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. Now what? pic.twitter.com/pAA4EENhSQ
“.. 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.
I am fully aware that the term “collateral damage” as used by the US Empire refers to the “unfortunate” death of innocent civilians as a result of “pre-war” sanctions. The most popular clip on the Internet is Secretary of State Madeline Albright being interviewed about the 500,000 children that died as a result of sanctions on Iraq between Gulf War I and II:
The reason I ‘air-quote’ the term pre-war is that in all reality, sanctions themselves are an act of war, even though it is on the economic variety. While there are no guns used, there is force used to ensure that the economic activity sanctioned actually does not take place, and that is indeed backed by guns. It is both coercion and violence-based. The state dictates that peaceful trade can not take place and its edicts will be followed, as the consequences to any business is well known. No business can go rogue in the sanction war.
Truth be told, we in the US on the domestic front are again close to having personal conversation scrutinized for words of support towards these sanctioned countries filled with people who desire peaceful trade with American citizens. If one supports Palestinian people, one is assumed to be anti-Semitic, if one supports Russian people, one is assumed to be a Russian-bot.
There was a time when war’s harm toward civilians caught in the crossfire was recognized and attempts were made toward international rules that safeguarded citizens as much as possible from the political conflicts that broke out across the world. By the 1700s in fact, this was the norm, which is why there was such disgust when British dragoon leader Banastre Tarleton would kill both the wounded enemy as well as civilians that appeared to “aid the enemy”.
By the time seven states decided to leave the American union in 1861, this norm had not yet changed. Most of the civilized world’s battles took place on the outskirts of cities.
From an article written by one who has seen war with his own eyes since Vietnam, Tom’s Dispatch writes about this time period:
In fact, the classic American instance of war-as-spectator-sport occurred in 1861 in the initial major land battle of the Civil War, Bull Run (or, for those reading this below the Mason-Dixon line, the first battle of Manassas). “On the hill beside me there was a crowd of civilians on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles, with a few of the fairer, if not gentler sex,” wrote William Howard Russell who covered the battle for the London Times. “The spectators were all excited, and a lady with an opera glass who was near me was quite beside herself when an unusually heavy discharge roused the current of her blood — ‘That is splendid, Oh my! Is not that first rate? I guess we will be in Richmond tomorrow.’”
Yes, a picnic lunch adjacent to a large battle. You now know how everyone assumed that civilians would not be targeted. People in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Syria, Pakistan, Yemen and Libya pretty much know the opposite is true with the US Empire in the 21st century.
Reflecting back once more:
That woman would be sorely disappointed. U.S. forces not only failed to defeat their Confederate foes and press on toward the capital of the secessionist South but fled, pell-mell, in ignominious retreat toward Washington. It was a rout of the first order. Still, not one of the many spectators on the scene, including Congressman Alfred Ely of New York, taken prisoner by the 8th South Carolina Infantry, was killed.
By in large, the southern armies were driven by principles. The leadership time and again desired to spare the civilian population of the havoc of war. When Robert E. Lee’s army invaded the northern states of Maryland and Pennsylvania, his men were under strict orders NOT to help themselves to the resources of these civilians but rely on their own supplies. This was even apparent at the end of the war in 1865 when a hungry, tired and destitute southern army under Robert E. Lee retreated from Richmond and came across a rare cow in the countryside. Robert E. Lee directed his hungry men to return that cow to its rightful owner.
We do however know that there were civilian deaths during this internal conflict where one section of the country desired to depart in peace. Tom’s Dispatch explains:
Judith Carter Henry was as old as the imperiled republic at the time of the battle. Born in 1776, the widow of a U.S. Navy officer, she was an invalid, confined to her bed, living with her daughter, Ellen, and a leased, enslaved woman named Lucy Griffith when Confederate snipers stormed her hilltop home and took up positions on the second floor.
“We ascended the hill near the Henry house, which was at that time filled with sharpshooters. I had scarcely gotten to the battery before I saw some of my horses fall and some of my men wounded by sharpshooters,” Captain James Ricketts, commander of Battery 1, First U.S. Artillery, wrote in his official report. “I turned my guns on that house and literally riddled it. It has been said that there was a woman killed there by our guns.” Indeed, a 10-pound shell crashed through Judith Henry’s bedroom and tore off her foot. She died later that day, the first civilian death of America’s Civil War.
We know she was not the last to die. Many would die as Union army cut swaths through the south in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. Civilian’s fields, silver and homes would not be spared, nor were their personal bodies as many women were raped by the marauding troops from the north. As in many countries in the Middle East today, these atrocities would not soon be forgotten.
Tom’s Dispatch (Nick Turse) continues:
No one knows how many civilians died in the war between the states. No one thought to count. Maybe 50,000, including those who died from war-related disease, starvation, crossfire, riots, and other mishaps. By comparison, around 620,000 to 750,000 American soldiers died in the conflict — close to 1,000 of them at that initial battle at Bull Run.
So by 1865 these ratios were starting to change. Civilian deaths are hard to estimate, but you can be assured that military deaths these days are minimal when compared to those of innocent civilians.
In Vietnam, we saw this on black and white TV before the government decided to control more of what the masses would view:
A century later, U.S. troops had traded their blue coats for olive fatigues and the wartime death tolls were inverted. More than 58,000 Americans lost their lives in Vietnam. Estimates of the Vietnamese civilian toll, on the other hand, hover around two million. Of course, we’ll never know the actual number, just as we’ll never know how many died in air strikes as reporters watched from the rooftop bar of Saigon’s Caravelle Hotel ..
Since the 1960s, this trend has only accelerated and has not only produced more of what our own CIA calls “blowback” (I mean, when you blow up funeral processions with drones, you will multiply the number of freedom-fighters, errr I mean “terrorists” in a region) but it also has cause economic and political refugees seeking a better life in other regions of the world. For both the military-industrial complex and politicians, this is actually a win-win for them. How sick is that?
