US Civil War #2? No, Civil War #1 was Not a Civil War

I am a detail person. I love properly defined words. Governments and their historians twist words to favor their own agenda. This is why the secession of 7 and then 11 united States AND the resulting conflict for four horrible years is labeled a “civil” war.

What is hilarious is that Lincoln, knowing that secession was legal since he considered it during and even ten years after the Mexican-American War when he said:

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent. – Abraham Lincoln, Peoria, Ill., Oct. 16, 1854

So when seven states, each, like an abused spouse, decided to cancel the voluntary contract she had entered into and go her own way, Lincoln decided to call this an “insurrection”.

Evidence is to the contrary however, as people today compare what happened in 1860 after Lincoln’s election:

Yes, there is a civil war looming in the United States. But it will not look like the orderly pattern of descent which characterized the conflict of 1861-65. It will appear more like the Yugoslavia break-up, or the Russian and Chinese civil wars of the 20th Century. –

The secession of whole states via legal means was the American patriots of the time effort to make the whole thing “above board”, “by the book” and “in accordance with the laws of the land”. We now know that Lincoln at the outset was not going to let that happen without a fight. It took the first month that he was in office to whip up the worst fears of life for the remaining 27 united States without the Deep South states. Economically, it looked real bad as the Northern economy and Western (Midwest) farmers would potentially lose their closest customers who in FEB1861 voted to become a relative “free trade zone” compared to the US’s 20%+ average tariff rate by setting tariffs at approximately at 13% on average.

A close inspection of Lincoln’s inaugural address (04MAR1861), two days after the US Congress passed a tariff increase (which the Republicans wanted and was in their platform) shows that ..

1. –  if you can believe Lincoln’s words, he was not going to do anything about slavery:

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

2. – Lincoln’s primary interest lay in collecting duties at all southern ports, as the US general government wanted and needed this revenue stream:

.. there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.

Lincoln contended that divorce was not an option. Of course he “saw” the nation as a singular, and that union was paramount. However, in history we have seen peaceful secession work many times. Lincoln, who once thought and said that governing requires consent of the governed, changed his mind.

Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. They can not but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them.

Properly conceived, the United States in 1861 was actually like polygamy, in that 34 spouses were involved, and 7 wanted to leave this arrangement:

This was NOT the 7 spouses wanting to rule over the WHOLE harem! That would be the true definition of civil war, where the winner gets EVERYTHING!

So in hindsight, the American Revolution was in fact 13 spouses wanting to rule their own households, so basically 13 civil wars as in each colony there was a mix of Tory/Loyalist and Whig/Rebel tendencies plus those that didn’t really care and just wanted peace at all cost.

The American Civil War was not really a civil war as after Lincoln called up 75,000 volunteer troops from the remaining 27 states, 4 of those said no way (Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia) as each of these had already voted once to stay in the union and now voted to leave.

This brings us to 2019. Are we facing a civil war? Again, I contend that most decent people want to be left alone. Most decent people don’t mind if the east coast from DC to MA and the west coast from CA to WA just leave (or stay and the rest of the states leave). Again, Gregory R. Copley shares:

It may, in other words, be short-lived simply because the uprising will probably not be based upon the decisions of constituent states (which, in the US Civil War, created a break-away confederacy), acting within their own perception of a legal process. It is more probable that the 21st Century event would contage as a gradual breakdown of law and order.

I tend to agree with this synopsis as the states are no longer entities with any autonomy, but are puppets of the federal government these days, a direct result of the union forcing the marriage covenant to be permanent.

Many will point to Trump or Brexit as the start of this so-called Civil War 2.0, but like most wars, their roots go back years if not generations:

It is significant that the gathering crisis in the United States was not precipitated by the November 7, 2016, election of Pres. Donald Trump, and neither was the growing polarization of the United Kingdom’s society caused by the Brexit vote of 2016. In both instances, the election of Mr Trump and the decision by UK voters for Britain to exit the European Union were late reactions — perhaps too late — by the regional populations of both countries to what they perceived as the destruction of their nation-states by “urban super-oligarchies”.

