US warns Israel against keeping up strikes on Syria
Press TV – January 30, 2019
The top US intelligence official has warned Israel of the consequences of keeping up its military strikes on Syrian soil, saying the attacks could eventually trigger a response from Iran, which has its military advisors based in the Arab state.
Speaking at a hearing of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in Washington on Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said that Israel’s continued aerial assaults against Syria would increase the risk of Iran’s retaliation.
“We assess that Iran seeks to avoid a major armed conflict with Israel,” Coats said. “However, Israeli strikes that result in Iranian casualties increase the likelihood of Iranian conventional retaliation against Israel.”
Coats also raised concerns about “the long-term trajectory of Iranian influence in the region and the risk that conflict will escalate.”
He further claimed that Iran pursues “permanent military bases” in Syria and probably wants to maintain a network of “fighters” there despite the Israeli aerial assaults.
The American official was presenting the views of the US Intelligence Community to the congressional committee as part of the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment.
Tehran has been offering military advisory assistance to the Syrian army at the request of the Damascus government. Iran says it is not operating any military bases there.
The Israeli military has on multiple occasions launched air raids against targets inside Syria, some of which it claims belonged to Iranian forces.
Israel – which has been backing the terror groups operating against Damascus — views Iranian advisors in Syria as a threat and has openly pledged to target them until they leave the Arab country.
Earlier this month, the chief commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) responded to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “ridiculous” threat of strikes against Iranian advisors.
Major General Ali Jafari vowed that the Islamic Republic will protect its military advisory mission against the regime’s acts of aggression.
Just days ago, Iran’s chief military commander raised the possibility of Iran adopting offensive military tactics to protect its interests.
The chief military commander says Iran is prepared to adopt offensive military tactics in order to protect its interests while generally adhering to its broad defense doctrine.
In April 2018, an Israeli airstrike against the T-4 airbase in Syria’s Homs Province killed more than a dozen people, reportedly including seven Iranian military advisors.
In May of the same year, Israel conducted its most intensive airstrikes on Syria in decades. According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, Israel had used 28 warplanes in its Syria strikes and fired 70 missiles. Both Damascus and Moscow said that the Syrian army had managed to shoot down over half of the missiles.
The Tel Aviv regime, at the time, claimed that its assault was in response to a barrage of 20 rockets that had been fired from Syria at Israeli military outposts in the occupied Golan Heights, and it blamed the rocket attack on Iran.
McConnell Mulls Introducing Amendment to Stop US Pullout from Syria, Afghanistan
Sputnik – 30.01.2019
WASHINGTON – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday he plans to introduce legislation to prevent what he called a “precipitous” withdrawal of US forces from Syria and Afghanistan before terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Daesh are defeated there.
“My amendment would acknowledge the plain fact that al Qaeda, ISIS[Daesh], and their affiliates in Syria and Afghanistan continue to pose a serious threat to our nation”, McConnell said in remarks on the Senate floor.
McConnell said his amendment, which he plans to introduce to a wide-ranging Senate bill on the Middle East, would “recognize the danger of a precipitous withdrawal from either conflict, and highlight the need for diplomatic engagement and political solutions to the underlying conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan”.
He stressed that his amendment would ensure the continued commitment of US forces until “vile terrorists” suffer an enduring defeat in both countries.
Moreover, McConnell emphasized that if the US exit the two countries before defeating the terrorists, the two conflicts would “reverberate in the United States”.
The comments mark a rare break between the Republican Senate majority leader and President Donald Trump, who has signaled that he intends to pull US troops out of both countries.
McConnell said he would introduce the amendment to the “Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act”, a sweeping package of measures that would impose new sanctions against Syria, boost defense spending in the region and punish activists who call for economic boycotts of Israel to protest its policies in Palestine, among other measures.
The bill cleared a first Senate hurdle on Monday in a 74-19 vote, and the chamber is expected to decide on the final version of the legislation in the coming days.
In December, the US-based media reported that Washington planned to withdraw around 7,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan. The reports came in the wake of Trump’s announcement regarding his intention to pull the US troops out of Syria since, according to him, the Daesh had been defeated.
The White House, however, has dismissed the claims about Afghanistan, saying that Donald Trump had no such plans.
