{"id":15358,"date":"2020-11-25T16:36:35","date_gmt":"2020-11-25T21:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=15358"},"modified":"2020-11-25T16:36:35","modified_gmt":"2020-11-25T21:36:35","slug":"consortium-news-declassify-syria-secrets-to-stop-biden-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/25\/consortium-news-declassify-syria-secrets-to-stop-biden-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Consortium News: Declassify Syria Secrets to Stop Biden War"},"content":{"rendered":"
Consortium News<\/strong>, November 25, 2020<\/p>\n

Declassify America\u2019s Dirty Secrets in Syria to Stop a Biden War<\/a><\/h1>\n
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Save<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Jim Bovard urges Trump to open\u00a0the files to provide\u00a0activism ammo for the vast numbers of Americans who vehemently oppose forever \u00a0wars.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Sen. Kamala Harris, at left, accepts the Democratic Party\u2019s nomination as vice president, Wilmington, Delaware, Aug. 19, 2020. (Lawrence Jackson, Biden for President, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

By\u00a0James Bovar<\/a>d<\/strong>
\nThe American Conservative<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"H<\/strong>ow many Syrians did you vote to kill on Election Day? Thanks to our perverse political system, the answer will be revealed over the next four years if the Biden administration drags the U.S. back into the Syrian Civil War. But there are steps that President Donald Trump can take in his final months in office to deter such follies.<\/p>\n

Syria was not an issue in the presidential campaign and there were no foreign policy questions in the two presidential debates. That won\u2019t stop the Biden team from claiming a mandate to spread truth and justice via bombs and bribes any place on the globe.<\/p>\n

The Biden campaign promised to\u00a0\u201cincrease pressure\u201d on Syrian presiden<\/a>t Bashar al-Assad \u2013 presumably by providing more arms and money to his violent opponents. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris declared that the U.S. government \u201cwill once again stand with civil society and\u00a0pro-democracy <\/a>partners in Syria<\/a>\u00a0and help advance a political settlement where the Syrian people have a voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Northeastern University professor Max Abrahms observed, \u201cEvery foreign policy \u2018expert\u2019 being floated for Biden\u2019s cabinet supported toppling the governments in Iraq, Libya and Syria, helping\u00a0Al Qaeda and jihadist friends<\/a>, ravaging the countries, uprooting millions of refugees from their homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Syria policy has long exemplified the depravity of Washington politicians and policymakers and the venality of much of the American media.<\/p>\n

The same \u201cHitler storyline\u201d that American politicians invoked to justify ravaging Serbia, Iraq and Libya was applied to Assad by\u00a0Secretary of State John Kerry<\/a>\u00a0in 2013. Once a foreign leader is irrevocably tagged with the scarlet H, the U.S. government is automatically entitled to take any action against his nation that would purportedly undermine his regime.<\/p>\n

Every side in the Syrian civil war committed atrocities, but the Obama administration acted as if there was only one bad guy.<\/p>\n

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Much of Raqqa, Syria, suffered extensive damage during the battle of June\u2013October 2017. (Mahmoud Bali, Voice of America, Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Trump attempted to extract the U.S. from the Syrian conflict, but his sporadic, often unfocused efforts were largely thwarted by the permanent bureaucracy in the Pentagon, State Department and other agencies. Considering the likelihood that the Biden administration will rev up the Syrian conflict by targeting Assad, recapping how America got involved in this mess to begin with is worthwhile.<\/p>\n

President Barack Obama promised\u00a016 times<\/a>\u00a0that he would never put U.S. \u201cboots on the ground\u201d in the four-sided Syrian civil war. He quietly abandoned that pledge and, starting in 2014, launched more than 5,000 airstrikes that dropped more than 15,000 bombs in Syria.<\/p>\n

Lying and killing are often two sides of the same political coin.<\/strong>\u00a0The U.S. government provided cash and a massive amount of military weaponry to terrorist groups seeking to topple the Assad regime. The fig leaf for the policy was that the U.S. government was merely arming \u201cmoderate\u201d rebels \u2014 which apparently meant groups that opposed Assad but which refrained from making grisly videos of beheadings.<\/p>\n

U.S. policy in Syria became so bollixed that Pentagon-backed Syrian\u00a0rebels openly battled CIA-backed<\/a>\u00a0rebels. The U.S. government spent billions aiding and training Syrian forces who either quickly collapsed on the battlefield or teamed up with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or al-Qaeda-linked forces.<\/p>\n

Federal law prohibiting providing material support to terrorist groups was not permitted to impede Obama\u2019s Syrian crusade. Evan McMullin, a 2016 presidential candidate, admitted on Twitter: \u201cMy role in the CIA was to go out &\u00a0convince Al Qaeda<\/a>\u00a0operatives to instead work with us.\u201d<\/p>\n