“We have defeated ISIS in Syria” – Is Trump telling the truth?

Eric Zuesse

At 11:52AM on Wednesday, December 19th, CBS News headlined “White House orders Pentagon to pull troops from Syria immediately” and reported that, “Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a veteran of the US Air Force who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and now serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said it’s ‘simply not true’ [which Trump, had said there, that] ISIS is defeated in Syria.”

CBS News didn’t indicate which political Party Kinzinger represents, but he is a Republican, and he represents the rural Illinois 16th Congressional District, where Donald Trump had beaten Hillary Clinton by a 17% margin in 2016. So, Kinzinger is an anti-Trump Republican on this matter. He’s credible about that, not partisan about it.

Who is telling the truth, Trump’s “We have defeated ISIS in Syria” or Kinzinger’s contrary, and what explains the contradiction between the accounts by Trump and Kinzinger?

As the CBS News report says, “Two weeks ago, Special Envoy Brett McGurk said the end of ISIS will be a long-term initiative, and “nobody is declaring mission accomplished.” CBS’s report, however, fails to note that McGurk is an Obama appointee and has been consistently dedicated to America’s defeating Russia and replacing the leadership in all nations that are allied with (or even friendly toward) Russia, including, most especially, Syria and Iran.

At a deeper level, the question is: Which nations are primarily the cause of the considerable reduction in ISIS forces in Syria? If ISIS has been defeated in Syria, then, nonetheless, is it true for Trump to claim, “We have defeated ISIS in Syria,” or is the United States not even the main force which has done that?

On 30 September 2015, CNN headlined “Russia launches first airstrikes in Syria” and reported that, “Claiming to target ISIS, Russia conducted its first airstrikes in Syria, while US officials expressed serious doubts Wednesday about what the true intentions behind the move may be.” The next day, on October 1st, PBS bannered “Mike Morell, former deputy director of the CIA, talks about why Russia deployed airstrikes in Syria”, and Morell, who had always been speaking and writing against Russia and against any Government that is at all allied with Russia, said:

President Putin believes that if President Assad were to depart the scene, there would be even more instability in Syria and, with that greater instability, ISIS would have more running room, and you could actually end up with ISIS in Damascus. So that is the primary reason he’s doing what he is doing. Now, the question is why doesn’t he just attack [only] ISIS then because President Assad is under attack from a variety of different groups? ISIS is one, al-Nusra [Al Qaeda in Syria] is one, and the moderate opposition is another. So in order to prop up Assad to keep him in control, to make sure you don’t have more instability, he wants to attack all of those groups, right. But his fundamental focus is on ISIS.”

But, then, he argued for US President Barack Obama’s position, against Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria:

If we were to have a transition from Assad to another government that everybody can agree on, then we’re actually going to have more stability in Syria. And I think the President probably argued that as long as Assad is around, he is a magnet for fighters to join ISIS, to join al-Nusra to fight Assad. And you can’t ultimately defeat ISIS and defeat al-Nusra without getting rid of President Assad in the process.

So: Morell acknowledged that Putin’s main target was ISIS, but Morell said that Obama was correct to oppose Russia’s bombing campaign there, because “you can’t ultimately defeat ISIS and defeat al-Nusra without getting rid of President Assad in the process.” Then, he said, of Putin, “this guy is a thug. This guy is a bully.” But he said that, unfortunately, America must deal with that “bully”: “first thing we have to convince the Russians of is that you can’t successfully deal with ISIS and al-Nusra without Assad going away. We have to be able to convince them of that. We really believe that. We really believe that. We really believe that he is a magnet for drawing people to ISIS and to al-Nusra.” He was saying that Assad had caused ISIS, which was trying to overthrow and replace him.

On 9 October 2015, investigative journalist Tony Cartalucci bannered “The Mystery of ISIS’ Toyota Army Solved” and he documented that ISIS had gotten its Toyota pickup trucks from the US-backed Free Syrian Army, whom Obama called moderate rebels. Whether the FSA had ever had those trucks wasn’t known.

Then, on 14 October 2015, the Financial Times bannered ”Isis Inc: how oil fuels the jihadi terrorists” and reported that,

Oil is the black gold that funds Isis’ black flag — it fuels its war machine, provides electricity and gives the fanatical jihadis critical leverage against their neighbours. … Selling crude is Isis’ biggest single source of revenue. … While al-Qaeda, the global terrorist network, depended on donations from wealthy foreign sponsors, Isis has derived its financial strength from its status as monopoly producer of an essential commodity consumed in vast quantities throughout the area it controls.”

