US Forces Living on Borrowed Time Syria and Iraq

By: Kayhan Int’l

In the Pentagon and in the State Department a fierce behind-the-scenes debate is raging on the wisdom of military presence in Iraq and Syria, especially after the criminal involvement of the US in Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and the massacre of over 15,000 civilians (mostly children and women) on President Joe Biden’s green light for the genocide by refusing ceasefire demands by officials and public rallies.

There is a growing fear that in view of the Zionist entity’s unabated aerial attacks on Syria, sooner or later the unwanted American soldiers will be targeted with more powerful projectiles and return home in body bags, even if they were to brutally respond to the attacks of the Resistance Forces.

The US might think of itself as a militarily powerful country but it is powerless in averting the death of its soldiers and destruction of its bases where its means of defence, though impenetrable on paper (like Israel’s so-called iron dome), turn out to be tin-coated paper vis-à-vis the resolve, the technique and the precision of the missiles and drones of their adversaries.

There is deep resentment, both in Syria and Iraq, against the US military presence and blatant American complicity in Israel’s mass massacre of the innocents in Gaza. 

The Syrian government has time and again complained to the UN that the US has no right to station soldiers on its soil in violation of its sovereignty and in open support of terrorists trying to dismember the country.

Damascus has also notified the World Body of the stealing of millions of barrels daily of its crude oil in broad daylight by the US occupation forces and their sharing of intelligence with Israel for attacks on industrial and military sites, as well as on trade convoys transiting the Syrian-Iraqi border.

In Iraq, the anger and hatred of the US is all pervasive, in view of the almost two million people killed directly and indirectly during the American invasion and occupation of the country in 2003 for almost a decade.

The Iraqi people and their representatives, the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), also point to the dropping of crates of weapons for Takfiri terrorists by US aircraft while claiming to fly sorties against them.

The Iraqis have dismissed the claim that the US forces are on a mission to train army personnel. By referring to the Iraqi parliament’s unanimous verdict in early January 2020, following the dastardly terrorist attack on Baghdad Airport that claimed the life of the icons of anti-terrorism, Iran’s Qassem Soleimani and Iraq’s Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, they are demanding the closure of all American bases.

In Washington, some level-headed US officials say there is no purpose for the American soldiers to linger any longer in Syria and Iraq, where they were targeted by the local militias during the Israel’s Biden-directed war crimes in Gaza.

They add that though the attacks have ceased over the past few days in respect to the temporary truce in Palestine, once Israel resumes its bombing, the US bases in both Syria and Iraq will be exposed to more lethal attacks and this time not mere injury but the death of American armed forces.

Once this happens, the other US bases in the so-called friendly states of the Persian Gulf and Jordan, will also be liable to long range attacks with untold and humiliating consequences for Washington.