While ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for the Moscow shooting, Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that the United States might have been behind the attack.

Although he provided no evidence for his claim, it is true that ISIS and the United States government have a long and complicated relationship, with Washington using the group for its own geopolitical purposes and that former ISIS fighters are active in Ukraine, as MintPress News explores.

A Brutal Attack

On March 22, gunmen opened fire at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, killing at least 143 people. Authorities apprehended four suspects who they claim were fleeing towards Ukraine. The attack was only one of a number planned. After receiving international tip-offs, Russian police foiled several other operations.

ISIS-K, the Islamic State’s Afghanistan and Pakistan division, immediately took responsibility for the shooting, with Western powers – especially the United States – treating the matter as an open and shut case. Vladimir Putin, however, felt differently, implying that Ukraine or even the United States might have been somehow involved. “We know who carried out the attack. But we are interested in knowing who ordered the attack,” he said, adding: “The question immediately arises: who benefits from this?”

Moscow has long accused Ukrainian intelligence services of recruiting ISIS fighters to join forces against their common enemy. Far-right paramilitary group Right Sektor is believed to have trained and absorbed a number of ex-ISIS soldiers from the Caucuses region, and Ukrainian militias have been seen sporting ISIS patches. However, there are no clear and official links between the Ukrainian government and ISIS, and the suspects – all Tajiks – have no publicly known connections to Ukraine.

Last Year, Ukrainian militants wearing ISIS patches were pictured on camera by the press – probably unintentionally. pic.twitter.com/5SvfLD6pKJ

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) March 26, 2024

This is not the first time that ISIS has targeted Russia. In 2015, the group took responsibility for the attack on Metrojet Flight 9268, which killed 224 people. It was also reportedly behind the January 2024 attacks on Iran that killed more than 100 people, commemorating the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general responsible for crushing ISIS as a force in Iraq and Syria.

Giving Birth To A Monster

A host of U.S. adversaries have claimed that ISIS enjoys an extremely close working relationship with the U.S. government, sometimes acting as a virtual cat’s-paw of Washington. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, for instance, has accused the U.S. of ferrying ISIS fighters around the Middle East, from battle zone to battle zone. Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai stated that he considers ISIS to be a “tool” of the United States, saying:

I do not differentiate at all between ISIS and America.”

And just this week, the Syrian Foreign Ministry demanded:

the U.S. should end its illegitimate presence on Syrian territory, and end its open support and fund for Daesh [ISIS] and other terrorist organizations.”

It was in Syria that the goals of ISIS and the United States most closely aligned. In 2015, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (D.I.A.), lamented that ISIS arose out of a “willful decision” by the U.S. government. A declassified D.I.A. report says as much, noting that the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” were ISIS and Al-Qaeda. “There is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria,” the report noted excitedly, adding that “[T]his is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition [i.e., the U.S. and its allies] want.”

A now-declassified DoD document shows US military officials believed backing AQ and ISIS in Syria could help defeat Assad

Throughout the 2010s, images of ISIS’ brutality consistently went viral and led to news bulletins around the world, providing the United States with a convenient enemy to justify keeping its troops in Iraq and Syria. And yet, throughout the decade, the U.S. and its allies were also using ISIS to weaken the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. As then-Vice President Joe Biden said, Turkey, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia were:

 [S]o determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tonnes of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad.”

This included ISIS, Biden said. He later apologized for his remarks after they went viral. Nevertheless, the U.S. also supported a wide range of radical groups against Assad. Operation Timber Sycamore was the most extensive and most expensive C.I.A. project in the agency’s history. Costing more than $1 billion, the agency attempted to raise, train, equip and pay for a standing army of rebels to overthrow the government.

It is now widely acknowledged that large numbers of those trained by the C.I.A. were radical extremists. As National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an email published by WikiLeaks:

AQ [Al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.”

Clinton herself was well aware of the situation in Syria, noting that Qatar and Saudi Arabia were:

providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”

While ISIS regularly attacked a wide range of enemies in the Middle East, it actually apologized to Israel in 2017 after its fighters mistakenly launched a mortar attack on the IDF in the occupied Golan Heights region of Syria.

