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Dec. 15, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
29:40
What Are US Troops Guarding And Dying For In Syria

The killing of two US National Guard troops and one interpreter - and wounding of other US personnel - in Syria over the weekend forces once again the question: WHY are US troops STILL in Syria? What is their mission? How is it in the US national interest for them to be there? And WHY are we building yet ANOTHER base in Syria?

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Incident in Syria 00:15:18
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report with us today.
We have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing well.
Thank you.
A little bit cold this morning.
I got up to let the ducks out, and it was cold.
I don't have to worry about moving my plants in.
Yeah.
Two days of frost, but I have to protect them.
That's right.
Most of the time, nature protects them, but not always.
Not where we are in this belt where some days a frost is a big deal.
No kidding.
But nevertheless, there are some other big deals we want to talk about.
And it's all about the fallacies that we've been fed for so long that our government's here to make us safe and prosperous and take care of us.
And you don't have to worry about a thing.
But you need a big army for it.
And you want to make sure nobody's ever going to invade us.
I think it was, what was it, 1812.
Maybe that was about the last time they invaded us.
But no foreigners on our shores now.
Except sometimes we just open up the doors.
We say, oh, you guys don't have to invade anymore.
We're just going to let you walk in and we'll take care of you.
We'll feed you and make sure that you have all that you need.
And then you get to do whatever you want until a few American citizens wake up and say, we've had enough of this stuff.
But anyway, we're getting there.
But today we want to talk about an incident, which is big.
Incident is too mild a war, a word, but has to do with Syria.
And Assad has to go.
Assad has, and he's gone.
He's gone.
So who won?
I don't know.
I can't remember any Americans worrying about Assad, but they better start worrying about Americans dying in Syria because we have troops there.
But it looks like to me, Daniel, that Syria is officially, before it was always recognized, but it's officially part of the empire.
And we're serving the interests of some special countries, and they want us there.
And we don't have to worry about paying for it because our credit is still good.
People still buy our treasury bills.
And they're going to do that until they can't do it anymore.
But there are some people who think that we're approaching a time.
But the article we want to start off with comes from anti-war, our favorite friends on telling us about so much that we're looking at today.
But the title is, Why Are American Troops Still Dying in Syria?
Yeah.
Well, what a tragedy.
And I understand that maybe we have the guard unit over there.
And I keep wondering, why is the guard unit in Syria?
But anyway, this is Syria, serious stuff about Syria.
And Trump is even, you know, voicing his opinion.
Three Americans were killed.
I think two were military.
And then an interpreter was killed.
But Trump has sent out the word.
There will be retaliation.
And sometimes they say, wow, we're on the moral side of righteousness now because they killed somebody.
But they never asked the question why it happens, where it's going, and why we're all over the place all around the world.
So he's promising retaliation.
And later in the show, I'm going to tell you where I think the real retaliation ought to be.
Yeah.
Well, this is a terrible tragedy and made all the worse by when you actually personalize it.
When it stops being two troops and an interpreter, but when it starts being actual human beings that you can identify with.
Now, this is a New York Post.
If you put that first clip up, this came out yesterday.
Grieving Iowa police chief reveals son was one of three U.S. soldiers killed in Syria.
Quote, cruel world.
An Iowa police chief has posted a heartbreaking post identifying his son as one of the three Iowa Army National Guard soldiers killed in an ISIS attack in Syria.
So, as you point out, Dr. Paul, these are not even regular military.
These are Iowa Army National Guard who should be guarding the U.S. I'll go to that next one in a press conference Sunday morning.
Iowa Army National Guard Major General Stephen Osborne said the attack was carried out by a lone ISIS gunman who was later killed by partner forces.
At the time of the attack, U.S. personnel were conducting a key leader engagement.
So remember that.
That was the official line, Dr. Paul.
He was carried, killed by a lone ISIS gunman, and we're told that we're over there taking care of ISIS.
But guess what?
As is often the case, the official narrative is undermined by reality.
Now go to the next one.
This is also anti-war.com.
This is Dave Ducant that robot.
No, it wasn't a lone ISIS gunman.
