US-Israel bond hindering defeat of ISIL

The US government’s close ties with Israel have “tragically” prevented it from cooperating with the Syrian government to eradicate the ISIL terrorist group, a journalist and author in California says.

“The tragedy is that the Americans and the Syrians have the exact same goal in staving off this terrorism,” said Tim King, a correspondent for Salem News.

“It’s unfortunate that the American bonds with Israel prevented it from being able to  work with [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad and to establish this common goal of eradicating or at least leveling out this terrorism,” King told Press TV in an interview on Monday.

“I just think that it’s a tragedy that the Americans don’t have the willingness to simply work with a partner like Bashar al-Assad,” he added. “I think that they can quickly eradicate the problem if they did.”

The ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, control large parts of Syria’s northern and eastern territory. The group sent its fighters into Iraq in June, quickly seizing vast expanse of land straddling the border between the two countries.

Warplanes from the US and several of its allies began striking ISIL targets in Syria on September 23. The US military has already conducted hundreds of airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq since mid-August.

President Barack Obama insists that he would not send American troops to combat against ISIL.

US Senator Chris Murphy, however, has told CNN that the United States does not have a “realistic political strategy” to prevent a prolonged military engagement in Syria.

AHT/HRJ