That same year, the United States launched a significant attack on ISIS-K in Afghanistan, dropping the GBU-43/B MOAB bomb on a network of tunnels in Nangarhar Province. The bomb was the largest non-nuclear strike ever recorded and reportedly killed at least 96 ISIS operatives. Yet ISIS did not appear particularly interested in striking back at the U.S. Instead, it waited until the American departure from Afghanistan to launch a series of devastating attacks on the new Taliban government. This included a bombing at Kabul International Airport, killing more than 180 people, and the Kunduz Mosque Bombing two months later. The Taliban accused ISIS of carrying out a U.S.-ordered campaign of destabilization.

Global Terror Network

While the precise relationship between ISIS and the United States will surely never be known, what is clear is that, for decades, Washington has armed and trained terrorist groups around the world. In Libya, the U.S. joined forces with jihadist militias to topple the secular leader Muammar Gaddafi. Not only was Libya transformed from North Africa’s most prosperous country into a political and economic basket case, but the fighting unleashed a wave of destabilization across the entire region – something which continues to this day.

In Nicaragua, the U.S. sponsored far-right death squads in an attempt to overthrow the leftist Sandinistas. Those forces killed and tortured vast numbers of men, women and children; U.S.-trained groups are thought to have killed around 2% of the Nicaraguan population. The Reagan administration justified their intervention in Nicaragua by stating that the country represented a “mounting danger in Central America that threatens the security of the United States.” Oxfam retorted that the real “threat” Nicaragua posed was that it was a “good example” for other nations to follow.

Meanwhile, in Colombia, successive administrations helped to arm and train conservative paramilitary forces that prosecuted a brutal war against not only leftist guerilla forces but the civilian population as a whole. The extraordinary violence led to the internal displacement of more than 7.4 million Colombians.

Donald Trump once quipped that Barack Obama was “the founder of ISIS.” While this is not true, there is no doubt that the United States did indeed nurture the group, watching it expand into the force it is today. It has, at the very least, turned a blind eye to its operations and abetted it in its attack against their common enemies. In this sense, at least, with every ISIS attack, there is some blood on Washington’s hands.

Feature photo | A US-backed anti-government fighter mans a heavy machine gun next to a US soldier in al Tanf. Hammurabi’s Justice News | AP | Modification: MintPress News

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

The post The US and ISIS: It’s Complicated appeared first on MintPress News.

Soi kèo Châu Á Myanmar vs Syria

Với việc để thua trong trận ra quân gần nhất, đội tuyển Syria đang thể hiện phong độ thi đấu khá thất vọng. Theo thống kê soi kèo Myanmar vs Syria từ trang Xoilac TV cho thấy, sau 5 trận gần nhất, họ chỉ giành được 1 chiến thắng. Tuy nhiên, nếu chơi đúng phong độ, đội tuyển Syria vẫn sẽ biết cách đánh bại đối thủ sau 90 phút trận này.

Soi kèo Myanmar vs Syria

Đội tuyển Syria đang chơi không tốt mỗi khi hành quân xa nhà. Khi mà họ chỉ giành được 1 chiến thắng sau 5 chuyến làm khách gần nhất. Tuy nhiên, tuyển Syria vẫn sẽ biết cách giành trọn vẹn một chiến thắng trên sân của đối thủ. Điều đó hoàn toàn có thể xảy ra, khi mà tuyển Syria được đánh giá cao hơn khá nhiều so với đối thủ.

>> Lịch thi đấu bóng đá 24h <<

Nhất là khi, tuyển Myanmar cũng đang có phong độ khá thất vọng gần đây. Theo thống kê cho thấy, sau 3 trận ra quân gần nhất, họ không giành được chiến thắng nào. Được chơi trên sân nhà, tuy nhiên, phải tiếp đón các vị khách Syria, đây thực sự là một thử thách khó khăn. Tuyển Syria vẫn được các chuyên gia đặt nhiều kỳ vọng hơn.