The last-ditch reactions by those who voted in the US for Donald Trump and those who voted in the UK for Brexit were against an urban-based globalism which has been building for some seven decades, with the deliberate or accidental intent of destroying nations and nationalism.

I contend that the roots of this go much further back than seven decades, but back to the very end of Amerexit, when the thirteen colonies each received acknowledgement in the 1783 Treaty of Paris that the British Empire would let them go in peace, finally. In the post war era, those former patriots would once again turn on the people to assemble a central government that would “protect” them, at a cost when in fact it was a guerilla war that actually freed the colonies from the British grip.

The myth abounded that formal confederation was necessary to win the war, although the war would be virtually won by the time confederation was finally achieved. The war was fought and won by the states informally but effectively united in a Continental Congress; fundamental decisions, such as independence, had to be ratified by every state. There was no particular need for the formal trappings and permanent investing of a centralized government, even for victory in war. Ironically, the radicals were reluctantly pulled into an arrangement which they believed would wither away at the end of the war, and thereby helped to forge an instrument which would be riveted upon the people only in time of peace, an instrument that proved to be a halfway house to that archenemy of the radical cause, the Constitution of the United States. – Murray Rothbard in ‘Conceived in Liberty Vol IV p.243

It is both sick and sad that even radical patriots turned back to central government as the safe way forward. Allowing the smaller states to work in a loose confederation would have provided a true “land of the free” much more than our tyrannical US Empire has allowed us domestically.

As the fictional Benjamin Martin said at the close of the movie The Patriot (2000)

“With the war ending .. I take measure of what we have lost. And what we have won.”

What was won was colonial-centric liberty and freedom from British Empire oppression, what was soon lost was that very same thing. Squandered, politics has a way of doing that every time.

-SF1

Thanksgiving Propaganda 1.0 by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863

High angle shot of an unrecognizable family saying grace at the dining table on Thanksgiving

Donald Jeffries helped me this morning to reflect on the “official” federal (called general back in 1863) government declaration of the thanksgiving holiday and placed it in proper perspective, an act of deception.

Note that up until this point, the different English colonies and later American states each had their own day of Thanksgiving, if they had one. I think Lincoln here is trying to force this whole “union” thing. Since many still refer to him as “father” Abraham, there seems something magical to them when government decrees these kind of things, a vast majority people assume a god has spoken and the words are true.

Let’s take a look at the context:

It’s fitting that America’s biggest tyrant, Abraham Lincoln, first proposed a national day of Thanksgiving in 1863, after a pivotal victory by the Union army during the war he waged so relentlessly. His official proclamation, like all of Lincoln’s writings, distorted a horrendous reality into often beautiful poetry.

So Lincoln, over two years into a war “against insurrection”, but was actually against independence via secession like when the thirteen American colonies exited the British Empire, reflects on what he has accomplished to date:

While waxing over the wonderful bounties we all take for granted, Lincoln provided the following bit of political delusion: “In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict….”

Can any casual read call B.S. to this? I guess if you rely on government textbooks then maybe you believe this to be true. Maybe to the northern farmers of the time, you might have believed all this. But if you were an owner of a printing press, you would have known by now that there were many things you could not print. If you were a farmer in the south, you would have known by now the utter destruction the Union army accomplished against innocent civilians as they got more desperate for total victory, via total war. Lincoln, an avowed atheist, knows that many people DO believe in Providence and therefore speaks their language in his deceptive speech as Thomas DiLorenzo pointed out:

But as more and more fellow American citizens were murdered by the thousands by his army, and as the war crimes mounted, Abe stepped up his Biblical lingo.

Lincoln knew he had to connect with people to cover the lies he was spewing, like proclaiming government of/by/for the people? Really?:

“that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” when he was trying to prevent the seceded Southern states from doing that.

