J.D.As might have been anticipated, this thread has now degenerated into a wholesale discussion about US foreign policy and the myriad ways in which anything that happens on Earth is the direct result of things done by the United States.
Stop for a minute and try to recognize how arrogant and self-centered that premise is.
https://www.newschoolers.com/videos/watch/796571/ISIS--the-Syrian-Civil-War--and-Climate-Change---THE-SAAD-TRUTH-97-
I do think there is bias regarding US foreign policy and its supposed direct effect on the state of Syria. However, I do find this video at times to be quite fallacious. Climate change might of led to a proliferation of droughts in Syria which could have been a precursor of the civil unrest during the Arab Spring. However, the video is not giving any conclusive evidence and he simply just points out other substandard arguments. That being said we shouldn’t assume that the uprise in civil unrest was solely due to climate change, on the contrary I don’t think the individual in this video is saying that climate change has zero effect.
We understand that there are various agendas at play. ISIS wants to engender a Salafist state and make its presence all throughout Syria. Russia is helping the legitimate government of Syria bomb the Islamic state. Russia has been supplying Assad with weapons for years, and have continued to do so throughout the Syrian civil war. The United States does not back the Assad regime. The official policy of the U.S. with respect to Assad is regime change by any means possible. If that means covertly backing rebel proxies to destabilize the region than that is what they must do. Obama has stated "Assad must go.” The powers that be really could care less about ISIS presence in Syria only if they do not inflict on their foreign interests. I want to make it clear in all my bias that the principalities of the covert war that the powers that be are fighting is not what the corporate media would likely bring to light.
Through researching I know that on January 30th 2013 the US government affirmed that the Syrian government under Assad utilized chemical weapons against its own people. Most to this day would still believe that Assad orchestrated this attack. Following this event, it was revealed that a hacker leaked emails and a large quantity of sensitive documents from a UK based military contractor. Particular emails within these hacked documents were manipulated to make it look like this operation had full proof from the US government, however this is incorrect and stains the documents' credibility. Nevertheless, a plan by Qatari was to have the firm provide false evidence that Syria would give the 'go ahead' to use chemical weapons. These documents can all be read on wikileaks website.
So we understand that as far back as 2013 the US government wanted to oust Assad by any means necessary. Now on March 19th sarin gas was used in Aleppo, Syria. Israel and the US accused the Syrian government when many of those killed were Syrian government soldiers. Obama then began talking about the event as a ‘RED LINE’ that had been crossed. The warmongering continued until the UN investigated the subject and on May 6th 2013 UN investigator Carla Del Ponte went public, stating that it was in fact the Syrian rebels that utilized sarin gas and that there was no sign that the Syrian government launched any chemical attacks whatsoever.
According to the lab results, investigators discovered the presence of Hexogen, which was utilized as an opening charge and is not used in standard chemical emissions. Therefore, results pointed to the attack being launched by the Syrian rebels.
Mysteriously, the Obama Administration backed down from previous claims. I believe this was done to create the ostensible reason for military involvement. Hence, the US government is edging for regime change, this is no small fault. The financial elites are longing the expansion of the Rothschild Central Banking fiat currency system. (Only Syria, and Iran have independent central banks in the Middle East.... most recent example was Libya.) Another motive could be for Oil-and-gas as well as control of the money. Like the rest of the "axis of evil," Syria doesn't have a private central bank. Maybe I’m giving the United States too much leverage, I do not know, could it be due to a pipeline? Frederic Hof, a member of the Syrian Crisis Committee as well as a member of the Atlantic Council.
President Obama conferred on Ambassador Hof the rank of ambassador in connection with his new duties as special adviser for transition in Syria. So where did this guy come from? Armitage International L.C. Consulting Group. Have you ever heard of the Armitage International L.C. group before? It was founded by Richard (ie Dick) Armitage, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State. This guy arguably, is the architect of the invasion in Iraq. for the exact reasons that is happening in Syria.
This is from his entry in the book of knowledge::
"In 1998, Armitage signed "The Project for the New American Century" letter (PNAC Letter) to President Bill Clinton. The letter urged Clinton to target the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power in Iraq due to erosion of the Gulf War Coalition's containment policy and the resulting possibility that Iraq might develop weapons of mass destruction.
During the 2000 Presidential election campaign, he served as a foreign policy adviser to George W. Bush as part of a group led by Condoleezza Rice that called itself The Vulcans.”
So the path is we've got the project manager - the guy who works for Armitage, the one who works to get us in Iraq, Project for a New American Century, and he gets his guy put in charge there to stirring it up so we can build this pipeline.
Nonetheless, If the rebels takeover, Russia will not have any ally in the region. Syria is a very strategic ally, in term of economy; defense point; presence in the region. At this point, Russia cannot afford to lose it's only ally in the region.
Meanwhile we never get a similar story about analyzing US support for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, etc... or even Libya and Egypt.
