{"id":281231,"date":"2024-02-04T09:00:44","date_gmt":"2024-02-04T09:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=281231"},"modified":"2024-02-06T08:16:21","modified_gmt":"2024-02-06T08:16:21","slug":"biden-sacrifices-american-troops-and-mideast-security-for-us-israeli-hegemony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=281231","title":{"rendered":"Biden sacrifices American troops, and Mideast security, for US-Israeli hegemony"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aaron Mate \u2013 aaronmate.com Feb 2, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

[Update: in light of Friday\u2019s US strikes in Iraq and Syria, which the White House calls a retaliation for<\/strong> the recent attack on a US military base on the Jordan-Syria border that killed three American soldiers, I am unlocking this article, which provides some relevant background). <\/strong><\/p>\n

The Biden administration has vowed to retaliate after a drone strike on a US military base near the Jordan-Syria border killed three US soldiers and wounded more than 34 others, some critically.<\/p>\n

In a statement, President Biden blamed what he called \u201cradical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq,\u201d and pledged to \u201chold all those responsible to account.\u201d The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which took credit for the operation, called it a direct response to Israel\u2019s genocidal assault on Gaza and the presence of \u201cAmerican occupation forces in Iraq and the region.\u201d The Iranian Foreign Ministry has denied any involvement.<\/p>\n

The US claims that its troops were hit on Jordan\u2019s side of the border. Jordanian officials dispute that and say that the incident occurred in Syria, where the US maintains an unauthorized and unwelcome military force. Wherever it took place, the Beltway consensus is that Biden must now respond with more aggression in the Middle East, including potential strikes on Iran.<\/p>\n

The US, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared, must now impose \u201cserious crippling costs\u201d on Iran and its allies. Fellow Republican Senator Lindsey Graham called for striking \u201ctargets of significance inside Iran.\u201d In his view, \u201cthe only thing the Iranian regime understands is force.\u201d For Republican Senator Tom Cotton, \u201cthe only answer to these attacks must be devastating military retaliation against Iran\u2019s terrorist forces, both in Iran and across the Middle East.\u201d Should Biden order \u201canything less,\u201d Cotton declared, that will only confirm that he is a \u201ccoward.\u201d<\/p>\n

At this point, there is no indication that Biden has ruled out his Republican critics\u2019 top goal. According to New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker<\/a>, \u201cthe president\u2019s advisers were in consensus\u201d during a Sunday meeting that the Jordan-Syria attack \u201cwill require a different level of response.\u201d One possibility is that \u201cBiden would strike targets inside Iran itself,\u201d though that remains \u201cunclear.\u201d<\/p>\n

What remains undoubtedly clear is that Biden has put US troops in harm\u2019s way and provoked a wider regional escalation due to his devotion not only to Israel\u2019s mass murder campaign in Gaza, but broader regional US hegemony. And because the bipartisan US establishment is in lockstep behind that agenda, the only question at hand is what \u201clevel\u201d of aggression to commit.<\/p>\n

The US government is well aware that it has alternatives to enforcing the Israeli genocide of Gaza and the American military presence across the region.<\/p>\n

According to the Times\u2019 Baker, US officials \u201chave said for months that they did not believe Iran wanted a direct war with the United States.\u201d Instead, these officials acknowledge, \u201cIran has used its proxy forces to keep up the pressure on the United States and Israel as Israel continues to pound Hamas in Gaza.\u201d By \u201cpound Hamas,\u201d Baker means Gaza\u2019s civilian population, the main victims of the US-supplied armaments that regularly pound Gaza.<\/p>\n

In Yemen, Biden understands that his strikes are failing to deter the Ansar Allah movement\u2019s (aka the Houthis\u2019) blockade of Red Sea ships in protest of the Gaza genocide. Days after the US strikes began, Biden was asked if the bombings are working. \u201cWell, when you say, \u2018working\u2019 \u2014 are they stopping the Houthis? No,\u201d Biden said. \u201cAre they gonna continue? Yes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s mass murder campaign in Gaza shattered what the Wall Street Journal described in October as \u201can undeclared truce between Tehran and Washington.\u201d For more than six months before Oct. 7th<\/sup>, the Journal noted, \u201cIranian-backed militia groups refrained from launching drones or rockets against American troops in Iraq and Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n