Sheesh. I wonder how many people “got that”?

The author moves on in his analysis of this Thanksgiving proclamation:

Analyzing this proclamation further, Lincoln’s note that “order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed” was especially laughable, in light of the untold thousands of political prisoners he locked up in the north [18,000 to 38,000], the hundreds of newspapers he shut down, and his unconstitutional suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. “Harmony” certainly didn’t prevail in those makeshift prisons; one of those imprisoned was Frank Key Howard, grandson of Francis Scott Key. In an incalculable irony, Howard was incarcerated in Fort McHenry, the very spot where his grandfather was inspired by the glorious flying flag to write The Star-Spangled Banner. 

While this is indeed a 19th century case of fake news, please know that fake news has been around a lot longer than we realize. Some people wake up to this fact along the way, but it usually involves using some critical thinking techniques that few seem to be equipped with.

Lincoln’s concern for all those widows and orphans didn’t compel him to order bloodthirsty Union generals like Sherman and Sheridan to cease their unprecedented “scorched earth” campaign. It’s impossible to determine how many of those widows were raped by soldiers, who also plundered their remaining valuables, burned their crops and salted the earth behind them. As far as Lincoln imploring the “Almighty Hand” for anything, this flies in the face of his own, well-documented atheistic beliefs. His cold exploitation of a faithful, religious populace with these persistent, flowery references to an Almighty being he didn’t believe in himself goes beyond even what we see in the modern world of practical politics.

Was Lincoln’s proclamation successful? Well, you can be sure no southern state decided to celebrate Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Day any time soon. The truth is, Thanksgiving became a national holiday with the completion of the Reconstruction of the South after the War of Northern Aggression and the extermination of the Plains Indians by the Union generals in the 1870s. This actually taints the US Federal Government holiday “Thanksgiving” as a celebration of the preservation and expansion of the American Empire and accurately reflects the goal of the political forces behind Lincoln.

Politics of course was always at the forefront of Lincoln’s mind, the proclamation in the fall of 1863 was to set the tone for 1864 elections that he feared greatly that he would not win. Over the next year he would force the creation of a new state (West Virginia) out of part of a seceded one (Virginia), allow Nevada to join early even though it did not have enough people to qualify and also utilize the threat of force at the last minute as Lincoln won New York by 7,000 votes in 1864 “with the help of federal bayonets”.

Lincoln was not the first that tried to force Thanksgiving on ‘the people’, as George Washington issued the first National Thanksgiving Proclamation on November 26, 1789. However, the early presidents who were more Virginian and of a states’ rights disposition regarded such proclamations as excessively Yankee and Federalist.  I have to agree. Let each region or state choose themselves what they want to celebrate, or not. Getting pretty tired of the national government forcing their heroes and their morality (immorality) on the balance of us to celebrate, as I hesitate to hear what new holiday might be in the works.

So here we are in 2019, in a land with our society ripped about by politics, where the politicians are happy that their own political big names are talked about more than family and real life. The bread and circus era is upon this empire to distract from some pretty serious red flags one sees in various aspects of this nation, its war on terror creating more terrorists, its war on drugs imprisoning millions, its war on poverty keeping millions dependent on the state and the continued deficit spending causing more ‘taxation without representation’ as our kids and their kids will have to pay this money back and be tax slaves the rest of their lives. This will undoubtedly cause generational warfare which politics will claim as something they can solve.

Being a contrarian, a rebel of sorts, I like to counter this government sprawl that has taken place with its decreed holy days with some good old common sense.

Consider making everyday Thanksgiving Day, as we could just unofficially wake up each day, thankful for what we have and balance that with a hope for the future, for us, our families and our friends. I am not saying to not take advantage of this day, but attempt to keep perspective of what we have gained, and what we have lost, each and every day.

Consider too making every family-centered celebration the main thing, as those in opposition to faith and family that try to utilize the state as their avenue for more stuff, that causes more and more divisions, will be curious in time of the deep love y’all have for family.