Chọn: Syria

Soi kèo tài xỉu Myanmar vs Syria

Các chuyên gia đang kỳ vọng vào một trận đấu xuất hiện nhiều hơn 3 bàn thắng. Khi mà những trận đấu của đội tuyển Myanmar đang có tỷ lệ nổ Tai cao hơn. Theo thống kê cho thấy, trong 2 lần ra quân gần nhất đều đã nổ Tài. Mặc dù hàng công của tuyển Syria đang chơi không tốt, tuy nhiên, trước đối thủ yếu hơn, họ hoàn toàn có thể ghi nhiều hơn 3 bàn thắng.

Chọn: Tài cả trận

Tỷ lệ kèo Myanmar vs Syria
Soi kèo hiệp 1 Myanmar vs Syria 

Đội tuyển Myanmar đã phải nhận bàn thua trong hiệp 1 ở 2 lần ra quân gần nhất. Điều đó cho thấy, họ đang chơi phòng ngự thiếu chắc chắn. mặc dù đội tuyển Syria đang gặp khó khăn trong việc triển khai lối chơi. Với việc 4/5 trận gần nhất, họ không ghi bàn trong 45 phút đầu tiên. Tuy nhiên, cơ hội thắng kèo hiệp 1 trận này của tuyển Syria vẫn là khả quan hơn.

Chọn Syria thắng kèo hiệp 1

>> Bảng Tỷ lệ kèo bóng đá hôm nay <<

Đội hình dự kiến Myanmar vs Syria

Myanmar: Kyaw Zin Phyo, Ye Min Thu, Soe Moe Kyaw, Zwe Khant Min, Hein Zeyar Lin, Kyaw Min Oo, Nay Moe Naing, Zaw Win Thein, Aung Thu, Maung Maung Lin, Suan Lam Mang.

Syria: Ahmad Madanieh, Thaer Krouma, Al Ajaan, Rahman Weiss, Aiham Ousou, Ezequiel Ham, Jalil Elias, Ibrahim Hesar, Al Aswad, Omar Khrbin, Ramadan.

Dự đoán tỷ số trận đấu Myanmar vs Syria

1-4 (Chọn Syria, chọn Tài cả trận)

The post Nhận định soi kèo Myanmar vs Syria lúc 18h30 ngày 21/3/2024 appeared first on XoilacTV.

On February 13, the U.S. House of Representatives deliberated on Resolution 3202, the “Assad Regime Anti-Normalization Act of 2023.” The following day, the House passed the bill with a 389 to 32 bipartisan majority. Now, the bill moves on to the Senate, where it will most likely pass with similar bipartisan support and a ringing endorsement from President Biden once it reaches his desk.

The bill was pushed with a veneer of Syrian support represented by the advocacy of the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF) and the Syrian American Council (SAC) – Syrian opposition groups in the U.S. While its aims seem, at face value, to focus on humanitarian issues and a quest for accountability, the reality is much more complicated.

The Bill’s Stated Aims

The bill was presented to the public as a tool for accountability purely targeting the Assad-led government of Syria and any of its in-country partners. The bill purports to achieve this by “Prohibiting any U.S. official action to normalize relations with any Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad, “Strengthening the human rights sanctions levied on Syria,” and” Examining the Assad government’s manipulation of the United Nations.”

In keeping with the polite presentation of the bill, Moaz Moustafa, SETF Executive Director, said: “We are proud to see legislation that holds the Assad regime and those normalizing with war criminals accountable” as a response to the passage of the bill.

Similarly, on the House floor, House Foreign Relations Committee chairman Mike McCaul announced that “Congress is sending a message that it remains committed to justice for the Syrian people.”

The Bill’s True Aims

While the stated aims seem to be focused on accountability and human rights, the real thrust of the bill was conveniently left unmentioned in the SETF and house representatives’ celebratory posts on X (formerly Twitter).