Dave writes, gunman who killed three Americans in Syria was a member of Syrian government security forces.
He was one of the government security forces.
The gunman who killed two members of the IN National Guard and an American civilian interpreter in an attack in Palmyra at central Syria on Saturday was a member of the Syrian government security forces, according to the Syrian Interior Ministry.
So according to Syria's own government, it was a government troop who shot and killed those three Americans, Dr. Paul.
So no, it wasn't a lone ISIS gunman.
It was people that were in the Syrian military, a person in the Syrian military who took the shot.
Along with this, with what you said, from defense priorities, they had a statement put out about this.
This sort of I thought was a significant summary of what's going on.
And it goes, the only reason ISIS was able to strike U.S. troops in Syria is because we senselessly left them in harm's way.
Yes.
And long after their mission was completed, yeah, what was our mission?
We must not compound this tragedy by allowing U.S. troops to remain vulnerable to attack on a nebulous mission with no end date.
The U.S. should withdraw all forces from Syria and Iraq and let those countries manage their own problems.
That's to the point.
Yeah.
But unfortunately, they're not going to pay any attention to those of us who want to bring our troops home.
And Americans are angry and rightly so.
But you know what the narrative is trying to do is trying to redirect that anger.
Yes, of course, the person who pulled the trigger is guilty and is a bad person for shooting people.
That's a fact.
But the real anger, really, and I think that that press release explains it, should be reserved for the U.S. government who continues to put these troops in harm's way for no understandable purpose.
Why are they there?
Why have they been there since before?
Actually, you made a good point.
Assad must go.
That's when we put the troops in there.
Now, first we were told, well, we got to get their oil.
We got to steal their oil.
And now we don't know why they're here.
But we do know one thing, which is that they remain in harm's way to no purpose for the United States.
Now, go to that next one.
This is from Dave's article.
The Syrian Terror Ministry claimed that before the attack, Syrian authorities had decided to fire him.
This is the shooter, for having extremist ideologies.
They planned to do it on Sunday.
We discovered him in December and we're going to dismiss him, but we didn't make it in time because it was a holiday.
Oops, okay.
Go to the next one.
According to Wail Assam, a Palestinian journalist who's covered the conflict in Syria for years, the perpetrator had been identified as Tariq Satuf Al-Hamd from the Aleppo countryside.
Isam said that Al-Hamd was, and I highlight this, Dr. Paul, previously a member of ISIS, but after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, he traveled to Idlib, the former home base of HTS, which is al-Qaeda in Syria, and joined the general security.
So after they got rid of Assad, well, he decided to join the new government as security.
Now go to the next one.
One more, Dr. Paul.
And this is important, I think.
Issam, this is the journalist, also suggested that other members of the security forces were involved in the attack.
Quote, security sources confirmed to me that Syrian intelligence, along with government forces, arrested six elements from the general security at the headquarters in Palmyra, accused of coordinating the operation with him, i.e. the shooter, and said they are from a group that moved with him from the desert to the general security in Idlib.
And also the authorities were unable to identify his previous affiliation.
But here's the part, Dr. Paul.
There are hundreds like him due to the large numbers who joined.
So when we put the head of al-Qaeda in Syria as the president, of course, all of his gang decided to join as security forces, and now they're shooting Americans.
Is it a surprise?
Sounds like a snake pit to me.
Poisonous snakes.
Their anti-war by Alan Mosley has a statement about this too, on a retaliation and what Trump said.
Trump responded with characteristic fury.
He promised, quote, very serious retaliation, because, you know, it's 100%, you know, somebody else's fault, even though we've making the point here.
Why in thunder are we there when we lose these troops?
And, you know, this is just small, minute number of people being killed.
But just think of what's happened since 1945.
How many people have been in harm's way unnecessarily?
We're not talking about hundreds.
We're talking about thousands.
And if you talk about the civilians killed too, it's just unbearable.
And this very serious retaliation sort of opens up the door for what they're doing.
You know, now there's an excuse.
But I have an idea about what we should do.
And if they call me and ask for, well, what should we do?