Enjoy the day y’all .. get hugs from family and friends and stay true to liberty and freedom and the One who gave us our natural rights in this very broken world.

Draft #1 of the declaration of independence from the British Empire:

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained, & to assume among the powers of the earth the equal & independant station to which the laws of nature & of nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the change.

We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness ..

-SF1

Searching For Truth – Be Aware, Sociopaths Are Everywhere!

PSA (Public Service Announcement): ** NOTICE **

From Caitlin Johnstone’s June 2018 article comes some wisdom in dealing with many people in this broken world.

Please follow the link above to see details about the other eleven tips (my favorites are listed below):

1) It’s always ultimately about acquiring power. 2) Money rewards sociopathy. 3) Wealth kills empathy. 4) Money is power. 5) This same ruling class controls the media. 7) Society is made of narrative. 9) Powerful forces are naturally incentivized to collaborate with each other toward mutual interests. (Note: think Roman Empire occupation forces and religious Pharisees .. more on this later) 10) There is an immense amount of wealth that can be grabbed in the chaos of war and conflict.

It is the last one, #12 below, that caught my eye:

12. The push towards truth always starts with yourself.

You can’t out-manipulate seasoned manipulators. The main error most people make when trying to deal with a sociopath is to try and manipulate them back. Don’t even try. They have years of experience on you because they literally have done nothing else. While you were laughing and crying and worrying and connecting and relating to people, they were working out how to play humans like Garry Kasparov worked out how to play chess. And when you have literal teams of sociopaths collaborating together to amass power, you my dear child, do not have a chance. Don’t play their game. You will lose.

The only way to win this is to set your compass resolutely to “true.” Always be honest with yourself. Find all the different ways that you are manipulating others and see them and acknowledge them. Find your tribal allegiances and your desire to be right, and tip your hat to their existence. The more self-aware we are, the less levers we have to be manipulated by. If you are blindly partisan or loyal to a particular faction, that makes you gullible to propaganda because your wishful thinking and your desire to be right come into play. Get honest with yourself about who you are and what you want, and you will start to become an un-playable piece on the board.

It is a tough day when you find your ladder is on the wrong wall .. thinking how I felt when I realized in late 2003/early 2004 that President George Bush lied about WMDs .. I had to be honest with myself, I had been deceived all along. While there were other things about history that made me suspect of the government of my own country, it was nothing compared to this. I was a changed man.

This also has me thinking of how the most zealous Pharisee in the Roman Empire occupied territory of Judea felt in 31 A.D.!

The author of the Bible’s book of Acts, doctor Luke, describes Saul (who later because known as Paul) in the following clips:

On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison. (Acts 8:1-3)

“I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. I studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the law of our ancestors. I was just as zealous for God as any of you are today. I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, as the high priest and all the Council can themselves testify. I even obtained letters from them to their associates in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished. (Acts 22:3-5)

What changed Saul’s mind in his search for truth? A very dramatic event:

Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” (Acts 9:1-6)

Coming face to face with Truth, Saul found no condemnation .. just love and a mission! He went away a changed man, so much so, that he changed his name!

What is the lesson here in 2019?

The first is “situational awareness” in spotting manipulators or sociopaths in our midst as Caitlin Johnstone pointed out in her article.

The second being “setting our compass to true”. This is not unlike the fictional character Benjamin Martin in the movie “The Patriot” when he gives Anne (Gabriel’s new wife) a talisman of Polaris, the north star, that belonged to his late wife. He explains that the star is a symbol of unwavering strength and serves as a constant guide.

Being aware of one’s surroundings and culture while seeking truth is a very honorable path. As the American Empire starts to stumble and crumble, this will become more and more a strategy to consider embracing.

Keep searching and seeking truth and liberty!

-SF1

Washington DC: The Capital of Hypocrisy – When BS is Called Truth

It would be entertaining if it were not so sad and dangerous. Our political class, enables by the elites, scurry around pointing fingers at people assuming that no one can remember the past few years, let alone the past few decades.

