By Caitlin Johnstone
August 29, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- Numerous Syrian and
foreign militants have
reportedly been killed and several US troops
injured in an escalating exchange of attacks
between the American invaders and the people in
the country whose territory they are illegally
occupying.
On Tuesday night US Central Command
announced that it had “conducted precision
airstrikes in Deir ez-Zor Syria” in order to
“defend and protect U.S. forces from attacks
like the ones on August 15 against U.S.
personnel by Iran-backed groups.”
“The President gave the direction for these
strikes pursuant to his Article II authority to
protect and defend U.S. personnel by disrupting
or deterring attacks by Iran-backed groups,”
CENTCOM said.
Iran
has denied any link to the troops targeted
in the airstrikes, up to ten of whom were
reportedly killed.
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The US attack was followed by
rocket attacks on US military positions in
eastern Syria, injuring an unknown number of US
troops, to which the US responded with an Apache
helicopter assault on Syrian vehicles from which
it claims the rockets were launched. Central
Command
claims “two or three suspected Iran-backed
militants” were killed in the helicopter attack.
As of this writing it remains to be seen if
this exchange of attacks will continue, but
what’s crystal clear is who the aggressor is.
“US claims to be in Syria to fight ISIS, but
it rarely fights ISIS,” journalist Aaron Maté
tweeted of the exchange. “It’s actually
there to
deny Syria its own oil and wheat, and to
occasionally attack Syrians and their allies who
defeated US-backed sectarian death squads in the
dirty war.”
What he says is completely true. The US is an
occupying force who is there without the
permission of the Syrian government, without
having been attacked by Syria, and without any
valid claim to be defending itself from anyone
in Syria. The “Iran-backed” militias in Syria
are operating with the full authorization of the
Syrian government. The US has quite literally
invaded a nation on the other side of the world,
killed the people in that nation who don’t want
them there, and then claimed self-defense in
doing so.
If I broke into my neighbor’s house to steal
his things, and then murdered him when he tried
to stop me or make me leave, it would look
pretty ridiculous if I tried to plead
self-defense. It would look even more ridiculous
if anyone believed me.
This comes at the same time as a
report from Axios that the British special
envoy to Syria had nothing but glowing things to
say about the way Israel has been constantly
bombing Syria for years:
“The British special envoy for Syria told
Israeli officials during a visit to
Jerusalem several weeks ago that the Israeli
airstrike campaign against Iranian military
targets is ‘probably the only thing that
works in Syria,’ Israeli Foreign Ministry
officials briefed on the meetings told Axios.”
“In recent years, Israel has launched
hundreds of airstrikes in Syria,”
writes Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp on the Axios
report. “The Israelis say that the bombing
campaign is to prevent Iran from becoming
further entrenched in the country, but the
strikes often kill Syrian troops and
sometimes kill civilians and damage civilian
infrastructure.”
“The US tacitly endorses the bombing campaign
in Syria and reportedly coordinates some of the
strikes,” adds DeCamp. “In June, The Wall
Street Journal reported that Israel
secretly coordinates the bombings with the
US and that Washington has approved many Israeli
airstrikes that were launched from areas near a
US base in southern Syria.”
So if you’re wondering why western liberals
are all waving Syrian flags and loudly
condemning the US and its allies for their
criminal, murderous assault on a sovereign
nation, that’s why.
I am of course kidding; that is not
happening. That sort of mainstream public outcry
is reserved solely for the misdeeds of
governments the US does not approve of, like the
Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Westerners are only encouraged to contemplate
the horrors of war when it is someone else’s
war. If it serves the strategic interests of the
globe-spanning power structure loosely
centralized around the United States, you can
bomb your neighbor every week and it will barely
make the news. You can even invade a country on
the other side of the world and then claim you
are defending yourself when they try to throw
you out.
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reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
in this article are
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reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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