I said, well, you should retaliate.
And it is serious.
So I would redirect the retaliation.
I'd retaliate.
It would be a political retaliation against the neocons that run the show, the ones that puts the pressure on them, the policies that we're following, and this empire building.
So yes, we should retaliate against them and fire them.
They shouldn't be in top position advising that we go in there to make us safe because it doesn't work.
It's wrong.
It's illegal.
It's unconstitutional.
And innocent people die for no reason.
Well, we know that Assad was not a saint.
No one is a saint.
Certainly no leader on earth is a saint.
But you had warned, and so many people had warned all those years during the Assad must go era that the people opposing Assad were Al-Qaeda.
They were ISIS.
Even Jake Sullivan, the former National Security Advisor to President Biden, said in a memo to Hillary Clinton, Al-Qaeda is on our side in Syria.
So we knew the opponents of Assad were Al-Qaeda, were ISIS.
And now that Assad is gone, should we really be surprised that ISIS is now taking potshots at American troops sitting there in Syria?
It shouldn't be a surprise, especially when their former leader, when they were Al-Qaeda, is now the president put in place by the U.S. and supported by the U.S.
And in fact, I have a clip here.
I think it's a Pentagon official.
If we can first look at the, because this is Michael Tracy, who's always good with analysis, look at what he said on X.
He said, amazing how the mission, no, I can't even read it.
Anyway, let's go ahead and go to the clip and listen to the clip of this is on Fox News Sunday.
To be honest, I don't recognize a Pentagon official, but he explains why our troops, you might want to put your earpiece in, Dr. Paul.
He explains now why our troops remain, some 1,000 troops remain in Syria.
We have about 1,000 American troops in Syria to support the new president, and there will be hell to pay for those who are responsible for that attack on American troops.
Well, there's a new president in Syria, and President Trump has been in touch with the new leadership there to back up this new president and Syria to take on terrorists.
The attacks yesterday are devastating.
Again, American strength will prevail.
We will root out there.
I'm sorry that made the mistake.
He's the chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
I didn't recognize him at first.
So now all of a sudden, our troops are there to protect the new president in Syria.
That's a whole new rationale for a thousand troops.
Well, let's refresh our viewers' memory.
Who is the new president we're protecting?
Put on that next clip.
This was literally still up.
This is still up on the State Department website.
Stop this terrorist, Muhammad Al-Jalani.
$10 million reward for the guy who now, if you look, it's an amazing talk about an extreme makeover, Dr. Paul, from this to, now go to the next one, to this.
In just a couple of months, here is Jelani now renamed and made up Al-Shara sitting behind President Trump, a smiling President Trump in the Oval Office.
An incredible makeover.
And now our soldiers have to die to protect this guy.
You know, it's not unusual for us to get involved in so many places.
And we pick sides and we pretend they're allies and we will fight with them.
And we're all on the same page.
Why Innocent People Suffer 00:12:41
But then when the fighting is supposedly closing down, then there's picking sides.
But I wonder how many times this has happened and the weapons end up going into the hands of one of the factions that were one that was involved in this.
They end up with the weapons and they use them against us.
Who knows where the gun was that came for killing these three people?
And of course, the whole thing is just so, so damaging, so illogical, that you just wonder where they get their brains.
If they have any.
Well, it's actually even worse than that.
Not only has President Trump not withdrawn the troops from Syria, as he said he would do, actually, even starting in his first administration, he tasked Heron McGregor, our good friend, help me get the troops out.
Colonel put together a plan.
He said, I want to do it.
So not only has he not removed these troops, go to that next clip.
This is from Reuters.
We're actually building another military base in Syria, exclusive.
This is from just a month ago.
U.S. military to establish presidents in Damascus airbase, sources say.
Now, why the heck are we there building a base in Damascus?
Go to the next one.
Pardon me.
The U.S. is preparing to establish a military presence in an air base in Damascus.
And I highlight this, to help enable a security pact that Washington is brokering between Syria and Israel.
Six sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The U.S. plans for the presence in the Syrian capital, which have not been previously reported, should be a sign of Syria's strategic alignment with the U.S. following the fall of Assad.
