- Syrian civil war perilously pits US against Russia
The battle lines, thankfully only metaphorical so far, have been drawn in the Syrian sand by the two heavyweight nuclear-armed antagonists of the brutal civil war, ongoing since 2011, whose single-minded end was and remains a forcible regime change removing strongman President Bashar al Assad, thereby eliminating another threat to the regional superpower, colonial Israel. President Trump, besieged by internal FBI investigations and salacious ‘stormy’ scandals, was quick to resort to his trigger-happy tweets, mindlessly warning of a military strike for the dastardly chemical attack in Douma, which he blamed on the Syrian army, Russia and Iran. This trio constitutes the new ‘axis of evil’ in US eyes, a classification that may make it easier for the two Washington super-hawks, National Security Advisor John Bolton and designated Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to goad an amenable Trump into a foolhardy venture, rather than reining him in. If the cycle of escalation continues, as Russia has also threatened retaliation, a trembling world could experience another 1962 Cuban Missile crisis.
The trio has totally rejected the US allegations as fabricated, and Russian military specialists found no traces of Chlorine and Sarin or patients with chemical poisoning. Indeed, it is inexplicable why the victorious Syrian army, which has since overrun the last rebel stronghold of Douma in eastern Ghouta, should resort to an inhuman chemical attack when it was winning the battle anyway. A similar suspicious accusation was levelled in March 2017 when the Syrian army was on the verge of capturing Raqqa, the Islamic State ‘capital’, and was followed by a US cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base. So, whose side are the Americans on, anyway?
The usual suspects in all previous similar situations, the US, UK and France, have already launched an orchestrated verbal warfare campaign, hence the urgent need to ascertain the true facts by concerned agencies under UN aegis to prevent a knee-jerk ‘wild west’ response. The Syrian people, over 500,000 of whom have lost their lives and 11 million made homeless by the ruthless civil war, deserve an end to proxy power games and ‘false flag’ pranks, and return to peace.
