Thread by @usacsmret

This is a must read if you want to understand the situation in Syria
The Four A’s of American Policy Failure in Syria | The American Conservative theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-f… via @amconmag

@amconmag Afghanistan, represents the epitome of covert American meddling in regional affairs—Operation Cyclone, the successful CIA-run effort to arm and equip anti-communist rebels in Afghanistan to confront the Soviet Army from 1979 to 1989.

@amconmag The success of the Afghanistan experience helped shape an overly optimistic assessment by the administration of President Barack Obama that a similarly successful effort could be had in Syria by covertly training and equipping anti-Assad rebels.

@amconmag Adana hosted a meeting between Turkish and Syrian officials in October 1998 to craft a diplomatic solution to the problem presented by forces belonging to the Kurdish People’s Party, or PKK, who were carrying out attacks inside Turkey from camps located within Syria.

@amconmag The resulting agreement, known as the Adana Agreement, helped prevent a potential war between Turkey and Syria by formally recognizing the respective sovereignty and inviolability of their common border.

@amconmag Ankara—is perhaps the most crucial when it comes to understanding the demise of the American position in Syria.
In September 2019, Ankara played host to a summit between Erdogan, Putin, and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani.

@amconmag Russia backed Turkey’s demand for a security corridor along the Turkish-Syrian border, and accepted Ankara’s characterization of the American-backed Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) as “terrorists.”

@amconmag In the mainstream media there is only a skewed version of reality, which portrays the American military presence in Syria as part and parcel of a noble alliance between the U.S. and the Kurdish SDF to confront the ISIS scourge.

@amconmag This ignores the reality that the U.S. has been committed to regime change in Syria since 2011, and that the fight against ISIS was merely a sideshow to this larger policy objective.

@amconmag “Assad must go.” Those three words have defined American policy on Syria since they were first alluded to by President Obama in an official White House statement released in August 2011.

@amconmag Obama turned to the CIA to undertake an Afghanistan-like arming of Syrian rebels to accomplish on the ground what could not be around a table in Geneva.

@amconmag The CIA took advantage of Turkish animosity toward Syria in the aftermath of suppression of anti-Syrian government demonstrations in 2011 to funnel massive quantities of military equipment, weapons, and ammunition from Libya to Turkey, ...

@amconmag ...where they were used to arm a number of anti-Assad rebels operating under the umbrella of the so-called “Free Syrian Army,” or FSA.

@amconmag In 2013 the CIA took direct control of the arm and equip program, sending teams to Turkey and Jordan to train the FSA. This effort, known as Operation Timber Sycamore, was later supplemented with a Dept of Defense program to provide anti-tank weapons to the Syrian opposition.

@amconmag American efforts to create a viable armed opposition ultimately failed, with many of the weapons and equipment eventually falling into the hands of radical jihadist groups aligned with al-Qaeda and, later, ISIS.

@amconmag The emergence of ISIS as a regional threat in 2014 led to the U.S. building ties with Syrian Kurds as an alternative vector for implementation of its Syrian policy objectives.

@amconmag While the fight against ISIS was real, it was done in the context of the American occupation of fully one third of Syria’s territory, including oil fields and agricultural resources.

@amconmag As recently as January 2019, the U.S. was justifying the continued presence of forces in Syria as a means of containing the Iranian presence there; the relationship with the SDF and Syrian Kurds was little more than a front to facilitate this policy.

@amconmag Turkish incursion into Syria is the direct manifestation of the four A’s that define the failure of American policy in Syria—Afghanistan, Astana, Adana and Ankara. It represents the victory of Russian diplomacy over American force of arms.

@amconmag This is a hard pill for most Americans to swallow, which is why many are busy crafting a revisionist history that both glorifies and justifies failed American policy by wrapping it in the flag of our erstwhile Kurdish allies.

@amconmag Obama's misadventure in Syria was never going to end well—bad policy never does. But at least our forces left Syria alive, and not inside body bags, which was an all too real alternative had they remained to face the overwhelming forces of geopolitical reality in transition.

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