Imagine that you despised your brother-in-law and wanted to kill him. But you didn’t have the guts to do it yourself so you hired a hit-man to do the job for you.

Would you still be guilty of murder?

You’re darn right, you would be. So let’s apply this same rule to US foreign policy: Would it be just as wrong to invade a country, kill its people and topple its government with militants that you funded, armed and trained as it would be with your own US troops?

Yep, it sure would be. So while some people might think that it was smarter for Obama to use a proxy-army in Syria instead of US soldiers, morally or legally speaking, there’s really no difference between what he did and what Bush did in Iraq. A US invasion is a US invasion. Period. It doesn’t matter if you use for-hire killers or your own guys. It’s all the same. Obama is just as guilty as Bush.

Why does it matter?

It matters because Obama’s Syrian policy has resulted in the deaths of 250,000 people and created 11 million refugees. That’s more refugees than Iraq. And the funny thing is, the media doesn’t even talk about it, in fact, there’s not one major media outlet in the entire country that has stated what everyone knows to be the obvious truth; that the United States is 100 percent responsible for the refugee crisis. 100 percent! Assad had nothing to do with it. US policy and our buck-passing president are entirely to blame.

The point is, the Democrats pursue the same policies as the GOP with some minor-tweaking at the edges. So if the hard-charging, but dimwitted Republicans decide to drag the country to war on a pack of lies, then the shifty Dems will try to be smarter about it; they’ll try to micromanage the public relations, preempt antiwar marches in US cities and avoid US casualties at all cost. Obama has succeeded in all of these things. There’s nobody in the streets protesting, the media has convinced most people that Syria is in the throes of a civil war, and there have been no flag-draped coffins returning to Andover Airbase because their are no US boots on the ground.  For all practical purposes, the Democrats have created our first completely invisible war. That’s quite an accomplishment, don’t you think?

The only glitch is that, after 4 years, Obama’s plan for toppling Bashar al Assad has failed. True, he’s destroyed the world’s oldest civilization and condemned its people to a hardscrabble existence for the next 20 years or so, but he’s failed in his primary objectives; to remove Assad, partition the country, and secure the territory he needs for vital pipeline corridors. So, you see, all the sneaky, underhanded methods the Democrats have used to secretly prosecute their war on Syria have backfired because the US is going to lose the war anyway.

Why is the US going to lose the war?

Because the Russian-led coalition has stopped Washington dead-in-its-tracks and sent the terrorist vermin fleeing for cover, that’s why.

On Tuesday, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and fighters from the feared Lebanese national militia, Hezbollah,  recaptured  the strategic Kuweires military airbase in North Syria killing hundreds of ISIS terrorists and liberating 250 Syrian soldiers who had been holding out at the base for more than two and a half years. The battle was downplayed in the western media mainly because it represents a critical turning point in the conflict. The Russian-led coalition is now the drivers seat while the “US-backed” jihadis are on the run.   The war’s momentum has totally shifted in Putin’s favor which means that Putin’s going to win and Obama’s going to lose.

Kuweires is Syria’s Stalingrad, the famous WW 2 siege which lasted from August 1942 to February 1943 when the German Wehrmacht was repelled by the ferocious Red Army in the largest and bloodiest battle in the history of warfare. While the scale of Kuweires is smaller by many orders of magnitude, it’s importance can’t be overstated. It wasn’t ISIS that was defeated at Kuweires; it was US foreign policy, a policy which has reduced a large swathe of the planet, extending from North Africa, across the Middle East and into Central Asia, into smoldering rubble. Kuweires was a key node in Washington’s plan to topple Assad and plunge Syria in failed-state anarchy. That strategy has now been rolled back, not by people waving signs in the streets or politicians appealing for peace and sanity, or diplomats at the UN “talking shop” who have become the de facto rubber stamp for US aggression. No. US policy was rolled back by Russian warplanes, heavy artillery, armored vehicles and highly-motivated, stiff-neck fighting grunts who put their country before their own personal safety. Get the picture?

