Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Sy Hersh Blockbuster: Top U.S. General Ignored Obama, Led Secret Plot
to Protect Assad and Bring Russia Into Syrian War
________________________________________
Sy Hersh Blockbuster: Top U.S. General Ignored Obama, Led Secret Plot to
Protect Assad and Bring Russia Into Syrian War
By Steven Rosenfeld [1] / AlterNet [2]
December 21, 2015
President Obama's top military commander secretly orchestrated intelligence
sharing with military leaders in Germany, Israel and Russia to thwart the
president's policy to remove Bashar Assad from power in Syria and lay the
groundwork for Russia's military entrance into the Syrian civil war, because
he believed Obama's anti-ISIS strategies were hopelessly misguided.
That is just one of the astounding takeaways from a 6,800-word expose [3] by
venerated investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh, that was just published
in the London Review of Books. Hersh, whose sources include top senior aides
to the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, which commands all U.S. military
forces, also described in great detail how Turkey's president Recep Erdoğan
has deceived the White House by siding and arming ISIS and other extremist
Islamic militias in Syria, in a gambit for Turkey to emerge as a regional
power akin to the Ottoman Empire.
The broad contours of this cloak-and-dagger tale were confirmed by
Saturday's Democratic Party presidential debate. One of the key foreign
policy questions was whether the Syrian dictator had to be removed to defeat
ISIS. Bernie Sanders said no, voicing the same argument Hersh reported was
put forth by recently retired Joint Chiefs chairman Martin Dempsey: removing
Assad would create a vacuum that Islamic extremists would fill. Ex-Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton said Assad had to go, but intriguingly noted that
Turkey was not helping matters. This separation of Assad's fate from
fighting ISIS is now moving into the presidential race, but if Hersh's
account is correct it mirrors the thinking of the top Pentagon commander who
felt he had to act on his own because Obama wouldn't listen to the
military's advice.
According to Hersh, the president's policy-that Assad must leave office, and
that moderate rebels in Syria could be armed in order to defeat him-was
built on major flaws. That was the conclusion Dempsey and the various
intelligence teams that prepared reports for the Joint Chiefs made. There
were no moderates in the Syrian civil war, as repeatedly proven by failed
CIA attempts to arm and train forces that took American weapons and sold
them to Assad's fiercest opponents, either Jabhat al-Nusra or the Islamic
State. Moreover, removing Assad would likely lead to a situation similar to
what has been seen in Libya and Iraq, where America's removal of those
dictators created a vaccum that was filled by warring factions and
fundamentalists. Hersh quotes Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of
the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to '14, who said of the White
House, "They did not want to hear the truth."
So the Joint Chiefs, under Dempsey, found a way around the president. Hersh
writes, "The Joint Chiefs felt that a direct challenge to Obama's policy
would have 'had a zero chance of success.' So in the autumn of 2013 they
decided to take steps against the extremists without going through political
channels, by providing US intelligence to the militaries of other nations,
on the understanding that it would be passed on to the Syrian army and used
against the common enemy, Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State."
Those nations were Germany, Israel and Russia, which all had reasons for
cooperating with Assad. "Germany feared what might happen among its own
population of six million Muslims if Islamic State expanded; Israel was
concerned with border security; Russia had an alliance of very long standing
with Syria, and was worried by the threat to its only naval base on the
Mediterranean, at Tartus."
Hersh then quotes an unnamed senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs who
described what would come to pass:
"We weren't intent on deviating from Obama's stated policies," the adviser
said. "But sharing our assessments via the military-to-military
relationships with other countries could prove productive. It was clear that
Assad needed better tactical intelligence and operational advice. The JCS
concluded that if those needs were met, the overall fight against Islamist
terrorism would be enhanced. Obama didn't know, but Obama doesn't know what
the JCS does in every circumstance and that's true of all presidents." The
advisor went on, "The JCS could conclude that something beneficial would
arise from it-but it was a military to military thing, and not some sort of
a sinister Joint Chiefs' plot to go around Obama and support Assad. It was a
lot cleverer than that. If Assad remains in power, it will not be because we
did it. It's because he was smart enough to use the intelligence and sound
tactical advice we provided to others."
The Joint Chiefs started sharing these top intelligence reports under four
conditions, Hersh said. First, Assad must keep Hezbollah from attacking
Israel. Second, he must renew negotiations with Israel on the Golan Heights.
Third, he must accept Russian and other outside military advisers. Fourth,
he must commit to holding open elections after the war with a wide range of
factions. Assad essentially agreed to these conditions over time and that
led to major shifts in the war that are generally known to the public, Hersh
wrote. First, the supposedly moderate Syrian rebels started receiving
substandard arms, which they have complained about. That led Assad to stop
their military gains made in the spring of 2013. And then Russians came in
militarily, essentially because they had long relations with Syria and they
felt the Islamic extremists were allied with Chechen rebels and other
enemies. Russia's Vladimir Putin did not want to see Assad murdered the way
Gaddafi had been in Libya, Hersh wrote, which would also create a vacuum.
