The Russians are coming!

By Eric Margolis

"The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!”  So echoed the cry this week from the Pentagon, the US media and  Republican candidates for president.

How silly.  It seems the Russians have sent six tanks to Syria, some medium artillery and a bunch of military technicians to two bases on Syria’s coast near Latakia.   According to Republican warmongers, the wicked Soviets…ooops, sorry, Russians…are intervening militarily in the five-year old Syrian War and planning new bases in the strategic Mideast nation.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.  The United States has about 800 bases and military installations around the globe. Russia has only a handful of small bases near its borders.
The exception is in Syria where Russia has had a small naval supply/repair facility in Tartus and an electronic listening post for almost 50 years.  Moscow has long been Syria’s principal foreign ally and arms supplier.

While the US ruled almost the entire Mideast – what I call the American Raj – Syria was regarded as a limited  Soviet/Russian sphere of influence.   No more.

Washington ignited Syria’s civil war by infiltrating anti-government forces from Lebanon and Jordan.  Over the past five years, the US, along with Israel, France, Britain and Saudi Arabia, has armed, financed and directed Syria’s anti-Assad regime rebels.  The Saudis unleashed their secret weapon against Damascus, the Syrian-Iraqi Islamic State movement.

The West’s objective in Syria was to overthrow its government, because it is closely allied to Iran, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Russia.  President Bashar Assad’s secular government in Damascus is just managing to hold off the rebels and mobs of fanatical jihadists sent by the Saudis and Washington – which pretends to be fighting the Islamic state. In fact, the Islamic State, or IS, is a tacit American ally.

Read the rest here