Islam Times - US Strike on Syrian Forces: ‘Aggression Masquerading as Self-defense’

Islam Times - Investigative journalist Rick Sterling said that we can’t trust anything Washington says; the US-led coalition claims its primary goal in Syria is to fight Daesh but is attacking the dominant force fighting the terrorist group.

The US-led coalition inside Syria said that it destroyed pro-government forces that entered the so-called 'de-confliction zone' established around a coalition training facility.
In a statement, it said: “Despite previous warnings, pro-regime forces entered the agreed-upon de-confliction zone with a tank, artillery, anti-aircraft weapons, armed technical vehicles and more than 60 soldiers posing a threat to coalition and partner forces based at the al-Tanf Garrison.,”
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday that such zones were different from 'de-escalation zones,' which Russia, Turkey, and Iran are in the process of establishing with the full support of the United Nations Security Council and the government of Syria.
He added that Moscow rejected US justification for the attack, saying it does not recognize any 'de-confliction zone' declared by the US unilaterally.
Former US Army judge advocate, Todd Pierce agrees that the US can’t justify strikes in a foreign state where they haven’t been invited. He said: “They entirely depend upon people being gullible enough to accept that idea that [the US] is there legally instead of illegally – which we are. Hence, there is no justification for us being there.”
To understand the situation better, everything should be put in context, Pierce said and added: “That goes back to 2003 with the Iraq invasion. And out of that, as we know, came the birth of ISIS – out of our detention prisoner camps…As General Wesley Clark has said, we had a plan from the very beginning, right after 9/11, to destroy seven Arab countries. And we’re now on what – on number three or number four? So the point about why we’re in that particular place - because it’s on Syrian territory, but near the Iraqi border, but also near Iran -answers a big part of the question.”
According to Pierce, the US is using “salami tactics” in Syria, and added: “We’re slicing off a piece here and piece there and expanding our territory, and anyone who approaches, even though they have a legal right to be there – as the Assad forces - we’re deeming them to be the enemy and threatening to us. So that we don’t get this dislodged from that point.”
According to Michael Maloof, a former Pentagon official, the US intends to remain in the area and commenting on how Washington is defining the 'de-confliction zone,' he said: “It’s probably an area where they occupy, and it’s hopefully meant to be some kind of a safe zone. But in this case, it’s really meant to be an area where they are training, where they have their own forces and also to basically take over territory that they can ultimately use in the future as a bargaining chip with the government of Syria. The intent is not to preserve the government of Bashar Assad; the US intends, in my view, to actually occupy that eastern part of Syria, whether it’s at al-Tanf or up in the Kurdish area in order to maintain perhaps a semi-permanent base, particularly for a post-war stabilization effort.”
He added that the US “is not doing all of this just to go in and then leave again as they did in Iraq. “I think there is an intention to stay,” adding that it’s done without permission of the Syrian government. “This is something that politically is going to have to be dealt with at very high levels between the US, Russia, and Syria.”