These groups\u2019 decision to strike US forces in response to the Gaza genocide follows a well-entrenched pattern of resisting joint US-Israeli aggression, or what the Journal describes<\/a> as efforts to \u201cpush back against American and Israeli influence\u201d in the Middle East. And contrary to US claims that Iran\u2019s main regional allies \u2013 Hezbollah in Lebanon, Ansar Allah in Yemen (the Houthis), the PMU in Iraq, Hamas\/Islamic Jihad in Palestine, and the Syrian government — are all mere Iranian \u201cproxies\u201d, these groups \u201chave domestic agendas of their own and operate with some measure of autonomy,\u201d the Journal notes. US intelligence analyst Brian Katz concurs. Iran\u2019s allies \u201care no longer simply Iranian proxies,\u201d Katz writes<\/a>. \u201cRather, they have become a collection of ideologically aligned, militarily interdependent, mature political-military actors committed to mutual defence.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the Washington Post notes, Iranian allies in the region \u201cbegan targeting U.S. interests in 2018, after then-President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from a landmark nuclear deal with Tehran\u201d as part of a hawkish policy of \u201cmaximum pressure.\u201d Rather than return to the Iran nuclear deal upon taking office in January 2021, Biden continued the Trump agenda \u2013 and knowingly endangered US troops in the process.<\/p>\n

When Biden \u201cordered airstrikes on militia groups\u201d in Syria, the\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0<\/em>reported in August 2021<\/a>, that ended up \u201csparking a fresh cycle of reciprocal violence, with militiamen firing at a facility housing U.S. troops and American forces responding with artillery fire.\u201d Biden\u2019s support for Israeli aggression against Syria yielded the same result. When a drone strike hit a US military base located in southern Syria in October 2021, US and Israeli officials acknowledged that it was \u201cIranian retaliation for Israeli airstrikes in Syria,\u201d the New York Times reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In launching and encouraging attacks on Iranian allies in the region, Biden was pursuing an arrangement that he forged with the Israeli government. In August 2021, then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett urged Biden to pursue \u201ca death by a thousand cuts\u201d strategy, in which the US and Israel would \u201c[counter] Iran through a combination of many small actions across several fronts \u2014 both military and diplomatic \u2014 instead of a single dramatic strike,\u201d Axios reported<\/a>. The goal would be to put Iran\u2019s \u201cregional aggression\u201d \u2013 a euphemism for resisting US-Israeli hegemony \u2013 \u201cback in the box.\u201d Toward that goal, one of Bennett\u2019s key requests was that \u201cBiden not to pull U.S. forces out of Iraq and Syria,\u201d which the Israeli delegation felt quite \u201coptimistic\u201d about. In Biden, Bennett gushed, \u201cI found a leader who loves Israel, knows exactly what he wants and is attuned to our needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

As part of Biden\u2019s attunement to Israel\u2019s needs, the US has assisted Israel\u2019s regular airstrikes on Syria and the Iranian-allied forces operating there. While US officials \u201chave said little about Israel\u2019s bombing missions\u201d in Syria, the Wall Street Journal reported in June 2022<\/a>, \u201c[b]ehind the scenes… many of Israel\u2019s missions for several years have been reviewed in advance for approval by senior officials at U.S. Central Command and at the Pentagon.\u201d<\/p>\n

