What Are We Doing In Syria, Anyway?

With growing alarm, our government's meddling in the affairs of other sovereign nations, including arming and abetting war on these governments in complete violation of the U.S. Constitution, is escalating with virtually no scrutiny by the Congress or the American news media. The so-called loyal opposition who challenged our military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq throughout the George W. Bush presidency has seemingly been silenced since the election of Barack Obama, who was one of the leading voices in Congress opposed to those wars. Since Obama's election, we have withdrawn most of our troops from Iraq, but the number of soldiers dying in the war in Afghanistan has gotten much worse than it was under Bush. With Obama's blessing, our government provided aid and comfort to the Muslim Brotherhood in their successful effort to overthrow a friendly government in Egypt. Our government, through NATO, provided air power and armed assistance to the rebels who overthrew the government of Libya. And now the CIA and NATO are actively involved in an effort to overthrow the government in Syria.

Reports of our own government and news media have been less than truthful in explaining to the American people what is taking place in Syria. Objective observers seem to agree that the Assad government has the backing of the vast majority of the Syrian people, even if it is not a friendly ally of the U.S. U.S. government and American news reports have falsely portrayed the Syrian government of waging war on its own people. The reality is that the armed conflict is being waged largely by mercenaries armed and backed by the U.S. government, who have flooded into the country in an effort to destabilize the government. What is particularly alarming is the fact that the very same al Qaeda terrorists on which our country blamed the 9/11 terrorist attacks on our country are flooding into the country in order to train and command the U.S.-backed rebels. Their goal is to establish an Islamic state, not a democratic-elected government. Ironically, the U.S. invasion of Iraq drove many to join al Qaeda. Recent media reports blamed a massacre that left hundreds of innocent civilians dead on the government. Accounts of the victims' families, however, contradict those accounts. They hold the rebels responsible for the massacre. President Obama claims our government is only providing non-lethal aid to the rebels. The New York Times contradicted that claim, reporting that the CIA had helped funnel arms to rebel groups" before later revising its story to claim the CIA was only identifying groups within Syria that were receiving arms. Other news reports confirm the CIA has smuggled Stinger missiles into Syria to help the rebels take out the Syrian government's warplanes just like it did with the Afghan rebels fighting the Russians during its occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s.

Does anyone see a pattern here? We fund the Afghan rebels in the war against the Russians, a military movement that gave birth to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. A hostile government led by the Taliban emerges to run Afghanistan after the Russians leave, which provides a base of operation for al Qaeda to carry out terrorist activities against the West, including the U.S. We go to war in Afghanistan to destroy al Qaeda and to kill bin Laden. We go to war in Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, a man our own government helped put in power back in the 1960s by backing coups that brought Hussein's Baath Party to power, because he supposedly has weapons of mass destruction and is aiding al Qaeda. Conditions in both countries are as bad and anti-American as ever, if not worse. We're now arming rebels in Syria who are being commanded and trained by al Qaeda. Meanwhile, U.S. troops are dying by the thousands and are suffering permanent physical and psychological injuries from pointless wars that make the world a less safe place to live and one in which hostilities against are own country are being elevated. How much longer will the American people allow us to be played by our government for fools?