Tag: American Exceptionalism

US is Concerned for the ROI on Forces in Syria .. Apparently

ROI = Return on Investment

The US seems to be uneasy about the loss of human life in the Idlib region of Syrian that is under mainly al-Queda control along with elements of the Free Syrian Army. It is not enough that elements of the US’s deep state lit the fuse on this conflict back in 2011 that has to date claimed the lives of over 500,000 civilians and caused millions of people to become refugees by destroying their means to live peacefully in their communities.

Moon of Alabama (MOA) has noted in this article that the US is determined to create a quagmire that Syria/Russia/Iran will have trouble with, while today’s article from MOA gets real specific as to the agenda the US wants here:

U.S. President Trump added another warning against the Idelb operation:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump – 22:20 utc – 3 Sep 2018
“President Bashar al-Assad of Syria must not recklessly attack Idlib Province. The Russians and Iranians would be making a grave humanitarian mistake to take part in this potential human tragedy. Hundreds of thousands of people could be killed. Don’t let that happen!”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dunford, also chipped in:

“We don’t see any way that significant military operations are going to be beneficial to the people of Syria,” Dunford told reporters during a trip to Athens. “If major military operations take place we can expect humanitarian catastrophe and I think we would all want to see that be avoided,” …
…
Pressed about the best course, Dunford said: “More of a discussion between the Turks, the Syrians and the Russians at more precise counterterrorism operations — as opposed to large scale conventional operations — would be the right approach.”

The U.S. is not a friend of the people of Syria…

So the last line is the key line of logic that MOA offers and rightly so. Why would anyone listen to an entity that has spent seven years trespassing on Syrian soil, supplying any rebel group hostile to the legitimate Assad government with support both direct and indirect (thanks McCain, Clinton, Obama and Trump) is THE question one must ask!

The “advice” offered by the US administration is NOT helpful to the Syrian people, BUT to the US’s agenda as stated by MOA just a few days ago:

The U.S. is not only spoiling the military operations against the terrorists in Syria. It is trying to hamper any reconstruction and the return of refugees. Reconstruction is made more difficult by the devious sanction regime of the U.S. and EU.

So let us talk about all the lies being thrown at this. OK, we don’t have time for ALL the lies, so let’s just nail down a few:

First, the US asking what the heck is Iran doing in Syria?

The semi-permanent U.S. occupation of north-east Syria will be used in a new (and futile) attempt to achieve the long held U.S. aim of regime change. Secretary of Defense Mattis declared as much in a recent press conference. Asked about Iran in Syria he said:

“What are they doing in Syria in the first place, other than propping up someone who has committed mayhem and murder on his own people?
They have no business there. And our goal is to move the Syria civil war into the Geneva process so the Syrian people can establish a new government that is not led by Assad and give them a chance for a future that Assad has denied them, with — with overt Russian and Iranian support.”

If Iran, a treaty ally invited by the legitimate Syrian government, has ‘no business’ in Syria what business does the uninvited U.S. invasion force have?

Exactly, typical of a people group that believe American Exceptionalism allows them multiple levels of hypocrisy, it is laughable that US leaders could even think like this. The US has been the uninvited “guest” for seven years in another country .. what the HELL is the US there for?

Second, when US military leadership starts talking about ISIS again:

Asked about the prospect of U.S. troops in Syria Mattis said:

“[L]et me give three points here. One, we have to destroy ISIS. The president’s been very clear that — that ISIS is to be taken out, so that’s got to happen. We also have to have trained local troops who can take over. We’re doing that training as we speak. As we uncover ground, the chairman’s got people assigned there specifically to train the locals. And third, we need the Geneva process, the U.N.-recognized process to start making traction towards solving this war.
Now, if the locals are able to keep the security, obviously during this time we might be reducing our troops commensurate with their ability to meet — deny ISIS a return, but it really comes down to finding a way to solve this problem of Assad’s making.”

The claim that the U.S. is there to fight ISIS is a lie. ISIS is still active in two places in Syria. Both are under U.S. control.

