country’s heavily armed imperial tourists find themselves sent back again and again for one abbreviated tour of duty after another, until it seems less like an adventure and more like a jail sentence.

The paradox of short-timers prosecuting such long-term wars is irresolvable because, as has been repeatedly demonstrated in the twenty-first century, those wars can’t be won.  Military experts criticize the Obama administration for lacking an overall strategy, whether in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere.  They miss the point.  Imperial tourists don’t have a strategy: they have an itinerary.  If it’s Tuesday, this must be Yemen; if it’s Wednesday, Libya; if it’s Thursday, Iraq.

In this way, America’s combat tourists keep cycling in and out of foreign hotspots, sometimes on yearly tours, often on much shorter ones.  They are well-armed, as you’d expect in active war zones like Iraq or Afghanistan.  Like regular tourists, however, they carry cameras as well as other sensors and remain alert for exotic photo-shoots to share with their friends or the folks back home.  (Look here, a naked human pyramid in Abu Ghraib Prison!)

As tourists, they’re also alert to the possibility that on this particular imperial safari some exotic people may need shooting.  There’s a quip that’s guaranteed to win knowing chuckles within military circles: “Join the Army, travel to exotic lands, meet interesting people — and kill them.”  Originally an anti-war slogan from the Vietnam era, it’s become somewhat of a joke in a post-9/11 militarized America, one that quickly pales when you consider the magnitude of foreign body counts in these years, made more real (for us, at least) when accompanied by discomforting trophy photos of U.S. troops urinating on enemy corpses or posing with enemy body parts.

Here’s the bedrock reality of Washington’s twenty-first-century conflicts, though: no matter what “strategy” is concocted to fight them, we’ll always remain short-time tourists in long-term wars.

Imperial Tourism: A Surefire Recipe for Defeat

It’s all so tragically predictable.  When it’s imperial tourists against foreign “terrorists,” guess who wins?  No knock on American troops.  They have no shortage of can-do spirit.  They fight to win.  But when their imperial vacations (military interventions/invasions) morph into neocolonial staycations (endless exercises in nation-building, troop training, security assistance, and the like), they have already lost, no matter how many “having a great time” letters — or rather glowing progress reports to Congress — are sent to the folks back home.

By definition, tourists, imperial or otherwise, always want to go home in the end.  The enemy, from the beginning, is generally already home.  And no clever tactics, no COIN (or counterinsurgency) handbook, no fancy, high-tech weapons or robotic man-hunters are ever going to change that fundamental reality.

It was a dynamic already obvious five decades ago in Vietnam: a ticket-punching mentality that involved the constant rotation of units and commanders; a process of needless reinvention of the most basic knowledge as units deployed, bugged out, and were then replaced by new units; and the use of all kinds of grim, newfangled weapons and sensors, everything from Agent Orange and napalm to the electronic battlefield and the latest fighter planes and bombers — all for naught.  Under such conditions, even the U.S. superpower lacked staying power, precisely because it never intended to stay.  The “staying” aspect of the Vietnam War was often referred to in the U.S. as a “quagmire.”  For the Vietnamese, of course, their country was no “big muddy” that sucked you down.  It was home.  They had little choice in the matter; they stayed — and fought.

Combine a military with a tourist-like itinerary and a mentality to match, a high command that in its own rotating responsibilities lacks all accountability for mistakes, and a byzantine, top-heavy bureaucracy, and you turn out to have a surefire recipe for defeat.  And once again, in the twenty-first century, whether among the rank and file or at the very top, there’s little continuity or accountability involved in America’s military presence in foreign lands.  Commanders are constantly rotated in and out of war zones.  There’s often a new one every year.  (I count 17 commanders for the International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan, the U.S.-led military coalition, since December 2001.) U.S. troops may serve multiple overseas tours, yet they are rarely sent back to the same area.  Tours are sequential, not cumulative, and so the learning curve exhibited is flat.

There’s a scene at the beginning of season four of “Homeland” in which ex-CIA chief Saul Berenson is talking with some four-star generals.  He says: “If we’d known in 2001 we were staying in Afghanistan this long, we’d have made some very different choices.  Right?  Instead, our planning cycles rarely looked more than 12 months ahead.  So it hasn’t been a 14-year war we’ve been waging, but a one-year war waged 14 times.”