Now go to the next one.
The U.S. has been working for months to reach a security pact between Syria and Israel, two longtime foes.
So this actually makes it even worse, Dr. Paul.
First, they were there to steal the oil.
Then they were there to protect al-Qaeda president.
And now they're actually there to fight and die to help put together a security pact between Israel and Syria.
Now, if the two of those countries reach an agreement, we'll be happy.
They won't be fighting.
Maybe people won't be dying.
But why should Americans be dying for the two of them to figure out how to get along?
You know, we've narrowed our charges against the people that we're allies with and we're helping them out as if they're separate.
But I think what we're doing is satisfying the people who really believe in empire because they believe that this is a very big positive step for what has happened.
And even though there's a mixture of who is doing what, but just the way that the president's welcoming the White House and it said they're our best friends now.
But I think the neocons especially, and we don't know who makes the final decisions on neocons, but I don't place all the blames on the president.
There's a lot of people.
That's why I would say that we should retaliate by somebody in there getting the boot because they're the ones who set the standards and the policymakers.
But even there's room for everybody, if they have a tendency to agree with us, everybody should do something about it because it's people's attitudes that finally end wars and nonsense.
But this is more complicated.
The people don't quite understand this.
Look how long it took them to understand Vietnam.
And then the people, the American people, just put their foot down, said, enough is enough.
It took 20 years to figure out what we were doing in Afghanistan.
So everybody has a job.
You can't say, okay, I'm going to run for Congress and I'm going to vote against this stuff.
No, it's important that we have somebody talking this way, but we have to get the people to wake up and know how ridiculous this is and why innocent people are getting shot at out of the clear blue From a guard unit over in Syria.
And how many Americans would know exactly what's going on?
We have to read a bit and study a bit to find out who's on whose side.
Yeah.
Well, here's the bottom line, Dr. Paul.
There are a couple of families right now, just days before Christmas, who are grieving over the loss of their loved ones.
It would be bad enough if they were killed in a war for America's interests.
We would feel terrible, but there would be a little bit of a mediating factor that they actually did something to help the United States.
Sadly enough, and it's terrible to say this, these two Americans have given their lives.
Their families are grieving for something that had absolutely nothing to do with the United States security, with our national interest, or anything.
It was take your pick, stealing oil, propping up Julani, helping Israel make peace with Syria.
It doesn't matter.
They shouldn't be there.
These families should not be suffering just a few days before Christmas.
If an incident like we're talking about, if that would wake up a lot of Americans and the attitudes were changing, you know, it would be a plus coming out of this.
But, you know, most of the time they use patriotism associated with people who are thrown in and lose their lives.
And then if you don't accept these policies, then, yo, you're just unpatriotic.
You don't care about America and you don't care about our government and the people.
You don't care about the troops.
But, you know, I was introduced and was involved in that type of an argument.
And I think a lot of people were surprised to find out that even the troops.
One day it dawned on me when we were talking about the troops accepting and the veterans and all this.
And I said, oh, by the way, I'm a veteran too.
Why wouldn't I?
Why do I have to join the gang who follows these policies of senseless interference and senseless wars that are undeclared and are almost perpetual?
So I see so many spots going on.
It almost looks like an explosion.
If they could wave a wand, every place we have troops and we want an influence for a various reason, other than being empire and looking after oil and a few things like that, I'll tell you, it would be a miracle, but that's not going to happen.
There's a lot of legwork that has to be done to get the average American citizen to be aware of these problems.
And that is a challenge because, you know, this support for this policy, it's driven by fake patriotism and it's bipartisan.
Absolutely.
Well, the one sort of thing we want to mention in closing is a piece out on the intercept.
Nick Turse is obviously a very good journalist and he's broken some important stories.
But this is something that we would, you know, we warned when President Trump started blowing boats out of the water and killing people just because he said they were terrorists.
Didn't have to prove anything.
You know, at least I and I know you warned, well, this is, it's not going to be long before they do that internally.
And in fact, it looks like it's getting closer.
This came out a couple of days ago.