One line, deep within the 22-page bill, reads: “Section 7438 of the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019 is amended by striking ‘the date that is 5 years after the date of the enactment of this Act’ and inserting ‘December 31, 2032.'” This hidden line, left out of all the explainer content dished out by SETF and SAC, extends the Caesar Act, set to expire in 2024, for eight more years.

The perversely named Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019 has immiserated the more than 12 million Syrian people living under the government of Syria. Since the enactment of the Act, the percentage of the Syrian population below the poverty line has reached 90%, 600,000 Syrian children’s growth was stunted, and cases of anemia in pregnant and breastfeeding women saw a 60% rise.

Described as “unprecedented,” as one of the “strictest and most complex collective regimes in recent history,” and as the “most complicated and far-reaching sanctions regimes ever imposed,” the Syrian groups pushing for Caesar’s eight-year extension understandably shied away from mentioning the most crucial part of this new bill, even though they helped provide Syrian cover for its passing.

None of the four articles written by the SETF mention the extension of the Caesar Sanctions to 2032

As for normalization, although the bill purports to impose only a U.S. policy of wholesale rejection of normalization with the Syrian government, in reality, the bill lists several measures that would threaten a whole list of other countries wishing to restore diplomatic relations with Syria.

The bill calls on the Secretary of State to submit an annual report to Congress detailing a “strategy to describe and counter actions taken or planned by foreign governments to normalize, engage with, or upgrade political, diplomatic, or economic ties with the regime led by Bashar al-Assad in Syria.” This annual report must also include “a full list of diplomatic meetings at the Ambassador level or above, between the Syrian regime and any representative of the Governments” mentioned.

The report must also include a list of any transaction of $500,000 or more between any “foreign person located in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, or Lebanon” and any “recipient in any area of Syria held by the Assad regime.”

Sanctioning Syria: A Washington Tradition

H.R. 3202 is not the first, nor will it be the last, sanctions bill to target Syria. The economic war that the United States has been waging against Syria started long before a Tunisian banana salesman self-immolated, launching what would come to be known as the Arab Spring.

In 1973, as the October War was waging, Henry Kissinger was perfecting his shuttle diplomacy in hopes of breaking the thorn that was former Syrian President Hafez Al Assad. Kissinger tried everything in his arsenal to get the then-Syrian president to abandon the military struggle and resistance of alliances he was waging against the U.S. presence in the Middle East, particularly Israel.

Upon failing to sway Assad’s Syria from supporting Hezbollah, Palestinian Jihad, Hamas, and other resistance groups, and once Syria’s position was weakened by the Egyptian signing of the 1978 Camp David Accords, the ire of the U.S. State Department and Treasury, fell upon the Arab Republic.

Syria’s name was written atop the inaugural “State Sponsors of Terrorism” (SST) list in 1979, along with Iraq, Libya, and South Yemen. Today, Syria remains the only inaugural member still on the list, sharing the limelight with newly added countries: Cuba, Iran, and North Korea.

A timeline showing the membership of the US State Department’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list. Source | Wikipedia

For the past 45 years since Syria made it on the SST list, the sanctions have never stopped. Below is a summarized list of all the sanctions that have been progressively levied upon the country of Syria and its people:

• In 1979, the Export Administration Act added Syria to the SST and thus restricted Syria from receiving foreign assistance funds from the United States. The Act added that the Secretary of State must notify Congress before licensing the export of goods or technology worth more than $7 million to Syria.
• In 1985, the threshold for notifying Congress before licensing the export of goods or technology to Syria was lowered from $7 million to $1 million.
• In 1986, the Omnibus Diplomatic Security and Antiterrorism Act of 1986 and Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986 respectively banned U.S. military sales to Syria and denied foreign tax credits on income or war profits from Syria with both of these laws citing alleged Syrian government support for terrorism.
• In 1989, the threshold for notifying Congress before licensing the export of goods or technology to Syria was lowered from $1 million to any value.
• In 1994, an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 mandated that the United States withhold a proportionate share of funding and contributions to international organizations for programs that benefit Syria.
• In 1996, under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the U.S. President was required to withhold aid to third countries that provided assistance or lethal military equipment to Syria.
• In 2003, the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act (SALSRA) imposed broad sanctions based on alleged WMDs accusations against Syria and Syria’s support of “Hezbollah, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.”
• In 2004, Bush announced an executive order expanding upon the SALSRA. The expansion cited Syria as being “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States” in its “undermining of […] stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq.“
• In 2008, three years before the Arab Spring, the Bush administration imposed further blocks on assets related to public corruption in Syria.