On the east side of the Euphrates, near Al-Bukamal, ISIS holds several villages and the city of Hajin with originally some 40,000 inhabitants. The U.S. and its Kurdish controlled proxy force SDF stopped attacking those ISIS position in November 2017.

How is it that the US military and political leadership just make statements about stuff and they BECOME truth? That is truly exceptional! Epic BS.

On June 6 Mattis announced that the attack on ISIS in Hajin had re-commenced but there was zero news of any fighting. Instead ISIS forces from Hajin crossed the Euphrates and attacked Syrian government positions. Further imminent attacks on ISIS in Hajin were announced by the U.S. proxy forces on July 13 and on August 14. None happened.

Again, the US announces something they want the world to believe, 90% of the American people believe it .. but nothing happens. The people on the ground know the reality, but this is fake news all over again.

For ten month now ISIS sits unmolested in Hajin and the nearby areas. According to (pdf) the UN Sanctions Monitoring Team it is again extracting and selling oil and “earning millions of dollars per month”. ISIS attacks from Hajin on Syrian government forces west of the Euphrates continue.

The other ISIS concentration in Syria is around the al-Tanf border crossing between Syria and Iraq which is also under illegal U.S. control. The nearby Rukban refugee camp, with allegedly 50,000 inhabitants, is housing many ISIS families. Last week the Syrian army prevented an attack from the U.S. controlled area towards Palmyra ..

.. The U.S. is not fighting ISIS in Syria. It is building semi-permanent bases, trains a large proxy force, and controls Syria’s oilfields. Its aim is still regime change, the same aim it had when it launched the war on Syria seven and a half years ago.

Do you doubt that? Try on this quote:

As CIA and Pentagon mouthpiece David Ignatius wrote this week:

“[T]he administration has stopped the dithering and indecision of the past 18 months and signaled that the United States has enduring interests in Syria, beyond killing Islamic State terrorists — and that it isn’t planning to withdraw its Special Operations forces from northeastern Syria anytime soon.
“Right now, our job is to help create quagmires [for Russia and the Syrian regime] until we get what we want,” says one administration official, explaining the effort to resist an Idlib onslaught. This approach involves reassuring the three key U.S. allies on Syria’s border — Israel, Turkey and Jordan — of continued American involvement. …”

It is not nor has it ever been about the Syrian people, “democracy” or about innocent civilians being killed. It is ONLY about the US’s agenda of regime change to continue to destabilize the Middle East until it “gets what it wants” = ROI (a return on the US investment into all the rebel groups in Syria!)

Delaying the Syrian/Russian/Iranian operation in Idlib only continues to expose the civilian population trapped there to this:

[The Idlib] province is ruled by al-Qaeda:

“H.T.S. has controlled much of Idlib since 2015, acting as de facto governmental authority, facilitating trade across the long border with Turkey and organizing aid deliveries.”

The “de-facto governmental authority” HTS is known to publicly execute women accused of adultery. It “facilitates trade” by taxing it to finance its terrorist activities. It “organizing aid deliveries” by talking half of any aid that is brought in. That is the reason why the Inspector General of USAID recently shut down its aid program in Idleb.

What a bully state to say that civilians must endure this MONTHS longer because the US wants something out of this. How can anyone salute that flag (US) or say the pledge after hearing this? The flag is indeed a symbol of the state, not the people. It has been made “holy” by decree of the state as has its military that gets paid to spread the PR before every major sporting event in this country JUST to remind you of its place in your life .. to be your god.

In the meantime:

The U.S. is massively expanding its positions in north-east Syria. More than 1,600 trucks with new equipment arrived over the last month. The U.S. now has 18 bases in north-east Syria, 6 of which have their own landing strips. The media continue to claim the the U.S. has 2,000 soldiers in the north-east. The real number is more than double or triple of that. It is quite obvious that the U.S. is settling in with the intent to split the north-east from the rest of Syria, similar to what it did with the creation of a Kurdish entity in northern Iraq.

