So finally the US gets what it wants: a war on Syria. But should it be a war in Syria? Either way, this is another US-led attack that violates international law and, without the consent of Congress, probably domestic law as well. Syria has warned the US against this step, just as it warned the US and its friends against backing the armed groups four years earlier. Now we see where this has led — to the growth of the self-styled Islamic State (IS) group. You can practically write your own script for what happens now. In Iraq more intense air strikes but no American “boots on the ground.” The Iraqi army in combination with the Kurdish Peshmergas will have to liberate Mosul, where IS has been entrenching itself for the past three months. A prolonged battle can be expected, with large parts of the city being destroyed and countless numbers of civilians killed. Mosul will end up looking like Aleppo and other Syrian cities. The US has given itself the right to launch a war in Syria. It has the support of the British government. UK Prime Minister David Cameron says the Syrian government is illegitimate because it has committed war crimes and that therefore military action in Syria without its consent is justified. Of course it is not. It will be a flagrant violation of international law and another example of the tearing to shreds of the 17th-century Treaty of Westphalia which was designed to ensure stability in Europe through mutual respect for borders and the principle of sovereignty of the state. What Cameron said one day was contradicted by his foreign secretary, Phillip Hammond, the next. The latter said that Britain would not take part in attacks on IS in Syria, but a few hours later Downing Street insisted that all options were open. Germany has opted out, and France says it will join the air attacks in Iraq and on Syria if asked. Turkey, the erstwhile neo-Ottoman leader of the Middle East, will provide humanitarian aid and logistical support (from the Incirlik air base near Adana) but won't take part in combat missions in Iraq or against Syria. One strong reason was that IS had been holding dozens of Turks hostage in Mosul since June, releasing them only this week. In the same week that one of its minions cut off the head of a second American, Turkey's deputy prime minister, Bulent Arinc, said the hostages were safe. How can any prisoner be safe in the hands of people who cut off heads? Turkey has handled this crisis by instructing the media not to talk about it. The game plan, as announced by US President Barack Obama, is to destroy IS in Syria while pumping up the forces of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA). Well, if Christ could raise Lazarus from the dead perhaps Obama can breathe life into the FSA. In truth, there is no FSA and it will take years to create one. They tried for four years and could not do it. Perhaps they should postpone attacking Syria for another decade or two until they really have some kind of army. The takfiris are running the armed opposition in Syria, yet the US says that as IS positions are destroyed, FSA “moderates” will fill the vacuum. The stated game plan is to fill a vacuum with an empty space. If all of this smacks of a war planned in the sunroom of an asylum consider next how the US intends to fight it. The Syrian government is not going to call off its campaign against the armed groups just because the US has intervened to save the skins of its real protégés rather than the fictive ones the American public is constantly told its government is supporting. Two hostile air forces will be bombing in the same air space, so intervention against IS is likely to end in war with Syria. Isn't this the war the US and its friends wanted all along? They funded the pool of takfiris out of which IS has arisen, and now it has opened the front door for their attack instead of the back door they have had to use thus far. The next question is where the US will attack. Logically, the first target should be Raqqa, the Syrian seat of IS, but the betting is that the US will go instead for targets around Aleppo. This is the city the invisible FSA wanted to set up as the capital of “liberated” Syria. It is close to the Turkish border and therefore is the pipeline for arms, men, money and aid in various forms. Half the city is in the hands of takfiris the US and its friends like, even if they don't admit it, but these are threatened by other takfiris the US and friends openly admit they do not like. To make sure everyone understands the difference, the US is colour-coding the takfiris: green for the ones the US and friends like, yellow for the ones in between whom they might like one day, and red for the ones they definitely don't like. The reds will be bombed until they are dead. No one expects them to decide that they prefer green or yellow. It's either red or dead for them. The greens will be protected as long as they don't cross over to the reds, and the yellows will be safe as long as they stay in between. In recent months the greens and yellows have suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of the reds, and without the intervention now planned they would soon be removed from the palette. The immediate task is to stop the red takfiris from taking over the green and yellow takfiri half of Aleppo. As the fortunes of war fluctuate, the greens might go to red and the reds to green or yellow and the yellows to either. The US is likely to end up bombing the greens, thinking they are the reds, and protecting the reds, thinking they are the greens. In any case, whichever colour the US bombs on any particular day, the Syrian military will continue to bomb the reds, greens and yellows. Aleppo will end up looking like a canvas by US artist Jackson Pollack. Both Russia and Iran waited for Obama's speech before issuing warnings against intervention. Maybe they will decide to intervene too. Russia has warships in the eastern Mediterranean close to the Syrian coast, and Iran has a standing army of more than half a million men. For the past four years these countries have watched Western governments and their regional allies turn their ally into a punching bag. How much longer can they stand by and watch this go on, irrespective of the international complications? There is a tipping point at which the Syrian war will turn into a much wider one, and open US intervention brings that point closer. Accidentally or by design, or as a mixture of both, the US and its friends created IS. Now they are pulling back in alarm because of the threat of this group to themselves. Senior military figures in the US and Britain have called for cooperation with Syria, but the politicians are not listening. This is their campaign, and like Bush, Cheney and Blair before them, they have to be held fully accountable for the consequences of what they are setting in motion. We are back in the 1930s, except with the “liberal democracies” now behaving as the fascists did then. The writer is an associate professor of Middle Eastern history and politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.
