Do not believe a word you have heard from the Pentagon and the White House about the “success” of the cruise missile strikes on Syria. A fraud is being perpetrated on the American people, and the men wearing stars on their shoulders have dishonored themselves by going along with it.
If you could sit in the Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, if you could talk to the officers working for CENTCOM away from the microphones and the press releases, you would hear something very different from what the networks are telling you. You would hear disgust. Shock. Anger. And I’m talking about people who supported Trump, who wanted him to succeed, who believed he might be different from the rest of the permanent war party.
They watched him claim “Mission Accomplished” and wanted to throw up.
Let me give you what they know, what the carefully scripted briefings left out.
First, the attack was fully coordinated with the Russians. Not deconflicted after the fact. Coordinated beforehand. The United States told Russia exactly where we were going to strike. Russia told Syria. By the time the Tomahawks launched, the targets were empty. Personnel evacuated. Equipment moved. The whole thing was a performance for the cameras, not a military operation.
General Dunford stood at the podium and played word games about it. “Normal deconfliction,” he called it. The same line we’ve used for three years of daily communication with the Russians to keep our aircraft from shooting each other down. But normal deconfliction doesn’t include handing over target lists. That’s something else entirely. That’s coordination. That’s telling the enemy what you’re about to hit so they can get out of the way.
Why would we do that? Because the alternative is risking a real confrontation with a real air defense system. Because the Russians have capabilities that make our pilots very, very nervous. Because for all the tough talk on television, the people actually flying these missions know what they’re up against.
Second, the missiles didn’t get through. Over half of them were shot down. The Russians and Syrians claimed more than seventy. The Pentagon says that’s propaganda. But the officers at the CAOC know differently. They saw the tracks disappear. They did the battle damage assessments. They know that the gleaming footage of launches from ships and bombers was not matched by footage of things actually blowing up.
General Mattis knew it too. That’s why he closed his press conference by warning about a “significant disinformation campaign” from those aligned with Assad. He was setting the table, inoculating the public against the truth. Anything you hear that contradicts the official story is propaganda. Don’t believe your own eyes. Don’t trust the evidence. Just trust us.
Third, the Russians are not the second-rate military the blowhards on Fox would have you believe. Retired General Jack Keane stands at a map and tells the audience that Russia has limited capability, that they won’t shoot at our airplanes, that it’s all bluster and talk.
The pilots flying over Syria know different. They’ve trained against Russian systems. They’ve studied Russian tactics. They’ve watched what Russian air superiority fighters can do. And they are scared shitless at the prospect of a real engagement with a Su-30.
Keane confuses restraint with weakness. The Russians have a clear strategy in Syria: defeat the rebels, preserve the Syrian state, achieve their objectives without getting drawn into a war with the United States. That’s not weakness. That’s discipline. That’s professionalism. And assuming it will continue indefinitely is a dangerous, potentially deadly error.
One of these days, Trump or his handlers will overplay their hand. They’ll assume the Russians will keep absorbing punches without hitting back. They’ll launch another round of missiles, maybe at something the Russians actually care about. And they’ll discover, too late, that the air defense systems surrounding Russian bases make our Patriot batteries look like Nerf guns.
That discovery will not be televised. It will not be spun. It will be measured in wreckage and bodies.
The Russians have held their cards close. They haven’t mounted a major PR campaign to expose our lies about the missile strikes. They’re playing the long game, waiting for us to make a mistake. And we will, because we always do. Because our leaders believe their own propaganda. Because men like Keane confuse talk with action and restraint with fear.
When that mistake comes, the American people will be in for a rude awakening. They’ll discover that the military they’ve been told is invincible has real vulnerabilities. They’ll discover that the Russians have been ahead in air defense technology since the 1950s and we’ve never caught up. They’ll discover that all the slogans and flags and “mission accomplished” moments were just theater.
By then, it will be too late. The damage will be done. And the men who lied to us will be on television explaining why it wasn’t their fault.