True enough.  In Afghanistan and Iraq as well, the U.S. has fought sequentially rather than cumulatively.  Not surprisingly, such sequential efforts, no matter how massive and costly, simply haven’t added up.  It’s just one damn tour after another.

But the fictional Saul’s tagline on Afghanistan is more suspect: “I think we’re walking away with the job half done.” For him, as well as for the Washington establishment of this moment, the U.S. needs to stay the course (at least until 2017, according to President Obama’s recent announcement), during which time assumedly we’ll at long last stumble upon the El-Dorado-like long-term strategy in which America actually prevails.

Of course, the option that’s never on Washington’s table is the obvious and logical one: simply to end imperial tourism.  With apologies to Elton John, “sorry” is only the second hardest word for U.S. officials.  The first is “farewell.” 

An American officer poses with group of Montagnards in front of one of their provisionary huts in a military camp in central Vietnam on Nov. 17, 1962. By manhaul (CC BY-NC 2.0)

A big defeat (Vietnam, 1975) might keep imperial tourism fever in check for a while.  But give us a decade or three and Americans are back at it, humping foreign hills again, hoping against hope that this year’s trip will be better than the previous year’s disaster.

In other words, a sustainable long-term strategy for Afghanistan is precisely what the U.S. government has failed to produce for 14 years!  Why should 2015 or 2017 or 2024 be any different than 2002 or 2009 or indeed any other year of American involvement?

At some level, the U.S. military knows it’s screwed.  That’s why its commanders tinker so much with weapons and training and technology and tactics.  It’s the stuff they can control, the stuff that seems real in a way that foreign peoples aren’t (at least to us).  Let’s face it: past as well as current events suggest that guns and how to use them are what Americans know best.

But foreign lands and peoples?  We can’t control them.  We don’t understand them.  We can’t count on them.  They’re just part of the landscape we’re eternally passing through — sometimes as people to help and places to rebuild, other times as people to kill and places to destroy.  What they aren’t is truly real.  They are the tourist attractions of American war making, sometimes exotic, sometimes deadly, but (for us) strangely lacking in substance.

And that is precisely why we fail.

Copyright 2015 William J. Astore

William J. Astore a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and professor of history, is a TomDispatch regular. He edits the blog the Contrary Perspective.

B&W – An American officer poses with group of Montagnards in front of one of their provisionary huts in a military camp in central Vietnam on Nov. 17, 1962. By manhaul (CC BY-NC 2.0)

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ROGUES GALLERY
=By= Sam Gerrans

Since Russia stepped up to the plate, suddenly western countries can’t wait to bomb ISIS. Are they now there to get the job done? Or are they there to stop Russia increasing its influence, and to make sure it doesn’t succeed where they failed?

The world is falling over itself to bomb Syria.

The following statement from Reuters summarizes the situation:

“Most of the world’s powers are now flying combat missions over Iraq and Syria against Islamic State. But any consensus on how to proceed has been thwarted by opposing policies over the 4-year-old civil war in Syria, which has killed 250,000 people, driven 11 million from their homes, left swathes of territory in the hands of jihadist fighters and defied all diplomatic efforts at a solution.”

While it may seem to the outside observer that this catalogue of mayhem is the result of incompetence, to me – on the contrary – it is evidence of things going to plan.

I have never, thus far, seen a war the ruling elite clearly wanted to happen not happen.

Here, as in all other cases, there has been a bit of hand-wringing, some crying, some protests, some moving speeches. But like the morality plays of medieval times, after enjoying the sermon dressed as entertainment, life has inevitably carried on as normal with the barons raping and pillaging and everyone else having to put up with that reality.

Destruction of Syria is the plan

This time the plan – at least judging from the outcomes – is to destroy Syria.

Syria has been anathema to the self-appointed arbiters of righteousness: the ‘international community’, that coterie of hypocrites which arrogates to itself the monopoly on meting out death to those who won’t get with the program.

This group dislikes Syria which has had an uncompromising stance towards Israel and an independent financial system, and is using the chance to destroy it to flood Europe with refugees, thus further debasing the makeup of its constituent nations, and simultaneously justifying a lockdown in those countries.

