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Trump Says U.S. Military In Syria “Only For The Oil”

By Sally Jane Black

In a rare display of honesty, Donald Trump has stated several times in the last two months that U.S. troops have only remained in Syria to “secure the oil.” Though Pentagon officials have tried to backtrack on his comments (since they are an admission of war crimes), the cat is out of the bag. While Trump previously claimed U.S. troops would be leaving the area—signaling a victory for the Syrian people under threat by U.S. imperialism—troops remain to maintain U.S. corporate control of the natural resources of the region.

The U.S. military’s presence in the Middle East is the primary cause of the instability and wars that have plagued the region for decades.

There is a long history of U.S. imperialism and militarism acting only to rob other nations of their natural resources. Whether it’s Bolivian lithium or Nigerian uranium or Iraqi oil they’re after, the U.S. military serves capitalist exploitation in its plunder of the world’s wealth. In Syria, it has been no different; the U.S. involvement there began when Syria tried to build their own gas pipeline and control their own resources. Since then, the U.S. has bombed hospitals and civilians, spread lies about use of chemical weapons, and backed all kinds of reactionary paramilitary organizations including the so-called “moderate rebels” now murdering the same Kurds the U.S. once backed.

The U.S. military’s presence in the Middle East is the primary cause of the instability and wars that have plagued the region for decades; the impact of imperialism is always violence and suffering for working people. Trump’s remarks expose the long-standing truth. US workers should stand in solidarity with the Syrian people and demand that Trump be prosecuted for the war crimes he admits to.

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U.S. and Turkey Out of Syria!

By Gregory William

After Trump announced U.S. forces would withdraw from northern Syria, the House of Representatives voted on a non-binding resolution against it. Although Republicans and Democrats seem divided on many issues, both are parties of endless war for profit who voted 354-60 to continue the illegal war in which 400,000 people have died since 2011.

Trump is a warmonger who just approved sending 1,800 more troops to Saudia Arabia, a U.S. ally carrying out a genocidal war against Yemen. Trump has pledged to keep troops in Syria to protect oil fields—the only thing the U.S. capitalists care about in the Middle East.

Pulling troops from Syria is not a bad thing. By attacking him on this, the Democrats are trying to be more right-wing than the war-crazed Trump.
Many progressives are confused. Hasn’t the U.S. military been protecting the Kurds in Syria? The answer is a clear “no” if we look at the big picture.
The Syrian Kurds have been attacked by Turkish forces, but Turkey is a Washington ally. The far-right Turkish regime represses workers and carries out constant attacks against the Kurdish people, all the while receiving more U.S.-made weapons than any country besides Israel or the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.).

Washington has supported the Turkish state for decades. So close is the relationship that the U.S. government has at least 50 nuclear warheads in Turkey. These stockpiles go back to 1962, when the U.S. government began positioning nuclear weapons there to threaten the Soviet Union.
But what about the “crazy militias” the corporate press says attacked the Kurds? The U.S. government has backed 21 out of 28 of these groups. Most are off-shoots of Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra, armed and trained by the CIA and Pentagon. Washington used these groups to undermine the elected government in Syria and carry out atrocities throughout the country, not just against the Kurds.

The U.S. has fomented war in the country for eight years, but now that Syria has been restored to the control of the Syrian government, there is finally a prospect of peace. The Kurds have joined forces with the Syrian Army. There is no longer any pretext for the U.S. to be there.

It’s right that workers are angry over Turkey’s military attacks, and so our demand should be that Washington withdraw all support for Turkey, ending all arms sales and military aid to that murderous far-right regime.

We must demand: U.S. and Turkey out of Syria!

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U.S./Israel Out of Syria!

By Quest Riggs

As Syria fights the last battles of its over 7-year war against U.S. and Israeli-backed terrorist insurgency, it still faces many challenges and a rough road ahead. This long, dirty war which has been fueled by the US and its allies, has cost 500,000 Syrian lives and an estimated $400 billion in damages. The war has driven 10 million Syrians to flee their homes, creating one of the worst refugee crises in the world today. Needless to say, despite their celebrating their victories against terrorism and invasion, the people in Syria will live with the trauma of this war for generations.

However, western imperialism and its puppets in the middle east are still aggressively harassing the Syrian people and the Syrian army. In the past 18 months Israel has shot over 200 missiles into Syria. The U.S. still maintains its illegal invasion of Syrian territory, with 12 military bases and up to 2,000 special operations soldiers. U.S. Generals (Trump’s best friends) continue to regularly threaten Syria with further bombing and invasion.

