Trump vows “severe retaliation” for 3 dead Americans in Syria whose deaths he enabled

 Trump vows “severe retaliation” for 3 dead Americans in Syria whose deaths he enabled

 

America has defiled Syria since the 2011 civil war we entered to support Islamic jihadists seeking to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad. We called the jihadists getting our weapons to depose Assad ‘moderates’ who could be controlled. These folks aligned with the 911 attackers were now cool to work with because they supported our real agenda…depose Assad to please Israel.

 

We stationed soldiers in Syria to capture Assad’s oil fields, choking off his main source of wealth. It took 13 years but our jihadist buddies finally toppled Assad a year ago. Then we embraced al-Qaeda terrorist Mohammad al-Julani who morphed into Ahmed al Sharaa when his HTS terrorist rebels toppled Assad. HTS quickly installed Sharaa as new Syrian strongman. Sharaa swapped his al-Qaeda fatigues for a western business suit to visit the White House and his new fan Donald Trump. For someone who toiled for years to kill Americans, a lifetime trip to Guantanamo was more appropriate.

 

But US support of the violent new Syrian government killing Alawites, Christians and others associated with Assad, did not protect the thousand US military and civilian personnel with a target on their back for continuing their senseless occupation having nothing to do with US national security interests. Two US soldiers and a civilian US interpreter were ambushed and killed in Palmyra, central Syria on Saturday.

 

Trump vows revenge but has no clue, never will, who did the foul deed. Suspects include anti-American Syrian government forces, Iranian militias, ISIS, Turkish backed forces opposed to our Kurdish support, possibly even Russian mercenaries.

 

Our troops needlessly in harm war are not wanted by Syrian’s new jihadist government, not authorized by Congress, violating Syrian sovereignty and violating international law by stealing Syria’s oil treasure. Every US death, every US injury of military and civilian personnel having no business defiling Syrian sovereignty is on Trump while in office. 

 

Trump’s imminent bombing of designated scapegoats is sure to backfire. Besides anti-US government forces, there are numerous armed factions surrounding US positions likely to respond in kind. The attack may have been deliberately planned to provoke further violence against US retaliation.

 

Trump’s wisest response would be to extract all remaining US forces from Syria. Fourteen years of US meddling that helped kill hundreds of thousands, turning Syria into a failed state, is fourteen years too many.

 

Chances of Trump being that wise? Zero.

Walt Zlotow  West Suburban Peace Coalition  Glen Ellyn IL 

substack.com/@waltzlotow