"Terrorist Organization" Means Whatever The United States Wants It To Mean

"Terrorist Organization" Means Whatever The United States Wants It To Mean

Dec. 10, 2024

U.S. and ISRAEL IMPERIALISM - FOLLOW THE MONEY

Caitlin Johnstone

The U.S. government is simultaneously (A) preparing to remove from its list of designated terrorist organizations the group which led the charge to oust Bashar al-Assad in Syria and (B) justifying Israel’s land grab in Syria by saying the nation has been taken over by terrorists.

The U.S. government is simultaneously (A) justifying Israel’s land grab in Syria by saying the nation has been taken over by terrorists, and (B) talking about removing those same forces from its list of designated terrorist organizations.

The U.S. podium people have pivoted seamlessly from celebrating the liberation of the Syrian people in the removal of Assad to citing the fact that the nation is now overrun with terrorist factions in defense of Israel’s rapid move to militarily occupy large swathes of Syrian land while hammering Syria with hundreds of airstrikes.

At a Monday press conference, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said these moves by Israel “are temporary to defend its borders” and that Assad’s ouster “potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations that would threaten the state of Israel and would threaten civilians inside Israel.”

“Every country has the right to take action against terrorist organizations,” Miller added.

During a Tuesday press conference Miller further clarified the U.S. position on Israel’s land grab, saying, “What precipitated their move into the buffer zone was the withdrawal of the Syrian armed forces, which, as I said yesterday, creates potentially a vacuum that could be filled by any one of the numerous terrorist organizations that continue to operate inside Syria that have sworn to the destruction of the state of Israel.”

During the same Tuesday press conference Miller also stated that “there is no legal barrier to us speaking to a designated terrorist group” such as HTS, the group which led the run on Damascus whose leader has been an official in both ISIS and al-Qaeda.

And as it happens the U.S. government has now taken a sudden interest in removing HTS from its listing as a designated terrorist organization, with Politico reporting that there is now “a furious debate playing out in Washington” as to whether or not the group should be removed from the list immediately. Somehow I doubt the debate is actually all that “furious”.

So according to one narrative Syria has been liberated by brave freedom fighters and that’s wonderful, but according to another concurrent narrative Israel obviously needs to invade Syria because the nation has just been taken over by evil terrorists, and by yet another concurrent narrative those evil terrorists aren’t evil terrorists anymore because they’re going to be running a U.S. puppet regime.

Reading by Tim Foley

Article with supporting links: https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/12/11/terrorist-organization-means-whatever-the-us-wants-it-to-mean/

Original: https://youtu.be/bbHcsSENdGM

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