In a recent article entitled “Russians Strike Targets in Syria, but Not ISIS Areas, The New York Times attempts to frame Russia’s recent actions in Syria as dishonest and dangerous. It reported: “Russian aircraft carried out a bombing attack against Syrian opposition fighters on Wednesday, September 30, including at least one group trained by the C.I.A., eliciting angry protests from American officials and plunging the complex sectarian war there into dangerous new territory.”

“This of course would only make Russia’s actions dishonest or dangerous if groups trained by the US CIA were in fact the “moderates” the US claims they are. However, they are not, and thus Russia’s actions are duly justified as is the expansion of their current policy,” wrote journalist Tony Cartalucci in his analysis published by the Activist Post on October 1st.

In the war in Syria there are no moderates, and there never were. For years, Washington has been covertly arming militants in Syria for the purpose of overthrowing the government in Damascus

There were never any moderates. Starting as early as 2007, years before the war in Syria began, the US, as a matter of policy, had long since decided to intentionally fund and support the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood –to all intents and purposes the political wing of Al Qaeda– and begin arming militants affiliated with Al Qaeda itself.

This was revealed in journalist Seymour Hersh’s 2007 New Yorker article titled, “The Redirection Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?”

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration had decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East.

In Lebanon, the Administration cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran.

The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to the US and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Seymour Hersh’s prophetic report would also reveal that, even then, the extremist Syrian Muslim Brotherhood was already receiving funding and support from the United States via Saudi Arabia.

To explain how America’s fictional “moderate” army has been displaced on the battlefield in Syria by Al Qaeda and ISIS, the US claims that its multi-billion dollar nearly 5-year operation has suffered from massive defections.

It is known that Syria’s main armed opposition group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), is losing fighters and capabilities to the Al-Nusra Front, an Islamist organization with links to al-Qaida that is emerging as the best-equipped, financed and motivated force fighting Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Cartalucci says that indeed, Russia is undoubtedly bombing militants supported by the United States, but that is only because the United States has intentionally supported Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria.

At any time, if the United States truly wanted to strike an irreparable blow at ISIS forces, it could simply seal off the Turkish border across which the summation of ISIS’ supplies, fighters, weapons, and vehicles flow.

By securing the Turkish-Syrian border to the north, and the Jordanian-Syrian border in the south, the United States could strangle ISIS out of existence in a month, if not sooner.

It must be noted, for those still doubting ISIS is in fact an intentional creation of US foreign policy, that ISIS is now fighting the combined military forces of Syria, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, and now Russia. One must ask themselves who has the material resources, finances, and operational capacity to support a single army capable of taking on a multinational coalition of this size?

“Where, if not from the US and its regional allies, does ISIS deriving the source of its fighting capacity?” asks Cartalucci.

Recently, fighters with Division 30, the “moderate” rebel division favored by the United States, surrendered to the al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front. This is new evidence that at the very least America’s policy of building up a moderate opposition in Syria has failed entirely.

Objectively speaking, the Russian bombing of Al Qaeda positions in Syria –even when these seem circumstantial allies of the Pentagon– actually favor the struggle against terrorism that the US publicly proclaims, says Cartalucci.

- Manuel E. Yepe http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/

A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.

October 3, 2015