Reversal of Fortune: US Doesn’t Want to See ISIL in Damascus
American officials are wiser today than they were yesterday, but only just. In the words of Jonathan Swift, an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and political pamphleteer: A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying that he is wiser today than yesterday…
At a time when ISIL terrorists are running away from the soon to be fully liberated city of Tikrit in Iraq – with their tails between their legs, CIA Director John Brennan says the United States cannot afford to allow ISIL “march into” the Syrian capital Damascus, adding that Washington is no longer seeking a “regime change” in the Arab country!
The head of the top US spy agency goes on to say that Washington does not want a collapse of the Syrian government since it could put ISIL and other extremists in power. “I think that’s a legitimate concern. None of us, Russia, the United States, coalition, and regional states, wants to see a collapse of the government and political institutions in Damascus.”
If we are not wrong, these are the same folks that until yesterday were talking about the imminent collapse of political institutions in Syria and the inevitability of military pressure, air war and no-fly zone to help their “moderate” terrorists oust the government in Damascus. So what happened to their criminal culpability then?
1. Brennan is right to say that the US cannot allow the death cult march into Damascus. There is only one problem, though. He has to switch the word “US” with “the Syrian army, volunteer irregular forces, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and of course Iranian military advisors.”
2. Iran is helping the Iraqi army and volunteer forces to burry the last corpses of ISIL militants in Tikrit, which is now virtually liberated. This strategic progress has begun paving the way for full liberation of Iraq and Syria. Washington knows that and it wants a piece of the action too. That’s why in a U-turn the CIA chief says ‘we have no higher priority than disrupting and defeating ISIL and other terror networks.’
3. Iran, Iraq and Syria have shown that there is no country for terrorists – even when the US and its regional cronies, mainly Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, were confident of the result, i.e., regime decapitation in Baghdad and Damascus. Last month, Washington and Ankara inked an agreement to train and arm “moderates” in Syria. Now Washington admits there is no country for the beleaguered terrorists. Talk about reversal of fortune!
4. With or without Washington, the United Nations Security Council will soon lift its baseless sanctions on Iran – once a civilian nuclear deal is reached. That’s good news for the region. With sanctions lifted, Iran will have more resources to help allies put the last nails in the coffins of Takfiri extremists in Iraq and Syria.
Judging from the above and reading the tea leaves, the conclusion should be this: The United States, the European Union and their regional cohorts are the ones that proudly endorsed four years of bloodshed, destruction and misery inflicted upon Syria – with some 200,000 killed and over 4 million refugees.
Those behind this criminal culpability cannot shirk responsibility and should never be allowed to escape justice – even if there are some thoughts in Washington about spurring the reconciliation route to Syria.
They must own that they have been in the wrong and they must face the consequences. A lot of deaths, a lot of sufferings, and a lot of war crimes have been packed into those four years.