Once the uprisings of the Arab Spring reached Syria, the trickle of sanctions became a flood, and a bevy of bills and executive orders levied an array of sanctions on multitudes of industries in Syria, all culminating in the 2019 Caesar Civilian Protection Act.

Today, Syria is the most heavily sanctioned country per capita in the world. Falling third behind only Russia (after the Ukraine war) and Iran. Syria, however, is much smaller than the valedictorian and salutatorian of U.S. sanctions and orders of magnitude worse off economically, therefore desperately tethered to the international export-import economy for its survival and more vulnerable to the damage of sanctions.

Who’s Responsible for the Tradition of Sanctions?

Although H.R. 3202 is not the first bill sanctioning Syria, it shares a crucial element with all its predecessor bills that have targeted Syria for the past half-century: the Israel Lobby.

The 1979 bill that introduced Syria to the cruel reality of sanctions was a direct response to Syria’s role in the October War of liberation waged against Israel and for Syria’s unwavering support of the Palestinian resistance.

The SALSRA Act of 2003 and the Caesar Civilian Protection Act of 2019 – the second and first most robust sanctions bills imposed upon Syria, respectively – were both written by Eliot Engels, a former Democratic congressman from the Bronx.

Engels, a New York Democrat accused of tax fraud, is one of the top recipients of the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) money in Congress, with a total of $1,847,342 raised from the Zionist PAC.

OpenSecret’s profile of former Congressman Eliot Engel’s campaign fundraising sources

As a member of the Arab-Israeli Peace Accord Monitoring Group, Congressional Hellenic-Israeli Alliance, and the Israel Allies Caucus, Engels is perhaps the foremost supporter of Israel amongst his Democrat peers.

One of the first bills he introduced was to recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. He also wrote a resolution condemning a United Nations Security Council Resolution that condemned illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and was one of the few Democrats who broke rank and voted with their Republican peers to kill a bill that would have banned the sale of U.S. made-cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia – cluster bombs that would later be dropped on Yemeni civilians by the monarchy.

Eliot Engel, center, greets Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz, left, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 27, 2015. Carolyn Kaster | AP

Following in Engels’ footsteps, Joe Wilson, the author of H.R. 3202, also receives AIPAC money, albeit much less than the man whose work he extended by eight years.

OpenSecret’s profile of South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson’s campaign fundraising sources

Wilson, a South Carolina Republican who cut his teeth as a young aide working for civil rights opponent Strom Thurmond and later defended his legacy, has also been one of the most ardent supporters of Israel in Congress throughout his service.

Grateful for the opportunity to join my colleagues in a bicameral, bipartisan support of Israel. Thousands gathered on the National Mall to hear the collective sounds of solidarity in the ‘March for Israel. March to Free Hostages. March Against Antisemitism.’ #StandWithIsrael pic.twitter.com/IKjRr50qnK

— Joe Wilson (@RepJoeWilson) November 14, 2023

In an interview with AIPAC, Wilson, who also serves as the chair of the Middle East and North Africa subcommittee, Global Counter Terrorism Committee member, and House Committee on Foreign Affairs member, raised the alarm about threats posed by Iran and the Houthis towards Israel and the United States. He added that he is “grateful for the military service and what America has provided for the world.” So extensive is Wilson’s dedication to the cause of Israel that he once bragged that a Jewish person described him as “a real mensch,” Yiddish nomenclature meaning ‘a person of honor.’

