Column - Pentagon and CIA at war in Syria

WHAT a mess! In the crazy Syrian war, US-backed and armed groups are fighting other US-backed rebel groups. How can this be?
It is so because the Obama White House had stirred up war in Syria but then lost control of the process. When the US has a strong president, he can usually keep the military and intelligence agencies on a tight leash.
But the Obama administration has had a weak secretary of defence and a bunch of strategists who are the worst military commanders since Louis XV, who put his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, in charge of French military forces during the Seven Years' War. The French were routed by the Prussians. France's foe, Frederick the Great of Prussia, named one of his dogs, "la Pompadour".
As a result, the two arms of offensive US strategic power, the Pentagon and CIA, went separate ways in Syria. Growing competition between the US military and militarised CIA broke into the open in Syria.
Fed up with the astounding incompetence of the White House, the US military launched and supported its own rebel groups in Syria, while CIA did the same.
Fighting soon after erupted in Syria and Iraq between the US-backed groups. US Special Forces joined the fighting in Syria, Iraq and most lately, Libya.
The well-publicised atrocities, like mass murders and decapitations, greatly embarrassed Washington, making it harder to portray their jihadi wildmen as liberators. The only thing exceptional about US policy in Syria was its astounding incompetence.
Few can keep track of the 1,000 groups of jihadis that keep changing their names and shifting alliances. Throw in Turkomans, Yzidis, Armenians, Nestorians, Druze, Circassians, Alawis, Assyrians and Palestinians. Oh yes, and the Alevis.
Meanwhile, IS was inflicting mayhem on Syria and Iraq. But who really is IS? A few thousand twenty-something hooligans with little knowledge of Islam but a burning desire to dynamite the existing order and a sharp media sense. The leadership of these turbaned anarchists appears to have formed in US prison camps in Afghanistan.
The US, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey armed and financed IS as a weapon to unleash on Syria, which was an ally of Iran that refused to take orders from the Western powers. The west bears heavy responsibility for the deaths of 450,000 Syrians, at least half the nation of 23 million becoming refugees, and destruction of this once lovely country.
At some point, IS shook off its western tutors and literally ran amok. But the US has not yet made a concerted attempt to crush IS because of its continuing usefulness in Syria and in the US, where IS has become the favourite whipping boy of politicians.
Next come the Kurds, an ancient Indo-European stateless people spread across Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. They have been denied a national state by the western powers since WWI. Kurdish rebels in Iraq have been armed and financed by Israel since the 1970's.
When America's Arab jihadists proved militarily feeble, the US turned to the Kurds, who are renowned fighters, arming and financing the Kurdish Syrian YPG which is part of the well-known PKK rebel group that fights Turkey.
I covered the Turkish-Kurdish conflict in eastern Anatolia in the 1980's in which some 40,000 died.
Turkey is again battling a rising wave of Kurdish attacks that caused the Turks to probe into northern Syria to prevent a link-up of advancing Kurdish rebel forces.
So, Turkey, a key American ally, is now battling CIA-backed Kurdish groups in Syria. About 80% of Turks believe the failed coup in Turkey was mounted by the US – not the White House, but by the Pentagon which has always been joined at the hip to Turkey's military.
This major Turkish-Kurdish crisis was perfectly predictable, but the obtuse junior warriors of the Obama administration failed to grasp this point.
Now the Russians have entered the fray in an effort to prevent their ally, Bashar Assad, from being overthrown by western powers. Also perfectly predictable. Russia claimed to be bombing IS but in fact is targeting US-backed groups. Washington is outraged that the wicked Russians are doing in the Middle East what the US has done for decades.
The US and Russia now both claim to have killed a senior IS commander in an air strike. Their warplanes are dodging one another, creating a perfect scenario for a head-on clash at a time when neocons in the US are agitating for war with Russia.
Does anyone think poor, demolished Syria is worth the price? Hatred for the US is now seething in Turkey and across the Middle East. Hundreds of millions of US tax dollars have been wasted in this cruel, pointless war.
Time for the US to stop stirring this witch's brew.
Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com