The United States is disingenuous in its fight against Daesh (ISIL) because it is tied to its funding sources, both directly and through proxy states and because its actual -- and stated -- goal is the overthrow of the Syrian government, an American writer and political analyst says.
So the US can't be part of the solution until they resolve these contradictions, but it won’t resolve them, Daniel Patrick Welch told Press TV on Friday.
Mr. Welch made these remarks when asked to comment on a statement by Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton who said on Thursday the US should lead the fight to defeat the ISIL terrorist network.
In a major foreign policy speech, Clinton distanced herself from President Barack Obama’s strategy for defeating Daesh and called for greater use of American ground troops against the Takfiri group in the wake of the terrorist attacks in France.
“This is really scary. I really think Hillary Clinton is the most dangerous politician on the planet at this particular time, because she is so close to the presidency, and so could easily win the position,” Welch said.
“The Republicans are just unelectable fascists that they really are not a big threat, but she is very likely going to be installed in the office. And she not only vows to continue the ruinous and murderous policies of the current president, but she is going to double down. She wants more war, and more ground troops, more expansion,” he added.
“It just shows the kind of crazed narcissism of the American political elite,” he said.
“I don’t know. Her stupidity, or pathology or mendacity or just plain evil emanates from one or more fallacies that are either obvious or deliberate or probably both, and one of these is that the US is a non-actor in this terrorist war on the Syrian state, or they are just trying to help or watching it happen when they in fact are the main actor, funding these groups openly and covertly both the terrorists and what they call the moderate terrorists or whatever,” the analyst noted.
“So to say this we are going to fight this without tackling the central notion which is that you’re trying to overthrow a government, is complete nonsense,” he observed.
“The broader picture is that they have to distance themselves from the overall concept of US foreign policy going back decades that you can fund these terrorist death squads projects through a whole range of schemes, literally scores of countries over the years to overthrow governments that you don’t like and aren’t toeing whatever line you want to be toed, and just stop funding and either looking the other way or directly allowing these connections through vassal states like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the [Persian] Gulf monarchies to do this for you or turn a blind eye because they are essentially doing your bidding. And that is what has to be changed, and it is not going to,” Welch emphasized.
He lamented how American politicians in general don't seem to understand their government's role in history, and how this affects the current crisis, with "Bernie Sanders... saying that Russia should join NATO and have a 'new NATO.' He's completely ignoring the founding doctrine of NATO, which was to 'keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.'”
The analyst fears that the people take their cue from leaders' shallow view of history, which bodes ill for any prospect for change. "It's amazing how American politicians and therefore the American people themselves, therefore, are so ignorant about their own foreign policy and their own political history and their role in the geopolitical arena. It's quite crazy and disturbing."