Syrian Window Dressing

Even the facade of faux grassroots Syrian support that was put forth for H.R. 3202 has shady links to account for its advocacy of regime change and rampant sanctions.

The Syrian Emergency Task Force has been widely documented to have direct funding links to the U.S. State Department and extensive ties to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and AIPAC. The group was condemned for its incessant push to get the Obama Administration to launch a Libya, or even Iraq-style invasion of Syria in order to force a regime change.

Mouaz Moustafa (left) stands with Mike Pompeo, second right, and Joe Wilson, right, at an event condemning the Syrian government. Source | Twitter

As journalist Max Blumenthal documented for Mondoweiss magazine, SETF has publicly celebrated a donation of $1 million from Cuba regime change organizations in a post on their website that has since been removed.

As for the neocon-aligned 501 (c) Syrian American Council (SAC), a more bloodthirsty front organization for regime change war could not be found. In 2018, as a response to the now debunked Douma chemical attacks, the SAC urged President Trump to “follow through on his tweets Sunday morning, and to take immediate action against this tyrannical regime…by grounding Assad’s air force.”

In 2017, the SAC publicly lamented Trump’s refusal to continue the Obama administration CIA funding program of Jihadist terrorists in Syria, claiming that the $1 billion a year program “was always too weak to tip the scales.”

Syrian Civilians: Not an American Priority

After the death toll of Palestinian children in Gaza reached a staggering 12,000, skepticism arises when observing the Permanent U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas, vetoing a fourth U.N. Security Resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. It becomes evident that the U.S. establishment’s concern for the lives of the Syrian people, let alone non-Israelis in the Middle East, is dubious at best.

US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield raises her hand in opposition to a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, February 20, 2024. Photo | Yomiuri Shimbun via AP

Likewise, anyone listening to U.S. special envoy for Syria, James Jeffrey, characterize the suffering of the Syrian people as part of a geostrategic policy to transform Syria into “a quagmire for the Russians,” akin to the U.S. experience in Vietnam can comprehend the true motivations behind H.R. 3202 and preceding bills imposed on Syria.

Lastly, observers noting the statements of Dana Stroul – Democratic co-chair of the bipartisan Syria Study Group (2018-2020), former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East (2021-2023), and current researcher at WINEP – discussing the “rubble” that the U.S. intends to keep Syria in and the “leverage” it plans to maintain over Syria, grasp that the policy of sanctioning Syria and obstructing reconstruction has long been endorsed by the bipartisan consensus in Washington. The driving force behind these detrimental policies has consistently been neoconservative regime change proponents and individuals affiliated with pro-Zionist think tanks.

Biden official Dana Stroul in 2019: via military occupation, US “owns” Syria’s “resource-rich” “economic powerhouse” region. And via sanctions, it can “preventing reconstruction aid and technical expertise from going back”, leaving Syria in “rubble.” pic.twitter.com/WmZSfvXrKR

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) June 13, 2021

In an interview with Joshua Landis, one of the few Independent U.S. experts on Syria, Landis shared his opinion on the crass and transparent language used by the likes of Jeffrey and Stroul, telling MintPress,

They’re saying that even if we don’t succeed in getting rid of Assad.. At least we lock [Syria] into a stalemate… A stalemate that denies Iran and Russia a strategic Victory.”

In describing the U.S.’ long-term goals in Syria to MintPress, Landis evokes the Arabic word for swamp or mustanka’a. “The long-term goal of America is to deny Syria as a strategic asset that’s got some money, and that can help [Russia and Iran], and so keep it as poor as possible and make it mustanka’a,” Landis concluded.

Long Term Damage

The Anti-Assad Regime Normalization Bill is the latest in a series of measures that the U.S. has taken against the Syrian people for the crime of winning a regime-change war imposed upon them.

The U.S. hypocrisy on the global stage is now clearly evident to all who wish to see it. While the U.S. condemns and sanctions Venezuela for barring an opposition leader convicted of treason from running in the upcoming election, it supports and even provides IMF loans for Pakistan even after the latter ousted its democratically elected leader who chose neutrality in the Ukraine war.

