President Obama ordered a review of America’s strategy in Syria in light of ISIL’s resilience to coalition airstrikes. Instead of fighting ISIL in Iraq first, the US is now pivoting to Syria, claiming regime change is the main means to defeating the terrorist group.
Twisted Thinking
The administration’s ‘logic’ is that President Assad is enabling terrorism by continuing to be the leader of Syria, according to National Security Council spokesperson Alistair Baskey, and that his removal will somehow remove the motivation for international jihadis to flood into the country. Never mind that he was democratically re-elected with 88.7% of the vote, this despite the fact that Syrian expatriates in countries like the US and France were prohibited from voting by those respective governments. Baskey is also forgetting that terrorists from over 80 countries are fighting against the government not only because they hate President Assad, but that they — more importantly — hate Syria’s secular state and want to establish a fundamentalist Islamic regime in its place.
The US wants to use the ‘Free Syrian Army’ (FSA) as a proxy to overthrow the government, but amidst its embarrassing spate of military defeats and the countless defections of its members to ISIL and other terrorist groups, that strategy is no longer as viable as before. This is why Obama asked Congress for $500 million of funding in June (on top of the other millions already provided by the CIA and other intelligence agencies for this very cause over the years) to train and supply more of them.
The FSA, by the way, is the same group that was beheading its fallen enemies when it found American citizen Douglas McArthur McCain dead on the battlefield in August, having been killed while fighting for ISIL.
They’ve also been accused of carrying out other atrocities such as indiscriminate murders, rapes, and lootings. Lady Liberty sure has some ugly bedfellows, doesn’t she?
Been there, done that…did not learn from it
Afghanistan
This isn’t the first time the US has enforced regime change. During the Cold War, it trained and equipped the Mujahedeen in their fight against the pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan. Many of these fighters, like Osama Bin Laden, turned around to form Al Qaeda while others became the Taliban, the real winners in that war. Then back in 2001, the US supported the Northern Alliance against the Taliban and during their capture of Kabul. One would think that getting rid of a terrorist government would get rid of terrorism in the country, but that clearly wasn’t the case. Now imagine what getting rid of the only secular government in the Mideast would do, especially one that is fighting for its survival against ISIL. It would be like overthrowing the current Kabul government as it fights against the Taliban.
Iraq
That brings up another point. When the US removed Saddam Hussein from power, it also disbanded the Iraqi Army, forcing thousands of destitute soldiers into the hands of militias and extremists. At the time, Iraq hadn’t been at war for over a decade, having finished its eight-year-long war with Iran back in 1988, and its military wasn’t as battle-hardened and experienced as it once was.
Libya
And let’s not forget Libya and what happened to the country that used to have the highest human development index in Africa before 2011. After the US and its allies practically sponsored the regime change by supporting the insurgents fighting against the government, the country broke up into a bunch of terrorist fiefdoms, and the ‘legitimate’ government still doesn’t function to this day. Some of the terrorists even attacked the US Consulate in Benghazi and killed the American Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, back in 2012. If Libya is the last example to go by and President Assad goes the way of Gaddafi, then Syria’s up the creek, with no paddle to think of.
US Regime Change Policy Never Changed
The US has been officially pursuing regime change against Syria since the beginning of 2012. It was widely reported that summer that Obama had previously signed off on supporting the anti-government insurgents with covert US support. The roots of this strategy actually go back even earlier, to the mid-2000s. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, best known for his exposure of the Vietnam War-era My Lai Massacre, published The Redirection in 2007, in which he details the US government’s plans for regime change in Syria as a means of weakening Iran. Working with the Saudis, the Americans would finance and logistically support anti-government forces there, including the Muslim Brotherhood, “a radical Sunni movement”. Funny enough, ISIL is popularly described in the same manner, and they’re also pushing for regime change, just not the kind the US says it wants. Instead there’s the FSA, intended by the US to fight both the government and ISIL.
This basically boils the US foreign policy in the Middle East down to square pegs and round holes. As they say, if at first you don’t succeed… just keep trying the same thing over and over again.