Saudi tanks crush protesters in Bahrain, barely makes news. Instead we are bombarded with Assad committing terrine atrocities, many of which have been proven to be false. I’m not saying Assad is a good person his army very much has committed atrocities. So why not mention US frustration with their rebel allies at same time as Russian frustration. There are various claims that the rebels used chemical weapons including MIT study and respected leading weapons inspector.
US and allies replace a secular military dictatorship in Libya with a Islamic semi democracy (does not allow members of old regime to run for office and killed who they could so unknown how popular rival tribes were), meanwhile US and allies support a secular military dictatorship replacing an Islamic democracy in egypt. (Military dictatorship gets 10 billion+ extra funding, etc; military is funded rather than civilians or government often).
When US bombed Libya, they did not even legally declare war first (requires congress approval), because only "bombing", despite everyone considering Pearl Harbour attack by Japan which involved a small fraction of bombing to be "act of war".
Obvious the reason Russia supports Syria, same reason US supports every country in middle east that hosts US military bases, whether or not protests or dictatorship, or government snipers killing people. THE REASON: Syria hosts russia bases and buys russia military weapons.
Now back to my point, back in 2013 you would have been called a nut or lunatic for believing that NATO and the US were running a proxy war by arming and funding the FSA. Yet, they funneled these resources through their allies in the region and. To obscure the source of this support, Qatar has been used to purchase the weapons from countries like Sudan and route them to Syria via Turkey. Qatar is a close military ally of the US; they provided tank support in the Gulf War and served as the US Central Command Headquarters during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Presently, the US government has now openly admitted to funding, arming and training the Syrian rebels. Now many people are saying that the US government has covertly armed the Islamic state.
What is the motive? The only parties that benefit from the ensuing attack are the Syrian rebels, the US and its allies. The Syrian government knows full well that NATO and the US have been looking for any accuse to invade. The rebels on the other hand have already been caught committing ruthless killings as well as creating fake videos of civilian casualties. Two days after the attack, the Syrian rebels release a video statement vowing to strike back with any and all means. They claimed to have access to chemical weapons and that they now intended to use them with zero misgivings from this point forward. Basically, they are using their own crime for a pretext to openly utilize chemical weapons in battle.
There are multiple militant groups in Syria including but not limited to: ISIS, other miscelaneous Islamist extremist groups that are not directly affiliated with ISIS, Syrian rebel groups that are fighting against the Assad government (these are not mutually exclusive with ISIS or other islamist militants). There is not much clarity about the alignment and backing of the various rebel groups. Its a clusterfuck basically.
The targets that Russia bombed are groups that have been fighting against the Assad regime. There is not much agreement about which groups they bombed. We only know that it wasn't Assad's army. The Russians themselves probably don't even know, but that is my conjecture. Like with any war, civilians die. Assad has killed civilians, the French airstrikes have killed civilians, same with Russia and the US.
Now If US covert operations are not directly behind the dissent and protests in these countries as the aforementioned wikileaks document would suggest they are directly behind it, we're coming in after the fact and supporting the dissenters, which has already been proven to be true. However, this is not only done by the US alone, but by many other countries as well.
Maybe what I’ve been saying is fallacious garbage and I want everything to be like a movie. Maybe, I’m wrong and just want to spot a bad guy acting as the puppet master, to whom it can be attributed everything bad that has happened. Yet, I believe what I say and research both sides to come to a legitimate conclusion, usually that conclusion being of an ever-changing nature.
Now it has been said that the US goal in December 2006 was to undermine the Syrian government by any means necessary, either by utilizing ecumenic hit men or via destabilizing the region by stirring up a salafist movement in the region, i.e ISIS. And that what mattered was whether US action would help destabilize the government., not what other impacts the action might have... In public, the US was opposed to Islamist terrorists everywhere; but in private it saw the potential threat to the legitimate government of Syria from the increasing presence of transiting Islamist extremists as an opportunity that the US should take action to try to increase. Destabilisation is and will always be a requirement for overthrowing a government. It's the primary reason an external force would do so. The other agenda seems to be the elimination of the Shia powerbloc for Western and Saudi interests, point blank. That is the motive.
Regarding the video,
This person said it best, "Chomsky is actually a far more rational and level-headed observer than the vast majority of mainstream warmongers who see US national interests at stake in every little corner of the world and who view every world problem as a nail that needs to be hit by a firm US hammer. Chomsky may be committed to a certain perspective on things but that perspective is not by any means a result of "delusion" - that perspective is arguably a reasoned and reasonable reaction to real-world US foreign policy that itself is aggressive, rash and perhaps also just a tad delusional at times."
As for who started ISIS, everyone knows (well, most do anyway) that USA created the overall conditions for the rise of ISIS but that its ME allies (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, etc) were the ones who actually funded and supplied these jihadi groups. Defining responsibility depends on what you consider the most important aspect and where you draw the starting line. As for Israel, it's not delusional by any means to entertain the possibility that Israel helped ferment unrest in the early days of the Syrian "revolution" (I would actually expect nothing less of a serious and seasoned organization like Mossad) but even if true that would only make Israel a minor bit-player in Syria.”
