Islam Times - US war against Daesh was cover to undermine Syrian government

Islam Times - The US military intervention in Syria to fight the Daesh terrorist group was a cover for removing the government of President Bashar al-Assad, an American analyst in Virginia says.

“The way that the United States got involved in Syria was simply by sending troops to Syria ostensibly under the guise of fighting the Daesh, or ISIS as they’re called here,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.

“In reality the objective was to undermine the regime of President Assad,” Preston said.

“The Americans were not trying to defeat the Daesh per say; they may have been interested in controlling the spread of the Daesh to certain regions; for example they didn’t want the Daesh to spread to Israel or to states that were aligned with the United States,” he added.

The US general in charge of special operations forces has cautioned against talk of "winning" against the Daesh terrorist group in Syria, contradicting President Donald Trump’s claim that the group had been defeated.

General Raymond Thomas, who heads US Special Operations Command, made the comments earlier this month during a US Senate hearing after lawmakers asked him what winning in Syria would look like.

"I'd be hesitant to use the term winning, as opposed to the objective," Thomas told the Senate’s Armed Services Committee.

Trump declared victory over Daesh in December, saying the US had "beaten them badly" and "won". He also announced he would withdraw the 2,000 or so American troops -- most of them special forces commandos -- from Syria.

Since Trump's announcement, US officials have rejected the idea of a clear victory over Daesh, stressing the group will remain indefinitely as an insurgency after they have lost control of the area they once claimed.

Trump’s announcement resulted in the resignation of Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Washington’s anti-Daesh coalition envoy Brett McGurk and Pentagon chief of staff Rear Admiral Kevin Sweeney, who disapproved of the president's decision.

The US deployed troops and equipment to Syria in 2014 as part of a Washington-led coalition purportedly fighting Daesh without authorization from the Damascus government.

The terror group is widely reported to be financed by Saudi Arabia and partially trained and protected by American forces in Syria to support the terror campaign against the Syrian government and ordinary citizens.

Iran and Russia, on the other hand, have been respectively lending military advisory support and aerial backup to the Syrian military in its battle against those groups.