American Dream » Fri Oct 18, 2019 10:31 pm wrote:She is no progressive on foreign policy. That seems clear.
How do you define 'progressive'? What, in your view, is the 'progressive' stance on foreign policy?
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American Dream » Fri Oct 18, 2019 10:31 pm wrote:She is no progressive on foreign policy. That seems clear.
Belligerent Savant » 19 Oct 2019 03:37 wrote:.American Dream » Fri Oct 18, 2019 10:31 pm wrote:She is no progressive on foreign policy. That seems clear.
How do you define 'progressive'? What, in your view, is the 'progressive' stance on foreign policy?
American Dream » Wed Oct 16, 2019 4:00 pm wrote:https://rewire.news/article/2019/01/24/gabbard-is-no-progressive-foreign-policy/Tulsi Gabbard Is No ‘Progressive’ When It Comes to Foreign Policy
Jan 24, 2019, 1:26pm Ramah Kudaimi
There is absolutely nothing progressive about siding with authoritarian rulers and states over people’s movements.
[snip]
[snip] In order to justify this brutality, Assad and his backers have insisted that there is a “regime change” conspiracy against him, thus dismissing the legitimacy of the Syrian people’s suffering under his family’s decades-long rule as well as the right of Syrians to protest against their oppression.
[snip]
Whenever Gabbard repeats the lies that what has been happening in Syria is about regime change, she is taking the side of Assad over Syrians. And there is absolutely nothing progressive about siding with authoritarian rulers and states over people’s movements.
[snip]
New York Times, "Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.", 2013/03/24 wrote:With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.
Regime preservation: How US policy facilitated Assad’s victory
Assad and Kerry
8 May 2019
Michael Karadjis
This article originally appeared in Al-Jumhuriya: https://aljumhuriya.net/en/content/regi ... 9s-victory
A close examination of eight years of US policy in Syria shows Washington’s objective has never been regime change, but rather “a modified form of regime preservation,” writes Dr. Michael Karadjis in a comprehensive review of the record.
As the military conflict in Syria has been largely decided in favor of the Bashar al-Assad regime, there have been a number of attempts to review the role of US intervention, or lack thereof, in the Syrian outcome. Late last year, Washington’s special envoy to Syria, Jim Jeffrey, clarified that while the US wants to see a regime in Damascus that is “fundamentally different,” it is nevertheless “not regime change” the US is seeking. “We’re not trying to get rid of Assad.” Much commentary jumped on this as some kind of major shift in US policy, or a signal the US had “given up” on regime change.
Yet, as will be shown below, the US never had a “regime change” policy. On the contrary, Washington has always sought a modified form of regime preservation. Jeffrey’s statement was followed by President Trump’s announcement of an immediate US withdrawal from Syria. While the “immediate” was later dropped for reasons of expediency, a more gradual US withdrawal is still on the cards; a process coinciding with a creeping rapprochement with Assad by Trump’s Gulf allies, spearheaded by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain restoring diplomatic relations with Syria in late December 2018.
American Dream » Sat Oct 19, 2019 5:52 am wrote:By the way, the BS, Jack & Mac are on my ignore list and now coffin_dodger is a fourth. That ain't changing...
American Dream » Sat Oct 19, 2019 5:52 am wrote:Regime preservation: How US policy facilitated Assad’s victory
Assad and Kerry
8 May 2019
Michael Karadjis
This article originally appeared in Al-Jumhuriya: https://aljumhuriya.net/en/content/regi ... 9s-victory
A close examination of eight years of US policy in Syria shows Washington’s objective has never been regime change, but rather “a modified form of regime preservation,” writes Dr. Michael Karadjis in a comprehensive review of the record.
As the military conflict in Syria has been largely decided in favor of the Bashar al-Assad regime, there have been a number of attempts to review the role of US intervention, or lack thereof, in the Syrian outcome. Late last year, Washington’s special envoy to Syria, Jim Jeffrey, clarified that while the US wants to see a regime in Damascus that is “fundamentally different,” it is nevertheless “not regime change” the US is seeking. “We’re not trying to get rid of Assad.” Much commentary jumped on this as some kind of major shift in US policy, or a signal the US had “given up” on regime change.
Yet, as will be shown below, the US never had a “regime change” policy. On the contrary, Washington has always sought a modified form of regime preservation. Jeffrey’s statement was followed by President Trump’s announcement of an immediate US withdrawal from Syria. While the “immediate” was later dropped for reasons of expediency, a more gradual US withdrawal is still on the cards; a process coinciding with a creeping rapprochement with Assad by Trump’s Gulf allies, spearheaded by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain restoring diplomatic relations with Syria in late December 2018.
