One interesting and completely undeniable fact that we don’t talk about nearly enough is how Syria has been a target for regime change by the US-centralized power establishment since long before the uprising in 2011.
Proponents of US military interventionism in Syria will avoid addressing this known fact like the plague. They're more than happy to dispute claims about false flags and the White Helmets, but if you start asking them "Hey don't you think it's a little odd that the government we're all freaking out about right now just so happens to be one that's been a target for regime change by US defense and intelligence agencies since long before any of this started?" they get real squirmy all of a sudden.It's true though. Let's go over five key items in the mountain of evidence for this, starting with the most recent and working our way backward:
1. The Roland Dumas statement.
Roland Dumas is the former Foreign Minister of France, and he stated that he was made aware of the violence in Syria in 2009, two years before it started.
"I’m going to tell you something," Dumas said on French station LCP. "I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer minister for foreign affairs, if I would like to participate. Naturally, I refused, I said I’m French, that doesn’t interest me.’’
‘’This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned," Dumas added.
Prepared, preconceived, and planned.
2. The 2006 William Roebuck cable.
A December 13, 2006 cable published by WikiLeaks reveals how five years prior to the beginning of the violence, the US government (USG) was seeking out weaknesses of the Assad government which could be exploited to undermine it. William Roebuck, an official at the US embassy in Damascus, said this in his summary of the cable:
"We believe Bashar's weaknesses are in how he chooses to react to looming issues, both perceived and real, such as the conflict between economic reform steps (however limited) and entrenched, corrupt forces, the Kurdish question, and the potential threat to the regime from the increasing presence of transiting Islamist extremists. This cable summarizes our assessment of these vulnerabilities and suggests that there may be actions, statements, and signals that the USG can send that will improve the likelihood of such opportunities arising."
This excellent Truthout article from 2015 goes into further details about the cable's examination of the ways Syria and its relationship with Iran could be undermined, and documents the recurring theme of the US government's plan to provoke a rash overreaction from Assad against the various oppositional factions in Syria using psyops to foment paranoia about coup plots. The theme of Assad "overreacting" to demonstrations in 2011 has been loudly trumpeted by the western mass media ever since the violence erupted, which the US and its allies were involved in creating from the very beginning.
3. The General Wesley Clark statement.
General Wesley Clark made the following statement on Democracy Now in 2007 about a conversation he had with a general in 2001:
About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in.
He said, "Sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second."
I said, "Well, you're too busy."
He said, "No, no."
He says, "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq."
This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, "We're going to war with Iraq? Why?"
He said, "I don't know." He said, "I guess they don't know what else to do."
So I said, "Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?"
He said, "No, no." He says, "There's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq." He said, "I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments." And he said, "I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail."
So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?"
And he said, "Oh, it's worse than that." He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, "I just got this down from upstairs" -- meaning the Secretary of Defense's office -- "today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran."
Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.
4. The 1986 CIA memo.
A CIA document declassified last year exposed a plot to overthrow the Syrian government by provoking sectarian tensions all the way back in 1986.
Here are a few juicy excerpts:
"Although we judge that fear of reprisals and organizational problems make a second Sunni challenge unlikely, an excessive government reaction to minor outbreaks of Sunni dissidence might trigger large-scale unrest. In most instances the regime would have the resources to crush a Sunni opposition movement, but we believe widespread violence among the populace could stimulate large numbers of Sunni officers and conscripts to desert or mutiny, setting the stage for civil war."
Sound familiar? Here's some more:
"We believe that a renewal of communal violence between Alawis and Sunnis could inspire Sunnis in the military to turn against the regime."
"Sunni dissidence has been minimal since Assad crushed the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1980s, but deep-seated tensions remain–keeping alive the potential for minor incidents to grow into major flareups of communal violence… Excessive government force in quelling such disturbances might be seen by Sunnis as evidence of a government vendetta against all Sunnis, precipitating even larger protests by other Sunni groups."
"Mistaking the new protests as a resurgence of the Muslim Brotherhood, the government would step up its use of force and launch violent attacks on a broad spectrum of Sunni community leaders as well as on those engaged in protests. Regime efforts to restore order would founder if government violence against protestors inspired broad-based communal violence between Alawis and Sunnis."
"A general campaign of Alawi violence against Sunnis might push even moderate Sunnis to join the opposition. Remnants of the Muslim Brotherhood–some returning from exile in Iraq–could provide a core of leadership for the movement. Although the regime has the resources to crush such a venture, we believe brutal attacks on Sunni civilians might prompt large numbers of Sunni officers and conscripts to desert or stage mutinies in support of dissidents, and Iraq might supply them with sufficient weapons to launch a civil war."
Oh and don't forget this important little detail:
"In our view, US interests would be best served by a Sunni regime controlled by business-oriented moderates. Business moderates would see a strong need for Western aid and investment to build Syria’s private economy, thus opening the way for stronger ties to Western governments."
5. Known coup attempts in the 1940s and 1950s.
A lot can change in seventy years, but it says a lot about Syria's strategic significance that the CIA has been attempting to stage coups there since the 1940s. In a 1969 interview CIA officer Miles Copeland confirmed statements he'd made in his memoirs that the Central Intelligence Agency had attempted to overthrow the Syrian government 20 years earlier. In 1956 there was the "anti-communist" intervention called Operation Straggle followed by Operation Wappen, and in 1957 there was a CIA/MI6 assassination plot.
So we know for an absolute fact that the defense and intelligence agencies of the US-centralized empire have been salivating over regime change in Syria literally for generations. And we're meant to believe that this same government that has been targeted for hostile takeover by the western empire generation after generation due to its strategic importance and refusal to kowtow to imperialist interests just so happens to be the greatest threat to humanity right now? That Bashar al-Assad, who was never spoken of as a vicious dictator prior to 2009 and was even nominated for honorary knighthood by Tony Blair in 2002, just spontaneously developed a sick "addiction" to gassing children in the last few years?
