Nothing good is happening from the American perspective. Even as a cynic, I am actually astonished at how fast this situation is deteriorating.
Yesterday’s CENTCOM press release was basically a template. An extremely vague description of bombing “ISIS” along with a boilerplate justification and a copy/pasted quote from a general. If you ask why I’m so sure, it is because I used to write press releases just like this one.
My problem with this series of strikes was that it happened way too fast. Even if we accept the US narrative that they are only attacking isolated “ISIS” personnel (who is even still in ISIS at this point?), there is no way their intelligence was good enough to know who in the opposition was ISIS and who was not. What makes this story especially ludicrous is that the Russian air forces were active up until a few days ago. Why would the supposed ISIS guys be surprised or unprepared for being bombed by the US as well?
Here is what I actually think happened.
Like the press release, I think this bombing campaign was against pre-recorded targets. AKA, known sites of military value previously controlled by Assad’s army. Now that this army has evaporated, it was essential to destroy these known weapons and assets before they could fall into the opposition’s hands. The process of planning the destruction of these assets would be fast because the target lists almost certainly existed already.
Needless to say, this isn’t a vote of confidence in the “new democratic government.”
Yesterday I was telling everyone that Russia just needs to wait. I was met with a lot of skepticism, but still think im right. Any opposition leader who is still alive at this point isn’t stupid, and has to know that American, Turkish and Russian forces play off against each other in different ways. If the Russians take their ball and go home, there is nothing to prevent the USA from stomping the new government, or whatever passes for a government.
Also yesterday I saw anti-Russia writers in Europe gloating that the Russian bases in Syria are about to be shut down. Now these writers are furious, absolutely FURIOUS that the USA and Israel are being so violent. They are right to be furious because the new top dogs in Syria warming up to a continued Russian presence is an obvious outcome of increased US/Israeli aggression.
Israel is also hitting many targets, which isn’t making the prospect of a stable post-Assad Syria more likely.
But we will just have to wait and see.
Ian Kummer
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I read that the USAF is actually bombing Arab Tribesmen who oppose an American presence in Syria and are leaving bombing military infrastructure to the Israelis . If they are bombing the Tribesmen then they are simply teaching more people to hate the USA .