Donald Trump said during his inauguration that he would defeat ISIS. This means Trump was ready to continue the known legacy of his predecessors—fighting sham terrorism. With less than 90 days in office, Trump is proving that he is willing to use all available force to achieve his objective.
Due to the push against ISIS by the United States-led coalition in Syria and Iraq, more civilians are dying. In the month of March, over 120 civilian casualty events from the United States-coalition were recorded across Syria and Iraq. These attacks resulted in the deaths of over 1,200 civilians. The majority of the deaths occurred in the cities of Raqqa (Syria) and Mosul (Iraq) where ISIS fighters are very active.
The high civilian death toll is leading many to question whether the United States military has loosened the rules of engagement that seek to limit civilian casualties. The Pentagon maintains the rules have not changed.
As the carnage continues against civilians in Syria and Iraq, on March 22, the Trump administration assembled all countries involved in the coalition against ISIS in Washington D.C. Currently, there are 68 countries in the coalition. The coalition includes Middle Eastern countries, with the majority of them allied to the United States.
All top officials of the coalition gathered at the State Department in Washington D.C. to listen to what Trump and his administration had to say. When it became apparent that ISIS had seized territories in Iraq and Syria in 2014, it was the United States who proposed and championed for the coalition to be set up against the group.
This makes the United States very influential regarding all decisions and procedures in the coalition. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson addressed the foreign ministers and senior leaders of the coalition who attended the conference.
Before the meeting, the State Department said the conference would allow the coalition to have a detailed discussion of priorities for the Coalition’s multiple lines of effort, including military, foreign terrorist fighters, counterterrorist financing, counter-messaging, and stabilization of liberated areas to increase the momentum of the campaign against ISIS.
The department also mentioned that the meeting will discuss the ongoing humanitarian crisis’ in Iraq and Syria that are affecting the whole of the Middle East.
Based on these, many were expecting the conference to bring some form of relief to civilians living in places badly affected by coalition airstrikes and bombardments.
But when Secretary Tillerson took to the podium to speak, it was pure disappointment. In fact, there weren’t any discussions. The United States gathered the coalition to dictate to member-countries. Commentators have described the meeting as fruitless as it did not serve any purpose.
The coalition left Washington more confused than when they arrived. The confusion is due to the perception that the Trump administration had conjured hope about having an awesome secret plan no one will see coming.
Tillerson told his Middle Eastern allies that the United States is determined and committed to destroying ISIS. He continued that the United States would play the lead role in the military operation to eliminate ISIS.
After saying this, Tillerson was quick to add unequivocally that the United States would only bear the cost of the military operation against ISIS, and that after ISIS is defeated, the United States wouldn’t care how those affected would rebuild their nations.
Tillerson said in plain message: “We are not in the business of nation-building or reconstruction.” To prove that the United States is more interested in destroying than building, Tillerson said the Trump administration is satisfied with the current formula of providing in Iraq and Syria, 75 percent of the military resources and 25 percent of humanitarian and stabilization support.
Do you now see why there are serious humanitarian disasters in Syria and Iraq? The United States only cares about the military operation against ISIS. It has no plan for civilians.
On March 17, when the coalition struck a building in Western Mosul that housed displaced civilians, resulting in the death of over 200 of them, the Iraqi Vice President, Osama al-Nujaifi, who visited the scene of the strike, said the coalition led by the United States is using excessive force without priority to saving civilian lives.
An important note we should take is that if even the coalition drives ISIS out of Raqqa and Mosul, it would not end the terrorist group. ISIS is capable of regrouping and retaking those territories again. Therefore, if the United States does not care about reconstruction and sustaining the peace in the area, what is the need for engaging in the military operation in the first place? The war on terror is about the military industrial complex – making the elites rich, while innocent people continue to bear the brunt.
This article (United States to Middle Eastern Allies: ‘We Can’t Help You Build, Our Job is to Kill and Destroy’) is a free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.
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