John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CAITLIN JOHNSTONE IN SOUTH FRONT
“US NEEDS TO OCCUPY SYRIA BECAUSE OF KURDS OR IRAN OR CHEMICAL WEAPONS OR OIL OR WHATEVER”
The author does miss the point.
The Syrian War has always been about toppling or at least dividing Syria.
And that is an objective which has been strongly advocated and materially supported by Israel for years.
Well, the long and costly proxy war in Syria is mainly over, and it was lost by Israel's side.
Israel has pressed Trump to keep at least something which hurts Syria’s interests.
And facing re-election and in need of lots of funds from lobby interests, Trump is glad to accommodate.
The occupation of Syrian oil fields is his response.
The huge job of reconstruction is ahead, and Syria is to be deprived on its own territory of a valuable resource.
Trump has always acted unhelpfully on all matters related to Syrian reconstruction.
He is, without question, the most faithful American president to Israel's narrow interests since Lyndon Johnson.
After all, he gave away what was not his to give, Jerusalem and the Golan, he arbitrarily tore up a working treaty with Iran and started immense hostilities against its 80 million people, and he appointed dangerous fanatics like Bolton and Pompeo to high office.
While a weak article on the whole, the following little crescendo of American excuses for being in Syria is very effective:
"We were told that the US must intervene in Syria because the Syrian government was massacring its people. We were told that the US must intervene in Syria in order to promote freedom and democracy in the Middle East. We were told that the US must intervene in Syria because Assad used chemical weapons. We were told that the US must occupy Syria to fight ISIS. We were told that the US must continue to occupy Syria to counter Iranian influence. We were told the US must continue to occupy Syria to protect the Kurds. Now the US must continue to occupy Syria because of oil."
Over time, though, I think the American hold on the oil fields is not sustainable.
It even works against American interests in the Middle East with the appearance of open piracy by America’s military in a region extremely sensitive about the ownership of natural resources, given a not-so-distant history of European colonialism.
With Russian influence rising and American influence waning in the region, it would be pretty foolish over any extended period to hang on to this booty.
But the superficial explanation for occupying the oil fields gave Trump something to crow about – and being a crude man, crowing and bellowing about nasty things are activities he actually enjoys - instead of telling the simple truth about Israel's influence and interests.
No heavy-duty American supporter of Israel’s interests admits in public to such things because the cumulative effect over time of a great many such admissions would be to cast Israel in a very poor light.
During all the years and vast destruction and cost of the Neocon Wars in the Middle East, we rarely heard the reason for them articulated, at least from any significant American political figure.
However, there was a moment when George Bush - after his invasion of Iraq in 2003, and having heard that Ariel Sharon was lobbying for another country to be invaded - was quoted along the lines of, “Jeez, I invaded Iraq for him. What more does he want?”
The quote was not given big play but was in some of the corporate press, and it is one of the fundamental pieces of evidence we have concerning the true nature of America’s bloody efforts in the Middle East over the last fifteen years or so.