For the last 15 years, the US has ruled the world through force of arms. Well, guess what; other people have weapons too, and they’re ready to use them. That’s the meaning of Kuweires. Other nations are refusing to accept a model of global world disorder where one country unilaterally arms, trains and deploys homicidal jihadi psychopaths to achieve its own narrow geopolitical goals. That’s a model that is seriously broken and needs to be replaced ASAP.  This is the task to which Putin and his fellow terror-liquidators have applied themselves, and they’re doing a pretty fair job of it too.

In the last week, the Russian-led coalition has made great strides in ending this madness and turning the tide on the imperial project.   As a result, Washington has been forced to rethink its approach and adapt to the rapidly-changing conditions on the ground. The evidence of this is everywhere, like this goofy article which ran at Huffington Post on Thursday. Check it out:
“Supported by U.S.-led airstrikes, Kurdish Iraqi troops on Thursday seized part of a highway that is used as a vital supply line by the Islamic State group, a key initial step in a major offensive to retake the strategic town of Sinjar from the militants….

Hours into Thursday’s operation, the Kurdish Regional Security Council said its forces controlled a section of Highway 47, which passes by Sinjar and indirectly links the militants’ two biggest strongholds — Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in northern Iraq — as a route for goods, weapons and fighters….

“By controlling Highway 47, which is used by Daesh to transport weapons, fighters, illicit oil and other commodities that fund their operations, the coalition intends to increase pressure … and isolate their components from each other,” a coalition statement said.”

(“U.S.-Backed Kurds Launch Offensive To Retake ISIS-Held Iraqi Town Sinjar”, Huffington Post)
So they launched a major ground offensive and cut off ISIS vital supply lines?

What a novel idea? Too bad no one in Washington thought about that before wasting the last 18 months blowing up camels in the dessert or whatever the hell they were doing.   And why has the Pentagon been playing circlejerk for the last year and a half while these freaks raped women, lopped off heads and wreaked havoc across the countryside when they could have pulled the plug on them long ago?

“Why”? Let me explain “why”?

It’s because ISIS is Washington’s favorite windup toy. They just let these hooligans “Do their thing” as long as they advance US geopolitical goals and, when they’ve served their purpose,  they stomp them out like a stag beetle. That’s the basic program. That’s how it works. Only now that Putin has been mowing down these gobshite takfiris like a combine-harvester slashing thorough the corn patch, the Obama crew has had to move on to Plan B: Liquidate ISIS and hold-on to those areas that were under ISIS control. That will give Uncle Sam the territory he’s going to need to set up his “safe zones” that’ll be protected by US aircover and serve as sanctuaries for  more troublemaking sociopaths who can be deployed back into Syria to perpetuate the conflict deep into the future. That’s the US strategy in a nutshell.

Washington knows now that the war is lost, so it’s looking for a way to keep a foothold in Syria for future mischief. The same is true on the Turkish-Syrian border where Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan is conspiring with Obama to set up a buffer zone on Syrian territory. Check this out in Today’s Zaman:
“In the run-up to the Nov. 1 election, signals were given that if the Justice and Development Party (AKP) won, Turkey might well start up a land military operation in Syria….

Looking at statements from top Ankara officials in the days prior to the upcoming G-20 summit in Antalya, it does appear that we’ll have action in Syria sometime soon. No matter how often government officials signal Ankara’s desire to cooperate in air operations over Syria, the real fact of the matter is, Ankara would like to see Turkish troops enter Syria by land in warfare situation….

Signals are now coming in fast and furious that Turkey will enter into this war. What’s more, the signals are not limited to AKP statements; the assumption is spreading in the West, too, that this will be Ankara’s course.” (“Is war on the horizon?“, Today’s Zaman)
Erdogan is a megalomaniac and a menace which is why Putin  had better keep an eye on him. And the same goes for Obama too. Obama may be down, but he’s not out just yet. He still has a few more tricks up his sleeve and he’s sure to use them before this thing is over.  Even so,  the advantage definitely goes to Putin at this point. He took on the entire Washington braintrust and beat them at their own game.

Like him or not, you got to tip your hat to a guy like that.

This article was written by Mike Whitney for Counter Punch on Nov. 13, 2015.