Russian Attacks In Syria Expose U.S., Allied Debacle

Russia’s Intervention into Syria has revealed long-running scandals in the regional foreign policy of the United States and its allies.

President Obama’s reversal last week of his firm pledge to avoid deployment of ground troops in Syria is one of the most obvious short-run embarrassments.

But others abound that discredit in far more substantive ways leaders of both U.S. political parties as well as such institutions as the CIA and State Department and allied leaders in NATO and nations neighboring Syria.

Among the reasons are that Russia’s bold military actions caught allies napping. Worse, the intervention exposed the essentially fraudulent nature of the long-running allied PR campaign to topple Syria’s government. The campaign has been revealed as a cruel, greedy, and poorly-executed attempt at empire-building reliant on an ongoing propaganda extravaganza that disgraces the political institutions of those nations complicit.

Looking ahead, reform, wise policy and public confidence can only come from credible assessment of what’s been going wrong.

U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a second term Democrat from Hawaii with two military tours in the Middle East, has emerged as an outspoken critic of U.S. policy. She is shown in both her official photo and one via Wikipedia of her as a second lieutenant in Hawaii’s National Guard, where she is now a major. Although she is not associated with all elements of the analysis above, she has voiced at least some parts of it.

“CIA Must Stop Illegal, Counterproductive War to Overthrow Assad” was the headline of her CNN interview Oct. 21 with “Situation Room” host Wolf Blitzer, a former Washington director of public relations for the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC). Blitzer repeatedly used propaganda talking points at times during the interview as he sought unsuccessfully to challenge her views.

She failed to comply, which is remarkable for a federally elected politician. Instead, she argued that the United States must stay out of counterproductive wars and focus on defeating the Islamist extremists who have declared war on America. A member of the House Armed Services Committee and a deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, she explained that the United States should stop focusing on trying to rid the Middle East of secular dictators and instead target the Islamic State (aka ISIS or ISIL) and not the government of Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad.

Few of any prominence in government have said such things publicly, although the sentiments are not unusual in private conversations.

But the forceful Russian intervention against the Islamic State and Middle Eastern/Libyan migrant crisis have dramatized in a highly public way the failures of U.S.-led foreign policies in the region.

These developments are explored below as part of a series on foreign policy that began Oct. 13. The series grows from our core focus on the justice system, including political prosecutions of whistleblowers, and examination of failures in mainstream media that are supposed to cover such matters. The series has presented so far (in chronological order): 

• U.S. v. Russia Proxy War In Syria Creates High Stakes For You
• NY Times Features Challenge To Obama Bin Laden Raid Story
• Memo Exposes Former British PM Tony Blair
• How Obama Leads Drone Strikes Killing Many Civilians 
• Clinton’s Benghazi Hearing
• Pardon Plea For Imprisoned CIA Whistleblower Wins Press Backing
• Madeleine Albright, Godmother To Foreign Policy Disaster Today