{"id":41701,"date":"2018-12-15T20:50:26","date_gmt":"2018-12-16T01:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=41701"},"modified":"2018-12-15T20:50:26","modified_gmt":"2018-12-16T01:50:26","slug":"us-commits-to-indefinite-occupation-of-syria-controls-region-the-size-of-croatia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=41701","title":{"rendered":"US Commits To “Indefinite” Occupation Of Syria; Controls Region The Size Of Croatia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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US Commits To “Indefinite” Occupation Of Syria; Controls Region The Size Of Croatia<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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“We don’t want the Americans. It’s occupation”\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u2014\u00a0<\/em>a Syrian resident in\u00a0US-controlled Raqqa told\u00a0Stars and Stripes\u00a0<\/em>military newspaper. This as the Washington Post noted<\/a> this week that\u00a0“U.S. troops will now stay in Syria indefinitely, controlling a third of the country and facing peril on many fronts.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

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US forces in Syria, via ABC News<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like the “forever war” in Afghanistan, will we be having the same discussion over the indefinite occupation of Syria stretching two decades from now? A new unusually frank assessment in\u00a0Stars and Stripes\u00a0<\/em>bluntly lays out the basic facts concerning the White House decision to “stay the course” until the war’s close<\/a>:<\/p>\n

That decision puts U.S. troops in overall control, perhaps indefinitely, of an area comprising nearly a third of Syria, a vast expanse of mostly desert terrain roughly the size of Louisiana<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon does not say how many troops are there. Officially, they number 503, but earlier this year an official let slip that the true number may be closer to 4,000<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A prior\u00a0New Yorker<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>piece described the US-occupied area east of the Euphrates as “an area about the size of Croatia<\/strong>.” With no Congressional vote, no\u00a0public debate, and not even so much as an official presidential address to\u00a0the nation, the United States is settling in for another endless occupation of sovereign foreign soil while relying on the\u00a0now very familiar\u00a0post-911 AUMF<\/a>\u00a0fig leaf of “legality”.<\/p>\n

Like\u00a0the American public and even some Pentagon officials of late\u00a0have been pointing out\u00a0for years regarding Afghanistan, do US forces on the ground even know what the mission is? The mission may be undefined and remain ambiguously to “counter Iran”, yet the dangers and potential for major loss in blood and treasure loom larger than ever.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US Commits To “Indefinite” Occupation Of Syria; Controls Region The Size Of Croatia “We don’t want the Americans. It’s occupation”\u00a0\u2014\u00a0a Syrian resident in\u00a0US-controlled Raqqa told\u00a0Stars and Stripes\u00a0military newspaper. This as the Washington Post noted this week that\u00a0“U.S. troops will now stay in Syria indefinitely, controlling a third of the country and facing peril on many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[441,6939,23512,620,23511,776,827,862,5228,4318],"class_list":["post-41701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-iran","tag-occupation","tag-occupying-forces","tag-pentagon","tag-raqqa","tag-syria","tag-united-states","tag-war","tag-washington-post","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41702,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41701\/revisions\/41702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}