Are Dotty Old Joe’s handlers planning an American military misadventure in Syria? It wouldn’t be any surprise. Syria’s state-run Syrian Arab News Agency reported Sunday that “a new convoy of US occupation trucks loaded with logistic materials have entered Hasaka countryside via the illegal border crossings with northern Iraq to support the occupation’s bases in Hasaka countryside. Local sources in al-Khazna village told SANA reporter that a convoy, that includes 45 trucks loaded with boxes, military vehicles and fuel tankers, entered via al-Walid illegal border crossing with northern Iraq.”
The claim comes from a hostile source, the Assad government, as became clear when the report went on to say that “the convoy crossed the M4 highway, heading for Deir Ezzor and Hasaka, where number of the occupation’s bases spread. In a flagrant violation of the international law, the US occupation troops work to enhance their illegal presence in al-Jazeera region, as they have established several bases to protect and train armed groups and terrorist organizations operating under their command to achieve their hostile schemes.”
This is, unfortunately, not at all farfetched. Back in January, two days after the inauguration, i24News reported that “a large US military convoy entered northeastern Syria.” Reportedly, the convoy “included some 40 trucks and armored vehicles and was backed from the air by helicopters.”
What is going on? Former President Trump said it last September: “The top people in the Pentagon…want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy. But we’re getting out of the endless wars, you know how we’re doing.” Not any more. The drumbeat to get American troops into Syria began almost immediately after Joe was anointed President-elect by the establishment media.
Of course, because of deep state interference in Trump’s presidency, we never really left Syria in the first place. Trump’s former special envoy for Syria, Never-Trumper Jim Jeffrey, boasted in November that he circumvented Trump’s orders to withdraw American troops from Syria by lying to the President. Jeffrey explained: “We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” and said that “the actual number of troops in northeast Syria is ‘a lot more than’ the roughly two hundred troops Trump initially agreed to leave there in 2019.”
What the Masters of War have in mind, however, appears to be a far greater commitment of American troops than even Jeffrey’s shell game allowed for. After all, how else are they going to keep happy “all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes”? There’s money to be made even in the devastated hellscape that is Syria after nearly a decade of civil war, and so our moral superiors are starting to beat the drums of war in Syria once again in order to ensure that Biden commits enough American troops to keep that money flowing into the right pockets.
Bashar Assad is without any doubt a scoundrel. But as his undeniable evils begin to preoccupy the military and media anew, it is useful to ask cui bono. Who benefits? There are oppressive rulers all over the world; why is Assad once again the focus of negative attention and U.S. military activity? The answer is clear enough: toppling Assad is a bit of unfinished business left over from the Obama administration. Now that Obama’s third term has begun and the messianic internationalists are back in the saddle again, they’re ready to resume working to “make the world safe for democracy,” as their equally messianic internationalist forbear Woodrow Wilson put it, and to remake the globe in accordance with their smug and miseducated sense of the way things ought to be.
And if, along the way, a few friends make a bit of money, what could be wrong with that? The world’s policeman is back on the beat, heedless once again of the spiraling risks of interventionism, and that guarantees that the weaponry will continue to be needed, and the money will keep on flowing. So watch for CNN, the New York Times, AP, Reuters, and the rest to start telling us again about just how bad this Assad chap is, and why it is up to the United States to do something about it militarily. They will no doubt manage to fool millions yet again.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
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