The U.S. system of rules-based order that has prevailed since 1945 with the establishment of the Bretton Woods Institutions is slowly unraveling. The dollar’s strength is waning, and the bite of U.S. unilateral sanctions has become duller over the years, as evidenced by the failure of the Russian sanctions regime.

While the U.S. will undoubtedly succeed in causing another generation of Syrian kids’s growth to be stunted, and while it will succeed in bringing more Syrian families below the poverty line during the coming eight years of Caesar Sanctions, it is all the while wrecking any semblance of credibility it might still have on the global stage, and – most unfortunate as Joshua Landis surmised while sharing his thoughts on the new bill – losing its identity along the way.

Through much of American history, America believed that a stronger middle class made democracy and contributed stability in the world. But with this promiscuous use of sanctions, America is betraying its own values to lift people into the middle class. And now by trying to drive them into poverty, and using sanctions as a central instrument of its foreign policy, it’s creating deeper anger, and impoverished people who are less educated, and less capable of competing in the modern world. In theory, all this is to promote democracy or Justice … but of course it’s not going to do that. It’s just going to make people more desperate, more Islamist, and more available to radical ideologies.”

Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News

Hekmat Aboukhater is a Syrian American investigative journalist reporting from France, the U.S., and Syria. Hekmat hosts the WhatTheHekmat Podcast and the Conversations With Dissidents show. He has written for The Grayzone and Al Mayadeen. Follow him on X @WhatTheHekmat.

The post Deconstructing H.R. 3202: The Israel Lobby’s Persistent Role in Sanctioning Syria appeared first on MintPress News.

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

https://medium.com/media/ceb114b202032f44363cdcdf750d0794/href

Pentagon contractor Elon Musk and war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu had a conversation that they broadcast on Twitter during Musk’s apology pilgrimage to Israel in a desperate bid to salvage his public image amid costly accusations of antisemitism.

The “conversation” was really more of a monologue, with the Israeli leader droning on in his conspicuously American accent while Musk meekly agreed with him on every point. During his lecture, Bibi said something worth highlighting while complaining about the worldwide pro-Palestine protests that have been underway since the beginning of Israel’s ongoing Gaza massacre.

“We have mass demonstrations,” Netanyahu said at around the 15:55 mark. “Where were these demonstrations when over a million Arabs and Muslims were killed in Syria, in Yemen, many of them starving to death, those who didn’t die in explosions. Where were the demonstrations in London? In Paris? In San Francisco? In Washington? Where are they?”

“The answer is they don’t care about the Palestinians, they hate Israel,” Netanyahu said. “And they hate Israel because they hate America.”

Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו on Twitter: "https://t.co/vJDbprlHhj / Twitter"

https://t.co/vJDbprlHhj

You hear this “where were the protests over Yemen and Syria?” talking point over and over again from Israel apologists, the argument essentially being that because few people protested the mass killings in those countries then Israel should get to do a little genocide of its own, as a treat.

This talking point is stupid for a few reasons, including the way it tends to avoid the inconvenient fact that the bloodshed in both Yemen and Syria was facilitated by US interventionism, just like the bloodshed in Gaza is. The civil war in Syria was only able to occur because the western alliance and its regional partners flooded the nation with weapons given to extremist factions in the hope of toppling Damascus, and Saudi Arabia’s war crimes in Yemen were fully backed by the US and its allies.

The talking point is also stupid because there are many entirely legitimate reasons the Gaza massacre is getting special attention. In a recent New York Times article titled “Gaza Civilians, Under Israeli Barrage, Are Being Killed at Historic Pace,” Lauren Leatherby explains that Israel’s actions in Gaza are actually quite different from other conflicts this century, killing far more civilians far more rapidly than the wars in places like Syria and Ukraine. Last week the UN’s emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths said during a CNN interview that Gaza is the worst humanitarian crisis he’s ever seen, even worse than the Killing Fields in Cambodia. This conflict is being treated differently because it is different.