White House refuses to rule out summary executions of people on its secret domestic terrorist list.
The Trump administration ignored questions about whether or it would order the killings of those on its NSPM 7 list, even while answering other queries.
So if you go to that next one, President Trump has shattered the limits of executive authority by ordering the summary executions of individuals he deems members of designating terrorist organizations.
He's also tested the bounds of presidential powers by creating a secret list of domestic terror organizations, presidential Memorandum 7, NSPM 7.
So, the question is: who was on those lists and will they rule out extending this execution of terrorists to terrorists on the secret list?
It's a pretty good question, Dr. Paul.
Boy, that's for sure.
You know, the one big thing is that this is not a partisan issue, it's bipartisan.
And there was a time when we used to say, as libertarians, we'll say, you know, a good progressive Democrat can help out on civil liberties and on a foreign policy.
But right now, that isn't the case.
The anti-war Democrats hardly exist anymore.
So it's a bipartisan thing about supporting this, supporting these programs.
And that to me is a big problem for us to contend with.
But this summary execution, that's just way over the top.
And every once in a while, you'll see pictures of foreign countries, bad people in foreign countries, might have 10 people lined up before the firing squad.
And it's just a holy man.
How could they do that?
But here, we do it.
We're neater about it.
We don't put them on a stage and then let it be on television.
But how many antipsy people, how many innocent people die from our foreign policy?
Americans.
These three people, Americans, the people care about that.
Yes, this is recognizable.
But we're not talking about a couple people being victims of our foreign policy.
And I think the principal cause is that we didn't follow the thrust of respect for a peaceful foreign policy.
And we just go ahead and do this.
And we start wars and kill a lot of people.
And oh, well, the people declared war, aren't they?
No, the people haven't declared war.
And they're not going to wake up because they're going to hear propaganda justifying how many terrorists are in our country.
And everybody say, look, we have 20,000 new terrorists in our country.
Well, how'd they get here?
Oh, we opened the door and let them in and we rewarded them for coming in and get a free ride to our system.
Yeah, it's terrible.
Well, I'm going to close out today, Dr. Paul.
And as many of you heard, I do have a cold.
I'm sorry.
I tried to mute as much as possible, but we don't get sick days here, Dr. Paul.
The news never sleeps, and neither do we.
So I hope I thank you for bearing with us.
If you put on that very last clip, I was outed by someone in our comments on Thursday for not mathing very well.
I said 5% of our goal was 20%.
But thankfully, over the weekend, we have had a bit of a push, and now we actually are up to almost 30% of our goal, the RPI challenge.
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So in order to cash in and be able to continue not only with the Liberty Report, but all the things that the Ron Paul Institute does, our conferences, our seminars, and to expand and to do new things in a year where I think the anti-war movement and the civil liberties movement is going to need a real shot in the arm.
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We're halfway through December, and as you can see, we're off to an okay start, but we've got a long way to go, and we really need your help.
So, thank you very much for helping.
And over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
You know, we're in the midst of a process that's been going on for a long time, but they're really very active now.
Empire Building Costs 00:01:39
And we're throughout the world continuing to build our empire.
And right now, we're talking about Syria, how Syria has all, you know, it's been settled that many people believe now this is forever, but it isn't.
It's unstable.
It's a terrible system.
But empire building has been around for a long, long time, and some empires last a long time.
They last as long as their currency works because it's very expensive doing this.
Yes, it's expensive loss of liberty.
It's expensive in that people suffer for various reasons.
And the people who lose loved ones, it's a very costly thing.
But the empire is very expensive, but it's very dangerous.
We're very much involved in it.
I don't know what word they use, but I think they probably aren't too embarrassed to even use that term, but they might call it something else.
But they do believe that because of our supermoral nature, that we have this obligation to spread our goodness around the world.
And therefore, it's all all right.
Well, I disagree with that.
I think non-intervention is the way to go.
And that means we don't have an empire.
And we try to emphasize the fact that relationships between individuals and countries and wherever economics says well should be voluntary.
And that would solve a lot of problems just by accepting that one rule.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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