Syria Is America’s New Lost War

Syria is the forgotten war of U.S. President, Barack Obama. Nine months after the motions of military intervention began, Obama seems resigned to another loss; one more to add to the American growing collection of lost wars that already list Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria, where despite heavy American support for terrorists in the African country, the regime of Bashar Assad is still standing strong.

The American paralysis after it was discovered that its terrorists committed war crimes by attacking Syrian people with chemical weapons, grew exponentially to mark the end of a short era of deadly military interventions that is shamelessly labeled as ‘humanitarian’ by Western aggressors in a supposed attempt to protect populations threatened by their own rulers.

The idea of ​​worldwide responsibility to protect – and consequently the more propagandistic ideal of exceptionalism — began to circulate in the nineties, when the passivity of the great powers to the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda allegedly prompted intellectuals and politicians to raise the need to resort genocide to stop genocide.

Soon, the concept of ‘responsibility to act’ was turned into excuses to wage war on perfectly stable nations with democratically elected governments – as in the case of Ukraine. But before the West, and mainly NATO expanded its dark shadow to the Middle East and Eastern Europe, they took their deadly liberating campaigns to Bosnia and Kosovo to later invade Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the Global War on Terrorism. In doing so, American and its Western partners revealed themselves as the terrorists they’ve always been.

Now, in times of military withdrawal, and while the U.S. seems to show more enthusiasm to ‘solve’ other people’s affairs, a new war scenario has been laid out.

If there is one thing that separates Obama’s actions from those conducted by George W. Bush is that his advisers are not as cold blooded as Bush’s; at least not yet. Many political analysts believe that if Bush were in office today, the United States would have already attacked Syria and invaded Ukraine. The reason why this is not a reality under Obama is perhaps that there are less neocons in positions of power than in comparison to the Bush years.

What is true today is that Obama’s lack of insanity, so to speak, has raised concern all over the Middle East, where American allies in Tel Aviv, for example, have judged the U.S. president according to his hesitation to take Syria into a full civil war and to attack Iran for daring to possess nuclear material to possibly create a nuclear bomb. A Bush administration would have already done some of that, which is why Obama is seen by American partners in crime as weak and unreliable.

“Doubts when arming the Syrian rebels and hesitance to arm the Ukrainian government respond to the same desire to move away from difficult situations, and I think this is very harmful,” says Former Bush Administration adviser Elliott Abrams.

Obama met Tuesday with Jarba Ahmad, the president of the Syrian Opposition Coalition, the group composed of radical terrorists that is recognized by the U.S. as the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people. Jarba, accompanied among others by General Abdul-Ilah al-Bashir, head of the military wing of the opposition, visited the U.S. to request more military aid and to ask the Obama Administration to explain to politicians and public opinion that, despite their defeat and current division in their ranks in the battlefield, nothing is lost.

“We need weapons, no doubt. Especially antiaircraft and antitank weapons,” said in an interim between meetings with members of think tanks and the White House’s special representative of the coalition to the UN, Majib Ghadbiangainst. “Air superiority of the Syrian regime terrorizes and prevents us from ensuring governance in the liberated areas. We must stop the crimes against the Syrians,” he added.

Apparently, no commitment for direct military aid was made in the meeting with Obama. But the first antitank missiles manufactured in the U.S. have already reached the hands of the rebels, according to The Washington Post. Along with the missiles, the CIA has provided secret help.

Since it began three years ago, the Syrian war has left more than 150,000 people dead, according to some estimates, and millions displaced. It has also strained relations with key U.S. allies in the region like Saudi Arabia. At this time they are harmless or have breached the exhortations and promises of Obama: Assad must relinquish power; if the regime used chemical weapons, the U.S. would intervene; or Washington, at least, would arm the rebels.

In September 2013, an agreement with Russia in extremis to remove Syrian chemical weapons allowed Obama to suspend its plans for military intervention as such plans ran into opposition from the U.S. Congress and American citizens. Americans seem to finally be coming to their senses after a decade of lost wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since then, the chemical disarmament of Assad has advanced, but the war continues. Attempts to negotiate peace last January in Geneva failed because of American preconditions to carry out another coup against Assad himself.

“Unfortunately, things are not going in the right direction. It is very frustrating,” said a few days ago, a senior official of the Obama administration, who demanded anonymity. “But this does not mean that we throw in the towel,” he said.

Since before the war in Syria began, the U.S. has said it fears the day when its weapons fall in the hands of the rebels, but they have directly and intentionally provided weapons to different factions of rebel groups. From the start of the civil war, the U.S. has rejected military intervention for fear of a repeat of the fiasco in Iraq.

The Pentagon was also reluctant to participate in the 2011 bombing of Libya and now demurs sending military aid to Ukraine. But that did not mean that Washington would let a chance go by to balkanize those countries. Libya, Syria and now Ukraine have experienced America’s hunger for brutal hegemony to the point of daring Russia to respond to provocations.

Luis R. Miranda is the Founder and Editor of The Real Agenda. His 16 years of experience in Journalism include television, radio, print and Internet news. Luis obtained his Journalism degree from Universidad Latina de Costa Rica, where he graduated in Mass Media Communication in 1998. He also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Broadcasting from Montclair State University in New Jersey. Among his most distinguished interviews are: Costa Rican President Jose Maria Figueres and James Hansen from NASA Space Goddard Institute. Read more about Luis.