Do you feel like you have to puke yet? I do, this is not honorable, none of this is honorable. What happened to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”? (Golden Rule)  Or how about this?:

SpinDown: How Russia Does It and How the US Empire Does It

Russian Military Police – Observation Post in Syria

The process of spinning down a conflict is a lot harder than spinning it up. It seems that after years of destabilizing various areas of the world, the US has no patience for the spin-down process.

Notice how Russia patiently waited for Syria’s request for assistance, and once expectations were matched (as peers would do), the process would evolve in a strategy that maximizes stability throughout the spin-down process. This is basic project management.

Russia was aware that Syria was battling terrorism in their country starting in 2011 and was supporting Syria behind the scenes (while the US/Israel/Saudi Arabia/UK was supporting ISIS behind the scenes) for FOUR years until Assad requested direct Russian military assistance in 2015. Here we are three years later and without carpet bombing or napalm, Syria with Russia’s and Iran’s assistance have throttled back the terror impact inside Syria methodically. This is a five year plan that differs from the US approach in that Russia does not intend to stay past its welcome. This is what friends do, we don’t perpetually parent our friends for 20, 40 or 60 years or more!

The US was heavily involved in spinning up the North Korean conflict in 1950 through 1953 when a cease-fire was agreed on. The US has done nothing but exploit the situation with the North Koreans over the past 65 years. Through this process, South Korea has totally depended on the US military like welfare recipients depend on Uncle Sam, they might be grateful but they will never respect the entity/empire. All it takes is for the gravy train to end and the relationship goes south in a hurry. Does the same hold true in Japan, Germany, and Taiwan? You bet it does. It seems that the US Empire needs a strong military at all costs, because a bully doesn’t have any friends if he doesn’t have any fists! We have long ago overstayed our welcome as we are that enabler parent that will not let the kid grow up!

I was hopeful that President Trump, having accomplished a visit to North Korea in the spring of 2018 might have broken out of the dysfunctional funk that has plagued US negotiations and treaty performance (the American Indians know real well how that goes). Whether it is Trump’s inability at guiding his staff to build on his goodwill OR it is just part of the “art of negotiations”, Moon of Alabama gets to the core of the issue in this article:

Now Pompeo came to Pyongyang and asked for details about North Korea’s nuclear program and how it plans to abandon it. As far as we know he did not talk about point 1, the “establishment of new US-DPRK relations” which would include the opening of embassies and economic engagement. He did not talk about point 2, “a lasting and stable peace regime” i.e. a peace treaty. He did not talk about 3a, the “security guarantees to the DPRK”. The only item he talked about was 3b, the last item on the list.

Really? Is this the best that Team Trump can offer? I have to give it to North Korea for their part in some truth-telling to the US bully empire:

As for the issue of announcing the declaration of the end of war at an early date, it is the first process of defusing tension and establishing a lasting peace regime on the Korean peninsula, and at the same time, it constitutes a first factor in creating trust between the DPRK and the U.S. This issue was also stipulated in Panmunjom Declaration as a historical task to terminate the war status on the Korean peninsula which continues for nearly 70 years. President Trump, too, was more enthusiastic about this issue at the DPRK-U.S. summit talks.

That is mature, that is the ability to be critical of the staff that was supposed to follow through on his boss’ success while still giving the boss credit for what he started to accomplish.

Valuable agreement was reached in such a short time at the Singapore summit talks first ever in the history of the DPRK-U.S. relations. This is attributable to the fact that President Trump himself said he would move towards resolving the DPRK-U.S. relations and the issue of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula in a new way.
If both sides at the working level reneged on the new way agreed at the summit and returned to the old way, the epoch-making Singapore summit would be meaningless … We still cherish our good faith in President Trump.

The U.S. should make a serious consideration of whether the toleration of the headwind against the wills of the two top leaders would meet the aspirations and expectations of the world people as well as the interests of its country.

Wow. Has the US ever responded this way? The Golden Rule as Ron Paul would say, would go a long ways in sustaining peaceful and respectable relationships with other countries. I think there is more money to be made in war however:

Beyond this July 2018 dialog, it seems that the US Media has joined in following in the footsteps that the Trump administration left off, further criticizing of the North Koreans. I honestly think they believe that they don’t have a chance in getting their war in Syria liked they wanted and since much of the US naval fleet is in the Western Pacific anyway, why not just rattle some cages on that side of the world for a while. Sick!

