Boy, did we ever call this one. Contrary to the prevailing leftist conspiracy theory that the US was backing ISIS against Assad, we predicted earlier this year that the US would soon intervene in Syria against al-Qaeda and its offshoots such as ISIS. Today, the New York Times reports the comments of Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that ISIS cannot be defeated unless the US or its partners take them on in Syria. "This is an organization that has an apocalyptic end-of-days strategic vision that will eventually have to be defeated," Dempsey said. "Can they be defeated without addressing that part of the organization that resides in Syria? The answer is no." Dempsey and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who both spoke at a Pentagon press conference, stopped short of saying air-strikes on Syria are planned, but the comments were obviously intended to float the idea.
We will note that just a year ago, when intervention in Syria was being posed as against Assad rather than the jihadis, Dempsey was arguing against it.
This raises the question of whether US intervention against ISIS in Syria would extend to attacking Assad as well, to finally get the damn place under control, or if (on the contrary) Washington would tilt to Assad to help defeat ISIS, as paleocons and idiot-leftists have been advocating.
Joseph Daher, an exiled member of Syria's Revolutionary Left Current, the tendency in the civil resistance that continues to oppose US intervention against Assad, took a skeptical view of the Iraq intervention on the group's website Syria Freedom Forever (stilted English in original):
The US military intervention, despite its "humanitarian" propaganda, is nevertheless part of clear political objectives that are to protect American diplomatic personnel stationed in Erbil, (which is also home of a CIA basis), large multinational companies in the hydrocarbon/oil sector such as Mobil, Chevron, Exxon and Total exploiting the oil production in the region and have already invested more than $ 10 billion, but the primary purpose above all is primarily to keep the Iraqi regime ally, inherited from the American invasion. The United States did not intervene when Mosul fell and other regions and more than 200 000 refugees were on the road in direction of Iraqi Kurdistan, but when IS was threatening to conquer the Kurdish areas of the North and the capital Baghdad in the South.
We said as much when the intervention was announced. It is axiomatic that the struggle for Iraq's oil is of far greater criticality to the empire than the suffering of those oppressed by ISIS. The inaction in Syria for the past three years is alone evidence of this. But we also recognize that, while we should certainly have no illusions about US intentions, it would have been a disaster for the Kurds and the greater region—not just the US empire—if Erbil had fallen to ISIS.