Come on.
We're being lied to. We're being lied to about a key strategic asset that the western empire is trying desperately to secure as it hurtles toward post-primacy in a rapidly shifting world. It's so obvious. Keep pushing back on the lies and open as many eyes to what's going on as you can before these bastards drag us into a conflict with Syria, Russia and their allies that there may be no coming back from.
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Suppose that it did.
Why not?
Syria is a metastasis of Russia and a tyrannical state in its own right.
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Thanks Caitlin. I did not know about Tony Blair's recommendation, I will have to throw that into conversations! In William Blum's excellent work Killing Hope, he details the failed coup attempt of 1957. If there is an HQ address for the Western powers - it's Langley. At the time John Foster Dulles was still high from Iran and fuelled by anti-communist paranoia, the CIA was looking to remake the Middle East oil region in their own making. Far from being Communist, Syria none the less valued it's independence and refused 'aid' from America. Once again the British are involved, a State Department internal memo stated 'The British are believed to favour active stimulation of a change in the present regime in Syria...The US shares the concern...'. Five years later JF Kennedy met British PM Harold MacMillan and they agreed 'Penetration and cultivation of disruptive elements...' What's changed? Well it's no longer the fear of reds under the bed - or is it?
“It is Israel which is behind the war on Syria and which is pressing for further conflict.” The history of the conflict in Syria detailed in the following link goes back further, and up to 2013, and shows it to be but a step in a larger campaign for control of the Middle East, a Greater Middle East strategy. This is the strategy that is dangerous. Whether it is the strategy of the U.S. or not should weigh in our assessment of the potential causes of this potential conflict.
While claiming to be non-ideological, Caitlin solves the problem of who is causing the conflict by positing a, “US-centralized power establishment” or a “US-centralized empire” which she also refers to as, “the Western empire.” The problem with this construct is that it is abstract. There is no address or headquarters for such an empire per se. At best it is allegorical , that NATO and the US act like an empire or are a de facto empire. While that rubric may be helpful in some kind of analyses, it can also be problematic and impractical.
As is discussed in the articles linked above, the problem can also be identified as an Israeli one, and which is the tail and which is the dog is a legitimate question. Is Israel doing America’s bidding when it fires missiles into Syria and arms dissident factions to overthrow sovereign governments? Or is it more helpful to think of the U.S. as a client state of Israel’s? With all the money and influence AIPAC showers on congress, and the outsized influence of donors like Sheldon Adelson, there is an argument to be made that Israel is the patron in the patron-client relationship. Or, is there a third party controlling the governments of both Israel and the U.S.? I think it is both helpful to keep asking these questions — even though we don’t have unqualified answers for them (yet); and, important not to invent an adversary to fuel a polemic.
I find the Israel-centric argument persuasive in many of the particulars. U.S. involvement seems muddled, but a good case for U.S. centered involvement in the case for Syria is made by the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies:
The US has failed in its effort to produce a US-friendly and democratic Northern Middle East, where Sunnis and Shiites power-share and emulate US forms of governance. Turkey has turned to Russia and authoritarianism. Iraq is a Shiite dominated state that needs decades to build reliable institutions that will allow it to turn away from dependence on Iran. Assad’s authority has survived in most of Syria, and Hizbullah is more powerful than ever in Lebanon. For the US to believe that it can turn around this history of political failure and misspent millions by launching a comeback in North Syria is nothing short of goofy.And a U.S.-centric motivation doesn’t add up there, either; any more than if you see Israel as the central figure driving the conflict, regarding Syrians as potential Palestinians. Whatever the reason, Trump now claims to have his hand on the trigger. If he goes in, it will be a reversal of his campaign posture, his behaviour to date, and his stance on such interventions previous to becoming a presidential candidate. Some have speculated that Trump is being hemmed in by the Democratic Caucus, who have hounded him from day one, and now have enough leverage — they sacked the office of his lawyer (Cohen)— that Trump has to obey them. Others that Trump’s bellicosity is only a feint, and that he will pull back from actual intervention. Perhaps Trump has converted, and really believes such an intervention to be in America’s best interests? Or perhaps Trump is so mercurial and inchoate any rationale would fall short of the mark.
The majority of the media and by extension the democratic (and much of the republican) establishment seem to think invading Syria not only a swell idea, but one motivated by high-mindedness and concern for human life and human rights. The casuistry being employed by those who support intervention in Syria has become astounding; Orwell himself could not imagine doublethink of this order. Today, Eli Lake, writing in an op-ed in Bloomberg, America Learned Wrong Lessons From Iraq, and Syria Suffers: Foreign policy has become inordinately timid because any muscular proposal is instantly derided as Iraq redux draws exactly the wrong conclusions from the Iraq intervention and turns history and all available evidence on its head, arguing for intervention. Michael Graham opines for CBS News in much the same manner a few days earlier, in a column entitled Trump’s Syria quandary, “Punishing a dictator for gassing children is an opportunity for America to both do the right thing and feel great about it.”
Good comment. I've discussed this with people about Israel. I think they are the client state, however I think they are also a player in their own right.
Woah. Thanks for the information.
Must only be a coincidence that Royal Dutch Shell is a large shareholder of Al-Furat Petroleum Company.
Sigh. I naively wish for world peace after reading all this.
Thanks for putting this together! When I start thinking about this conflict, it seems when I look for information on why it's going on I always end up at "it's complicated". Now I understand how many layers there are...
it has been going on since kissinger lied his ass off to hafez assad about the western allies' desire to have all of the regional powers have a say in the disposition of the middle east. had they kept a fair playing field with him this entire decades long power grab would never have happened.