New survey shows most Americans oppose US intervention in Syria

A new poll has revealed that most Americans oppose US intervention in Syria amid growing efforts by the Obama administration and pro-Israeli members of Congress to directly engage US troops in yet another Muslim nation.

While 61 percent of those polled expressed opposition to US meddling in the internal Syrian crisis, triggered and sustained by a massive foreign-sponsored armed insurgency, merely 10 percent of participants in the online survey were supportive of the American intervention, according to the results of a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll published on Wednesday.

The findings of the new survey confirms the results of an earlier poll conducted by US-based CBS News and The New York Times, which put the strength of American opposition to the potential US intervention in Syria at 62 percent.

Despite the obvious opposition of most American to yet another US military intervention in the Middle East, a number of fervently pro-Israel members of the US congress continue to press the Obama administration to expand its support of anti-Damascus militant gangs in Syria by supplying them with lethal weapons and even deploy troops in a bid to “hasten” what many consider as a joint US-Israeli vision for the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The development comes just a day after US-based press reports cited senior Obama administration officials as saying that Washington is preparing to deploy troops to Syria and being supplying lethal weapons to foreign-backed militant in the country in an intensifying effort to force the ouster of Syrian president.

According to these report, the decision to hugely expand American intervention measures against Damascus was prompted by the growing realization in Washington that that the US-sponsored Syrian opposition is unable to gather popular support in the Arab nation.

“We’re clearly on an upward trajectory; we’ve moved over to assistance that has a direct military purpose,” a senior Obama administration official was quoted as saying in a Washington Post report.

Further highlighting Washington’s actual aim of removing President Assad from power in Syria at any cost, the administration’s National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said, “We continue to consider all other possible options that would accomplish our objective of hastening a political transition,” which refers to regime change.

This is while openly pro-Israeli Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina recently cited the widely discounted Israeli claims of chemical weapons use in Syria, pressing for swift Washington action to “secure” chemical arms arsenals in the country.

The two lawmakers, however, did not explain how American forces would accomplish such a task.

Moreover, Graham called on the US military to “bomb Syrian air bases with cruise missiles in a bid to “neutralize” the government’s air advantage over the foreign-backed militant gangs and turn the “tide of battle pretty quickly” in favor of the anti-Damascus insurgents.

Senator McCain, meanwhile, said the US should move into Syria as part of an “international force” to secure the country’s chemical weapons, but did not elaborate on how such international military force would be established and which countries would be involved.

Syria has been faced with a foreign-sponsored armed insurgency since 2011. Thousands of people in the country, including a large number of security forces, have been killed in the unrest with many foreign nationals infiltrating the key Arab state in a bid to destabilize the government of President Bashar al-Assad.