And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
I’ve been familiar with Blake’s poem, quoted above, for years. I always thought that “dark Satanic Mills” referred to factories. I didn’t think they meant newspapers. The editors of the Washington Post are concerned about Syria. They’re concerned that the civil war may end:
THE CIVIL war in Syria may be on the verge of another turn for the worse. Syrian government and allied forces are reportedly massing for a potential assault on the northern province of Idlib, one of the last areas of the country not under government control. Tens of thousands of rebel fighters are based there, including forces linked to al-Qaeda, along with some 3 million civilians, many of whom are refugees from other parts of the country. An offensive by the regime could mean thousands more deaths and drive a new wave of refugees toward neighboring countries, as well as Europe. Meanwhile, efforts by Iran to entrench itself in the country risk triggering a war with Israel.
National security professionals in the Trump administration appear to recognize these dangers. Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo named a seasoned diplomat as special envoy for Syria, charged with reviving a U.N.-sponsored peace process. In a briefing, senior officials told reporters that U.S. forces based in eastern Syria would not be leaving anytime soon and insisted that reconstruction aid for government-controlled areas would be blocked until an acceptable political process was underway. On Wednesday, national security adviser John Bolton publicly warned the regime of Bashar al-Assad not to employ chemical weapons in any new attack and said the United States was determined to “deal with the presence of the Iranians.â€
Any U.S. strategy in Syria would face steep obstacles, including the machinations of Russia, which claims to want to restrain the regime and remove the Iranians but, in practice, abets both. Yet the unique problem with this U.S. policy is that it is at odds with the stated positions of President Trump. Mr. Trump has repeatedly and bluntly declared that he wishes to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria as soon as possible; he has insisted on canceling U.S. stabilization aid to the area where those troops are deployed; and after meeting privately with Russian President VladiÂmir Putin in Helsinki last month, he appeared to endorse Russia’s plan for reconstruction, unlinked to any peace process.
These views come amidst the reports that not only did the lethal aid we gave to the “rebels” support Al Qaeda in Syria but so did the food aid that we delivered there. U. S. support for the rebels has been nothing less than Satanic, injuring not just the Syrians but us as well.
If we had really been concerned about reducing the death toll in Syria, we would have exerted all of our efforts to ending the civil war as quickly as possible. Instead we have done everything we could to maximize the death toll. If there is a better example of Conquest’s Third Law of politics than our policy in Syria, I don’t know what it might be.
