The United States Needs To Occupy Syria Because Of Kurds Or Iran Or Chemical Weapons Or Oil Or Whatever by Caitlin Johnstone!
(2019-11-03 at 08:22:18 )

The United States Needs To Occupy Syria Because Of Kurds Or Iran Or Chemical Weapons Or Oil Or Whatever by Caitlin Johnstone

President Trump reiterated to the press today that the United States is maintaining its military presence in Syria not to patrol the nations border with Turkey, but to control its oil fields.

"We have kept the oil," President Trump said. "We have stayed back and kept the oil. Other people can patrol the border of Syria, frankly, and Turkey, let them - they have been fighting for a thousand years, let them do the border, we do not want to do that. We want to bring our soldiers home. But we did leave soldiers because we are keeping the oil. I like oil. We are keeping the oil."

This open "kick their ass and take their gas" policy is nothing new for the United States of Americas reality TV president; he has been saying it for years.

It was recently addressed head-on by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who said during an interview that it is nice to have a United States president who is honest about Americas true motives in the Middle East for once.

"As for President Trump, you might ask me a question and I give you an answer that might sound strange," Mr. Assad said. "I say that he is the best United States American President, not because his policies are good, but because he is the most transparent president.

All United States American presidents perpetrate all kinds of political atrocities and all crimes and yet still win the Nobel Prize and project themselves as defenders of human rights and noble and unique American values, or Western values in general.

The reality is that they are a group of criminals who represent the interests of United States of American lobbies, i.e. the large oil and arms companies, and others.

President Trump talks transparently, saying that what we want is oil.

This is the reality of the United States American policy, at least since WWII.

We want to get rid of such and such a person or we want to offer a service in return for money. This is the reality of the United States of American policy.

What more do we need than a transparent opponent?"

Some establishment media chose to deliberately misinterpret Mr. Assads scathing criticism of United States foreign policy as praise for Donald Trump, with The Hill tweeting out "Syrian President Assad praises Trump: He is "the best" because he is "most transparent president", and The Jerusalem Post running the headline "SYRIAN LEADER BASHAR ASSAD: DONALD TRUMP IS THE BEST U.S. PRESIDENT–The Syrian leader, who allegedly committed war crimes against his own people to suppress public demands and win a bloody civil war, seemed to approve of Donald Trumps honesty."

Many United States foreign policy critics have been rightly attacking this administrations open resource grab; if Russia had forcefully invaded a sovereign nation and seized its oil fields without permission the United States American political-media class would be shrieking hysterically and working to manufacture support for World War Three within minutes.

Yet that is what United States of American exceptionalism leads the empire to do without a second thought.

Mr. Assads comments mirror what I wrote more than a week ago (so please note that I am not an Assadist-he is a Caitlinist), but it is important to point out that President Trumps oil narrative is just the latest in a long list of excuses that the United States government and its apologists have been making to justify the illegal occupation of Syria.

We were told that the United States must intervene in Syria because the Syrian government was massacring its people.

We were told that the United States must intervene in Syria in order to promote freedom and democracy in the Middle East.

We were told that the United States must intervene in Syria because Mr. Assad used chemical weapons.

We were told that the United States must occupy Syria to fight ISIS.

We were told that the United States must continue to occupy Syria to counter Iranian influence.

We were told the United States must continue to occupy Syria to protect the Kurds.

Now the United States must continue to occupy Syria because of oil.

These wildly different reasons the public has been given for the United States of Americas need to forcibly insert a military presence into Syria all have only one thing in common, and that is the United States of America forcibly inserting a military presence into Syria.

This is because they are not reasons, but excuses.

The United States forcibly inserted a military presence into Syria with the full intention of keeping it there, and then started diddling a bunch of completely different narratives in order to justify the thing it already wanted to do long before any of those excuses arose.

For eight years we have been spoonfed an assortment of radically different narratives explaining why the United States needs to control Syria militarily, and it turns out that the United States and its allies have been plotting to control Syria since long before then.

This is because Syria occupies an extremely geostrategically valuable location that is in no way limited to its oil fields.

In 2004 Mr. Assad launched his "Five Seas Vision", a plan to use Syrias supreme location to place itself at the center of a regional energy and transportation system and become an economic superpower.

The nation was then plunged into chaos seven years later, but whoever manages to secure control over this location will be able to achieve the same lucrative energy and transportation control for themselves.

The dispute over pipeline routes that many have highlighted is just one small example of this. There is also the illegally occupied Golan Heights which the extremely shady Genie Energy corporation has a vested interest in, and which provides a third of Israels water supply, and which the United States has decided to officially regard as Israeli property.

So it is a geostrategically crucial region, and it happens to have no interest at all in allowing itself to be absorbed into the blob of the United States-centralized power alliance, allying itself instead with the unabsorbed nations of Russia and Iran.

This has made it the epicenter of a giant global imperialist struggle the implications of which stretch far beyond its borders to the rest of the world.

This is the real reason why half a million Syrians have died in an imperialist proxy war, and why many more Syrians continue to suffer under United States-led sanctions and the deprivation of their nations valuable natural resources.

Not because of humanitarianism, not because of democracy, not because of chemical weapons, not because of Iran, not because of Kurds, and not even really just because of oil, but because there is a globe-spanning oligarchic empire to which Syria has refused to submit.

Everything else is empty narrative.

Whenever you see anyone arguing for keeping troops in Syria that are not there with the permission of the Syrian government, this is all they are really supporting: a campaign to annex a strategically valuable location into the United States-centralized empire.

This is true regardless of whatever reason they are offering for that support.

And notice how all the different reasons we have been inundated with all appeal to different political sectors: the oil and Iran narratives appeal to rank-and-file Republicans, the humanitarian arguments appeal to liberals, and the Kurds narrative appeals to many leftists and anarchists like Noam Chomsky.

But the end result is always the same: keeping military force in a location that the empire has long sought to absorb.

By providing many different narratives as to why the military presence must continue, the propagandists get us all arguing over which narratives are the correct ones rather than whether or not there should be an illegal military occupation of a sovereign nation at all.

This is just one of many examples of how the incredibly shrinking Overton window of acceptable debate is used to keep us arguing not over whether the empire should be doing evil things, but how and why it should do them them.

Do not fall for it. It is not legitimate for the United States empire to occupy Syria for any reason. At all.

"Because oil" is not a legitimate reason.

"Because Kurds" is not a legitimate reason.

"Because ISIS" is not a legitimate reason.

"Because Iran" is not a legitimate reason.

"Because Russia" is not a legitimate reason.

"Because freedom and democracy" is not a legitimate reason.

"Because chemical weapons" is not a legitimate reason.

And those who are driving this illegal occupation know it, which is why they keep shifting to whatever is the most convenient narrative in any given moment.

Thanks for reading!!
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