As all of this was unfolding, the U.S. military and its allies in this
clandestine plan (Russia, Israel and Germany) increasingly saw Turkish
president Erdoğan as double-dealing. Erdoğan told the Obama White House he
was cooperating in the fight against the Islamic State while in reality he
was helping to arm them and was allowing Islamic fighters from other
countries, notably western China, to pass through Turkey to get into Syria.
The Joint Chief's anonymous adviser said the top military officers felt the
U.S. and Russia had many more common interests than differences.
"When it comes to tackling Islamic State, Russia and the US have much to
offer each other," Hersh wrote. "Many in the IS leadership and rank and file
fought for more than a decade against Russia in the two Chechen wars that
began in 1994, and the Putin government is heavily invested in combating
Islamist terrorism. 'Russia knows the Isis leadership,' the JCS adviser
said, 'and has insights into its operational techniques, and has much
intelligence to share.' In return, he said, 'we've got excellent trainers
with years of experience in training foreign fighters-experience that Russia
does not have.' The adviser would not discuss what American intelligence is
also believed to have: an ability to obtain targeting data, often by paying
huge sums of cash, from sources within rebel militias."
Publically, the Obama administration has kept up its condemnation of Russia
for supporting Assad. Hersh doesn't suggest why, but it could be tied to the
fact that the harshest criticism of Obama's Syrian policy has come from
critics who remind anyone listening that the president drew a line in the
sand on Assad's use of chemical weapons and then retreated. For whatever
reason, Hersh is able to find numerous top U.S. and foreign diplomats who
say Obama's policy vis-à-vis Russia is "unfocused." Quoting a top American
diplomat recently in Moscow, Hersh writes, "The reality is that Putin does
not want to see the chaos in Syria spread to Jordan or Lebanon, as it has to
Iraq, and he does not want to see Syria end up in the hands of ISIS. The
most counterproductive thing Obama has done, and it has hurt our efforts to
end the fighting a lot, was to say: 'Assad must go as a premise for
negotiation.'"
The thrust of Hersh's article is that unbeknown to President Obama, his
former Joint Chiefs chairman orchestrated the way for Assad to remain in
power while paving the way for Russia to enter the Syrian war-despite stated
White House policies and criticisms of both Assad and Putin. That White
House drum beat, which to Hersh sounds like a Cold War script, continues.
"The four core elements of Obama's Syria policy remain intact today: an
insistence that Assad must go; that no anti-IS coalition with Russia is
possible; that Turkey is a steadfast ally in the war against terrorism; and
that there really are significant moderate opposition forces for the US to
support."
Hersh writes that this incredible powerplay behind Obama's back ended with
Dempsey's retirement this September. His replacement, General Joseph
Dunford, told the Senate Armed Sevices Committee this past summer that
Russia poses an "existential threat" to the U.S., and since assuming office
said that the U.S. must "work with Turkish partners to secure the northern
border of Syria" and "do all we can to enable vetted Syrian opposition
forces"-which according to Hersh are the nonexistent moderates.
"Obama now has a more compliant Pentagon," Hersh writes. "There will be no
more indirect challenges from the military leadership to his policy of
disdain for Assad and support for Erdoğan. Dempsey and his associates remain
mystified by Obama's continued public defense of Erdoğan, given the American
intelligence community's strong case against him-and the evidence that
Obama, in private, accepts that case."
Hersh writes that last spring, Obama said to Turkey's intelligence chief,
"we know what you're doing with the radicals in Syria." Ending on that note,
Hersh leaves readers of this astounding cloak-and-dagger tale wondering what
has really been going on. Did Obama's top generals outfox him when it came
to the war in Syria? Do the top U.S. military commanders really believe that
the White House has chosen the wrong sides and allies in Syria and needs to
wake up to the fact that the U.S., Russia and China all share common goals
fighting Islamic extremists? Did the generals have such little confidence in
Obama that they took it upon themselves to launch a covert foreign policy
that has apparently succeeded? Assad is still in power and the 2016
political debate is beginning to sever the question of his removal and
countering ISIS.
If Hersh's account [3] is to be believed, the answers are yes, yes and yes.
Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including
America's retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and
elections. He is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting"
(AlterNet Books, 2008).
