For over a decade, the dominant Western narrative on the Syrian War has been simple: a peaceful uprising turned into a brutal civil war because of Bashar al-Assad’s ruthless crackdown on his own people.
But in Creative Chaos: Inside the CIA’s Covert War to Topple the Syrian Government, the Libertarian Institute’s latest book, William Van Wagenen methodically dismantles this mainstream version of events, exposing it as a convenient fiction crafted to justify one of the most disastrous regime change wars of the modern era.
His central thesis is clear: the war in Syria was not an organic revolution but a deliberate effort by Washington, Israel, and their regional partners to weaken Iran by toppling Assad’s government.
And when peaceful protests were hijacked by Islamist militants, instead of helping restore stability, the US and its allies deliberately prevented Assad from crushing the insurgency—even as it became dominated by al-Qaeda and ISIS-affiliated groups.
Now, years later, the result is a fractured Syria, ruled by jihadist warlords and occupied by foreign powers, with Israel consolidating its hold over strategic territory.
How and why did this disaster for Syria’s people come to pass? And why were the non-interventionists who called out Washington’s lies always right about the war and its likely outcome?
Regime Change: The Blueprint for Syria’s Destruction
Van Wagenen carefully documents how regime change in Syria had been a goal of US foreign policy long before the Arab Spring. The Bush administration set the groundwork, but the Obama administration accelerated the effort, seeing it as a way to strike a blow against Iran without a direct war.
His research confirms that the US and its allies—including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Türkiye—actively supported and armed the so-called “moderate opposition,” despite overwhelming evidence that jihadists controlled the rebellion almost from the start.
Instead of letting the Assad government restore order, Western intelligence agencies funneled billions in arms, logistics, and training to extremist groups, ensuring the war would drag on.
The leaked 2012 email from Jake Sullivan to Hillary Clinton (which Van Wagenen references) makes this reality undeniable: “AQ [Al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.”
This stunning admission exposes the real nature of US policy in Syria: at the same time they fought them on the other side of the line in Iraq, Washington was directly supporting al-Qaeda-linked groups because they served its geopolitical interests.
Note: For those who haven’t read the Libertarian Institute Director Scott Horton’s book Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terror, this was a reversion to form rather than a policy innovation: Washington had, as a rule, favored the fundamentalist and radical Sunni sects over secular alternatives in the region going back decades.
Hellbound and Down 
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