U.S. uses ‘restraint’ in bombing ISIS in Syria

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It is often said that “politics makes strange bedfellows.” Such was the case, for example, during the eight-year 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, when the U.S. corporate media demonized the Iranian government following the 1979 Revolution that had removed the U.S.-imposed dictator­ ship of Shah Reza Pahlavi. The U.S. imperial overlords’ hyper-concern was the new Iranian government’s na­ tionalization of the country’s massive oil reserves at the expense of the U.S. oil corporations that had stolen Iran’s oil after the 1953 CIA coup that removed the elect­ ed government of Mohammad Mosaddegh.

But the chief U.S. ally and feted hero in that war was none other than Iraq President Saddam Hussein, whom the U.S. armed to the teeth to unleash a conflagration that took the lives of a million Iranians and a million Iraqis.

Since both nations were destroying their opponent’s oil refineries and pipelines, U.S. officials were more than content to have competition from its fossil fuel com­ petitors reduced to naught. But when the gains of the U.S.-abetted war began to tilt toward Iraq, at President Ronald Reagan’s instructions, the CIA ordered National Security Adviser Oliver North, of Watergate infamy, to secretly sell Tow missiles to the demonized Iranians at $1 million a crack to re-balance the battlefield at the ex­ pense of their alliance with Hussein.

In this context, a May 27 New York Times headline is instructive. It reads “With ISIS in Cross Hairs, U.S. Holds Back to Avoid Civilians.”

With regard to the takeover of Raqqa and other Syrian cities in recent weeks by the Islamic State (often called ISIS), The Times reports: “The air campaign has aver­ aged a total of about 15 strikes a day,” in contrast to 50 per day during the 2011 U.S.-NATO war against Libya, 85 daily strikes during the 2001 Afghan War, and 800 daily strikes in the course of the U.S. slaughter in Iraq dur­ ing 2003. We should note here that in all these “wars,” the “enemies” had no air power of their own. The United States, “heroes” that they are, bombed with impunity.

The Times, quoting a number of top-ranked U.S. mili­ tary officials and Obama administration spokespersons, attributes the government’s “restraint” in Syria to a con­ cern over “civilian casualties,” a novel twist indeed given that the U.S. has raised little apprehension about the current Saudi saturation bombing of Yemen, where the vast number of victims have been civilians. In Yemen, 12 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 2015 Today, the target in Tomorrow, the Assad many of the “fighters” were civilians.

The claimed U.S. “restraint” against ISIS in Syria has nothing to do with newfound U.S. concerns over civilian casualties and everything to do with the U.S. objective of removing, in due time, the repressive regime of Syr­ ian President Bashar al-Assad. To this end, any and all means are considered legitimate, from early on collabo­ ration with the Saudi government to arm and finance ISIS and the al-Qaeda associated al-Nusra Front for their attacks on Syria to organizing, financing, and directing the so-called Free Syrian Army, which regularly collabo­ rates with the U.S.-designated terrorist ISIS and al-Nus­ ra reactionary fundamentalist groups.

So long as all of the above, including the U.S., bomb Syr­ ia to smithereens and undermine the Assad regime, “all is fair in love and war.” Today, the target in Syria is sup­ posedly ISIS, give or take some “mistaken” hits of Syrian vital infrastructure facilities and civilians. Tomorrow, as with Libya’s Gadhafi, it will be the Assad government that is the direct and formal victim in the U.S. crosshairs.

ISIS, contrary to its caliphate (religious state) proc­ lamations, is not a country. It lacks all the prerequisite characteristics of one. Its finances, arms, and “economy” have been dependent on Saudi Arabia and other oil monarch states. The refineries that it captures, as it has done in Syria and Iraq, would be worthless if there were no nations or corporations to purchase their oil for cash to purchase new weapons from their beneficiaries and stuff the pockets of their capitalist “leaders” as well.

Admittedly, the U.S. suffered some embarrassment at Ramadi, when ISIS captured a mass of newly sent U.S. weapons to the Iraqi army, which didn’t bother to take them along as it fled yet another ISIS onslaught.

U.S. imperialism, the world’s sole superpower in the modern era, is centrally responsible for the cataclysmic state of the Middle East today, with its endless wars for profit, plunder, and exploitation being the new norm in world politics.

Following the 2003 conquest of Iraq, that nation was formally ruled by the U.S.-appointed administrator Paul Bremer, after which U.S.-conducted “elections” placed the Nouri al-Maliki regime in power in 2006. Maliki im­ mediately proceeded to persecute and exclude the Sunni minority while granting U.S. oil corporations the lion’s share of Iraq’s renowned oil reserves. With his army and government in a state of collapse, he was forced to step down last year—his corruption and the wanton murder (continued on page 11, in “United National Antiwar Coalition Action Plan”)