Staggering Civilian Deaths from US Air Strikes Is Not Self-Defense

Rasa - An independent commission of UN war crimes investigators has denounced a “staggering loss of civilian life” that has resulted from the escalation of US airstrikes against the ISIL-held city of Raqqa since the beginning of the Kurdish invasion last week.

News ID: 430393

Date: 16 June 2017 - 22:34

RNA - The separatist Kurdish YPG has been advancing on Raqqa for months, and the US airstrikes in the course of that operation have killed a lot of civilians too, but it has grown precipitously in the past week, with the UN inquiry saying the US airstrikes have killed at least 300 civilians.

Worse still, the escalation has not only killed hundreds of people, but has also led to the displacement of 160,000 civilians, adding to the ever-growing problem of internally displaced persons within Syria. This is because the US allows its so-called fight against terrorism to be undertaken at the expense of civilians. The same situation exists in Mosul, where many civilians are being killed in the course of the US airstrikes.

At any rate, the claims that the US is just reacting defensively ring hollow. The Pentagon regime has openly confirmed that the US has been building up its troop numbers in southern Syria explicitly to confront the allied forces of Iran, Syria, Russia, Hezbollah as well as Iraq’s Shiite volunteer forces who are fast reaching the Iraqi-Syrian border. Nor is that all:

-The Pentagon regime officials and Secretary of Defense James Mattis are taking us for fools claiming that the attacks are simply “self-defense” aimed at protecting US ground troops positioned inside Syria, and that the US would continue to do so in Mosul.

-It is not just the UN war crimes investigators; Human Rights Watch have also faulted the US for the use of toxic incendiary white phosphorus inside Mosul and Raqqa, saying it is unacceptable to use the chemical in populated areas, and that the US should show more care with such attacks.

-In addition to killing civilians, the US continues to launch multiple attacks, mostly targeting allied forces of Syria, Iran, Russia and Hezbollah in southern Dara’a province, all because it is under the illusion that these forces are getting too close to a base belonging to the Qaeda-allied terrorist groups at al-Tanf, a base at which US forces are deployed to train terror proxies. The allied forces are fighting Al-Qaeda and ISIL in the area, but the US claims they are a threat to its ground troops.

-As maintained by Damascus, the US occupying troops were never invited into Syria in the first place and aren’t authorized to hold that base, let alone to attack anti-ISIL forces for getting too close to their base. The US is using the strikes to prevent Al-Qaeda and ISIL from losing ground to the allied forces. The allied forces are trying to secure a corridor linking Iraq to Syria, and US forces are in the border area to block any supply routes for them via the Palmyra-Baghdad road, and not the disenfranchisement of Iraqi Sunnis and Kurds, as the US would like to claim.

-The close alignment between Damascus, Baghdad and Tehran is a political dynamic that the US, ISIL and other terrorist groups continue to exploit for sectarianism support. They claim this is resulting in further disenfranchisement of the country’s Sunni and Kurdish populations, which is a lie.  War-party Washington has no interest in defeating ISIL in Iraq or in Syria. It needs the ISIL threat to Baghdad and Damascus in order to make both capitals dependent on US for their survival and for permanent US military occupation.

Let’s not kid ourselves. War-party Washington has no intention of improving the security situation in the region during the occupation either, and to think it has changed now is naïve. ISIL and Al-Qaeda are in last gasp and all we are seeing now is an accelerated, concerted effort by their American associates to kill as many civilians they can and to get everything they can while the United Nations is looking the other way.

And the UN has to look the other way, because it’s hard not to notice that US-backed Kurdish forces are now operating out in the open, actively seeking an independent state of their own.

Why is all this happening? Put simply, the US is hamstrung by its desire to partition Iraq and Syria on sectarian lines. Reports that US reconnaissance flights are over Raqqa in support of separatist Kurdish forces and Qaeda-allied Sunni proxies are deeply troubling. Reconnaissance flights generate targets when those targets are static. As a result, these targets will have to be generated by eyes on the ground - the eyes of Kurdish troops.

While US commanders use reconnaissance flights over Raqqa to develop targets in support of Kurdish-only operations, they in fact are supporting their Kurdish partners and their operations for an independent state carved out of Iraq and Syria. One need only look to the new UN inquiry, and, for that matter, Raqqa for evidence of such a dirty campaign.

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