This funding included $100 million from Saudi Arabia. US officials also insist this won’t mean a military pullout. In other words, the Trump Caliphate and its cronies are not in Syria just to end the central government in Damascus. They are there to also occupy the country forever, "contain Iran”, and destabilize the entire region for a foreseeable future.
Lest we forget, if it weren’t for Yemen, it might be hard to imagine a more
miserable place in 2018 than Syria. Since 2011, when the US and company planned
to unseat President Bashar Assad, more than half the country’s pre-war
population of 22 million has become internally displaced or refugees, according
to numbers from the UN High Commission on Refugees. Actual casualty figures are
impossible to pin down with any exactitude. In April 2018, however, different
reports by the UN and rights groups put the number of directly caused deaths at
511,000, including fighters and civilians.
There is plenty of blame to go around and plenty of actors to shoulder that
blame. But the biggest culprit in all this has to be Washington and its
so-called neoconservatives who continue to offer Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu their "Clean Break” strategy to rebuild the Middle East to the
Christian-Zionist liking.
That plan started with unseating Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein and went on to
destabilize Syria. It proved to be a nightmare. Lest we forget, one of that
plan’s loudest advocates during the Bush administration - John Bolton - is now
Trump’s national security advisor. In other words, there is plenty of blame to
go around and plenty to worry about this time around.
If there is a place in the greater Middle East even more desperate than Syria,
it has to be Yemen. With US logistical and financial support, Saudi Arabia has
waged a cruel air war against the poorest country in the Arab world. Just like
in Syria, the Saudi-American-Zionist alliance seeks to control Yemen and
preserve the regional status quo. In between, they have killed thousands of
innocent civilians, made millions more refugees, pulverized entire communities.
With the US now allocating money and talking openly about permanent war and
occupation in Syria, there is a real risk that some combination of the US,
Israel, and Saudi Arabia could initiate yet another regional war with another
country. Obviously, they haven’t learned their one lesson from the failed wars
on Syria and Yemen: "They can’t win.”
Looking into the future, though, let’s pray for one thing: that the United
Nations will step in to force the Trump Caliphate and regional cronies to leave
post-ISIL Syria and Yemen alone. This is because they seem eternally in search
of yet more wars to launch.
Pointing to Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, for instance, Marine Corps
Commandant General Robert Neller recently told US troops in Norway to expect a
"big ass fight” in the future, adding, "I hope I’m wrong, but there’s a war
coming.”
Also, former National Security Adviser Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster once
suggested that the possibility of a war (conceivably nuclear in nature) with Kim
Jong-un’s North Korea was "increasing every day.”
Unfortunately, in 2018 and beyond, we should all expect more violence and more
bloodshed on the planet from the Trump Caliphate. Hi bellicosity, his
"America-first” policies, and his baseless claim of "finally winning again in
Syria and Afghanistan” could be a recipe for prolonging the unnecessary wars and
occupations in Muslim heartlands that are guaranteed to create even more chaos
and more failed states in the Middle East and beyond.
Source:FNA