Washington Creates More Chaos in Syria While The Grown-Ups Talk Resolution

[AZJoe]

Washington Creates More Chaos in Syria While The Grown-Ups Talk Resolution

http://www.moonofalabama.org/

Last week a Chinese admiral visited Damascus and promised support. The Indian Minister of State for External Affairs also passed by. The Turkish deputy intelligence chief was there for secret talks. Earlier the Turkish president visited Russia and the Turkish foreign minister visited Tehran. Those are a lot of talks between big and important countries and players in the conflict over Syria. None of them, not even Barzani, is in the U.S. camp.

I assume that this outbreak of diplomacy, which bypassed Washington, led to concern that the U.S. might be left out of a resolution in Syria. It had to play a card of its own. That is the most likely explanation for the sudden clashes in Hasakah where the Syrian Kurdish YPG is suddenly determined to kick out the Syrian army garrison that protects the Arab population there. U.S. special forces are "advising" these Kurds. …

The aim of this move is the creation of north-eastern block in Syria … sprinkled with new U.S. bases. … Somehow the U.S. must have talked or bribed the YPG Kurds into creating this statelet … [Washington] is not a reliable friend and it will not defend the Kurds should the other actors turn against them …

The Russians are currently trying to negotiate a new ceasefire in Hasakah … it was the Syrian army and the Russians who supplied and supported the Kurds with weapons and ammunition to defend themselves against the Islamic State and the U.S. supported "moderate rebels". …

the Turks will not allow that Kurds take the city. … Some of the Turkish artillery strikes also hit YPG positions. Which side of that three way fight will the U.S. support? Will it, as one insane "expert" demands, bomb everyone for "moral symbolism" and to be seen as "willing to exercise its rightful superpower role?"

The U.S. meddling in Syria is creating more and more chaos. … Is that the intent? … one can hope that those large, grown up, older nations - Russia, India, China and Iran - now align their plans and steer this conflict towards some saner, bearable solution.

[Danke]

I think we're watching the empire slowly crumbled.

[Origanalist]

The Endless, Illegal War Creeps Into Syria

the 15 months since the president unilaterally launched our latest war in the Middle East, he’s repeatedly pledged that he wouldn’t put US “boots on the ground” in Syria.

As he told congressional leaders on September 3, 2014, “the military plan that has been developed” is limited, and doesn’t require ground forces.

Alas, if you liked that plan, you can’t keep it. Earlier today, the Obama administration announced the deployment of US Special Forces to Northern Syria to assist Kurdish troops in the fight against ISIS.

US forces will number “fewer than 50,” in an “advise and assist” capacity; they “do not have a combat mission,” according to White House press secretary Josh Earnest. Granted, when “advise and assist” missions look like this, it can be hard for us civilians to tell the difference.

Asked about the legal authorization for the deployment, Earnest insisted: “Congress in 2001 did give the executive branch the authority to take this action. There’s no debating that.”

It’s true that there hasn’t been anything resembling a genuine congressional debate over America’s war against ISIS. But the administration’s legal claim is eminently debatable.

It’s based on the 2001 authorization for the use of military force, or AUMF, the Congress passed three days after 9/11, targeting those who “planned, authorized, [or] committed” the attacks (Al Qaeda) and those who “aided” or “harbored” them (the Taliban).

In 2013, Obama administration officials told the Washington Post that they were “increasingly concerned the law is being stretched to its legal breaking point.” That was before they’d stretched it still further, 15 months later, to justify war against ISIS, a group that’s been denounced and excommunicated by Al Qaeda and is engaged in open warfare with them.

Headlines like “ISIS Beheads Leader of Al Qaeda Offshoot Nusra Front,” or “Petraeus: Use Al Qaeda Fighters to Beat ISIS” might give you cause to wonder — or even debate! — whether this is the same enemy Congress authorized President Bush to wage war against, back before Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPod.

In the Obama theory of constitutional war powers, Congress gets a vote, but it’s one Congress, one vote, one time. This is not how constitutional democracies are supposed to go to war. But it’s how we’ve drifted into a war that the Army chief of staff has said will last “10 to 20 years.”