Read: https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2019/05 ... s-victory/
American Dream » Sat Oct 19, 2019 5:52 am wrote:By the way, the BS, Jack & Mac are on my ignore list and now coffin_dodger is a fourth. That ain't changing...
Marionumber1 » Sat Oct 19, 2019 8:30 am wrote:It's too bad that this article, posted uncritically by AD, is blatantly lying by downplaying at best and denying at worst that there is indeed a regime change conspiracy against Assad.
Christian Science Monitor, "Cables reveal covert US support for Syria's opposition", 2011/04/18 wrote:Newly released WikiLeaks cables reveal that the US State Department has been secretly financing Syrian opposition groups and other opposition projects for at least five years, The Washington Post reports.
That aid continued going into the hands of the Syrian government opposition even after the US began its reengagement policy with Syria under President Barack Obama in 2009, the Post reports. In January, the US posted its first ambassador to the country since the Bush administration withdrew the US ambassador in 2005 over concerns about Syria's involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
Truthout, "WikiLeaks Reveals How the US Aggressively Pursued Regime Change in Syria, Igniting a Bloodbath", 2015/10/09 wrote:This cable shows that, in December 2006, the top US diplo mat in Syria believed that the goal of US policy in Syria should be to destabilize the Syrian government by any means available; that the US should work to increase Sunni-Shia sectarianism in Syria, including by aiding the dissemination of false fears about Shia proselytizing and stoking resentment about Iranian business activity and mosque construction; that the US should press Arab allies to give access in the media they control to a former Syrian official calling for the ouster of the Syrian government; that the US should try to strain relations between the Syrian government and other Arab governments, and then blame Syria for the strain; that the US should seek to stoke Syrian government fears of coup plots in order to provoke the Syrian government to overreact; that if the Syrian government reacted to external provocations, it proved that the regime was paranoid; that the US should work to undermine Syrian economic reforms and discourage foreign investment; that the US should seek to foster the belief that the Syrian government was not legitimate; that violent protests in Syria were praiseworthy and exemplary; that if Syria is the victim of terrorism and tries to do something about it, the US should exploit that to say that the Syrian government is weak and unstable, and is experiencing blowback for its foreign policy.
DEBKAfile, "Assad's tanks blast all of northern Syria day after 150 die in two cities", 2011/08/01 wrote:Syrian armored forces shooting at random are now running into heavy resistance: Awaiting them are anti-tank traps and fortified barriers manned by protesters armed with heavy machine guns.
DEBKAfile, "Syria tanks enter Homs while fighting Palestinians in Latakia", 2011/08/15 wrote:NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria, which is to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters spearheading the Assad regime's crackdown on dissent. Instead of repeating the Libyan model of air strikes, NATO strategists are thinking more in terms of pouring large quantities of anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns into the protest centers for beating back the government armored forces.
2012 DIA memo on the state of the war in Syria wrote:C. THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY SUPPORT THE OPPOSITION; WHILE RUSSIA, CHINA, AND IRAN SUPPORT THE REGIME.
[snip]
C. IF THE SITUATION UNRAVELS THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME, WHICH IS CONSIDERED THE STRATEGIC DEPTH OF THE SHIA EXPANSION (IRAQ AND IRAN).
US military document reveals how the West opposed a democratic Syria
by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Le Monde diplomatiqueUS military document reveals how the West opposed a democratic Syria↑
Bashar al-Assad propaganda.
US military documents from 2011 and 2016 reveal that although officials wanted a Syrian regime change in theory, they thought it was highly unlikely to actually happen — and hoped that if President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown, he would not be replaced by an opposition-led Syrian democracy but, rather, the same Alawite-Baathist ruling structure would continue. The end result was to be the decimation of the democratic opposition, the consolidation of Islamist forces and regime preservation.
‘The US has given up on the overthrow of Assad in Syria’, wrote Robert Fisk this summer. Indeed, as the Russian-backed Syrian army prepared to execute its final offensive on Idlib, western governments appeared to signal their acceptance of a bloody victory for Assad, despite the ritual denunciations.
But at the last minute, Russia and Turkey agreed a truce to ward off a Russian-led attack for at least a month, and establish a buffer zone to protect 3 million civilians. The deal will involve hashing out how to remove extremist rebels from the buffer zone, and Turkey has announced it will send more troops into Idlib.
As the Idlib offensive loomed, the West, curiously, did little of substance in any particular direction. According to two newly uncovered US military documents, western reticence might be because the US was never really committed to overthrowing Assad, due to a self-serving strategy that has been wildly misunderstood.
The documents suggest that both early on and toward the later phase of the conflict, senior US military officials had not given any credence to the democratic aspirations of Syrian protestors, but had merely sought to use them as a tool to sideline expanding Iranian influence. Toppling the regime was dismissed as a highly improbable scenario, with officials indicating they believed the survival of an authoritarian Baathist governing structure — with or without Assad — was inevitable.
