In case the geopolitical narrative needed an extra dose of uncertainty, Mike Pompeo on Thursday announced the US has determined that Bashar al-Assad carried out a chlorine attack in May.
Specifically, the incident relates to the government’s ongoing campaign in and around Idlib, the last rebel holdout in Syria’s eight-year-old civl war.
“The Assad regime is responsible for innumerable atrocities some of which rise to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity”, Pompeo told a news conference. “Today I am announcing that the United States has concluded that the Assad regime used chlorine as a chemical weapon on May 19”.
The timing is interesting to say the least, coming as it does during a spiraling domestic political crisis that increasingly poses an existential threat to Trump and everyone in his orbit, including Pompeo.
Of course, it also comes on the heels of the UN and amid back-and-forth negotiations between various stakeholders in Syria, including Iran, Russia, Turkey and the US.
Trump has bombed Syria twice during his presidency in retaliation for chemical attacks, and while it’s too early to say whether the White House is prepared to directly insert itself into the Idlib drama just as the the president is keen on extricating the US from Syria altogether, Pompeo did say that the US “won’t let Assad’s attacks go unchallenged”.
If the administration wanted an excuse to ratchet up the pressure on Iran, this would serve the purpose.
Without the support of Hezbollah and the IRGC, Assad would have been deposed years ago. Tehran openly supports the regime and touts Hezbollah’s battlefield successes in the country as an example of how Iran’s proxies have worked to rid the region of Sunni extremism.
Clearly, no US strikes on Syria would be feasible without the consent (even if tacit) of the Kremlin, official attempts to suggest otherwise notwithstanding.
In April of 2018, Trump famously flew off the handle at the suggestion that Russia might thwart US strikes on Assad’s forces.
“Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!'”, Trump shrieked, in a tweet so cartoonish that it could have easily been mistaken for a parody account were it not for the blue checkmark.
“You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!”, the US president went on to scream.
Two days later, the US, France and the UK launched joint air strikes.
Despite the “wag the dog” timing, Assad really is a “brutal dictator” –but so too is MBS, Putin, Erdogan, Un is worse. . . where’s the freedom love for the Hong Kong protestors? The Kashmiris in lockdown? of Uighurs in China? “Arbitrary” and “incoherent” have become the watchwords of US foreign policy under Trump/Pompeo –at least Pompeo can rest assured that Jesus is coming soon to fix everything. . . maybe if he makes more hash of it, he will be an instrument of god hastening the apocalypse. . .
Of course he’s a brutal dictator. This is another one of those things where, thanks in no small part to the proliferation of Russian-sponsored propaganda in the US blogosphere (which most people still don’t realize is Kremlin-backed even if just at arm’s length), American audiences no longer understand that it’s possible to be skeptical of the official narrative while also acknowledging reality.
Syria is the quintessential example of that. Was the country better off when Assad ruled unchecked? Absolutely. Have Iran and Russia been instrumental in eradicating Sunni extremism in Syria? Yes, for sure. Is the US narrative on Syria wildly disingenuous and full of gaping holes? For sure. No question about it.
BUT, is Bashar al-Assad a dictator? Yes. Did he gas his own people? Yes. Have Russia and Iran contributed to human suffering as an inevitable side effect of their anti-extremist efforts in Syria? Yes.
But what to do about it? One of the problems is that Bashir Assad is brutal dictator without his father’s uncanny ability to repress with a cold efficiency that even gave Henry Kissinger pause. Crude, messy, minimally competent and so now the whims of others dictate affairs and those others really don’t care much about the human catastrophe they have instigated, but that is to whom the field has been yielded and there is about as much enthusiasm to save Syrians as there is to save Yemenis.
yup. it’s “not good, not good”, to quote Trump. lol
The only thing for which I give Trump some credit is his policy of de-escalation of the U.S. involvement in the Middle East. Please, Trump, don’t give in to the war-mongers like Pompeo in order to distract from your serious domestic problems.
None of this has anything to do with Assad and whether or not he is a Dictator or for that matter brutal or not..It is all about Geopolitical motivations by all related parties . In the case of the US denying Russia of a Mediterranean port and access for Petrochemical products into the European market were paramount.. Maintaining Israeli power and the protection racket with the Saudi Arabian ( brutal dictators) by throttling down Iran was also a consideration. The list can go on and on……Propaganda , I am not sure who invented that but everybody seems to play that game, it being in fact the art of complex lying….
I don’t see how Pompeo can use that rhetoric without Trump following by taking some sort of military action. He has criticized Obama too many times for not acting (after Congress failed to authorize a strike). Now, the question is not whether there will be a response, but what the nature of the response will be.
That’s a good point. Looking back at Trump’s Twitter feed and subsequent actions, you do find a disciplined man who consistently adheres to principle.