Remember Democrats, the “peace” party? Well, they identify as the “war” party now. That transition was amazingly fast and all the sheep that identify with their blue sticker stayed true to blue.

Apparently, Moon of Alabama (MoA) has been following the impeachment hearings, something that I would not waste my own time on, and noted some points of hypocrisy that only comes out when politicians open their mouths.

“It is clearly in our national interest to deter further Russian aggression,” Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and a decorated Vietnam War veteran, said in explaining why Trump’s decision to withhold congressionally appropriated aid to the most immediate target of Russian expansionism didn’t align with U.S. policy.

But at a time when Democrats are simultaneously eager to influence public opinion in favor of ousting the president and quietly apprehensive that their hearings could stall or backfire, the first round felt more like the dress rehearsal for a serious one-act play than the opening night of a hit Broadway musical.

“In direct contravention of U.S. interests” says the NBC and quotes a member of the permanent state who declares “it is clearly in our national interest” to give weapons to Ukraine.

But is that really in the national U.S. interest? Who defined it as such?

President Obama was against giving weapons to Ukraine and never transferred any to Ukraine despite pressure from certain circles. Was Obama’s decision against U.S. national interest? Where are the Democrats or deep state members accusing him of that?

Russian aggression can be summed up in the following map:

Oh crap … wrong map? No, correct map, just a member of the permanent state talking BS .. “Russian aggression” .. pleeeeaaaasssseee.

MoA also points out who gets to set national foreign policy:

The U.S. constitution “empowers the President of the United States to propose and chiefly negotiate agreements between the United States and other countries.”

The constitution does not empower the “U.S. government policy community”, nor “the administration”, nor the “consensus view of the interagency” and certainly not one Lt.Col. Vindman to define the strategic interests of the United States and its foreign policy. It is the duly elected president who does that

The president does not like how the ‘American policy’ on Russia was built. He rightly believes that he was elected to change it. He had stated his opinion on Russia during his campaign and won the election. It is not ‘malign influence’ that makes him try to have good relations with Russia. It is his own conviction and legitimized by the voters.

[I]t is the president who sets the policies. The drones around him who serve “at his pleasure” are there to implement them.

Just as Thomas Jefferson changed course when he came into office after John Adams, so too can Trump after Obama, BUT WAIT .. is what Trump doing so different than Obama?:

President Obama was against giving weapons to Ukraine and never transferred any to Ukraine despite pressure from certain circles.

Oh really now. But something changed that got the Democrat’s dander up .. I am thinking they are courting the Military Industrial Complex more and more because all that lobbying money talks!

Finally, there seems to be some people in this world (much less than 5% for sure) that have thought things through .. and this Ukrainian businessman has been doing some thinkin’:

It is not in the interest of Ukraine to be a proxy for U.S. deep state antagonism towards Russia. Robber baron Igor Kolomoisky, who after the Maidan coup had financed the west-Ukrainian fascists who fought against east-Ukraine, says so directly in his recent NYT interview:

Mr. Kolomoisky, widely seen as Ukraine’s most powerful figure outside government, given his role as the patron of the recently elected President Volodymyr Zelensky, has experienced a remarkable change of heart: It is time, he said, for Ukraine to give up on the West and turn back toward Russia.“They’re stronger anyway. We have to improve our relations,” he said, comparing Russia’s power to that of Ukraine. “People want peace, a good life, they don’t want to be at war. And you” — America — “are forcing us to be at war, and not even giving us the money for it.”

Mr. Kolomoisky [..] told The Times in a profanity-laced discussion, the West has failed Ukraine, not providing enough money or sufficiently opening its markets.

Instead, he said, the United States is simply using Ukraine to try to weaken its geopolitical rival. “War against Russia,” he said, “to the last Ukrainian.” Rebuilding ties with Russia has become necessary for Ukraine’s economic survival, Mr. Kolomoisky argued. He predicted that the trauma of war will pass.