Another reason this specific bombing campaign is getting so much more public backlash than others is because the pro-Palestine movement has had generations to build, whereas when the west lays waste to a country using military explosives it’s normally a fast ordeal which moves from manufacturing consent to execution very quickly. By the time people figure out they were lied to about the justifications for a depraved war the empire is usually two or three new wars down the track. The Israel-Palestine issue has been just sitting there for decades, so there’s been time to accumulate popular opposition. Once someone learns about the realities of the Palestinian plight they very seldom abandon their support for it, so every newly-opened pair of eyes stays open on this issue for a lifetime.

Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: "I keep seeing this fuzzbrained argument. I've written more words than almost anyone else in the English-speaking world in opposition to the mass atrocities the US empire has caused in Yemen and Syria, and I write against the US-backed slaughter in Gaza for the exact same reasons. https://t.co/OtiQnZv40h / Twitter"

I keep seeing this fuzzbrained argument. I've written more words than almost anyone else in the English-speaking world in opposition to the mass atrocities the US empire has caused in Yemen and Syria, and I write against the US-backed slaughter in Gaza for the exact same reasons. https://t.co/OtiQnZv40h

But perhaps the dumbest thing about this talking point is the fact that it ultimately works against the agendas of the people saying it. Israel apologists keep asking “Where were the protests over Yemen and Syria,” and gradually the millions of people who are beginning to wake up to the criminality of the US-centralized power alliance as a result of the Gaza massacre are going to start asking themselves the same question.

Because the assault on Gaza is so uniquely horrific and is being broadcast onto people’s social media feeds in real time, millions of people around the world are being snapped out of the propaganda-induced coma that has had them consenting to evil war after evil war over the years. People are starting to realize they’ve been deceived about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and they’re starting to wonder what else they’ve been deceived about. Keep asking them “Where were the protests over Yemen and Syria,” and eventually they’re going to start researching those conflicts and learning about their own government’s role in them, and from there it’s only a matter of time before they start asking, “Hey yeah! Where WERE the protests over Yemen and Syria??”

In a new article for The Guardian titled “The war in Gaza has been an intense lesson in western hypocrisy. It won’t be forgotten,” Nesrine Malik writes that “for the first time that I can think of, western powers are unable to credibly pretend that there is some global system of rules that they uphold. They seem to simply say: there are exceptions, and that’s just the way it is. No, it can’t be explained and yes, it will carry on until it doesn’t at some point, which seems to be when Israeli authorities feel like it.”

Nesrine Malik on Twitter: "'The lesson from Gaza is brutal and short: human rights are not universal and international law is arbitrarily applied.' https://t.co/RcGEOp7JP0 / Twitter"

'The lesson from Gaza is brutal and short: human rights are not universal and international law is arbitrarily applied.' https://t.co/RcGEOp7JP0

“Part of that inability to reach for convincing narratives about why so many innocent people must die is that events escalated so quickly,” Malik adds. “There was no time to set the pace of the attacks on Gaza, prepare justifications and hope that eventually, when it was all over, time and short attention spans would cover up the toll. Gaza has been a uniquely, inconveniently, intense conflict… The area is so densely populated that the toll of civilians is too high, and evidence for having undermined Hamas’s capabilities, the only possible justification for the casualties, is too low.”

This is the sort of political moment in which newly-formed critics of the western war machine are being asked to think carefully about why there hasn’t been a robust resistance to their governments’ other criminal actions. Which looks like a nightmare waiting to happen for the propagandists whose job is to manufacture consent for depraved acts of war.

One thing the empire is about to realize is that the western public has lost all its appetite for war. All the careful sanitising, video-gamifying and propagandizing that has been put in place since Vietnam in order to build a platform of consent for “humanitarian” wars has cratered into nothing over the course of mere weeks.

You can’t have an up close and personal relationship with the reality of bombs and all the things they do to human flesh and then go back to the way you were ever again. Millions of western eyes have been changed forever.

“War” is not abstracted any more.

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Featured image via Gaza Palestine (Public Domain)