Moon of Alabama in this recent article shares how the US Media / US Government Propaganda Machine is selling its fake news:

A Washington Post editorial today laments that the Singapore negotiations have given North Korea too much. It urges Trump further into the blind alley he already finds himself in:

The administration’s best hope of rescuing the situation is to return to talking with North Korea about an equitable tradeoff. To start the process of denuclearization, U.S. officials say the Kim regime must provide a complete inventory of its assets — warheads, production facilities and other nuclear infrastructure — and agree to inspections to verify it. Previous negotiations have broken down because of Pyongyang’s refusal to take this step, so a full disclosure would provide the first clear signal that Mr. Kim was serious about denuclearization. That, along with a freeze in the production of missiles and fissile materials, could justify U.S. participation in the end-of-conflict declaration the two Koreas are seeking.

This is exactly what Trump and his water carrier Pompeo are doing. They demand that North Korea bows to whatever the U.S. wishes without assuring it of a significant quid pro quo. If the U.S. can not even stick to simple agreements, like the Singapore Statement, why should North Korea believe any verbal assurance of vague steps the U.S. might take after it disarms?

The only way out of this is for the U.S. to offer and sign a peace treaty that finally brings the Korea War to an official end. There is only one alternatives to that. A return U.S. strategic maneuvers, which Defense Secretary Mattis just now announced, followed up by North Korea with new nuclear and missile tests, possibly combined in a launch towards Guam.

This is a bi-polar dysfunctional American empire that is “high” on itself, the old “American Exceptionalism” disease. Our kids and grand-kids will not benefit from this type of behavior in future generations.

If we even think about some of the more US’s recent interventions (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the attempt in Syria and elsewhere to lesser degrees), one has to wonder how long can this go on? Is this dysfunctional empire going to be able to “spin-down” any country where it is better off for the process of being led to “democracy”?

Unlike Russia, it seems that the US planning is only one step deep, intervene in a big way, and then let the chips fall where they may, so that in the destabilized environment Uncle Sam’s services will be needed for generations. Job security.

Uncle Sam needs an “intervention”!

-SF1

What is the Pivot Point of US Foreign Policy in the Middle East?

When you think of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and Syria (all adversely impacted by US foreign policy) and then consider the region’s powers of Israel, Saudi Arabia and UAE that are pitted against Iran, it all becomes a bit more clear. Israel desires to be a permanent fixture in the Middle East in spite of its illegitimate birth at the expense of native Palestinians. To preserve their place in the Middle East, they have become more desperate in their quest to control the narrative as well as the lands outside their true borders (i.e. Golan Heights, West Bank as well as Gaza).

Paranoid to a fault, they have used the United Kingdom and the United States of America for seven decades since they were given partial ownership of land in this region after the Zionist movement gained UK support three decades prior to that.

From AntiWar comes a fair synopsis [ Titled: “Making Sense of US Moves in the Middle East” by and ] of the region’s neighbors who have been decimated by US foreign policy working towards protecting Israel at all costs.

Starting with the US’s longest undeclared war to date, Afghanistan, the article points out:

The report was devastating – or would have been, if anyone here had noticed it. “Between 2001 and 2017,” it concluded, “U.S. government efforts to stabilize insecure and contested areas in Afghanistan mostly failed.”

If you think this has nothing to do with Israel, you are sorely mistaken. Israel has seen Iran (used to be Iraq) as it’s biggest enemy in the region since it has Saudi Arabia and UAE as allies.

Of course the US would like the world to believe that Iran is threatening the US but in reality just its existence WITHOUT any nukes it threatens Israel which has 100 nukes. Iran is not really an offensive powerhouse with its 40 year old military equipment mainly from the US before the Shah of Iran (US puppet) was overthrown.

So $2T to date has been spent in Afghanistan with 2,000 US soldiers dying there as well as 100,000 Afghans to date. The fact that the poppy-market (Opium) market there is thriving makes the country fantastic in funding CIA black budget towards its black ops worldwide as well as being lucrative for the Military Industrial Complex.