Sooner or later, we’ll have cause to regret the normalization of perpetual presidential war, but any congressional debate we get will occur only after the damage has already been done.

https://fee.org/articles/the-endless...ps-into-syria/

[Zippyjuan]

Grown- ups continue to talk.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...plomatic-talks

Syria ceasefire draws closer after US-Russia talks

A ceasefire in Syria is drawing closer after the US and Russia held diplomatic talks, but a final deal has yet to be reached, according to reports.

A number of issues blocking the restoration of a nationwide truce and wider aid deliveries were resolved at the 10-hour meeting in Geneva, but the US secretary of state, John Kerry, and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, fell short of a comprehensive agreement.

The two countries support opposite sides in the Syrian conflict, which erupted in March 2011 after President Bashar al-Assad cracked down on a pro-democracy revolt. Russia is one of Assad’s most important international backers while the US supports Syria’s main opposition alliance and some rebels.

Successive rounds of negotiations have failed to end the conflict which has killed more than 290,000 people and forced millions from their homes.

After the talks, Kerry said he and Lavrov had agreed on the “vast majority” of technical steps to reinstate the ceasefire and improve humanitarian access. But critical sticking points remained unresolved and experts would stay in Geneva to try to finalise those, he said.

Kerry stressed that the only way to solve the conflict was through political agreement.

“We are close,” he said. “But we are not going to rush to an agreement until it satisfies fully the needs of the Syrian people.

“We want to have something done that is effective and that works for the people of Syria, that makes the region more stable and secure, and that brings us to the table here in Geneva to find a political solution,” he said.

Lavrov echoed Kerry’s points, while highlighting the need to separate fighters in the al-Nusra Front, which has ties to al-Qaida, from US-backed fighters who hold parts of north-west Syria.

“We have continued our efforts to reduce the areas where we lack understanding and trust, which is an achievement,” Lavrov said. “The mutual trust is growing with every meeting.”

[Origanalist]

Two US-backed groups clash in northern Syria



Fighter from Jaysh al Tahrir holding a captured flag of the Syrian Democratic Forces

As part of ongoing Turkish military operations in northern Syria, two US-backed groups on opposing sides of the operation have clashed near the city of Jarabulus in northern Aleppo province. Jaysh al Tahrir, a rebel group that operates under the auspices of the Free Syrian Army and has received several TOW anti-tank missiles from the US, claims to have captured two villages from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) south of Jarabulus. The SDF has received considerable US-support, including airstrikes and special operations forces embedded within the group.

In one video, fighters from Jaysh al Tahrir can be seen walking through a compound of one of the villages near the town of Al Amarnah. A fighter is then shown brandishing a captured SDF flag taken from the area. In another (now deleted) video, Jaysh al Tahrir claims to have taken “more than eight” SDF fighters captive in the operations near Al Amarnah. It has also shown dead SDF fighters in pictures on its Twitter feed.

Jaysh al Tahrir is working alongside several Turkish-backed Islamist groups in Turkey’s Operation Euphrates Shield. The operation is nominally to protect the Turkish border from the Islamic State, however, it is also meant to push back the SDF. The most powerful group within the SDF is the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG), which is the Syrian branch of the US-designated terrorist organization Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). When the SDF captured the town of Manbij with heavy US support, Turkey was prompted to hasten an intervention to prevent more Kurdish advances. (See LWJ report, Turkey’s Operation Euphrates Shield is a message to the Kurds.)

The US is now engaged in a balancing act between keeping close relations with Turkey and its main partner in the fight against the Islamic State. Peter Cook, a spokesman for the Pentagon said in an email to The New York Times, that the US is monitoring the situation between the two groups and that the government “finds these clashes unacceptable.” However, this puts the US in an awkward position as the Kurds may see this, as well as tacit support of the Turkish intervention, as a betrayal. This also comes after US Vice President Joe Biden told the YPG portion of the SDF to retreat back to the eastern side of the Euphrates River, which was also likely seen as an insult by the US-ally.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archiv...20Bird%20Brief