President Trump has done the right
thing with regard to America’s troop deployment in Syria. Trump ordered
the 2,000 US troops based in Syria to get out and come home.
Neocons and the US war party are having
apoplexy even though there are some 50,000 US troops spread across the rest of
the Mideast.
The
US troops parked in the Syrian Desert were doing next to nothing. Their
avowed role was to fight the remnants of the ISIS movement and block any
advances by Iranian forces. As a unified fighting force, ISIS barely
exists, if it ever did. Cobbled together, armed and financed by the US,
the Saudis and Gulf Emirates to overthrow Syria’s regime, ISIS ran out of
control and became a menace to everyone.
In fact, what the US was
really doing was putting down a marker for a possible US future occupation of
war-torn Syria that risked constant clashes with Russian forces there.
We
will breathe a big sigh of relief if the US deployment actually goes ahead: it will
remove a major risk of war with nuclear-armed Russia, whose forces are in Syria
at the invitation of the recognized government in Damascus. The US has no
strategic interest in Syria and no business at all being militarily involved
there. Except perhaps that the war party wants never-ending wars abroad
for arms production and promotions.
Trump’s
abrupt pullout from Syria has shocked and mortified Washington’s war party and
neocon fifth column. They were hoping reinforced US forces would go on to
attack Damascus and move against Iranian forces. It was amusing to watch
the anguish of such noted warlike chickenhawks as Sen. Lindsay Graham and the
fanatical national security advisor John Bolton as their hopes for a US war
against Syria diminished. Israel was equally dismayed: its
strategic plan has long been to fragment Syria and gobble up the pieces.
The
venerable imperial general and defense secretary, Jim Mattis, couldn’t take
this de-escalation. He resigned. Marine General Mattis was one of
the few honorable and respected members of the Trump administration and a
restraint on the president’s impulses. To his credit, he opposed the
reintroduction of torture by US forces, a crime promoted by Trump, Bolton and Chicago
enforcer Mike Pompeo.
What really mattered was not
a chunk of the Syrian Desert. Matis’s resignation may have been much more
about Afghanistan, America’s longest war. The US has been defeated in
Afghanistan, rightly known as the ‘Graveyard of Empires.’ Yet no
one in Washington can admit this defeat or order a retreat after wasting 17
years, a trillion dollars and thousands of Americans killed or wounded.
Least of all, Gen. Mattis, Bolton or Pompeo who bitterly opposed any peace deal
with the Taliban nationalist movement.
According
to unconfirmed media reports, the US has already thinned out its Afghan
garrison of 14,000 plus soldiers. These soldiers’ main function is to
guard the corrupt, drug-dealing Afghan puppet government in Kabul and fix
Taliban forces so they can be attacked by US airpower.
Taliban
insists it won’t begin serious negotiations until all US and 8,000 foreign
troops are withdrawn. In fact, Taliban, which has been quietly talking to
the US in Abu Dhabi, may have agreed to a 50% western troops cut in order to
begin peace talks.
The Afghan War has cost the US $1
trillion. Occupying parts of Iraq and Syria has cost a similar
amount. Resistance against US rule continues in both nations.
Mattis and his fellow generals really like these wars, but civilian Trump does
not. As a candidate he vowed to end these ‘stupid’ wars. Let’s hope
he succeeds over the bitter objections of the Republican war party, neocons,
and military industrial complex.
Syria
is an ugly little sideshow. By contrast, Afghanistan is a dark blot on
America’s national honor. We watch with revulsion and dismay as the US
deploys B-52 and B-1 heavy bombers to flatten Afghan villages. We watch
with disgust as the US coddles the opium-dealing Afghan warlords and their
Communist allies – all in the spurious name of ‘democracy.’
If
Trump wants to make America great, he can start by ending the squalid Syrian
misadventure and the butchery in Afghanistan.
Eric S.
Margolis [send him
mail] is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new
book, American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the
Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World. See his website.
Copyright © 2018 Eric Margolis