“Russsiagate” and the Collapse of Obama’s War Against Syria

“Putin exposed the U.S. alliance with al Qaida on the world stage.”

“Russia-gate” is the scream of a wounded U.S. empire – a military colossus that can destroy the planet many times over but was defeated in its war of regime change in Syria, despite killing half a million people and displacing a third of its population. Barack Obama was packaged as a “peace” candidate, but his real objective was to reverse the humiliation of his predecessor’s forced withdrawal from Iraq and thus maintain the image and substance of U.S. “primacy” in the world. U.S. public opinion, however, would not tolerate another massive mobilization of American ground forces in the region. Instead, Obama and his secretary of state and would-be successor, Hillary Clinton, partnered with the monarchies of the Persian Gulf, the most backward regimes on the planet, to transform the various flavors of al Qaida into a pro-western foreign legion: foot solders of imperialism.

“How could a U.S. administration align itself with the same forces that were blamed for 9/11?”

The nature of the obscene alliance -- although impossible to fully conceal, and rooted in U.S. policy since Jimmy Carter’s presidency -- could not be spoken. Americans are conditioned to hate and fear all things Arab and Muslim (and, indeed, all people’s not sufficiently “white”). How could a U.S. administration align itself with the same forces that were blamed for 9/11? The same people that the CIA claimed had been harbored by Saddam Hussein? The same madmen that, we are told, want to kill Americans because they hate “our freedoms”? That’s way too much boggling for most American minds.

The very insanity of the idea helped to cloak the truth. The corporate media eagerly provided a full-blown counter-reality to suit imperial purposes. When the U.S. and its NATO and royal Arab allies became the air force for regime change in Libya, in 2011, the western press extolled the democratic virtues of the “rebels” on the ground -- even as these heavily jihadist militias lynched and massacred Black Libyans and immigrant African workers by the thousands. (See BAR, “Slavery in Libya a Surprise?”). Lynching was the imperially-sanctioned order of the day, as Hillary Clinton confirmed on news of Muammar Gaddafi’s mutilation and murder. “We came, we saw, he died,” she said.

“The western press extolled the democratic virtues of the ‘rebels’ on the ground -- even as they lynched and massacred Black Libyans and immigrant African workers by the thousands.”

Many tens of thousands more Africans would die as captured Libyan arms found their way to jihadists throughout the northern tier of the continent, destabilizing much of the region and providing many future “missions” for the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), established just three years earlier.

Libyan jihadists were already showing up in Syria shortly after the U.S.-NATO bombing campaign ended, in October of 2011, joining other “freedom fighters” from around the world. The eastern part of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, fell to Islamist forces in 2012.

The U.S. and its European, Turkish and royal Arab allies poured so much money and arms into the Syrian cauldron that a faction of al Qaida was empowered to declare a caliphate in the territory it captured from the Syrian army -- just as was predicted in 2012 by analysts of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The DIA memo, revealed three years later, said the emergence of a caliphate -- the Islamic State -- seemed to be “exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”

The U.S. imperial war machine was on the roll again in the Mideast, with the two al Qaida factions -- al Nusra and the Islamic State -- by far the most effective fighters. This is Barack Obama’s grotesque legacy.

“The U.S. and its allies poured so much money and arms into the Syrian cauldron that a faction of al Qaida was empowered to declare a caliphate.”

Three years later, it was Vladimir Putin who forced the U.S. to deploy its massive bombing power against the “rogue” Islamic State faction of al Qaida when the Russian leader denounced Washington’s double-game before the 2015 annual meeting of the United Nations general assembly. “No one but [Syrian] President Assad’s forces and Kurdish militia are truly fighting the Islamic state and other terrorist organizations inside Syria,” said Putin. The Islamic State’s profitable sale of captured Syrian oil to Turkey was conducted in broad daylight, immune to U.S. airpower. ISIS oil tankers traveled freely under open skies. “The motorcade of refueling vehicles stretched for dozens of kilometers, so that from a height of 4,000 to 5,000 meters they stretch beyond the horizon” [to Turkey], said the Russian president, who called for creation of “a genuinely broad international coalition” to bring to defeat the jihadist terrorists and bring peace to Syria.

Putin had exposed the U.S. alliance with al Qaida on the world stage, and intervened with his own air force at the request of the legitimate and recognized Syrian government, in full accordance with international law.

“The U.S. public must be made to see the threat to U.S. global supremacy as existential -- as do the imperialists.”

A little over a year later, in late 2016, when Aleppo was liberated from the jihadists, the western corporate media cried and fumed over the terrorists’ withdrawal from the city, as if the United States and its allies had been routed – which was, in fact, the case. Washington’s alliance with jihadists -- the Obama-Clinton scheme to reverse George Bush’s humiliation in Iraq and empower the U.S. to shut the Russians (and Chinese) out of the Middle East – was in ruins.

U.S. imperialism was, indeed, in acute crisis -- worse than when Bush was forced out of Iraq. The eclipse of United States “primacy” in the world was now painfully palpable. Further complicating this historic debacle, the Republican president-elect was an unpredictable outsider who had rhetorically questioned the bipartisan ruling class consensus on regime change, economic warfare (“free trade” treaties, crippling sanctions) and relentless hostility toward Russia. He would have to be contained, co-opted, or neutralized. Fortunately for the War Party –now decisively Democratic -- Trump is eminently demonizable, and truly deserving of almost any insult.

“The eclipse of United States ‘primacy’ in the world was now painfully palpable.”

“Russia-gate” was invented, almost out of whole cloth, in near panic and without benefit of evidence, to create the political climate to sustain the military offensive begun by Obama back in 2011. Having lost their jihadist war option in Syria and Iraq -- and with less “soft” power by the day -- U.S. imperialism feels it must now more aggressively deploy its strategic/nuclear throw-weight and its powers of economic strangulation, or lose the ability to dictate global affairs. The U.S. public must be made to see the threat to U.S. global supremacy as existential -- as do the imperialists. Thus, the Russians have invaded “our democracy”; their interventions in U.S. internal affairs amount to a “Pearl Harbor”; or, as Morgan Freeman, the God-poser, intones, “We have been attacked. We are at war.”

It follows that anybody that says differently should be silenced or locked up.

“Russia-gate,” the howling disinformation machine, is a lie born of many lies -- most immediately, the criminal U.S. partnership with al Qaida in Libya and Syria, perhaps the biggest lie and mass media cover-up of the 21st century: the Mother of all Fake News.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford(at)BlackAgendaReport.com