Then, on 16 November 2015, the New York Times bannered “US Warplanes Strike ISIS Oil Trucks in Syria” and reported that:

United States warplanes for the first time attacked hundreds of trucks on Monday that the extremist group [ISIS] has been using to smuggle the crude oil it has been producing in Syria, American officials said. … Until Monday, the United States refrained from striking the fleet used to transport oil, believed to include more than 1,000 tanker trucks.”

Two days later, on November 18th, the Pentagon said at a press conference, that “This is our first strike against tanker trucks” of ISIS.

Moreover, on November 24th, Zero Hedge bannered “’Get Out Of Your Trucks And Run Away’: US Gives ISIS 45 Minute Warning On Oil Tanker Strikes” and reported that the US Government were doing this oil-tanker-truck bombing only for show, because Russia had actually started the serious effort to conquer ISIS in Syria, and so the US needed to do something, for PR purposes.

Yet, further evidence also exists that the US Government supported ISIS against Syria’s Government:

On 24 March 2013, the New York Times bannered “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From CIA”, and reported that “From offices at secret locations, American intelligence officers have helped the Arab governments shop for weapons,” and that “‘A conservative estimate of the payload of these flights would be 3,500 tons of military equipment,’ said Hugh Griffiths, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, who monitors illicit arms transfers.”

The US Government tried to hide its involvement in this, by doing it through allied “Arab governments,” which were named in this news-report: “Qatar and Saudi Arabia had been shipping military materials via Turkey,” and all four of these Governments (US, Sauds, Turkey, and Qatar) were trying to overthrow Syria’s Government. Then, on 8 September 2014, AFP headlined “Islamic State fighters using US arms: study”, and they reported that the US Government was supplying ISIS. On 1 September 2017, Russian Television reported that the US Government was secretly supplying weapons to ISIS and that an anti-Assad fighter had even quit the CIA-backed New Syrian Army because of that.

US President Barack Obama started the US policy to arm ISIS, and it was continued under the current US President.

There is considerable other evidence that the US Government has invaded, and been occupying, parts of Syria, solely in order to replace Syria’s Government by one that would be controlled by the Saud family, who own Saudi Arabia.

It is definitely a lie for Trump to say: “We have defeated ISIS in Syria.”

A big turn in these events had been the failed 15 July 2015 coup-attempt, to overthrow Turkey’s Government, and which Turkey’s President, Tayyip Erdogan, says was engineered by the Gulen organization headquartered in the US, which is connected to and protected by the CIA. After July 15th, Turkey increasingly has allied with Russia’s Government, against America’s Government.

Later on December 19th, Reuters headlined “US State Department personnel being evacuated from Syria — US official” and reported that, “All US State Department personnel are being evacuated from Syria within 24 hours, a US official told Reuters.”

The present withdrawal of the US Government from Syria is actually due to the success of Vladimir Putin’s and Tayyip Erdogan’s plan (which I described on 10 September 2018, and which they jointly announced a week later, on September 17th) for Turkey to handle the military task of conquering the jihadists in Syria’s Idlib province and of Turkey’s forces then moving eastward from Idlib to compel the US Government to end its occupation of northeastern Syria — that nation’s crucial oil-producing region. If Russia’s troops, instead of Turkey’s, were to do that task, killing US troops, it would risk bringing on a US-Russia war, but, since Turkey is still in NATO, that danger doesn’t exist when Turkish troops and armor (backed by Russian air-power) do that highly sensitive job. Turkey’s forces would likely have needed to kill at least some US troops if Trump didn’t take this decision now to evacuate them; so, he did what he had to do, in order to avoid an extremely embarrassing US military defeat.

Instead of “We have defeated ISIS in Syria,” the truth, from the US Government, would be “We have been defeated in Syria,” or (more precisely) “We have surrendered in Syria.”

However, Putin (and Erdogan, and maybe even Assad) will not be crowing about their victory. (Erdogan, however, already is.) In any case, Syria’s Government has successfully resisted the US Government’s effort, since 2009, to replace Syria’s Government by one that would be controlled by the Sauds. When Russia entered that war on 30 September 2015, at the invitation of Syria’s Government, in order to kill ISIS and all of the other jihadist forces in Syria (including al-Nusra and America’s other proxy-forces who were America’s boots-on-the-ground fighters killing and dying there), Obama’s dream, of handing Syria as a vassal-state to the Sauds, was doomed to failure. Trump’s effort to win what Obama could not, has now likewise finally failed.

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