{"id":23188,"date":"2024-01-29T01:31:40","date_gmt":"2024-01-29T07:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=23188"},"modified":"2024-01-29T01:31:44","modified_gmt":"2024-01-29T07:31:44","slug":"american-base-near-syria-jordan-border-attacked-amidst-rejection-of-us-role-in-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=23188","title":{"rendered":"American Base Near Syria-Jordan Border Attacked Amidst Rejection of US Role in Area"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The United States has been engaged in a semi-covert regime change effort in Syria for over a decade.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A US base<\/a> near the Syria-Jordan border was struck<\/a> by an overnight drone attack in the latest demonstration of widespread rejection of the United States\u2019 role in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The attack killed three US Army soldiers and injured more than 30, according to the latest reports<\/a> from US officials Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is dispute over whether the targeted US installation was in Jordan or Syria. US officials have claimed the attack hit Tower 22 in Jordan, which US media describes as a \u201csmall US outpost\u201d in the northeast of the country. Meanwhile Jordanian government spokesman Muhannad al Mubaidin told a local television channel the strike was actually against the Al-Tanf base, which hosts a substantial US military presence in Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The distinction is significant as the Syrian government and other countries consider the US presence in Syria to be illegal.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The instance is the first known time US troops have been killed in attacks targeting the country\u2019s presence in the Middle East<\/a> since US backing of Israel provoked retaliatory strikes starting in October. US strikes are thought to have produced casualties as recently as four days ago, when the White House reported that an attack on Kataib Hezbollah likely killed<\/a> several members of the militia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the United States has never formally declared war on Syria, the country has been involved in efforts to oust\u00a0President Bashar al-Assad<\/a>\u00a0for more than a decade. Here, Sputnik takes a look at the controversial US role in the country, which has\u00a0contributed<\/a>\u00a0to the death of at least half a million people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of the details surrounding the genesis of US presence in Syria are still shrouded in mystery. The intervention is thought to have begun in 2012 or 2013 as a classified program of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) known as Timber Sycamore. The program was launched by the agency\u2019s infamous Special Activities Center, a division that conducts secret paramilitary activity, psychological operations, and economic warfare without oversight from the US public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Launched at a time of mass US public opposition to unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, CIA officials hoped they could topple Syria\u2019s government through the arming and training of rebel forces in the country. Ironically, many of the militants backed by the CIA had ties<\/a> to ISIS*, a force the United States has ostensibly fought to defeat in the region. This led former US President Donald Trump to claim former President Barack Obama was the \u201cfounder of ISIS<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai has also\u00a0claimed<\/a>\u00a0ISIS is a tool of US foreign policy, claiming he cannot distinguish between the United States and ISIS. Meanwhile Israel admitted in 2019 to arming ISIS-linked Syrian rebels in its shared desire with the US to eliminate al-Assad. Ex-US State Department official Michael Maloof has claimed US foreign policy in the Middle East is oriented around eliminating Israel\u2019s enemies in Syria, Iran, and Libya, among other countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CIA\u2019s Timber Sycamore program is thought to be one of the most expensive efforts in the agency\u2019s history. It\u2019s been reported that more than $1 billion in weaponry has been sent to Syrian rebels, although the exact figure is not known. Thousands of tons of arms have been shipped<\/a> from allied US countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Al-Tanf base on the Syria-Jordan border is one of at least ten<\/a> that the United States operates in Syria without the approval of the country\u2019s government, which has ordered US forces to leave the country. Thousands of US troops have been stationed in the country and an unknown number of Special Operations Forces. The US military has worked to keep details of the US presence secret, and responded<\/a> angrily when a Turkish news agency published a map of US installations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

US politicians have typically sold the US military presence as necessary to combat ISIS, despite the country\u2019s cooperation with ISIS-linked Islamic radicals in the country. The United States has long sought to expand its presence in the oil-rich region more broadly, to the exclusion of others. The US has criticized the presence of Russian forces in the country<\/a>, who assist Syria\u2019s military at the invitation of the allied country\u2019s government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a rare moment of candor of the type that earns him opposition from members of the US intelligence community, former US President Donald Trump once\u00a0proclaimed<\/a>\u00a0the United States maintains a presence in Syria \u201conly for oil.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many observers claim the American presence in Syria is contrary to US law and the so-called \u201crules-based order<\/a>\u201d often purportedly championed by the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

US Senator Rand Paul has sought<\/a> to end the war, which he points out has never been declared by Congress in line with the US Constitution. The war\u2019s backers insist US presidents have the authority to oversee action in Syria based on the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) which gives the executive branch broad latitude in the so-called \u201cWar on Terror.\u201d Others say the AUMF itself is an unconstitutional abrogation of Congress\u2019s defined constitutional powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe United States cannot fix Syria,\u201d said Robert Ford, Obama\u2019s former ambassador to Syria, recently. \u201cYet we still have 900 troops in eastern Syria for eight years, going on nine. I\u2019m puzzled that we haven\u2019t had a national debate on what U.S. troops are doing in Syria<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to have that debate about the authorization of military force,\u201d he added. \u201cThere needs to be a definition of the mission of U.S. forces. There needs to be a set of metrics to measure their success or failure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given that the CIA\u2019s intervention in the country may have begun without even informing the US president at the time, America\u2019s decade-long presence in Syria raises questions about the sprawling US deep state\u2019s lack of accountability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sputnikglobe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The United States has been engaged in a semi-covert regime change effort in Syria for over a decade. A US base near the Syria-Jordan border was struck by an overnight drone attack in the latest demonstration of widespread rejection of the United States\u2019 role in the region. The attack killed three US Army soldiers and injured more than 30, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":23189,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1153],"tags":[1925,1461,1327,1469,7292,1462,10442],"class_list":["post-23188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-military","tag-attacks","tag-base","tag-border","tag-jordan","tag-rejection","tag-syria","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23190,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23188\/revisions\/23190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}