The background on Afghanistan and how it became a target after 9/11 is an interesting one:

From Lew Rockwell

In 1998, the Afghan anti-Communist movement Taliban and a western oil consortium led by the US firm UNOCAL signed a major pipeline deal. UNOCAL lavished money and attention on Taliban, flew a senior delegation to Texas, and also hired an minor Afghan official, one Hamid Karzai.

Enter Osama bin Laden. He advised the unworldly Taliban leaders to reject the US deal and got them to accept a better offer from an Argentine consortium, Bridas. Washington was furious and, according to some accounts, threatened Taliban with war.

In early 2001, six or seven months before 9/11, Washington made the decision to invade Afghanistan, overthrow Taliban, and install a client regime that would build the energy pipelines. But Washington still kept up sending money to Taliban until four months before 9/11 in an effort to keep it “on side” for possible use in a war or strikes against Iran.

The 9/11 attacks, about which Taliban knew nothing, supplied the pretext to invade Afghanistan. The initial US operation had the legitimate objective of wiping out Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida. But after its 300 members fled to Pakistan, the US stayed on, built bases — which just happened to be adjacent to the planned pipeline route

So with that unpleasant fact out of the way (i.e. rationale for invading Afghanistan), let’s take a look at the West Bank before we turn our eyes to Syria.

Early on, Israel has made a point to solidify it’s grip on ALL the land promised the Hebrews and given to the Zionists (close enough for government work right?) by the UK and US after WWII:

From the AntiWar article mentioned above:

… the United States has often been Israel’s sole ally as, in direct contravention of international law, that country has used its own settlements to carve Palestinian territory into a jigsaw puzzle of disparate pieces, making a contiguous Palestinian state a near impossibility.

Then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon explained Israel’s plan for the Palestinian people in 1973 when he said, “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them.” Promising to insert “a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank,” he insisted that “in 25 years’ time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”

Forty-five years later, his strategy has been fully implemented, as Barack Obama reportedly learned to his shock when, in 2015, he saw a State Department map of the shredded remains of the land on which Palestinians are allowed to exist on the West Bank.

The “pastrami sandwich” strategy has effectively killed any hope for a two-state solution.

How convenient for Israel, and now in its effort to solidify this even more (as they are in fact now the minority class in Israel in terms of shear population), they are doing this (again from the AntiWar article):

.. as the number of non-Jews begins to surpass that of Jews in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, that country once again confronts the inherent contradiction of a state that aims to be both democratic and, in some sense, Jewish. If everyone living in Israel/Palestine today had equal political and economic rights, majority rule would no longer be Jewish rule. In effect, as some Israelis argue, Israel can be Jewish or democratic, but not both.

A solution to this demographic dilemma – one supported by present Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – is to legislate permanent inequality through what’s called “the basic law on Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people,” which is now being debated in the country’s parliament, the Knesset. Among other provisions, that “basic” law (which, if passed, would have the equivalent of constitutional status) will allow citizens “to establish ‘pure’ communities on the basis of religion or ethnicity.” In other words, it will put in place an official framework of legalized segregation. [Editor’s note: The Jewish Nation-State bill described here was passed early Thursday morning. This article was written before passage.]

Apartheid .. segregation .. a last ditch effort to strong arm its way in a region that is hostile to its own paranoid agenda. Acting like the US Empire as a world’s bully, not even allowing UN inspectors in Israel while it demands Iran to have total transparency in the world’s court.

Blowback is a bitch, but the current Zionist leaders only care about themselves and not their kids when they use this method to coexist in this world.

So while the US has given the Israeli military almost every toy the US has in its inventory as well as $134.7B (current, or non-inflation-adjusted) dollars in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding and promising $39B more in the next ten years it appears that GOP, Democrats and Zionist Christians are falling all over themselves to aid in this intimate partnership for the long term. The world is NOT impressed.

Lastly, what is up with Syria?

