Syria quagmire .

It appears that  (1)>>Russian intervention has succeeded .More than 50 State Department officials signed an internal memo protesting U.S. policy in Syria, calling for targeted U.S. military strikes against the regime of Bashar al-Assad and urging regime change as the only way to defeat IS. Although NBC and CBS on Friday covered the “unprecedented,” “deep frustration” that diplomats at the State Department have for Barack Obama’s Syria policy, ABC’s Good Morning America allowed a scant 18 seconds to the move against Obama. New war? We are already at war. I personally think they should leave Assad alone. Every time we have removed a strong man from control in the Middle- East  it has created chaos.  (1.2)>>Yes, Syria is a made in America chaos . Those 50 people who are calling for this policy change, need to quit and volunteer for the military, then request to be the first ones in. Or, they need to send their children in. As a military member and part of a military family, I'm so tired of people pushing for war when they aren't the ones who have to pay the piper. President Barack Obama has resisted wading deeper into the Syria conflict, but

officials familiar with the memo said the State Department officials could be trying to force a policy debate in the upcoming elections. Hillary Clinton has promised a tougher policy toward Assad, while Donald Trump has promised to get tough on IS but would work with Russia.  We should have supported Assad against IS and other Islamists from the start, but Clinton and Obama were pushing the disastrous "Arab Spring", and the invasion of Libya.Whoever these State Department officials are, they should be fired. The strategy proposed by the diplomats is directly in contradiction Washington's strategy that has been approved by the UN Security Council: to defeat Daesh with the assistance of both the Syrian government and the secular/moderate "rebels."Furthermore, it is unlikely that the US "Syrian adventure" would receive high praise from Netanyahu's government in Tel Aviv: Israel could be subjected to attacks from both Syrian armed groups and Hezbollah militias as a result of chaos in the region. But with the struggle against the Islamic State largely stalemated, it is the naked display of Russian military power in neighboring Syria, as well as the leadership of Putin, Islamic State insurgents faced major assaults on two fronts in both Iraq and Syria on Wednesday in what could prove to be some of the biggest operations to roll back their caliphate since they proclaimed it in 2014. Pressuring the United States in to further action.  U.S.-backed militia with thousands of Arab and Kurdish fighters were reported to have captured villages near the strategically-important Turkish border after launching a major operation to cut off Islamic State's last access route to the outside world. The Syrian operation, which began on Tuesday after weeks of preparations, aims to drive Islamic State from the last stretch of the frontier with Turkey it controls.(2)>>U.S. policy has quietly fueled the escalation of the conflict in Syria and undermined every effort to bring the Syrian people the ceasefire and peaceful political transition they need and want.  Whoever is directly responsible for hundreds of deaths in the latest alleged chemical weapons incident, the critical covert and diplomatic role the United States has played in a war that has killed at least 100,000 people means that their blood is also on our hands.Surely the small scale and sporadic protests that began before March 2011 were met with violent repression from the Syrian state, and none of these findings absolve the Assad government from blame for this, however it is also true that these opposition movements were financed, trained, and advised by the US through ‘democracy promotion’ endeavors. Evidence shows that when members of these groups complain about their connections to Washington they are subsequently ousted from membership.The goal of financing these groups is regime-change, intended in Syria for 2 decades, and from the very beginning the US was arming and training the opposition to attack the state. Money, weaponry, and foreign fighters flowed in and were facilitated by the US special forces from the onset with a view towards targeted assassinations and eliciting a collapse from within. The government needed justification for this which was accomplished by the media’s refusal to report on information that ran counter to the official narrative.Over the past several decades, the U.S. State Department has deteriorated from a reasonably professional home for diplomacy and realism into a den of armchair warriors possessed of imperial delusions, a dangerous phenomenon underscored by the recent mass“dissent” in favor of blowing up more people in Syria. So, it’s not entirely surprising that several dozen U.S. “diplomats” would attack President Barack Obama’s more temperate position on Syria while positioning themselves favorably in anticipation of a Hillary Clinton administration, which is expected to authorize an illegal invasion of Syria — under the guise of establishing “no-fly zones” and “safe zones” — which will mean the slaughter of young Syrian soldiers. The “diplomats” urge the use of “stand-off and air weapons.”These hawks are so eager for more war that they don’t mind risking a direct conflict with Russia, breezily dismissing the possibility of a clash with the nuclear power by saying they are not “advocating for a slippery slope that ends in a military confrontation with Russia.” That’s reassuring to hear.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

(1)>>Russian intervention. So, far from being reluctantly dragged into a terrible conflict not of its own making, the United States and its allies have in fact followed a quite coherent policy of regime change, modeled roughly on their successful overthrow of the Libyan government in 2011.  The main difference has been the absence of foreign air support for the Syrian rebels.  In Libya, NATO conducted 7,700 air strikes, demolishing Libya's air defenses in the early stages of the campaign and thereafter bombing at will throughout the country.  The fact that Syria possesses a far more extensive, modern, Russian-built air defense system has successfully deterred the West and its Arab royalist allies from following the same strategy in Syria.Four months after launching airstrikes in Syria, the Kremlin is confident that Moscow’s largest overseas campaign since the end of the Soviet Union is paying off.Under the banner of fighting international terrorism, President Vladimir Putin has reversed the fortunes of forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which were rapidly losing ground last year to moderate and Islamist rebel forces in the country’s five-year-old crisis. Government forces are now on the offensive, and last week they scored their most significant victory yet, seizing the strategic town of Sheikh Miskeen from rebels who are backed by a U.S.-led coalition.The Russians investigated one attack that the Assad regime was blamed for  and conclude it was a weak Sarin gas made and used by the US supported Rebels. They sent an 80 page report to the US and the UN. A later gas attack was determined to also be done by the rebels according to Carla Del Ponte, a UN

investigator. The UN chemical experts were in town to investigate the earlier attack when this most recent attack occurred. The fact that no country or organization, except France, is willing to join the US in an attack should tell you something. (1.2)>>Yes, Syria is a made in America chaos .  A small group of neocons at the State Department (probably Victoria Nuland's fan club) are urging Obama to go for total war in Syria -- not against ISIS, but against the secular Assad government! http://sputniknews.com/politic...

The document appears to echo the CIA's longstanding stance that Daesh cannot be defeated while Syria has a "weak" government. Incredibly as it may seem, the intelligence agency believes that "destroying what's left of Syria's government might conceivably help".(2)>>.U.S. policy. As protests spread through the Arab world in 2011, the mostly leftist groups who organized the Arab Spring protests in Syria formed the NCB to coordinate peaceful protests and resistance to government repression.  They agreed, and they still agree, on three basic principles: non-violence; non-sectarianism; and no foreign military intervention.  But the U.S. and its allies marginalized the NCB, formed an unrepresentative "Syrian National Council" in Turkey as a government-in-exile and recruited, armed and trained violent armed groups to pursue regime change in Syria. The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar began flying in fighters, weapons and equipment to turn the Syrian Spring into a bloody civil war.  Once they had overthrown the government of Libya, at the cost of 25,000 to 50,000 lives, they began adapting the same strategy to Syria, despite knowing full well that this would be a much more drawn-out, destructive and bloody war.