A powerful foreign lobby and elements of the American deep state are working to prevent Washington from pulling troops out of Iraq and Syria, Richard Black, a former Republican senator in the Virginia Senate, has told Sputnik.
“The Israeli lobby is powerful, and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu fiercely opposes any such US withdrawal,” Black explained.
“Even if he wanted to withdraw, [President] Biden [would face] resistance from the entrenched foreign policy establishment that could prevent his exit, just as they blocked President Trump from carrying out his plan to exit Syria,” the former lawmaker added, referring to efforts by members of Trump’s administration including former Pentagon chief James Mattis, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former National Security Advisor John Bolton to undermine the president’s Syria orders.
“Survival of the Kurdish SDF is solely dependent on American might. It will dissolve once the American occupation ends,” Black added, commenting on the US-backed Kurdish-led militia force in de facto control over the oil and food rich-regions of northeast Syria, which the Damascus government needs desperately for reconstruction.
The US occupation of Syria and American troops’ presence in Iraq are part of a global problem, Black said. “DoD is overstretched across the globe,” he said. Meanwhile, “our soldiers have been taught critical race theory, making them distrustful of one another,” he added. Black also noted that as the US continues to “squander” billions of dollars on conflicts in far-off Ukraine and Gaza, America’s own borders have been left “open” to “foreign invasion” by illegal immigrants.
“These deficiencies and shortages provide powerful incentives for Biden to withdraw from Syria and Iraq, but doing so is difficult, even for a determined president,” Black stressed.
Black, 79, served as a member of the Virginia Senate between 2012 and 2020, and before that as a member from the state’s House of Delegates from 1998-2006. The Republican former military officer and Army lawyer made headlines in 2014 after sending a letter to Syrian President Bashar Assad thanking the Syrian Army for its “heroic rescue of Christians in the Qalamoun Mountain Range” as part of government forces’ operations against jihadist militants backed by the US and its regional allies. Black’s name ended up on IS’s* enemies list in 2015. Black traveled to Syria in 2016 on a goodwill visit aimed at debunking the Western narrative regarding the CIA dirty war against the Middle Eastern nation.
Damascus has repeatedly called on all US forces operating in Syria to vacate the country, emphasizing that they were not invited and that their pretext for being there (preventing an IS* resurgence) is a sham. Last week, the Iraqi government and US forces began talks aimed at bringing the US-led mission in the country to an end following Washington’s air strike assassination of a senior pro-Baghdad militia leader last December.
* ISIS (also known as ISIL/IS) is a terrorist group banned in Russia.