November 22, 2015 New U.S.-Turkish Bluster For Open War On Syria The U.S. media, especially cable TV, seems to create full hysteria over the Islamic State and Muslim in general. I assume that this campaign is supposed to prepare the U.S. public for war on Syria. The way thereto has its own logic. Tom Toles catches the salami slicing drift into it. It is exactly how the open U.S. involvement in war on Syria unfolded so far.

How the U.S. goes to war. Every. Single. Time. The neocons, here Robert Kagan who wants Hillary Clinton as next president, are already salivating. He claims there is a "crisis of world order", which is something that never really existed, and he wants U.S. troops to invade Syria and Iraq: What would such an effort look like? First, it would require establishing a safe zone in Syria, providing the millions of would-be refugees still in the country a place to stay and the hundreds of thousands who have fled to Europe a place to which to return. To establish such a zone, American military officials estimate, would require not only U.S. air power but ground forces numbering up to 30,000. Once the safe zone was established, many of those troops could be replaced by forces from Europe, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, but the initial force would have to be largely American.

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The heretofore immovable Mr. Assad would face an entirely new set of military facts on the ground, with the Syrian opposition now backed by U.S. forces and air power, the Syrian air force grounded and Russian bombing halted. But why would Russia and Syria allow this? Why would they halt their bombing of the anti-Syrian insurgents? Kagan does not say. The last quoted sentence is the only mentioning of Russia in the whole lame op-ed. By what means does he want to convince the Russian to agree to that plan? He does not say. Kagan also wants another 20,000 U.S. troops to directly fight the Islamic State guerrilla. Such an effort alone would need trice that number and would likely escalate further. Kagan is a certified lunatic but for whatever reasons his views are taking seriously in U.S. policy circles. In the UK prime minister Cameron is also moving towards war: The prime minister is likely to make a statement to MPs on Thursday, the day after Osborne’s spending review, and he will give them up to a week to digest his argument before deciding whether to call a Commons vote before the December recess. There is speculation in Westminster that political opinion has shifted in favour of British involvement in Syria. The unanimous support in the UN security council for a resolution calling on member states to take all necessary means to eradicate Isis in the wake of the Paris assault is believed to have helped change the mood among MPs. But the relevant UN resolution does not allow for war against Syria. It restricts all action to international law and the UN Charter. "Who cares," might Kagan say and Cameron think. Well, the Russians do. And they will have a say on this issue. Meanwhile Turkey is introducing another proxy army into Syria. After official protest against Russian attacks on "Turkmen" insurgents Turkey is upping the propaganda and claims to have sent volunteers to defend Turkmen in Syria against the Islamic State. Two border villages were captured. But the Turkmen story does not make much sense. There are hardly any Turkmen in Syria except those Chinese Uyghur Jihadis Turkey smuggled in on false Turkish passports. The volunteers Turkey claims to have send are also not harmless. Even the Syrian opposition propaganda outlet in the UK calls them out: The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that the villages had been captured from IS but said the campaign had been waged by rebel and Islamist factions and not just Turkmen fighters. 250 of the "volunteers" are men from the Alperen Ocaglari, the youth movement of the Great Union Party. These are real islamo-fascists combining hard right nationalism and radical Islamism into a crude ideology. M.K. Bhadrakumar believes that Erdogan wants to take, and keep, a big slice of Syria up to Aleppo and that this is the beginning of a new phase: In strategic terms, a defining moment has been reached in the Syrian conflict – the “first step” in the creation of a swathe of land in northern Syria that will be out of bounds for military operations by Syrian government forces, Russian aircraft, or various militia groups such as Hezbollah who are fighting on the side of the Syrian regime. Put differently, the race for Aleppo has begun. But neither Syria nor Russia will agree to that and it is unlikely that Erdogan will be able to send his official army. And make no mistake. Russia HAS the means to prevent Erdogan from further developing this scheme. One unconfirmed report said that a Russian cruise missile already hit one of those "Turkmen" towns. I am not sure that it is more than a rumor but it sounds like a good idea. I doubt that the U.S. will send its soldiers to occupy Syria for Erdogan. Obama is unlikely to want to risk war with Russia. So for now I regard all this as bluster. But should some kind of (allegedly) Islamic State related terror incident happen in the U.S. all bets are off. Obama may then turn to Kagan for "advice" and start a war that will confront another superpower. Posted by b on November 22, 2015 at 16:04 UTC | Permalink Comments next page » next page »