An F-15E Strike Eagle receives fuel from a KC-10 Extender with the 908th Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron July 19, 2017, over an undisclosed location. (U.S. Air Force/Senior Airman Preston Webb)
As news broke that an Iranian drone came within 100 feet of a U.S. Navy F/A-18 landing on the USS Nimitz in the Persian Gulf, four analysts in Washington, D.C., reiterated their call to remove American forces from the region.
What’s at stake for the U.S. being involved in a conflict that grows more complicated by the day? Everything, said former U.S. State Department official Matthew Hoh and former CIA counterterrorism analyst John Kiriakou.
Hoh and Kiriakou were accompanied by legal analyst Christie Edwards, and author and activist David Swanson.
“We are on the brink with a war with Russia,” Hoh told an audience at a National Press Club event Tuesday.
Hoh resigned as the senior civilian representative in Zabul Province, Afghanistan, in 2009, making him the first known U.S. official to resign in protest of America’s war in Afghanistan. A former U.S. Marine Corps captain, he had previously served two tours in Iraq.
He said the involvement of U.S. and Russian warplanes over Syria — still a sovereign state — is a clear violation of international laws.
And as each country continues to bait the other — mainly in the Baltics and Ukraine — the basis for involvement in Syria becomes even more misconstrued, Hoh said.
To further Hoh’s point, Edwards, a legal analyst with the American Society of International Law and chair of the Lieber Society on the law of armed conflict, said Russia and the U.S. make contradictory claims for their presence in Syria.
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!
No comments:
Post a Comment