Enter Putin

Everything was going swimmingly until Putin stepped in.

While many in the West who have grown jaundiced at the obvious usurpation of our governments by outside interests ascribe almost saint-like motivations to Putin, I do not. He is a superb strategist. Exactly what he is strategizing for is not clear yet.

What is clear is that his move into Syria threw a spanner in the works of a status quo the US was quite happy with: growing terrorism and mayhem in Syria and spreading nicely to Europe.

Assad himself said a few days ago to the BBC (courtesy of Czech Television) that ISIS was growing smaller after Russian bombing intervention whereas moves by other countries served only to strengthen ISIS and increase their recruitment.

He added: “The facts are telling.”

So what do the facts tell?

They tell us that Russia is the only country involved to date which has the removal of ISIS as an actual goal.

Russia is also the only country with a legitimate mandate under international law.

In addition, ISIS was most eloquently outed by author and journalist Gearóid Ó Colmáin on Russia Today as a US creation.

In this scenario, the reason for further western efforts in the region is looking increasingly like an attempt to prevent Russia from routing its assets or achieving the informational coup that would follow.

France and Britain milking the crises

The propaganda war is hotting up, with western press issuing unsubstantiated and emotional surmise as news.

Meanwhile, the French and the British are now, of course, bombing Syria.

At home, the French government not only voted to bomb but enacted ‘emergency’ powers at the same time. And Holland wants to change the constitution to extend these powers.

The Telegraph states: “The draft “Protection of the Nation” bill […] would extend the right to strip French citizenship from dual nationals convicted of terrorism offences by also including people born in France.

It would also prolong certain powers after a state of emergency was lifted.

No time limit will be inscribed in the constitution under the new proposals. As is currently the case, parliament will decide how long a given state of emergency should last.”

This all looks so like a dictator’s wet dream, it takes an effort of will to believe it has not been planned this way.

And a man no less respected than Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, formerly Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has raised legitimate questions about the official line on the Paris attacks.

He says:

“European peoples want to be French, German, Dutch, Italian, Hungarian, Czech, British. They do not want their countries to be a diverse Tower of Babel created by millions of refugees from Washington’s wars.

To remain a nationality unto themselves is what Pegida, Farage, and Le Pen offer the voters.

Realizing its vulnerability, it is entirely possible that the French Establishment made a decision to protect its hold on power with a false flag attack that would allow the Establishment to close France’s borders and, thereby, deprive Marine Le Pen of her main political issue.”

The same event, of course, justifies France’s bombing of Syria.

The British government for its part – despite some theatrical hand-wringing – has got on the bandwagon and opted to join in whatever further criminality the US has planned in Syria.

As though to justify the decision, the Telegraph breathlessly informs us that ISIS (or ISIL as it calls it) is planning to attack the UK “next”.

It says: “There are unconfirmed reports that Isil has decided that the next target of an attack will be Britain.

European security agencies, citing specific intelligence that had been obtained, stated that British Isil operatives in Syria and Iraq were being tasked to return home to launch an attack, CNN reported.”

This is the level of the propaganda now: CNN reports security agencies who say that a terrorist group whose name changes every five minutes might be sending members to Britain to do harm.

But this is unconfirmed.

The real reason for this war

I’m going to simplify things: the Plan for a New American Century – a document which was created by neoconservative warmongers in or close to power under George Bush Jr. – listed countries which it wanted the US to attack, namely: North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria.

The journal-neo.org site states:

“[all were] pinpointed as enemies of the U.S. well before the illegal war in Iraq in 2003, as well as the illegal 2011 war in Libya and the ongoing proxy war in Syria.”

Retired US General Wesley Clarke went on record in 2007 stating that the fix was in: the U.S. had unilaterally decided to destroy Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.

This is not some wild-eyed conspiracy theorist. Clarke was a four-star general, and the man who commanded Operation Allied Force in the Kosovo War during his term as the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe of NATO from 1997 to 2000.

The pretense of choice

Any objective assessment of who benefits from attacks upon the countries Clarke mentioned would not include any European country – or even the U.S. for that matter.

