Attention!
New Pentagon Hours:
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Carl Jarvis
On 1/30/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Truthdig
The New Pentagon Business Model
By Gareth Porter
A patrolling U.S. armored vehicle is reflected in the mirror of a car in
Kabul, Afghanistan. (Rahmat Gul / AP)
The speech by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on January 17 laying out a
series of conditions that would make it possible to withdraw US troops from
Syria confirmed what had already been revealed by the Pentagon itself: The
Trump administration is planning to keep US troops in Syria indefinitely.
Although it was not a comprehensive policy statement, the Tillerson speech
completed a months-long process in which the Pentagon has succeeded in
enlisting the Trump administration to sign on for a semi-permanent US
military engagement in three countries with significant US troops
contingents: Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
This trifecta of semi-permanent US military engagements reflects the
extraordinary power of the Pentagon to sway even a president who had made
opposition to such policies a central element of his campaign.
The Pentagon Gets Its War in Syria
Two months before Tillerson's speech, Secretary of Defense James Mattis had
already telegraphed the fact that the US military had been given approval
for a long-term commitment in Syria now that ISIS (also known as Daesh) had
been defeated and driven out of Raqqa. In mid-November in a briefing for
reporters at the Pentagon, Mattis said that US forces in Syria would fight
Islamic State "as long as they have want to fight" and that preventing the
return of what he called "ISIS 2.0" was a "longer-term objective." He even
suggested that US forces would remain to help establish conditions for a
diplomatic solution. "We're not going to walk away before the Geneva
process
has traction," said Mattis.
In another briefing for reporters in late December, Mattis said that the US
forces in Syria would be "shifting from an offensive, terrain-seizing
approach, to a stabilizing" role.
Tillerson's talk was a political gloss on what the Pentagon had already
begun planning to do. It provided a series of reasons for the US military
to
maintain a long-term presence in Syria, while at the same time giving it
maximum latitude to avoid getting into a war with Iranian, Russian or
Syrian
forces.
Tillerson presented the US presence in Syria as necessary to ensure that
not
only ISIS but al-Qaeda in Syria will "suffer an enduring defeat" - a new
term suggesting that the military mission would continue to be
counter-terrorism. The reality, as Mattis had already announced, was that
the US military is planning to be involved in post-war "stabilization" -
something Trump had denounced during the campaign - for many years.
The Tillerson gloss struck the obligatory anti-Iran chord, vowing that US
troops would remain until Iranian influence in Syria has been "diminished."
Mentioning that objective was an obvious way to justify a long-term US
military presence in Syria, since no one believes that Iranian influence in
Syria will be diminished in the coming years.
Despite its obvious bow to the administration's anti-Iran-war constituency,
the word "diminished" was clearly chosen as an alternative to other
possible
formulations that would have been supported by pro-Israeli figures and
institutions lobbying the administration. It reflects the Pentagon's
interest in averting war against the Assad regime or its Iranian allies and
its determination to keep its intervention in Syria focused on terrorism
and
avoid getting involved in forcible regime change.
In the early months of the Trump administration, Mattis and Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford rejected a proposal from National
Security Council staffers for US military intervention against Assad. And
in
June 2017, the US-led coalition fighting ISIS actually welcomed the likely
Syrian and Iranian-supported forces entering the city of Deir ez-Zor, which
had been under ISIS occupation, rejecting any idea of seeking to preempt
such a move militarily. That determination to avoid being drawn into a war
against Iran or Syria has remained unchanged through 2017.