Syria is now openly engaged in the early stages of what could be the last major battle of the war. Most of the western-backed terrorist forces, Al Queada, ISIS, al-NUSRA, which the U.S. has branded as terrorists are the so called “rebels” receiving support from the U.S. and Israel. They are concentrated in the northwestern city of Idlib, and the Syrian Army is preparing for an offensive with the support if its allies. They have had to make these preparations and conduct negotiations in the face of the aforementioned bombings and constant threats of intervention from imperialist politicians.

But why are the imperialists being so aggressive and threatening when Syria is close to ending its war? The answer is clear if you look at the history of U.S. war-mongering in the middle east: the imperialists make money off of wars and stealing natural resources, so they’ll only allow peace if they can hold a dominant, colonizer position.

Just within my generation, the U.S. has invaded and devastated Iraq, Libya and Afganistan. These countries, home to some of the world most ancient civilizations, had long been victims of western intervention and aggression, but they remained relatively stable until the U.S. and its allies invaded. They all now lay in ruins.

In Libya, the U.S. invasion caused the growth of a domestic slave trade as well as terrible sectarian violence between warlord and fundamentalist groups. In Iraq, the U.S.-installed government is viciously repressing protests where everyday Iraq citizens are demanding basic necessities like food and water and jobs. Afganistan has never seen an end to violence since the U.S. invaded, and NATO today uses the war-torn country as a military training ground. Last year the U.S. even dropped its most powerful non-nuclear bomb in Afganistan. One thing is for sure: the military industrial complex and the oil executives are laughing to the bank every time workers and oppressed people in the U.S. believe the lies that they feed us on the corporate media to justify these wars.

We should express our support for Syria in in their struggle against imperialism and for their right to self determination. We also must voice our opposition to the threats that U.S. politicians and generals have been issuing and demand that the U.S. & Israel stop their attacks and pull their troops out of Syria. Only then can Syrian workers rebuild their communities and advance their struggles against capitalist and imperialist oppression.

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Hands Off Syria!

In early April, there was hope that the years-long occupation of Syria by the US military might be coming to a close when Trump told media he was ready to “get out.” By mid-April, however, Trump and the entire establishment reversed their position, and they started moving towards a new all-out war on Syria.

On April 7 the entire corporate media reported on a chemical attack on Syrian civilians. Immediately, they suggested that the Syrian government was responsible, even though James Mattis reported months ago that they had no evidence that the Syrian government ever used chemical weapons. Trump and his military cabinet jumped on board and used this as a pretext to threaten Syria with total invasion.

The Syrian government denied any responsibility. They reminded the world that they have always allowed chemical weapons investigations from international organizations, which have always cleared them of using or having chemical weapons. They invited the inspectors to come back once again to try to find some proof for these serious allegations. However, without any evidence, the US, UK and France attacked Syria with over 100 missiles before the inspectors could even arrive.

Most of the missiles were from the US. The attack was ultimately useless, and the Syrian military claimed victory for their defenses, though infrastructure and private research facilities were destroyed. The attack wasted $100 million of our taxes and pushed the world closer to nuclear war.

The Syrian military has emphasized that they had no reason to use chemical weapons. They have only needed traditional warfare to almost completely retake the territories held by the foreign-backed terrorist groups that have ravaged their country for six years.

The US is refusing to accept defeat in Syria. Their goal has always been to overthrow the government to secure oil profits, like they did in Iraq and Libya. And just like in those catastrophic wars for profit, they will gladly lie to us to justify the destruction.

It is ridiculous to believe that the US,UK and France are concerned about the human rights of Syrians. Firing missiles on civilian populations will not bring about peace. And all of these countries are silent when it comes to the long and brutal war on the people of Yemen by their close ally Saudi Arabia. They also supported Israel’s terrible repression of Palestinian protesters in April, where dozens were killed and thousands more wounded, some by chemical weapons.

The hypocrisy is even more evident when you recognize that the US has consistently been the number one user of chemical warfare. From napalm in Vietnam to white phosphorous in Iraq and Syria, not to mention the chemicals used on US protesters from Ferguson to Standing Rock, the US has no moral authority to attack anyone on that basis.

We workers must stand with the people of the world to stop an invasion of Syria that would block peace in the country for years. We should speak out against the war mongering of both Republicans and Democrats, and we should call for the military to leave Syria. A war against Syria would not only devastate that country, but it would also be a war on workers and oppressed communities in the US.

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Syrian Conflict Continues as External Forces Continue Interference

The bloody war in Syria is continuing to drag along, mainly because of the actions of external forces. The main factors that have prolonged the war in recent months are the U.S. and Turkish occupation of Syria and revitalization of their respective terrorist proxies. The U.S. reignited its bombing campaign of pro-government forces, while Turkey and its proxies are fighting their way deeper into Syrian territory in their extermination campaign against Kurdish people. Meanwhile, the corporate media has reignited its propaganda campaign to obstruct the Syrian government’s military operations against terrorists and whip up support for U.S. warmongering against Syria and its allies.