But the subtext is clear: if Europeans don’t want to take part, terrorist attacks will be allowed or contrived until they acquiesce.

In short: the ruling elite wants this war. Our pretend governments voted it through on the nod. And we the people will have to deal with the fallout and put up with random terrorist acts if we wake up and speak out about how this charade is rigged.

At the same time, the people of Syria are subject to bombing raids by the US, France and the UK – none of which have any invitation from the legitimate government of that country – actions which, properly speaking, are acts of war against the country the perpetrators claim to want to help.

My prediction: the clean-up operation Russia initiated and Assad approves of will be made to fail; terrorism will increase and spread into Europe; and mass immigration from Syria and that area to Europe will continue; and acts of terrorism on European soil will magically justify endless war, internal lock-down, wholesale surveillance, detention without trial, and troops on the street.

And this – in the absence of hard evidence based in action to the contrary – I can only see as the actual plan.

Do you remember voting for that?

No, nor do I.

Source

Article: RT

Lead Graphic: by Rowan Wolf

---

 

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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL-QUOTES BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS.

By Finian Cunningham
Despite absurd denials, the grim conclusion is that NATO is at war in Syria…Russia has exposed a “giant, sordid criminal enterprise” whereby Western governments are being seen to be in league with regional despotic regimes like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

A Royal Air Force’s Tornado takes off from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland, December 2, 2015. REUTERS/Russell Cheyne TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

In two weeks we have seen two apparent acts of war by the US-led NATO military alliance in Syria. First, the Turkish shoot-down of a Russian warplane inside Syrian airspace; now this week the Syrian army is hit in a deadly airstrike.

Despite absurd denials, the grim conclusion is that NATO is at war in Syria.

The Syrian government is unequivocal about the latest incident. Damascus issued a condemnation to the UN Security Council on Monday over what it says is “a flagrant act of aggression” by the US military coalition. Early reports say three Syrian soldiers were killed and over a dozen others seriously wounded when an army base was blasted in the Deir Ezzor eastern province. Four US-led coalition warplanes were apparently involved in the attack, firing nine missiles at the base.

Warren-Uniformed liar.

However, Colonel Steve Warren, spokesman for the US coalition, was quoted by various media outlets denying that NATO aircraft carried out the raid. Warren claimed that coalition fighter jets had conducted airstrikes at a location 55 kilometers from the Syrian army camp, which is located near the village of Ayyash.

He said the airstrikes were against oil-smuggling operations run by the Islamic State (IS) terror group and there were “no humans” in the vicinity.

So who did carry out the deadly attack on the Syrian army? The US, Britain and France have been flying warplanes in the eastern province where the IS group has its strongholds around Deir Ezzor.

Pres. Assad: “There’s no doubt who did this and why.”

Washington and its NATO allies have negligible credibility. The US-led alliance has been operating an absurdist policy while bombing Syria for the past 15 months. Allegedly targeting the IS network, the terror group has only expanded its territory since Washington began (illegally) bombing Syria back in September 2014.

Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Maj-Gen Igor Konashenkov.

More recently, NATO has flatly denied Turkey’s provocative shoot-down of a Russian warplane even though Russia’s flight data shows that its Su-24 bomber was hit by a Turk F-16 jet that breached Syria’s border before firing its air-to-air missile.

SU-24 Tactical bomber.

Washington has also denied extensive aerial evidence of oil smuggling by the Islamic State terror group wending its way across the border to Turkish industrial centers.

When does theater of the absurd stop peddling double think and just become plain, factual war theater?

American political analyst Randy Martin at crookedbough.com says that recent events are proof that Washington and its NATO allies are indeed at war in Syria. Not against the IS jihadists, as officially claimed, but against the Syrian state. By extension that means NATO has also moved to a war footing against Russia, as an ally of the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria slams US-led coalition deadly strike against troops as ‘act of aggression’

“It’s quite clear that the US and the other NATO powers have stepped up their military operations in Syria precisely because their covert war for regime change against Assad is being smashed up by Russia’s intervention,” Martin told me. “The whole notion of the West backing so-called moderate rebels while being opposed to the Islamic State brigades is just a preposterous charade furnished in part by the Western media. All these groups are working as mercenary proxy armies for the Western objective of regime change.”

