{"id":167115,"date":"2015-07-20T18:46:07","date_gmt":"2015-07-20T18:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-us-hand-in-the-syrian-mess\/"},"modified":"2015-07-20T18:46:07","modified_gmt":"2015-07-20T18:46:07","slug":"the-us-hand-in-the-syrian-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-us-hand-in-the-syrian-mess\/","title":{"rendered":"The US Hand in the Syrian Mess"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Exclusive:<\/strong> Neocons and the mainstream U.S. media place all the blame for the Syrian civil war on President Bashar al-Assad and Iran, but there is another side of the story in which\u00a0Syria\u2019s olive branches to the U.S. and Israel were spurned and a reckless drive for \u201cregime change\u201d followed, writes Jonathan Marshall.<\/p>\n

By Jonathan Marshall<\/p>\n

Syria\u2019s current leader, Bashar al-Assad replaced his autocratic father as president and head of the ruling Ba\u2019ath Party in 2000. Only 35 years old and British educated, he aroused widespread hopes at home and abroad of introducing reforms and liberalizing the regime. In his first year he freed hundreds of political prisoners and shut down a notorious prison, though his security forces resumed cracking down on dissenters a year later.<\/p>\n

But almost from the start, Assad was marked by the George W. Bush administration for \u201cregime change.\u201d Then, in the early years of Barack Obama\u2019s presidency, there were some attempts at diplomatic engagement, but shortly after a civil conflict broke out in 2011, the legacy of official U.S. hostility toward Syria set in motion Washington\u2019s disastrous confrontation with Assad which continues to this day.<\/p>\n

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