RNA - This was the initial legal justification for US deployments in Iraq and Syria. But now that ISIL is defeated, new letters from the State and Defense Departments lay out the case, such as it is. The 2002 AUMF for Iraq doesn’t have any caveats. It just says Iraq is a threat, and that means the US can do whatever they want to, with, or in Iraq. Syria, where the US is not only not invited, but its troops are there to advance regime change, is a lot trickier.
The argument is that because ISIL still sort of exists, the US can keep troops in Syria just in case ISIL becomes a serious threat, and while there, any time Syria forces get kind of close, the US can attack them “in self-defense.” This, however, confirms the US is making no attempts to claim Syria’s government is covered by the AUMF, but that they consider them more or less fair game.
The AUMF authorized outside the UN war against a country that later came to be known to be no enemy of the United States with no Weapons of Mass Destruction. But now, the US government is crossing the International Law line again in claiming that even though Syria regime change isn’t included in the AUMF the US can still do that, and that it can keep using the AUMF (an illegal act) to justify more wars:
A- America’s endless wars and occupations will destroy us all. A new war on Syria and its allies (Iran, Russia, Hezbollah) will destabilize the entire planet. It will be just as disastrous, and won’t satiate the Military-Industrial Complex’s ravenous appetite. One way or another, the war mongers will also go after Iraq to ensure it remains divided on sectarian fault lines and militarily occupied forever.
B- The US military presence and war in Iraq and Syria with tens of thousands of bulletproof vest-clad soldiers, armed to the teeth, shooting at everything and everyone, won’t solve any problem. This significant escalation is being planned without a meaningful debate at the United Nations about the merits and risks of a military presence that is expected to include airstrikes and raids, not to mention consent from the Syrian and Iraqi governments.
C- America’s ‘forever presence’ will represent a significant progression of a war that could easily spread to other countries on the continent. It is being planned as the military burrows more deeply into battlegrounds in Syria and Iraq, where American ground troops are being asked to play an increasingly hands-on role in the fight, even if that requires targeting Iranian and Russian military advisors and troops.
D- The Pentagon regime officials claim their ‘forever presence’ in Iraq and Syria is aimed at ‘looking to take decisive military action against ISIL.’ They should be asking themselves: Why is ISIL even there in the first place? The answer, of course, is the 2003 US-led wars on Iraq and later on Syria that were both on shaky legal grounds. Their failed war and regime-change crusade destroyed the governments, leaving a power vacuum, large chunks of which were filled by Takfiri-Wahhabi groups including ISIL - the same extremist groups the US trained and armed and later turned against it.
E- Before the Syria war, ISIL was not present in the Levant. That is to say, it was the disastrous US-led war and occupation that brought ISIL into Iraq and Syria. What would possibly make the Pentagon regime think another mission creep in Syria is a good idea? The same is true of Iraq. It was the US war on Iraq - which the UN explicitly said was illegal - that led to the rise of ISIL. Now not just the ISIL, but Al-Qaeda's Nusra Front has metastasized throughout the region like a cancer.
According to Fars News Agancy, this dangerous process can and will only continue with America’s forever wars and occupations. The reasons used to justify America’s ‘forever presence’ in Iraq and Syria are too rubbish to get the international community on board. War continues to remain unpopular and for good reasons among the international civil society – including of course external factors and ulterior motivations for endless war:
It is impossible to satiate the bottomless appetite of the Military-Industrial Complex. Arms manufacturers and other military corporate contractors are guaranteed to rake in many billions on a new arms race that is amalgamated with America’s ‘forever presence’ in Iraq and Syria - at the behest of Zionist lobbyists on the Capitol Hill and the permanent war capital.
Above all, the Trump administration can institutionalize ‘forever war’ as a feature of everyday life in the remarkably bankrupt universe of Washington. It can engage in a new range of wars and conflicts in the Middle East. Nonetheless, the War Party can be pretty much sure that it can never win any new war come what may. Any doubters should ask the big-league generals who led the Pentagon regime’s previous wars on Iraq, Syria and Yemen, and failed - with disastrous consequences for everyone on the plant.
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