“Russian President Vladimir Putin has dealt a decisive blow to the US-led covert campaign of deploying various proxy terror groups to overthrow the Syrian state. It’s like Putin has smashed a hornet’s nest hanging from a tree and now all hell is breaking out,” says the analyst.

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]ince Russia ordered its warplanes and cruise missiles into Syria on September 30, the intervention has decimated hundreds of jihadi bases and, crucially, the oil-for-weapons racket that fuels the Western-backed covert war.

Martin reckons that this strategic reversal for US-led objectives in Syria is what is motivating the sharp upturn in NATO military operations in the country. Last week, the British and German parliaments voted for their air forces to join the US and French airstrikes. Britain’s RAF has already carried out strikes, the first one coming within hours of London’s parliamentary approval.

The analyst says that the NATO military gear-change is

“all about salvaging a situation in which Western powers are losing their covert war and their proxy means to prosecute that war.”

Russia has exposed a “giant, sordid criminal enterprise” whereby Western governments are being seen to be in league with regional despotic regimes like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. More damningly, Western governments are also shown to be colluding with some of the most barbaric terror groups known in modern times.

Putin’s principled military intervention to defend Syrian state sovereignty has flushed out the criminal parties and their joint enterprise to overthrow an elected government.

This is why Washington and its NATO allies have reacted with such manic militarism. It is entirely plausible that Turkey was given the green light by its NATO superiors to shoot down the Russian warplane on November 24.

The contradictions in NATO’s stated policies, as uncovered by Russia in Syria, are becoming unbearable.

US President Barack Obama at the weekend made yet another solemn nationwide speech telling the American people that as Commander-in-Chief he was committed to “hunting down” terror groups in Syria and Iraq. Obama also declared that his government would order regional allies like Saudi Arabia and Turkey to clamp down on funding for terrorists.

One name keeps popping up as the primary culprit of regional demand for the Islamic State’s “terrorist oil” – that of Turkish president Recep Erdogan’s son: Bilal Erdogan. (See below)

But virtually everything in reality shows that Washington and its Western allies are telling lies. Their military operations in Syria and Iraq have only made the terror networks expand and their Turk ally – a NATO member – is up to its eyes in financing jihadists through a massive oil-smuggling racket and other support operations. 

US Secretary of State John Kerry has even backed Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s calls for the Turkish border to be closed down to prevent the flow of illicit oil, weapons and fighters. Yet, Washington on the other hand patently denies that Turkey is involved in this terror trade.

sidebar

No man left behind: Dramatic details emerge of downed Su-24 pilot rescue

https://youtu.be/ROgOqqeQAL4

Russia and the Syrian (Arab) army —SAA—are the two forces that have made decisive advances against the terror brigades.

In the past week, the Syrian army with Russian air support has retaken major areas of Aleppo in the north, Homs in the centre and Qalamoun to the west. The Syrian-Russian alliance is also moving to push back jihadists in the oil-rich eastern provinces – the last stronghold of these mercenaries.

The Syrian army base hit this week near Deir Ezzor was an important spearhead against IS in the east.

It is therefore hard not to conclude, according to Martin, that the US and its NATO allies are caught in a dilemma.

“Their backs are against the wall because Russia is destroying their criminal enterprise in Syria,” he says.

And, disturbingly, it looks like Washington is prepared to start a world war in order to save its criminal enterprise – while acting as the air force for jihadist terrorists.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. Many of his recent articles appear on the renowned Canadian-based news website Globalresearch.  He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He specializes in Middle East and East Africa issues and has also given several American radio interviews as well as TV interviews on Press TV and Russia Today. His interests include capitalism, imperialism and war, socialism, justice and peace, agriculture and trade policy, ecological impact, science and technology, and human rights.  More details  

APPENDIX
See CrossTalk: Syrian chessboard

First Published on Dec 9, 2015

Recent claims that the US bombed a Syrian military installation may be a telling example of how Washington and its allies intend to escalate their war on the Syrian government and NOT against terrorists. It would appear [Pres] Assad remains target number one.

CrossTalking with Martin Jay, Marcus Papadopoulos, and Ivan Eland.

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