Post-ISIL U.S. Bases Are Bad News

Date: 16 July 2017 - 21:00

News ID: ۴۱۸۱۷

By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

The volatile region of the Middle East has had enough of U.S. wars, illegal invasions and troublesome military bases.
Last thing post-ISIL Iraq and Syria need is seeing the White House issue a statement calling on Congress to grant President Trump unilateral legal authority to open new military bases in the Levant, as well as to renovate existing facilities.
The political class in Washington is taking us for fools claiming the bases would be purely temporary in nature. For the U.S. empire of bases and chaos nothing is temporary. They have waged an endless war on terror and they keep telling us it’s permanent. They need bases from which to attack these imaginary terrorists which renders them permanent too.
Here, what "temporary” actually means is clear, particularly in Iraq where the Pentagon regime has been very public about the idea that they intend to keep U.S. ground troops in Iraq more or less forever. Those bases, then, are going to be open-ended facilities for an open-ended mission. That includes Syria as well.
The establishment of bases, particularly in Syria, is illegal, since the US doesn’t have any permission from the Syrian government to be there in the first place, and the appearance of the Pentagon laying down roots, however temporary they claim them to do, could be very provocative to Syria, and its allies Iran and Russia.
There is plenty of appetite for a new war in Washington, mostly within the Congress and the Senate. There’s so much eagerness in expanding the war that no one wants to put down on paper what the limits of the post-ISIL policy will be.
The Pentagon is quietly transforming its empire of over 1,000 military installations to maintain global dominance, including dozens of bases in every Persian Gulf country save Iran, and in Central Asian countries critical to the war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
U.S. officials are hoping these bases will entrench their influence and keep regional countries within an American orbit - at a time when some are asserting their independence. Experience tells us, however, that military bases only guarantee collaboration with terrorist groups and despotic regimes; hence, generating public anger and protests, as well as anti-U.S. sentiments and attacks.
Experience also tells us that the proliferation of new bases will simply militarize large swaths of Iraq and Syria. It will heighten tensions with neighbors and could even lead to new conflicts.