What is the real reason that the U.S. has been involved in Syria?
The U.S. has wanted to build a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan and Syria for decades. The best way to understand this is to go to investment broker and Bloomberg columnist Barry Ritholtz’s website The Big Picture and read his article which includes extensive maps and a detailed descriptions of the competing pipelines. The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline favored by the U.S. runs through Syria, which Ritholtz states, is why there was so much focus on Syria in 2012. It is likely that U.S. discussions of possible war with Syria was related to this pipeline—then and now. He notes that Unilocal and Enron were involved with full U.S. government support. There were—[and probably still are]—competing pipelines, noted Ritholtz back in 2012, with one backed by the U.S. and one by Iran, which he describes as a great geopolitical battle raging between the U.S. and its allies, on the one hand, and Russia, China and Iran, on the other hand.
Ritzholz wrote in 2012 that these wars were planned twenty years ago. His website, The Big Picture has archives which include numerous articles he has written on these subjects with extensive links to various articles that he has cited.
Barry Ritholtz writes that a “great geopolitical battle raging between the U.S. and its allies, on the one hand, and Russia, China and Iran, on the other hand” is a battle over oil and gas resources in Eurasia. Specifically competing gas pipelines through this area are likely behind the wars and unrest in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Syria. He notes that a U.S.-proposed gas pipeline through Syria is one of the reasons for the focus on Syria. While there are legitimate citizens’ human rights movements in these countries, some of which are part of the Arab Spring, the U.S. and other outside nations have financial interests in the oil and gas there with plans for competing pipelines to access them that run right through these nations. As we have seen, the U.S. (and other nations) have funded rebel forces in several countries. The U.S. funded rebel forces in Syria’s civil war after the Obama administration’s attempt to wage a war with Syria was met with strong resistance from U.S. citizens, NATO, and the international community. Giving arms and aid (through the CIA and otherwise) to rebels in civil war to create regime change is another effective way of putting in place new leaders more favorable to U.S. interests in the region–and it has also been used in the past by the U.S. as we have already seen. There are serious human rights issues and strong citizens’ movements in many countries around the world, but those that receive U.S. support seem to be either located in strategically important areas or those that have oil or gas.
The Syrian rebels’ Arab Spring was crushed by the Syrian dictator Assad whose air power was largely created by Russia, according to the Frontline documentary “Obama at War,” aired May 26, 2015 on Georgia Public Broadcasting. Although Samantha Power favored military action, and Hilary Clinton favored covert CIA action, (former CIA director David Petraeus’ plan), Obama and Chief of Staff Denis McDonough did not favor these military actions, notes Frontline. There was use of chemical weapons by both rebels and Assad, however Assad had the greatest access to Sarin gas and the greatest airpower to deliver it noted Wikipedia. After the Sarin gas strike in Damascus, the French government was mobilizing its military but stopped after the U.K. Parliament did not give approval for British military action and Obama paused to ask for U.S. Congressional approval for military action, noted Frontline. Russia proposed that military action be avoided by asking Assad to give up its chemical weapons–an idea which appeared to initiate with a person from a press conference audience who asked U.S. Secretary of State Kerry what it would take to avoid war–and he responded that Syria would have to surrender its chemical weapons. Putin then asked Assad to do so and he agreed–and thus, military action was temporarily avoided through diplomacy–eliminating more chemical weapons than would have been eliminated through war, according to one Frontline interviewee. The U.S. did eventually become militarily involved however.
The formation of ISIS which evolved out of the ongoing conflicts was completely predictable–because neither the U.S. nor Russia nor Assad were advocates for a solution that would have truly benefitted the Syrian people. It is tragic that extremist terroristic groups were so empowered to form by the failure of any country to truly advocate for the real needs of the Syrian people—the people of Syria, desperate for support, have no advocate, being that they were predictably failed by ISIS as well as the U.S. and Russia fighting over gas pipelines through the country.
(All of the above are excerpts adapted from my ebook: Susan M. Perz, Ph.D.: Conceiving a Peaceful World: Women’s BodyWisdom, Leadership, and Peacemaking, iBooks–also available on the other ereaders. Find all the links at www.womenswisdom.tv
Ritholtz cites the hawkish Rand Corporation’s study that revealed that the “War on Terror” was actually hurting U.S. security and he cites eight separate studies that say that the Iraq War increased the threat of terrorism—which incidentally was also entirely predictable. You can find Ritholtz’ article about how wars have increased the threat of terrorism and hurt U.S. security at the same link as above if you scroll down past the first article to the second article “Four Stories This Week Prove That the War On Terror Is a Farce,” published in October 2012 on his blog The Big Picture.
Dr. Susan Perz 