Is The Biden Administration Making The Worst Move In The History of American Foreign Policy?

This is not about Gaza. This is about Syria.

First, an extended recap of exactly how bonkers the world has gotten in recent years:

Since 2016, the US has had a military presence on the ground in Syria. The foot in the door was the multinational campaign against the clandestinely funded transnational oil smuggling syndicate and insurrection force known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (lands east of the Mediterranean Sea). Also known as Daesh.

In the aftermath of the fall of Mosul and the defeat of Daesh in Iraq, the remaining military force retreated into Syria.

The Syrian government is run by a man named Bachar al-Assad, the dynastic heir to the regime of his father, Hafez al-Assad. It’s incontestably the case that the US is hostile to the Assad regime. It’s a proven fact that the US has been supporting- and continues to support- military efforts by anti-Syrian government forces, to overthrow the Assad regime by force.

Nonetheless, when the Daesh insurgency that had grown up within central and west Iraq extended its power into Syria, US ground bases were granted permission to put down a small footprint, as part of the anti-Daesh effort. The US had already been allied in common cause against Daesh with other forces in the region- both Iraqi military and the Iranian Republican Guard (then led by General Quassim Suleiman, later decreed a terrorist leader and assassinated by a US airstrike.) But Suleiman had (temporary) common-cause ally status at the time when US forces were first allowed a presence on the ground in Syria. The deal was brokered by Vladimir Putin. Also doing his part in the common struggle to defeat Daesh, no? No one thinks Daesh is cool, right? (Except for whoever it is that was funding the now-defunct ISIL, through whatever means.)

This situation is complicated by the fact that the US ground bases in Syria weren’t allying with the Syrian Army. The territory of most of the US bases is in the eastern mountains, in areas run by Kurdish militias. Politically speaking, the Kurds of Syria play several roles in turn: for example, they’re one of the several anti-Assad opposition military insurgencies! But the Kurds also did a lot of infantry fighting to defeat Daesh in Syria, and that bought them some measure of local autonomy. Although not enough to ward off clashes with the Turkish Army on their northern border, including a substantial international refugee situation.

Additionally, let’s review: the Kurds are Sunni. The Turks are also Sunni. Daesh is nominally Sunni.

Assad is an Alawite (more akin to Shia than Sunni.) Syria itself is Alawite plurality, also more standard Shia than Sunni.

The anti-Daesh effort began in Iraq, and regular Iraqi Army units (Shia and Sunni) were assisted (a lot) by unofficial Iraqi militias that were entirely Shia. As were the Iranian Republican Guard units, also Shia.

The US joined in the war against ISIL- allied with the Iraqi Army of the regime (which the US has equipped, to the tune of billions of dollars made by the US weapons industry), later joined by the Shia Muslim militias like the Mahdi Army, and comrades-in-arms with the Shia Iranian Republican Guard in the fight against Daesh. Until, once Daesh was banished from Iraq and reduced to a vestige (at least in the Middle East), Qassim Suleiman had his use immunity lifted, evidently.

If you’ve forgotten: Daesh is (nominally) Sunni Muslim. As are the Kurds. As are the Turks.

Both the Kurds and the Turks are allies of the US. Except that some of the insurgent groups have been designated as terrorist groups by the US government.

Somehow, this situation got turned into a 3-D chess, six-sided war zone: the US ground presence in Syria originally amounted to policing the conflict between the opportunism of the Turks and the rebellious localism of the Kurds, and who knows what else local shit that we can’t know anything about. (US aerial bombing was the primary tactical effort by the US in Syria.) I’m doing my best to simplify this, as takeaways. There’s more to it.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/24/why-does-us-still-forces-syria-explainer

The upshot of it all is that the person who originally brokered the agreement for a US presence in Syria- Vladimir Putin- has since renounced it. US armed forces have remained there. Mostly in the Kurdish areas- but also in the southeast corner, where there are a lot of oil wells.

Allow me to be the first to ask this in an American news media source. What does Bachar al-Assad think about US military- let’s call them encampments- on the territory of Syria?

What does the leader of Syria think about US airstrikes on Syrian territory, to defend the continuing presence of the US “military presence”?

What does Assad- or a random sample of Syrians, outside of the Kurdish areas- think of the characterization of the alleged paramilitary groups operating in Syria against US forces are “Iranian-linked”, rather than “Syrian linked”?

That’s all I got, for now. (References later.)