Mr. Kolomoisky said he was feverishly working out how to end the war, but he refused to divulge details because the Americans “will mess it up and get in the way.”

Yes, the US was just USING the Ukraine, that is why the color revolution under the Obama administration, just to undermine Russia.

Unfortunately, Trump has gone along with the economic war with Russia, but as it turns out, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, so Russia of 2019 is a lot stronger than Russia of 2014. Maybe this is the 3D/4D/8D chess that Trump has been playing all along?

The bottom line? Well I agree with Bionic Mosquito on this one:

… he [Trump] was voted in based on his most basic attacks against the system: war and empire, central banking, Hillary is a crook and should be in prison, fix immigration.

On at least one of these – war and empire – I offer two thoughts: first he hasn’t started a meaningful new war; second, he is doing a great job of accelerating the rest of the world’s movement away from the American empire. Both are tremendous libertarian victories as far as I am concerned.

On the others, Trump has been pretty useless.

Now that is something to think about.

Signing out for now .. stay tuned.

-SF1

What is Good for America, Is Not Good for US Congress Representative’s Finances

The US House votes 354-60 against the withdrawal from the ILLEGAL US presence in Syria .. I think we found 354 people ready to volunteer themselves, or their kids and/or their grand-kids for the next war they dream up.
It must be all that MIC [Military Industrial Complex] lobbying money in their pocket and the promise of more $ that had them all voting against another illegal war in a far off land.
At the end of the day, this is great news for America, for American teenagers approaching the age where the military tries to attract them to the noble mission to occupy 700-1000 bases around the world, drone strike WITHOUT documentation in half a dozen countries and basically fail at bringing real democracy or freedom to any country in four decades PLUS.
Moon of Alabama’s post highlights all the good things going on in Syria which of course means that US politicians and their media start crying:
.. The mainstream borg is up in arms that Turkey uses Jihadis to attack their beloved anarcho-marxist PKK terrorists group. They have conveniently forgotten the history of the U.S. war on Syria, its arming of those Jihadis and its pampering of al-Qaeda. The U.S. did not betray the Kurds any more than it betrayed Turkey and the Jihadis which the Obama administration armed throughout the war…
On Lew Rockwell’s web site, Michael S. Rozeff writes:
This vote shows that the House members from both parties are captured by both military/intelligence/deep state interests and world government/democracy ideology. Both such elements go against the well-being of America..
You think? Bi-partisan agreement on unlimited wars, ‘wars without end, amen’ is what I hear from these sociopath politicians. Between the Israeli and MIC lobbies, these politicians can retire comfortably after only a few years in office.
To hear the politicians tell it, it was “shock and horror” when Turkey’s extremists start their NORMAL brutal tactics, but this time against the Kurds. It was all good when 500,000 Syrian’s were killed by Obama’s decision to “regime change” Syria.
Rania Khalek on Twitter outlines what REALLY came down:

“.. The US armed and funded extremists in Syria to overthrow the Syrian government and the media cheered. Those same extremists then attacked the Kurds on Turkey’s behalf to the horror of the same media…”
Yeah, main stream media (MSM) and a majority of US politicians acting the same way on the same day .. what can you say. They are all crazy.
Actually, things are going really well in Syria now with the US finally quitting their trespassing:

The Turkish controlled Jihadis made little progress. Mostly Kurdish fighters are preventing them from expanding from the area they are informally allowed to hold. The Turkish command has called up more irregular ‘rebel’ troops including Jihadis from Jaish al-Islam who had once controlled Ghouta in the east of Damascus. They had been transported to Idleb after their defeat. .. The Russian air force in Syria is preventing the use of the Turkish air-force in support of the Turkish attacks. Yesterday a Turkish F-16 entered Syrian air space but retreated when some Russian fighters appeared to hunt for it.

Can we do the same with Afghanistan now?

Asking for a friend.

-SF1