“He has taken the mask off the Democratic Party which likes to pretend it differs from the Cheneyite wing of the Republican Party,” former US Army Major and historian Todd Pierce said.
Pierce said Obama’s policies of supporting Syrian rebels, including Nusra Front, were identical to those followed by defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton when she was US secretary of state and to the discredited neoconservatives who supported her.
“If one scrutinizes the support given to… Clinton in the recent election by Republicans, it can be seen as coming from the most extreme radical elements of neoconservatives such as Eliot Cohen and Robert Kagan, the Project for a New American Century junta which took us into the Iraq War,” Pierce argued.
Pierce warned that the neocons were currently seeking a pretext for going to war against Russia and Iran.
The neocons also recognized that US President-elect Donald Trump wanted to avoid conflict with Russia, he added.
“They see Trump as less enthusiastic for that than they require and perhaps strong enough to buck the system which now requires perpetual war and military expansionism,” Pierce suggested.
Obama had followed the neocon agenda and had waged clandestine wars since 2009 but had wanted to leave the mission of directly attacking Syria to Clinton, whom he expected and wanted to succeed him as US president, Pierce said.
“But with her failure to win election… and Trump perhaps untrustworthy to wage war in Syria, Obama had to take his mask off and become the full blown militarist that Clinton and her neoconservative combine are and try and topple Assad before he leaves office,” Pierce explained.
Robert Naiman, policy director at Just Foreign Policy, agreed that Obama’s announcement of his arms supply policy to the Syrian rebels was just an extension of his previous consistent support for them.
“This doesn't appear to be a big shift to me. It seems to be mainly about the Syrian Kurds and the campaign to take Raqaa,” he said.
If possible, Obama would certainly like to finish the Raqaa campaign before he leaves office, Naiman explained.
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