The U.S. Defends Al Qaeda

Despite all warnings of dire consequences coming from the U.S. politburo, it doesn't appear to me that the Syrian offensive to recapture Idlib can be halted. The U.S. must either talk tough and then act modestly as it did in Douma last year or go in heavy and risk a war with Russia. The U.S. has heretofore avoided a direct conflict with the Russian Federation.

As Bill Van Auken notes this morning in "Washington escalates threats over Syria as Russia bombs Al Qaeda positions," the United States is now openly acting as a defender of Al Qaeda:

Absent from the US statements is any recognition that Idlib is effectively run by the Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate, which leads the dominant “rebel” faction, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (IHT), and includes large numbers of so-called foreign fighters. The IHT has reportedly set up gallows and employed firing squads to eliminate opponents seeking accommodation with the Syrian government.

The UN’s special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has acknowledged that there are at least 10,000 Al Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Idlib. The front that the group leads is said to control 60 percent of the province’s territory along with its capital, and effectively governs the region. Others have put the number of Al Qaeda-linked fighters at between 20,000 and 30,000.

Washington is threatening to intervene not out of any humanitarian concerns. Successive US administration have carried out bloody interventions in the region—from the war of aggression in Iraq, to the regime change operations in Libya and Syria and the near genocidal US-Saudi war against Yemen—that have claimed the lives of millions and decimated entire societies. 

If it launches a new act of aggression in Syria, it will be to rescue the Al Qaeda-led “rebels,” which Washington and its Western and regional allies have supported since the onset of the proxy war for regime change in 2011, pouring billions of dollars’ worth of money and weapons to support these forces. And it will be to further US geo-strategic interests in dominating the Middle East and rolling back the influence of Iran and Russia in both Syria and the wider region.

With the open defense of Al Qaeda in Syria, Washington is unceremoniously ditching the 17-year-old “global war on terror” in favor of preparations for military confrontation with what US national security documents describe as “revisionist states” challenging US hegemony—i.e., Russia and China.

As for the warnings over a chemical weapons attack, these amount to an invitation to the Al Qaeda forces to stage an incident in order to secure air support from the US and its allies. Damascus flatly denied responsibility for earlier incidents—in Douma last April and in Khan Shaykhun a year before. Both were used as the pretext for missile and air strikes by Washington and its allies.