Tom’s Dispatch article winds down by saying:
In this century, it’s a story that has occurred repeatedly, each time with its own individual horrors, as the American war on terror spread from Afghanistan to Iraq and then on to other countries; as Russia fought in Georgia, Ukraine, and elsewhere; as bloodlettings have bloomed from the Democratic Republic of Congo to South Sudan, from Myanmar to Kashmir. War watchers like me and like those reporters atop the Caravelle decades ago are, of course, the lucky ones. We can sit on the rooftops of hotels and listen to the low rumble of homes being chewed up by artillery. We can make targeted runs into no-go zones to glimpse the destruction. We can visit schools transformed into shelters. We can speak to real estate agents who have morphed into war victims. Some of us, like Hedrick Smith, Michael Herr, or me, will then write about it — often from a safe distance and with the knowledge that, unlike Salah Isaid and most other civilian victims of such wars, we can always find an even safer place.
A safer place. I am sure this is what those imprisoned in Gaza feel, or those in Libya near Tripoli these days, or in various areas of Iraq and Afghanistan and even in areas of Syria.
This will probably all “come home to roost” as our foreign policy of intervention and disruption plus regime change causes people to uproot and move. There is always “baggage” involved when violence displaces families.
This all will not end well, nor will this country be exempt from the fallout.
Things just don’t add up. I do believe that this is a pivot point for the narrative of the American Empire .. and as Ian56 @Ian56789 at Twitter says:
So you think PTSD levels among combat Vets & the drug sales as a result of these PTSD levels are off the scale?
Just imagine what will happen when these latest War Crimes & Treason sink in
Prozac, Oxycontin & Heroin dealers licking their lips at extra profit
We have been told many lies since 9/11, and IF you apply simple logic, you can see where this may lead. Maybe the US is protecting the civilians, but why didn’t they in Aleppo last year? Maybe the US is protecting al Qaeda. If so, what does that say about saving the very clan that according to the US government DID 9/11?
However, this would make MANY (a vast majority) people uncomfortable, because it upsets the worldview they have come to accept from one god ( the state) or the other god (their religion).
In my last post about Pearl Harbor, and the lies told in the run up to that “Day that will live in infamy” December 7th, 1941, it took several generations to really unpack and research documents that have shown us the truth of that day, two generations later? What will our kids and grand-kids find in declassified documents in 2070 in regards to 9/11? On the other hand, will we have to wait that long for truth to be unveiled?
So here we are in 2018 seeing the final push by Syria/Russia/Iran and the Hezbollah troops on the ISIS/alQaeda forces, an effort that tests the US foreign policy in the extreme:
.. and the United States (and possibly France, UK and even Germany) are coming on on the side of … al Qaeda!!!
So you might be thinking that al Qaeda is the United States’ main asset to protect in the Middle East.
Not so fast.
Today in 2018 we have seen the Taliban make some impressive gains in Afghanistan .. and the US seems fine with the stalemate, a weak Afghanistan is a well behaved Afghanistan:
So the 17 year war in Afghanistan AGAINST the Taliban is NOT BEING WON!
What about the 14 year war in Iraq (2004 invasion / Gulf War II)? Iraq as a nation is very week and basically divided and impotent in this region and is not a threat to anyone.
[Originally the rationale for was was for Saddam’s WMDs (Weapons of Mass Desctruction), something the US knew something about since the US gave Saddam Hussein them in 1988 during the Iraq-Iran War]
ISIS (these are NOT religious zealots, they generally don’t read the Koran, they are 90% PLUS mercenaries only 5% are hard core fundamentalists) is seen below expanding to cover much of Iraq and eventually spilling over into Syria:
… were given safe passage of over 500 miles across open desert to Syria:
From 2011-2015 the US was “fighting” ISIS in Syria, they claimed, but it was also noted that the US assisted in training ISIS and other moderate rebels in Jordan to get ready for phase 2 of the ISIS tour in the Middle East. All told, more than 250,000 combatants arrived from overseas to fight against the Syrian Arab Republic:
Not until 2015, when the Russians were invited by Syria’s President Assad to assist in battling ISIS/al Qaeda and other “moderate” rebel groups, did the US hand start to be seen clearly. The US (along with UK/Qatar/SaudiArabia and even Israel) were secret supporters of ISIS/al Qaeda.
Since 2015 is is interesting as much as ISIS/al Qaeda has been pressed, they do not enter Israel (although Israel has been observed aiding ISIS units across the borders in the Middle East).
The US apparently has not been in the Middle East since 1990 and then in Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2004), and Syria (2011) with a mission to “fight” al Qaeda (50 – 100 members at the time in 2001 when accused of 9/11) , or the Taliban, or ISIS.
Who is there left to PROTECT in the Middle East?
To see who you are protecting, look at the checkbook!
Who else can it be?
Why else would the US even get involved in 1990 with Gulf War I but to keep Iraq from encroaching on Israel (with US military hardware)?
Why else would the US in 2006 birth ISIS in Iraq but to keep Iran from encroaching on Israel?
Why else would the US in 2011 allow safe passage of ISIS into Syria but to keep Iran from encroaching on Israel?
Remember the conditions Trump’s administration was stating not more than a week ago about WHO has to leave Syria first?
The Trump administration won’t consider withdrawing US forces until Iran leaves the country.
Come on now! Russia was invited. Iran was invited. Hezbollah was invited.
The United States was NOT invited. ISIS/alQaeda was NOT invited.
WHO is complaining in the neighborhood?
There is no other way to look at this except that the Zionist nation of Israel needs the US Empire to accomplish the long-distance “defense” of their “homeland”.