The joint US-Israeli strikes on Syria are complemented by a US military occupation in about 30% of Syrian territory against the explicit wishes of the Damascus government. The US claims that its \u201csole purpose\u201d in Syria is to fight ISIS and prevent its resurgence. But as I reported in September 2021,<\/a> the Pentagon\u2019s own documents acknowledge that the US has barely done any fighting against ISIS. A Wall Street Journal report this past July obliquely noted the contradiction between the stated US mission to fight ISIS in Syria and the reality on the ground. The US, the Journal claimed, is \u201ccombating the remnants of Islamic State\u201d in Syria. Yet despite this stated mission, US troops \u201care operating in the east, far from the northwest enclave where suspected ISIS and al Qaeda leaders have been operating.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Journal did not explain how the US could be fighting ISIS while operating far from their enclave, but US officials have answered the riddle. While ISIS may not be in the northeast Syrian region that the US occupies, a far more important US target is located there: Syria\u2019s oil and wheat. As now-senior Biden Pentagon official Dana Stroul<\/a> explained\u00a0in 2019, occupying the \u201cresource-rich\u201d region of Syria’s northeast — which contains the country’s \u201chydrocarbons\u201d and is its \u201cagricultural powerhouse\u201d — gives the U.S. government \u201cbroader leverage\u201d to influence \u201ca political outcome in Syria\u201d in line with US dictates. Jennifer Cafarella of the Institute for the Study of War, a neoconservative Washington think tank, has likewise explained<\/a> that the US military occupation gives it \u201cdirect influence over the vast majority of Syria\u2019s most productive oil fields,\u201d thereby controlling \u201cSyrian national treasures that, when added up amount to brute geopolitical power for the US.\u201d<\/p>\n

The brute geopolitical power derived from stealing Syrian resources is especially gratifying for the bipartisan US foreign policy establishment, which can never forgive Syria and its allies in Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia for successfully resisting the CIA-led dirty war (and the United States\u2019 de-facto allies in Al Qaeda and ISIS<\/a>) that aimed to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. To help enforce its regional plunder, the US also maintains a military occupation in Iraq, sometimes in open defiance of the government\u2019s wishes. After Iraq\u2019s parliament called for a full US withdrawal in January 2020, the Trump administration responded by threatening to steal Iraq\u2019s US-based foreign reserves<\/a> \u2013 yet another example of the United States\u2019 expansive use of its \u201cbroader leverage.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Biden White House is equally aware that its commitment to Israeli genocide and US military occupation endangers the American forces tasked with acting as enforcers.<\/p>\n

One week ago, Baker – the New York Times\u2019 chief White House correspondent \u2013 reported that<\/a> when it comes to deadly attacks on US troops stationed in the Middle East, \u201cPresident Biden and his advisers worry that it is only a matter of time.\u201d Meanwhile, whenever news of an attack on US forces comes in, \u201cofficials wonder whether this will be the one\u2019 that \u201cresults in a broader regional war.\u201d Biden administration officials claim that they \u201cdo not want to go so far that the conflict would escalate into a full-fledged war, particularly by striking Iran directly.\u201d Yet \u201cprivately say they may have no choice, however, if American troops are killed.\u201d<\/p>\n

At that point, this \u201cred line\u201d had \u201cnot been crossed\u201d — but one week later, it has.<\/p>\n

Veteran US diplomat, Aaron David Miller, who participated in the so-called \u201cpeace process\u201d between Israelis and Palestinians, claimed that Biden \u201cconfronts a problem without a risk-free solution… if U.S. forces are killed, they\u2019ll have no alternative but to respond directly against Iranian assets.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, Biden has an alternative to knowingly sacrificing US soldiers’ lives and risking a broader regional war: withdraw US forces from Iraq and Syria, and stop supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The only \u201crisk\u201d in such a scenario would be to the goals of supremacists in both Israel and the United States, who insist that everyone is expendable \u2013 including their own soldiers \u2013 in defense of brute geopolitical power.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Aaron Mate is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.<\/p>\n

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Source<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Lindsey Graham calling for strikes on Iran itself, the Biden administration risks igniting a wider regional conflict<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":281232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=281231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281235,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281231\/revisions\/281235"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/281232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=281231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=281231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=281231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}