Set it off: How US invasion of Iraq led to chaos in Syria today

If a time traveler from 2024 landed in the Middle East of say 40 years ago, with the intent of revealing the future, he might not be believed.

He'd tell how the stalwart regimes of Qaddafi, Saddam, and the Assad dynasty were gone, their former countries now embroiled in some gradation of security chaos, state failure, or chronic political dysfunction. Egypt survives as a sort of U.S. client state, saved by American do-nothingism from the democratic possibilities of the Arab Spring.

When asked how all this could have happened, he'd explain that much of it had to do with the United States and its invasion of Iraq in 2003 — the destruction of a comparatively stable (but "evil" ; they're all evil) regime that turned out to be the linchpin holding most of the whole Sykes-Picot world together.

That invasion began a process of inviting all comers to take hold of a piece of Iraq and see how far they might get with it. Many of the same ISIS and former al-Qaeda elements that now stand athwart Syria (and will no doubt soon be fighting each other for control there) almost grabbed the entire country of Iraq after the U.S.-trained and equipped post-Saddam Iraqi army ran from the field. The country was left for the Iranians to then take the reins, fashioning it into a client state after the U.S. cut its losses by cooperating with Iran to wipe out most of ISIS (which was created amid the remnants of Al Qaeda, destroyed by U.S.) in Iraq and abandoning the Kurds who had foolishly believed the U.S. owed them a nation-state after all this.

American hubris then led to the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. But the much ballyhooed NATO bombing and Western-backed revolt of sorts ended up doing little more than creating a failed state in the fragile region. Pundits saw it, as they will wrongly see the fall of Syria, as a blow to Russian ambitions in the region, not calculating the negative value of unleashing chaos in a region consumed by the Iranian-U.S./Israeli proxy war and middle power politics in the Horn of Africa. Russia, by the way, is still fussing around there, to the consternation of the West.

As a side note, watching Qaddafi being sodomized on TV after he gave up his nuclear weapons assured the world North Korea would never do the same. But that's another world away…

Nobody is going to miss the Assad dynasty. Bashar's father and the family ran Syria since a 1970 coup. Assad initially portrayed himself as a modern reformist, but he responded to peaceful protests during the Arab Spring (a multinational uprising against despots across the Middle East that had more than not used the U.S. “Global War on Terror” to oppress their own populations) with brutal crackdowns, sparking a civil war there (with ISIS and U.S.-backed Islamist militias joining the fray to overthrow Assad) in 2011. His notorious prisons are now being emptied of political prisoners, many of whom have endured unspeakable torture for years. Bodies are still being discovered.

As with Iraq being left open for anyone who wanted a piece of it and could find a way to hold it, Syria is going to dissolve. Israel already grabbed snippets of territory this week to round out its border, and destroyed the Syrian navy, rocket and chemical stores, and much of its air force. Unlike in 2012, when Hezbollah came to Assad’s rescue against insurgents, Hezbollah today has few shock troops available to help.

Turkey, which many believe is at some level behind the current Islamist takeover of the country, sees renewed opportunity to rid itself of the Kurdish independence movement over its own border in Syria, setting up violent clashes with the U.S.-backed Syrian Defense Forces in the northeastern part of the country. Surprise, that is where all the oil is, too. Will the U.S. abandon the Kurds yet again?

So what's left is to see what America has to say. There are 900 American soldiers on the ground today in Syria, and U.S. warplanes are flying bombing missions ostensibly against ISIS — which actually in the near-past indirectly helped Assad (strange bedfellows and all that.) Had all this happened a year ago, when Joe Biden was still nominally in charge of the U.S. military, you might have seen some sort of intervention, more of a blocking move really, to keep the Islamist factions from uniting, to limit their success or at least slow it down, and to interdict any Iranian help arriving from the east.

But Joe Biden is no longer really in charge of anything. He used up his Commander-in-Chief goodwill on two ugly proxy interventions, fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian and of course supporting Israel in Gaza. A year — or more realistically two or three years — ago Joe might have made the case for either direct involvement in Syria or hitching the old bull of America more directly to another proxy, maybe the beleaguered Kurds who still want a piece of Syria for their own. As it stands, Joe lacks the political oomph to do any of that in his final days in office and good riddance.

Frankly, we are in no position (and have no wherewithal) to take advantage of the situation in a positive way. This will be in spite of mustering faith that the lead Islamist faction — HTS — has moderation on its mind. Any future expedient rehabilitation of the Syrian terrorists seems analogous to the disingenuous glow up granted the Ukrainian neo-Nazi militias and risks having the same result, no doubt.

Incoming president Donald Trump has made it clear he wants no part of a war in Syria (and is not too enamored with continuing the one in Ukraine, either.) He tried in Term 1.0 to withdraw American forces from Syria and failed, and will likely try early on in Term 2.0 to pull them out. It would be the right thing to do and likely engender wide support.

If most of that does not come true, expect another failed state in the heart of the Middle East. But it is too early to call out all of the near-future moves on the chessboard. Will HTS actually succeed in forming some sort of united, central government, to keep the wolves away? Will Turkey or its proxy in Syria move against the Kurds and will the U.S. protect them or cede the territory? Turkey is the current winner in this struggle, having eliminated its southern enemy in Assad. Russia appears to be out of the game, leaving its strategic naval and airbases there in question.

That leaves Iran, set back on its heels with the fall of Assad but by no means no longer a player. Iran could choose a side in the militia struggle, or it could pull back to lick its wounds, having also lost the power of Hezbollah in the same month.

Our Middle East time traveler would certainly leave his audience flummoxed, though honestly it is Washington that would have some explaining to do.