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Source URL:
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gnored-obama-led-secret-plot-protect-assad-and
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/steven-rosenfeld
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military
[4] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Sy Hersh Blockbuster:
Top U.S. General Ignored Obama, Led Secret Plot to Protect Assad and Bring
Russia Into Syrian War
[5] http://www.alternet.org/
[6] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Sy Hersh Blockbuster: Top U.S. General Ignored Obama, Led Secret Plot
to Protect Assad and Bring Russia Into Syrian War
Sy Hersh Blockbuster: Top U.S. General Ignored Obama, Led Secret Plot to
Protect Assad and Bring Russia Into Syrian War
By Steven Rosenfeld [1] / AlterNet [2]
December 21, 2015
President Obama's top military commander secretly orchestrated intelligence
sharing with military leaders in Germany, Israel and Russia to thwart the
president's policy to remove Bashar Assad from power in Syria and lay the
groundwork for Russia's military entrance into the Syrian civil war, because
he believed Obama's anti-ISIS strategies were hopelessly misguided.
That is just one of the astounding takeaways from a 6,800-word expose [3] by
venerated investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh, that was just published
in the London Review of Books. Hersh, whose sources include top senior aides
to the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, which commands all U.S. military
forces, also described in great detail how Turkey's president Recep Erdoğan
has deceived the White House by siding and arming ISIS and other extremist
Islamic militias in Syria, in a gambit for Turkey to emerge as a regional
power akin to the Ottoman Empire.
The broad contours of this cloak-and-dagger tale were confirmed by
Saturday's Democratic Party presidential debate. One of the key foreign
policy questions was whether the Syrian dictator had to be removed to defeat
ISIS. Bernie Sanders said no, voicing the same argument Hersh reported was
put forth by recently retired Joint Chiefs chairman Martin Dempsey: removing
Assad would create a vacuum that Islamic extremists would fill. Ex-Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton said Assad had to go, but intriguingly noted that
Turkey was not helping matters. This separation of Assad's fate from
fighting ISIS is now moving into the presidential race, but if Hersh's
account is correct it mirrors the thinking of the top Pentagon commander who
felt he had to act on his own because Obama wouldn't listen to the
military's advice.
According to Hersh, the president's policy-that Assad must leave office, and
that moderate rebels in Syria could be armed in order to defeat him-was
built on major flaws. That was the conclusion Dempsey and the various
intelligence teams that prepared reports for the Joint Chiefs made. There
were no moderates in the Syrian civil war, as repeatedly proven by failed
CIA attempts to arm and train forces that took American weapons and sold
them to Assad's fiercest opponents, either Jabhat al-Nusra or the Islamic
State. Moreover, removing Assad would likely lead to a situation similar to
what has been seen in Libya and Iraq, where America's removal of those
dictators created a vaccum that was filled by warring factions and
fundamentalists. Hersh quotes Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of
the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to '14, who said of the White
House, "They did not want to hear the truth."
So the Joint Chiefs, under Dempsey, found a way around the president. Hersh
writes, "The Joint Chiefs felt that a direct challenge to Obama's policy
would have 'had a zero chance of success.' So in the autumn of 2013 they
decided to take steps against the extremists without going through political
channels, by providing US intelligence to the militaries of other nations,
on the understanding that it would be passed on to the Syrian army and used
against the common enemy, Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State."
Those nations were Germany, Israel and Russia, which all had reasons for
cooperating with Assad. "Germany feared what might happen among its own
population of six million Muslims if Islamic State expanded; Israel was
concerned with border security; Russia had an alliance of very long standing
with Syria, and was worried by the threat to its only naval base on the
Mediterranean, at Tartus."
Hersh then quotes an unnamed senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs who
described what would come to pass:
"We weren't intent on deviating from Obama's stated policies," the adviser
said. "But sharing our assessments via the military-to-military
relationships with other countries could prove productive. It was clear that
Assad needed better tactical intelligence and operational advice. The JCS
concluded that if those needs were met, the overall fight against Islamist
terrorism would be enhanced. Obama didn't know, but Obama doesn't know what
the JCS does in every circumstance and that's true of all presidents." The
advisor went on, "The JCS could conclude that something beneficial would
arise from it-but it was a military to military thing, and not some sort of
a sinister Joint Chiefs' plot to go around Obama and support Assad. It was a
lot cleverer than that. If Assad remains in power, it will not be because we
did it. It's because he was smart enough to use the intelligence and sound
tactical advice we provided to others."
The Joint Chiefs started sharing these top intelligence reports under four
conditions, Hersh said. First, Assad must keep Hezbollah from attacking
Israel. Second, he must renew negotiations with Israel on the Golan Heights.
Third, he must accept Russian and other outside military advisers. Fourth,
he must commit to holding open elections after the war with a wide range of
factions. Assad essentially agreed to these conditions over time and that
led to major shifts in the war that are generally known to the public, Hersh
wrote. First, the supposedly moderate Syrian rebels started receiving
substandard arms, which they have complained about. That led Assad to stop
their military gains made in the spring of 2013. And then Russians came in
militarily, essentially because they had long relations with Syria and they
felt the Islamic extremists were allied with Chechen rebels and other
enemies. Russia's Vladimir Putin did not want to see Assad murdered the way
Gaddafi had been in Libya, Hersh wrote, which would also create a vacuum.