Predicting opposition failure
According to a US secret draft military document obtained via the Wikileaks archive, as far back as August 2011 (six months after the Syrian uprising began) US military officials were highly ambivalent about ‘regime change’ in Syria, on the grounds that opposition forces would never win. Supporting the rebels, the officials hoped, might encourage forces within Assad’s regime to remove him while maintaining the Alawite-dominated authoritarian power structure. But military intervention was not on the cards.
The document, reported here for the first time, is the draft of an internal US Marine Corps’ (USMC) Intelligence Department forecasting paper, produced jointly by analysts at the private intelligence firm Stratfor and senior USMC officials (1).
‘The Syrian Alawite-Baathist regime led by President Bashar al Assad will weaken significantly over the next three years, but its break point is unlikely to be imminent’, it states. ‘Fractured opposition forces in Syria are unlikely to overcome the logistical constraints preventing them from cohering into a meaningful threat against the regime within this time frame.’
The document was meant to be an internal USMC intelligence assessment and was never formally released to the public by the agency. It saw regime change as desirable in theory, but unattainable in practice, warning that Syria would experience ‘a violent, protracted civil conflict, one that will enflame sectarian unrest... The potential for the regime to collapse cannot be ruled out, but the road to regime change will be a long and bloody one.’
While the document does not strictly rule out regime change, it marshals abundant evidence to argue that a regime change effort would be futile. In particular, the document concludes that opposition forces would be unable to overthrow Assad: ‘... the opposition in Syria does not yet have the numbers, organization or capabilities overall to overwhelm the regime forces. Syria’s opposition is extremely fractured and is operating under enormous constraints inside the country.’
Marionumber1 » Sun Oct 20, 2019 2:56 pm wrote:Crucially, this article points out that the US government indeed "wanted a Syrian regime change" and viewed it as "desirable". Regardless of any pessimistic official assessments about how likely regime change was to succeed -- as if the CIA doesn't have a history of pursuing coups against better judgment -- it clearly was a goal, and there is no doubt from what I've pointed out above that regime change was being pursued. The longtime support of the opposition through funding and then weapons, and the use of plausibly-deniable CIA cutouts (as in Operation Gladio B, which has been corroborated by the same author you just cited, and is entirely in line with what we know about al-Qaeda activities up to and including 9/11) for these support networks, is straight out of the CIA coup playbook. The wholly unsurprising fact that the US didn't want a democracy in Syria doesn't prove that ousting Assad wasn't the most preferred outcome. My purpose, for what it's worth, wasn't to discuss the entire nature of the conflict in Syria; we have other threads for that. My issue is with your original article making a baseless attack on Tulsi Gabbard for pointing out that regime change aspirations against Assad are a central factor in the Syrian war.
American Dream » Sun Oct 20, 2019 4:30 pm wrote:I meant independent corroboration of Sibel Edmonds' allegations- I see no good corroboration for the existence of a "Gladio B".
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, "Why was a Sunday Times report on US government ties to al-Qaeda chief spiked?", 2013/05/17 wrote:Edmonds’ allegations find some independent corroboration in the public record. The Wall Street Journal refers to a nebulous agreement between Mubarak and “the operational wing of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was then headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri… Many of that group’s fighters embraced a cease-fire with the government of former President Hosni Mubarak in 1997.”
Youssef Bodansky, former Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, cited U.S. intelligence sources in an article for Defense and Foreign Affairs: Strategic Policy, confirming “discussions between the Egyptian terrorist leader Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and an Arab-American known to have been both an emissary of the CIA and the U.S. Government.” He referred to an “offer” made to al-Zawahiri in November 1997 on behalf of U.S. intelligence, granting his Islamists a free hand in Egypt as long as they lent support to U.S. forces in the Balkans. In 1998, Al Zawahiri’s brother, Muhammed, led an elite unit of the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serbs during the Kosovo conflict – he reportedly had direct contact with NATO leadership.
In recent interviews, two Sunday Times journalists confirmed to this author that the newspaper’s investigation based on Sibel Edmonds’ revelations was to break much of the details into the open.
“We’d spoken to several current and active Pentagon officials confirming the existence of U.S. operations sponsoring mujahideen networks in Central Asia from the 1990s to 2001,” said one Sunday Times source. “Those mujahideen networks were intertwined with a whole range of criminal enterprises, including drugs and guns. The Pentagon officials corroborated Edmonds’ allegations against specific U.S. officials, and I’d also interviewed an MI6 officer who confirmed that the U.S. was running these operations sponsoring mujahideen in that period.”
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