This obsession with Russia-gate among our liberal elites is absolutely bizarre. I lived through the later part of the Cold War, when President Reagan labeled the Soviet Union the “evil empire,” and I don’t recall this level of anti-Russian hysteria ever.

I believe that the ideology of American-exceptionalism, or more precisely, the notion that the U.S. believes it can intervene militarily anywhere in the world because it is spreading peace and democracy, is driving Russia-gate. If we’re honest, Trump is not any different from previous presidents. What’s different is that Trump’s proposals to end US regime-change policies have violated the tenets of this ideology.

Trump’s heresy particularly outrages liberals because, unlike their hero Obama, he makes it impossible to pretend that the US is a liberal democracy. They’ve also seized upon the idea that liberal supporters of “western civilization” should eschew any sort of reconciliation between the US and Russia because Trump and Putin represent authoritarian regimes. This is followed by the argument that the U.S. represents western civilization because of commitments to international agreements, regional organizations and specific allies and partners, and, most importantly, the tenets of liberal internationalism.

Set aside the dangers of a nuclear conflagration and the end of the world as we know it and focus on the logic behind this premise; that western civilization led by the US is a force for good, protecting liberal values, while Russia, led by Vladimir Putin is an evil authoritarian regime bent on world conquest.

After everything we’ve seen this century, I’m dumbstruck that anyone can make this argument. After all the death and destruction, does anyone still believe that the US is an upholder of liberal values?

Apparently.

I’ll focus on one example–Syria–to show how deceived we’ve become with regards to good and evil.

In Syria, we’ve been beset by images of children and civilians in the throes of agony because of Bashar Assad and his diabolical chemical-weapons and dastardly barrel-bombs. Syria has been condemned in the west for the bombing of civilian areas, and video footage by the White Helmets has provided constant images of dead and wounded men, women and children. And Russia, who intervened on the side of Assad and the Syrian government in 2015, is depicted as the contributor and held responsible for the savage attacks on helpless civilians.

But how much of this is true?

After 7 years of brutal fighting, the Syrian regime aided by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, have largely triumphed and the actual facts and history are coming to light. What they show is that despite the ongoing “war on terror”, the US was using the same Al Qaeda terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 to affect regime change in Syria. US planners have been fighting what the New York Times described as a “$1 Billion Secret C.I.A. War in Syria” while providing weapons to rebels through a program considered “one of the costliest covert action programs in the history of the C.I.A.” And, these “rebels” were Sunni-terrorists, Al Nusra (the official branch of Al Qaeda in Syria).

Because the US invasion of Iraq strengthened Iran, US planners welcomed rebel gains in Syria, including by rebel groups such as Al Nusra, who advocated genocide against Syria’s Alawite population, because these gains bolstered the broader US goal of toppling the Syrian government, in an effort to weaken its close allies, Iran and Hezbollah. US planners wished to see rebel gains in Syria, in spite of the obviously catastrophic consequences for Syrian civilians, including for Syria’s Sunnis, which rebel success would bring.

US support wasn’t limited to Al Nusra. At the same time that the world was recoiling from the head-chopping savagery of ISIS, the US was secretly aiding their escalations. The US preference for ISIS was explained by Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry shockingly admitted that US planners actually welcomed the ISIS push toward Damascus, which they felt they could leverage to put pressure on Assad to give up power to the US-backed opposition. The Syrian capital was on the verge of falling to the Islamic State (ISIS) in the summer of 2015 after ISIS, with the help of Al Nusra, captured all of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in the southern Damascus suburbs. Had Damascus fallen to ISIS, it is clear that many civilians in the city, including Christians, Alawites, Shiites, members of the LGBTQ community, and pro-government Sunnis, would have been killed.

Indeed, there was a long running US covert operation to use Al Nusra and other Sunni-terrorists to commit genocide and sectarian mass-murder in Syrian. This was clearly evident in the Syrian city of Latakia, which by the time of the Russian intervention in October 2015 was on the verge of falling to a coalition of Syrian rebel groups including Al Nusra and the US-armed and funded Free Syrian Army (FSA). Latakia has long been one of Syria’s safe zones, well defended by the army and its militias; there are tent cities full of people who have fled other parts of the country, including thousands from Aleppo. But in the summer of 2015, the rebels were closing in on the city limits, and mortars and rockets were falling downtown. If the rebels had captured the area — where Alawites are the majority — a result would almost certainly have been catastrophic. Robert Worth of the New York Times writes that “In Latakia, some people told me that their city might have been destroyed if not for the Russians.”

When Russia intervened militarily in Syria in October 2015, US planners responded by immediately increasing shipments of TOW anti-tank missiles to FSA groups, some of which then helped Al Nusra capture the strategic town of Murek in central Syria one month later in November 2015.

Obama administration officials themselves acknowledged tacit US support for Al Qaeda, admitting in November 2016 to the Washington Post that they had struck “a deal with the devil,” years before, “whereby the United States largely held its fire against Al Nusra because the group was popular with Syrians in rebel-controlled areas and furthered the U.S. goal of putting military pressure on Assad,” thereby confirming long standing Russian accusations that the US had been “sheltering Al Qaeda.”

What would have happened if the Russians hadn’t intervened?

Can you say Libya?

If the Sunni-terrorists, led by Al Qaeda and ISIS had prevailed in Syria there would have been massacres of Shiites, Christians, Kurds, Sunni supporters of the regime, and anyone who didn’t convert.

Lots of head chopping.

It would have been a bloodbath, but the neocons, liberal interventionists, and Zionists would have been gleeful. Hillary, or another of the bloodthirsty cohort would have been on CNN saying something like–we came we saw, he died! Syria would have been another failed state, weak and helpless exactly like the Yinon Plan envisioned, and millions more refugees would have flooded into Europe.

Going further, US support for the terrorists in Syria belies the myth of US benevolent liberal intervention, and the myth that any US intervention would be for the sake of preventing massacres and even genocide, rather than in support of it.

Tell me again how the US is a force for good?

To be fair, Bashar Assad is a dictator who’s responsible for terrible crimes, and there are numerous Syrian civilians who have legitimately protested the regime. However, these are not the people we’ve supported in our quest for regime change, a quest that dates back to 1949, by the way. No, the rebels that the US and its Gulf State allies have supported have been the Sunni-terrorists like Al Qaeda and ISIS. The number one reason is simple: Sunni-terrorists make great fighters. A close second is the fact that Sunni-terrorists can be proxies, or, if need be, patsies. This dynamic was on display in Syria, when after unleashing ISIS to affect regime change, the US turned around and used the threat of ISIS as a way to intervene in Syria.

I know. Just when you’ve hit peak cynicism there’s always another level of depravity.

In an amazing bit of synchronicity, the mastermind of this diabolical covert operation, code named Timber Sycamore, was none other that John Brennan, former CIA chief and current “Resistance” hero. Lately, Brennan has been all over TV calling Trump a traitor.

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed but that’s a pretty amazing work of projection. The fucking guy who oversaw a covert operation to overthrow a foreign government, using the same terrorist outfit who flew planes into the twin towers, is calling Trump a traitor?

The Russian intervention in Syria prevented this horrific outcome for Syrians of all ethnic and religious identities, despite the best efforts of US planners to achieve the regime change they had hoped for.

Does Russia-gate make a little more sense now?

The corporate media ignored it but in a speech before the UN, Putin called out the west for its hypocrisy in supporting terrorists to affect regime change despite its professed “war on terror.” He asked–“Do you realize what you’ve done?”