As all of this was unfolding, the U.S. military and its allies in this
clandestine plan (Russia, Israel and Germany) increasingly saw Turkish
president Erdoğan as double-dealing. Erdoğan told the Obama White House he
was cooperating in the fight against the Islamic State while in reality he
was helping to arm them and was allowing Islamic fighters from other
countries, notably western China, to pass through Turkey to get into Syria.
The Joint Chief's anonymous adviser said the top military officers felt the
U.S. and Russia had many more common interests than differences.
"When it comes to tackling Islamic State, Russia and the US have much to
offer each other," Hersh wrote. "Many in the IS leadership and rank and file
fought for more than a decade against Russia in the two Chechen wars that
began in 1994, and the Putin government is heavily invested in combating
Islamist terrorism. 'Russia knows the Isis leadership,' the JCS adviser
said, 'and has insights into its operational techniques, and has much
intelligence to share.' In return, he said, 'we've got excellent trainers
with years of experience in training foreign fighters-experience that Russia
does not have.' The adviser would not discuss what American intelligence is
also believed to have: an ability to obtain targeting data, often by paying
huge sums of cash, from sources within rebel militias."
Publically, the Obama administration has kept up its condemnation of Russia
for supporting Assad. Hersh doesn't suggest why, but it could be tied to the
fact that the harshest criticism of Obama's Syrian policy has come from
critics who remind anyone listening that the president drew a line in the
sand on Assad's use of chemical weapons and then retreated. For whatever
reason, Hersh is able to find numerous top U.S. and foreign diplomats who
say Obama's policy vis-à-vis Russia is "unfocused." Quoting a top American
diplomat recently in Moscow, Hersh writes, "The reality is that Putin does
not want to see the chaos in Syria spread to Jordan or Lebanon, as it has to
Iraq, and he does not want to see Syria end up in the hands of ISIS. The
most counterproductive thing Obama has done, and it has hurt our efforts to
end the fighting a lot, was to say: 'Assad must go as a premise for
negotiation.'"
The thrust of Hersh's article is that unbeknown to President Obama, his
former Joint Chiefs chairman orchestrated the way for Assad to remain in
power while paving the way for Russia to enter the Syrian war-despite stated
White House policies and criticisms of both Assad and Putin. That White
House drum beat, which to Hersh sounds like a Cold War script, continues.
"The four core elements of Obama's Syria policy remain intact today: an
insistence that Assad must go; that no anti-IS coalition with Russia is
possible; that Turkey is a steadfast ally in the war against terrorism; and
that there really are significant moderate opposition forces for the US to
support."
Hersh writes that this incredible powerplay behind Obama's back ended with
Dempsey's retirement this September. His replacement, General Joseph
Dunford, told the Senate Armed Sevices Committee this past summer that
Russia poses an "existential threat" to the U.S., and since assuming office
said that the U.S. must "work with Turkish partners to secure the northern
border of Syria" and "do all we can to enable vetted Syrian opposition
forces"-which according to Hersh are the nonexistent moderates.
"Obama now has a more compliant Pentagon," Hersh writes. "There will be no
more indirect challenges from the military leadership to his policy of
disdain for Assad and support for Erdoğan. Dempsey and his associates remain
mystified by Obama's continued public defense of Erdoğan, given the American
intelligence community's strong case against him-and the evidence that
Obama, in private, accepts that case."
Hersh writes that last spring, Obama said to Turkey's intelligence chief,
"we know what you're doing with the radicals in Syria." Ending on that note,
Hersh leaves readers of this astounding cloak-and-dagger tale wondering what
has really been going on. Did Obama's top generals outfox him when it came
to the war in Syria? Do the top U.S. military commanders really believe that
the White House has chosen the wrong sides and allies in Syria and needs to
wake up to the fact that the U.S., Russia and China all share common goals
fighting Islamic extremists? Did the generals have such little confidence in
Obama that they took it upon themselves to launch a covert foreign policy
that has apparently succeeded? Assad is still in power and the 2016
political debate is beginning to sever the question of his removal and
countering ISIS.
If Hersh's account [3] is to be believed, the answers are yes, yes and yes.
Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including
America's retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and
elections. He is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting"
(AlterNet Books, 2008).
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [4]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[5]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/investigations/sy-hersh-blockbuster-top-us-general-i
gnored-obama-led-secret-plot-protect-assad-and
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/steven-rosenfeld
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military
[4] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Sy Hersh Blockbuster:
Top U.S. General Ignored Obama, Led Secret Plot to Protect Assad and Bring
Russia Into Syrian War
[5] http://www.alternet.org/
[6] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