Meanwhile, if it weren’t for Yemen (see below), it might be hard to imagine a more miserable place in 2018 than Syria. Since 2011, when a nonviolent movement to unseat Assad devolved into a vicious civil war, more than half the country’s pre-war population of 22 million has become internally displaced or refugees, according to numbers from the U.N. High Commission on Refugees. Actual casualty figures are impossible to pin down with any exactitude. In April 2018, however, the New York Times reported that the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the number of directly caused deaths at 511,000, including fighters and civilians.

Death and destruction have come from all sides: al-Qaeda-linked terror groups and the Islamic State killing civilians; the Syrian military, which is presently driving opposition forces out of the southern city of Dara’a, where the original uprising began (creating a quarter-million refugees with literally no place to go); and U.S. bombs and other munitions – 20,000 of them – reducing the city of Raqqa to rubble in a campaign to liberate it from ISIS militants. Add it all up and the war, still ongoing, has destroyed millions of homes and businesses, along with crucial infrastructure throughout an increasingly impoverished country.

So with Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria all smarting from Israel’s lover, the US, all to protect Israel (more than US citizens when you understand the $20T debt, $200T unfunded liabilities and the loss of freedoms across the spectrum the American people have suffered (out of ignorance they would not understand this sentence)) .. what else is there? Yemen!!!

Saudi Arabia with US weapons and assistance have decimated Yemen towards a genocidal disaster. It is almost as if the US is getting Saudi Arabia up to speed to be another useful puppet in the region to protect Israel .. yes, you heard that right .. in fact, the US/Israel/Saudi Arabia team were the proud parents of ISIS.

With U.S. logistical and financial support, Saudi Arabia has waged a cruel air war against the Houthis, a home-grown movement that in 2015 overthrew the government of president Ali Abdullah Saleh. What is the Saudi interest in Yemen? As in their support for a potential UAE-Israel-Russia-U.S. alliance in Syria, they’re intent on fighting a proxy war – and someday perhaps via the U.S. and Israel, a real war – with Iran.

In this case, however, it seems that the other side in that war hasn’t shown up. Although, like the Iranian government and most Iranians, the Houthi are Shi’a Muslims, there is little evidence of Iranian involvement in Yemen. That hasn’t stopped the Saudis (with American support) from turning that country into “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.” Their destruction of infrastructure in rebel-held areas has collapsed a once-functioning public health system, touching off a cholera epidemic, with the World Health Organization reporting a total of 1,105,371 suspected cases between April 2017 and June 2018. The infection rate now stands at 934 per 10,000 people.

Even worse than the largely unchecked spread of cholera, however, is Yemen’s man-made famine. Photographs from the country display the familiar iconography of widespread hunger: children with stick-like limbs and blank, sunken eyes. As it happens, though, this famine was not caused by drought or any other natural disaster. It’s a direct result of a brutal Saudi air campaign and a naval blockade aimed directly at the country’s economic life.

Before the war, Yemen imported 80% of its food and even today, despite a disastrous ongoing Saudi/UAE campaign to blockade and take the port of Hodeidah, Yemen’s main economic center, there is actually plenty of food in the country. It now simply costs more than most Yemenis can pay. Because the war has destroyed almost all economic activity in Houthi-controlled areas, people there have no money with which to buy food. In other words, the Saudi offensive against Hodeidah is starving people in two ways: directly by preventing the delivery of international food aid and indirectly by making the food in Yemen unaffordable for ordinary people.

Nice … am I right? American exceptionalism at its finest! A nation under God right?

The author summarizes with this statement of hope (she is young, so you will have that):

For more than 70 years, Americans have largely ignored the effects of U.S. foreign policy in the rest of the world. Rubble in Syria? Famine in Yemen? It’s terribly sad, yes, but what, we still wonder, does it have to do with us?

That Part of the World doesn’t wonder about how U.S. actions and policies affect them. That Part of the World knows – and what it knows is devastating. It’s time that real debate about future U.S. policy there becomes part of our world, too.

Fat chance on the US really having a debate on foreign policy as the only export this country really has anymore is weapons and a bully military.

Again, blowback will be a bitch someday. I just with my generation would have learned from Vietnam and thought more like Thomas Paine: