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Your Guide to Discussing the Syrian Airstrikes Online
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Your Guide to Discussing the Syrian Airstrikes Online

The Middle East, and especially Syria, rejects simple narratives that people in America want to impose on it.

Matthew Gault
and
Kevin Knodell
Mar 1, 2021
4
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Your Guide to Discussing the Syrian Airstrikes Online
angryplanet.substack.com

The Middle East is a complicated region that rejects simple narratives. Yet people, especially those in the West, want simple narratives to explain everything that happens there. For some, when a president orders an airstrike in Syria it’s proof of that president's imperial aims. For others it’s a chance to talk about repealing the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) from 2001 that underpins the Forever Wars. For still others it’s a chance to talk about the litany of horrors America has brought to the Middle East.

So it was with President Biden’s first airstrike on Feb. 25. The facts are these: after several Iran-launched rocket attacks against U.S., coalition, and Iraqi forces in Iraq, Biden ordered an attack on a military checkpoint and storage facility used by Iranian-backed Iraqi militias on the Syrian side of the border of Iraq and Syria.

The strike came from F-15s which dropped seven 500 pound precision-guided bombs. These were probably GBU-38/B Joint Direct Attack Munitions, but that’s unconfirmed. Pentagon sources said there were casualties but didn’t give a number, emphasizing that the strike was meant as a warning. Local sources have reported casualties as high as 22, but that number is disputed by all sides

In the days after the strike, the White House spun up it’s media machine in an effort to characterize the strike as a retaliatory measure against Iran-backed strikes. It released footage of a January 2020 attack on the Al Asad Air Base.

Twitter avatar for @chadgarland
Chadbeard the Cranky @chadgarland
Here's the nearly 2-minutes drone footage of the ballistic missile attack on Al Asad Air Base Jan. 6, 2020, that @CENTCOM provided for the 60 Minutes episode that aired Sunday. dvidshub.net/video/785331/a…
Image
5:14 PM ∙ Mar 1, 2021
22Likes12Retweets

60 Minutes interviewed American service members present during the attack.

Twitter avatar for @60Minutes
60 Minutes @60Minutes
In January 2020, U.S. troops at an airbase in Iraq scrambled to evacuate 50+ aircraft and 1,000 troops before Iranian missiles hit. Those who stayed prepared for the worst: “I didn’t think that we were going to survive,” says Lt. Col. Staci Coleman. cbsn.ws/38dAPUP
Image
12:27 AM ∙ Mar 1, 2021
265Likes115Retweets

Online, some western leftists characterized the attacks as a hegemonic assault on the Middle East by Imperial America. The strike was proof, they said, that Biden was just another president who would keep the churning the fires of the Forever War. The Onion ran several biting articles about the attack. Memes depicting munitions covered in Democratic slogans proliferated.

Not many asked Syrians how they felt about all this.

The Syrian civil war has been going on for a decade now and it’s a complicated conflict. But at its base is President Bashar al-Assad who has used chemical weapons and barrel bombs against his own people to stay in power. Russia is backing him and has used its own Iskander ballistic missiles to destroy hospitals in Syria. 

We know this because the Russian Ministry of Defense recently released a montage of footage that included video of it blowing up hospitals. It released this footage after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan complained that his own Iskanders didn’t quite perform the way he wanted during Armenia’s fight with Azerbaijan last year. The Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada forces targeted in the attack are allied with the Assad regime. If the Syrian civil war has clear bad guys, these are them.

The media describes Kataib Hezbollah as an “Iran-backed militia” but what does that mean? It’s a Shia militia funded, trained by Iran, and often led by Iranian commanders. The irregular force first formed in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, pulling fighters from across the region. Iran’s Quds force supplied it with weapons and training. It became infamous for violent ethnic campaigns against Sunnis in Iraq.

Twitter avatar for @WalkerBragman
Walker Bragman @WalkerBragman
I feel like we should name the victims and tell their stories.
independent.co.uk‘At least 22 killed’ after President Biden orders military strikeThe attack was carried out on Iranian-backed militias
3:56 AM ∙ Feb 28, 2021
1,450Likes303Retweets

It's been instrumental in an Iran backed plan of genocide and replacement in Syria. As Sunnis die or flee, Shias from Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon come in. The militia attack in Erbil in the Kurdistan region of Iraq that precipitated the Syria strike injured at least one Syrian refugee when several rockets fell in residential areas of the city. At the American base two contractors—an Iraqi and a Filipino firefighter—died in the attack. Being Shia is not a protection from them, as Kataib Hezbollah routinely assassinates Shia dissidents and protestors.

The Syrian Emergency Task Force, a non-profit organization promoting peace and democracy in Syria, released a statement in support of the airstrike. “The Iranian-backed forces currently in Syria are allies to the Assad Regime, contributing to human rights abuses and mass atrocities against Syria’s civilian population,” it said. “Kataib Hezbollah forces are trained in Iran and then flown to Syria to support Assad’s forces on the ground. In this capacity, they have participated in the deliberate targeting of civilian life, including attacks on educational and medical facilities, and in forced displacement.”

Twitter avatar for @SoccerMouaz
Mouaz Moustafa @SoccerMouaz
Statement by @syrianetf on the US strikes against Iranian backed militia targets in #Syria
Image
10:24 PM ∙ Feb 26, 2021
30Likes21Retweets

There are thousands of Syrian expats online. There are even more subject-matter experts that either live or lived in the Middle East. Their opinions on this air strike matter more than mine.

Twitter avatar for @deebashadnia
Deeba Shadnia @deebashadnia
Pls make it stop
Image
8:47 AM ∙ Feb 28, 2021
598Likes51Retweets
Twitter avatar for @AmalHanano
Lina Sergie Attar @AmalHanano
If you have a strong opinion about Biden’s strike in #Syria on Iranian militias, but you’ve never had an opinion on the genocide & mass displacement of the Syrian people that’s been ongoing for TEN years now primarily by the Assad regime, then please spare us.
3:08 PM ∙ Feb 27, 2021
661Likes213Retweets
Twitter avatar for @Idlibie
كريم @Idlibie
Imagine witnessing an entire decade of open-source satellite data of scorched-earth tactics, accurate geolocation of where crimes against humanity happened and live-broadcasted footage of gas attacks and airstrikes on hospitals.. ..And only opening your mouth about Syria today.
4:41 PM ∙ Feb 26, 2021
260Likes92Retweets
Twitter avatar for @kshaheen
Kareem Shaheen @kshaheen
Dear pundit, Iranian-backed militias in Syria have played a key role in the mass killing of half a million Syrian civilians, starvation sieges, sectarian cleansing, and mass displacement that created the refugee crisis. Pls find another avenue to opine. End of transmission
12:28 AM ∙ Feb 27, 2021
644Likes207Retweets
Twitter avatar for @amoouleh
amal @amoouleh
Suddenly everyone cares about Syrian lives when the US hits a military facility of another foreign govt who’s been killing Syrians for years
5:14 AM ∙ Feb 26, 2021
3,025Likes671Retweets
Twitter avatar for @samboosa_a
Basma Alloush @samboosa_a
Its funny that western “progressives” are quick to get their knickers in a twist when it’s a strike on a warehouse but are chill when Syrian civilians are bombed to death by their own govt. So loud when the US acts but their silence on atrocities by nonUS actors is more deafening
4:21 PM ∙ Feb 26, 2021
1,784Likes499Retweets
Twitter avatar for @dimashqie
سمسم @dimashqie
All I have to say is that today Russia released footage of striking a hospital in Aleppo and the US bombed some random Iranian proxy warehouse in the desert and guess where all the outrage was directed
5:44 AM ∙ Feb 26, 2021
2,609Likes847Retweets
Twitter avatar for @Elizrael
Elizabeth Tsurkov @Elizrael
Since October 2019, amazingly brave youth have been protesting across Iraq, demanding an end to the corrupt regime ruling them. Hundreds of them were killed by Iranian-backed militias, including Kataeb Hezbollah & Iraqi security forces. Not a peep from the "progressive" Left.
Twitter avatar for @Elizrael
Elizabeth Tsurkov @Elizrael
In reality, the only confirmed casualty is Said Rahi al-Sharifi, an Iraqi fighter with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah Brigades, which routinely rockets US bases in Iraq. He died doing what he loves: occupying Syrian land in the name of spreading the doctrine of Shia clerical rule. https://t.co/PVXyv7O2ld
7:14 PM ∙ Feb 28, 2021
157Likes58Retweets

So, should Congress reassert its power to authorize war and repeal 2001’s AUMF? Yes. Does America need to scale back its involvement in the Middle East? I think so.

But don’t pretend that America is the worst actor in the Middle East. The anti-Imperial left in America absolutely believes in American exceptionalism, it just comes at it from a different angle. 

There’s a paternalistic chauvinism to how the left discusses Middle Eastern countries it doesn’t understand, one that can be as damaging and condescending as the idea that America needs to police foreign countries as an extension of its foreign policy goals. Being an anti-imperialist is not a license to use the tragedy of a people you haven’t bothered to understand as a political football. 

Angry Planet

No links this week, we’re too angry.

image at top: A F-15 in flight in 2007. U.S. Air Force photo

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Your Guide to Discussing the Syrian Airstrikes Online
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