CONFUSED.GOV: Obama’s Imperial Mideast Policy Unravels, Still Backing Terrorists in Syria

21st Century Wire says…

We just learned this week that US President Barack Obama will meet with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan at this week’s G20 summit in China. The White House claims that this is to discuss the two nation’s ‘Anti-ISIS efforts,’ but is this really to be believed, considering the facts on ground in Syria?

As 21WIRE reported this past weekend, Turkey has effectively invaded northern Syria. Initially, it claimed its military operation was to support “Syrian rebels” who aimed to recapture territory from ISIS around the town of Jarabulus, but it quickly became apparent that this was only a cover story. During its illegal invasion of its neighbor Syria,  Turkish military were flanked by ‘moderate rebel’ group Faylaq al-Sham – a extremist terrorist organization and more amazingly – both Turkish forces and their ‘moderate rebel’ partners received air support from the United States. That’s right: the USA is giving air cover to Al Qaeda in Syria. An excellent follow-on to our report is featured below by Daniel Lazare from Consortium News.

This would be the first meeting between Obama and Erdogan since the infamous failed coup attempt in Turkey in July. Both countries claim to be ensconced in Syria in the gallant ‘fight against ISIS’ (ISIL, IS, Daesh etc), but facts on the ground indicate that neither country has made ‘fighting ISIS’ – or any other Sunni-based Islamist extremist fighting group operating in Syria – a genuine priority. It’s as if they are both attempting to buy time for their own strategic objectives to develop.

What’s becoming ever clearer by the day, however, is that Washington is prepared to do almost anything in order to cover-up and obfuscate its central role in the promotion and strategic backing of all militant ‘rebel’ forces trying to destroy the nation of Syria, including Al Nusra Front and all its affiliates, and also ISIS itself.

Note below, the henchman role of US Vice President Joe Biden, delivering the death blow to Kurdish YPG militias in Syria…

Daniel Lazare
Consortium News

In the 1930s, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain appeased his enemies. Today, U.S. President Barack Obama appeases his friends.

Barack the Appeaser is the key to unlocking the mysteries of U.S. policy in the Middle East and beyond. Confusing to begin with, U.S. actions reached new heights of absurdity last week when the Obama administration abandoned its long-standing Kurdish allies with virtually no notice and announced that it was backing a Turkish thrust into northern Syria instead.

Although the Turks claimed to be targeting ISIS (also known as Islamic State, IS, ISIL, and Daesh), it was plain from the outset that the real aim was to counter an offensive that had carried Kurdish forces some 20 miles west of the Euphrates River and put them in a position to control nearly the entire Syrian-Turkish border.

But there was a problem. Not only had the U.S. approved the same Kurdish offensive, but it had provided arms, money, and air support plus military advice in the form of some 250 US Special Operations forces embedded among members of the Kurdish militia known as the YPG.

Indeed, the Syrian Democratic Forces, a multi-ethnic militia anchored by the YPG, was a real success story, just about the only one Washington has had in the course of its disastrous five-year Syrian intervention. As one analyst put it:

“Since the creation of the SDF last November, the U.S.-backed coalition was able to roll back IS advances in northern Syria at an unprecedented pace.  An effective mixture of multi-pronged offensives and U.S. air support led to the capture of key IS strongholds, including the city of Shaddadi in eastern Syria, the strategic Tishrin Dam along the Euphrates, and more recently IS’s former bastion of Manbij, south of the Turkish border.”

But now the U.S. had decided to drop the Syrian Democratic Forces despite their sterling anti-ISIS record and back Turkey even though it didn’t seem very concerned about ISIS at all. Vice President Joe Biden laid down the law during a visit to Ankara on Wednesday.

“We have made it absolutely clear,” he said, that Kurdish forces “must move back across the river. They cannot, will not, and under no circumstances get American support if they do not keep that commitment, period.”

Why the About-Face

What is the reason for such a remarkable about-face? What makes the U.S. think it can get away with cultivating an alliance one moment and dropping it like a hot potato the next?

The answer has to do with the phenomenon of liberal appeasement that Obama represents.

Appeasement became a dirty word as a result of the 1938 Munich Crisis when Britain and France decided that allowing Hitler to dismember Czechoslovakia would somehow allay his appetite for more conquests. But in Obama’s hands, it has come to mean something different: an endless attempt to satisfy conflicting demands by a growing number of client states.

The states include not just Turkey but Israel, the Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms, plus the dozen East European states that have entered NATO since 1999. If America were an old-fashioned empire, it would issue orders and expect such dependents to fall into line. But as a “democratic” empire, it relies on cajoling, bargaining, and other inducements to achieve “voluntary” consent…

Continue this story at Consortium News

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