For decades, US imperialism and its allies have targeted the government of Syria, subjecting its people to proxy wars, bombings, and starvation and economic destruction through sanctions.

​​​​​​​Now, those very same imperialists, who are carrying out a modern day holocaust in Gaza are celebrating the collapse of the Assad government in Syria and its replacement by the Turkish backed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the direct dissident of the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda. Never any friend of the peoples of Syria, the US-Israel war machine is celebrating this change in government by carrying out a massive military campaign.

While celebrating the new regime (in classic US fashion, headed by someone they once considered a terrorist), in the days immediately following the collapse of the Assad government, the US bombed 75 sites across Syria, while Israel, already occupying the Syrian Golan Heights, pushed its tanks further into the Syrian territory, and carried out a massive bombing campaign. The 480+ Israeli airstrikes laid waste to what was left of the Syrian Air Force and Navy, delivering a clear message: no matter who sits in Damascus, the US-Israel war machine is calling the shots.

Meanwhile HTS’s direct patron, Turkey, a NATO ally of the US imperialists, has stepped up its direct and proxy assaults on Rojava, the autonomous Kurdish region of Syria, and seems intent on continuing to sow division and chaos in Syria to stomp out the Kurdish national liberation struggle. Intensive fighting has renewed between the various armed groups, while civil unrest is breaking out in some of the major city centers. Even as the Assad governments prisons have been opened, HTS and their allies are unleashing vicious sectarian violence on the streets of Syria, and the new government has essentially allowed the Israeli assault on their own country to proceed without opposition. 

The wholesale destruction of the Syrian state achieves a longstanding goal of US dominance in the Middle East and North Africa. The US has stood firm in supporting the Israeli annexation and occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights, and thrashed Syria’s people with waves of sanctions. When protests against the Assad governments turned into open clashes in 2011 and 2012, the US took advantage of the situation to fund proxy forces aimed at the destruction of Syria. A WikiLeaks revelation exposed that, in 2012, national security advisor Jake Sulivan emailed Hillary Clinton that “Al Qaeda is on our side in Syria.”

What the US, Israel, and Turkey are pursuing in Syria is best described as the, “Libya option”, the playbook that the US and NATO unleashed on Libya in 2011. That bombing campaign overthrew the Gaddafi government, tearing the country apart, killing thousands in its wake, with various militias and foreign-back groups, including al-Qaeda and ISIS, vying for influence to this day. As in Syria, in LIbya the US and it’s mouthpieces used the real internal contradictions and problems within the country to generate a hypocritical discourse of human rights, justifying their bloody intervention. 

The catastrophe brought to Syria by US imperialism is the same catastrophe brought to Libya, Yemen, Lebanon, and Palestine. The butchers of Gaza can’t and won’t deliver a just future to the people of Syria. Global oppressors can’t deliver justice!