Leaving Syria? Don’t Make Me Laugh

On Thursday, President Trump said we’d be leaving Syria very soon.

“We’re coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon—very soon we’re coming out. We are going to have 100 percent of the caliphate, as they call it, sometimes referred to as land, taking it all back, quickly, quickly. But we are going to be coming out of there real soon,” he said in his trademark disjointed fashion.

Trump then offered his unique take on geopolitics. He said “if we kept the oil, we wouldn’t have ISIS.”

It’s true the Islamic State funded itself with stolen oil. However, the real mastermind behind the Islamic State was Saudi Arabia and its medieval take on Sunni Islam, its intolerance and violence, and a mountain of oil money to fund radical jihadists around the world. This was boosted by the US military in Iraq as it launched counter-insurgency psychological operations, most notably the fake Abu Zarqawi operation that merged with al-Qaeda—a CIA nurtured construct—and eventually morphed into the Islamic State.

But we can’t expect Donald to understand this, although it was basically admitted by the Pentagon in 2012 when it predicted a caliphate.

If you want to occupy a country into perpetuity, you need to invent an enemy that requires a military occupation, an enemy that cannot be defeated because it lives in the minds of fanatics.

Point is, the US isn’t going anywhere. It’s staying put in Syria.

Following Bush’s invasion of Iraq, the US established dozens of bases in Iraq, Jordan, and Syria. It’s not about to abandon these because the Donald made some erroneous remark, same as he did during the election campaign—and we know how those promises turned out.

Observers in Syria have noted the recent establishment of US military outposts near Deir Ezzor, Tanf, and Hajin.

Finally, the addition of John Bolton as national security adviser should serve as a strong indication that the precise opposite will happen—not only will there be more more military outposts and bases in Syria, but also a move by the United States, either directly or through its proxies, to remove the government of Bashar al-Assad.