Canada strips group of charity status for funding Israel army
MEMO | January 29, 2019
A Canadian Jewish organisation has been stripped of its charity status for supporting the Israeli army. The discovery – which has come as a shock to many well-meaning donors – was made following a government audit of the Toronto based group whose revenue is in the region of tens of millions.
Federal regulators found that some of the activities of Beth Oloth Charitable Organisation were not charitable under Canadian law, such as “increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the Israeli armed forces,” Canadian news agency Global News reported.
The pro-Israeli charity group, established in 1962, describes itself as “having reached out to thousands of newly-arrived immigrants and under-privileged Israeli girls – young victims of terror, sickness, turmoil, poverty and family strife.”
The group promotes its work saying: “the devoted staff at Beth Oloth receives these girls at the tender age of nine. The next ten years are marked with one continuous chain of love, warmth and nurturing, alongside a quality education.”
Beth Oloth’s charity work has now come under scrutiny after Canada’s Revenue Agency (CRA) discovered that it has been supporting “foreign armed forces”. Almost all the money raised by the pro-Israeli charity group went abroad. Beth Oloth was not only found to be aiding the Israeli military, it was also undermining Canada’s own foreign policy in the Israeli-Palestine conflict by funding projects in the occupied territories.
Investigation by the Canadian government discovered that the pro-Israeli charity group lacked “direction and control” over the use of its funds, and had funded non-charitable activity. Global News said that this included educational programs called “mechinot” that prepared high school students for Israeli military service.
The program is said to have provided weapons, physical and martial arts training, mentoring by Israel Defence Forces officers and visits to army bases and sites of historical battles.
The revocation was announced in the 12 January edition of the government’s Canada Gazette. Some 94 pages of evidence were released to expose the pro-Israeli group’s non charitable work. Beth Oloth has received vast donations in recent years – $61 million in 2017, $45 million in 2016 and $42 million in 2015 – but it’s not clear how much of that was spent on charity and how much went towards funding the Israeli army; programs for preparing kids for military training or towards projects in illegal settlements in occupied West Bank.
Beth Oloth responded to the allegations by insisting that its work involved providing “stipends to the poor for the observance of religious life” and that it had funded teachers to provide religious training at mechinot schools.” CRA refuted their claim saying: “Providing assistance to Israeli settlements in the occupied territories serves to encourage and enhance the permanency of the infrastructure and settlements and therefore is contrary to Canada’s public policy and international law on this issue.”
According to Canada’s tax agency, Beth Oloth’s revenue was relatively small; raising a mere $21,000 in 2008, a year before the Israeli military carried out one of the deadliest assault on the Palestinians in Gaza during “Operation Cast Lead”, killing 1,400 people. The pro-Israeli group enjoyed a rapid growth after that period but it’s not clear why its revenue went from mere thousands to over $60 million in such a short period of time.
Beth Oloth’s non-charitable activities have come as a shock. Jewish leaders accused the pro-Israeli group of abusing their generosity. “Well-meaning donors to Jewish community foundations may be surprised to learn that they have been funding illegal Israeli settlement activity,” said Rabbi David Mivasair of Hamilton, Ontario. “The CRA doing its job and removing Beth Oloth’s illegitimate charitable status strengthens our confidence that our generosity is not being abused.”
Beth Oloth isn’t the only pro-Israeli charity group whose work has raised the suspicion of the Canadian government. Audits carried out during the same week by the CRA found that the Jewish National Fund of Canada (JNF), one of the country’s long-established charities, funded infrastructure projects for the Israeli army, air and naval bases.
Complaints are said to have been raised against JNF for years. The pro-Israeli charity claims to run reforestation efforts in areas hit by wildfires, but an 85 page document has been submitted listing the many ways in which it has been violating Canadian tax law for over 50 years.
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US to spend $500bn on nuclear weapons upgrade over next 10 years
Press TV – January 27, 2019
A new US government estimate has found that Washington’s plans for modernizing and maintaining the country’s nuclear arsenal will cost nearly $500 billion over the next decade.
The exact nuclear weapons upgrade cost assessment stands at $494 billion, which is part of a biannual estimate produced by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and reflects a 23-percent increase over the previous estimate of $400 billion released in 2017, which was 15 percent more than the 2015 figure, US-based military journal Defense News reported Friday.
The report points out, however, that the whopping figure for the US nuclear arms upgrade only represents nearly six percent of the country’s overall projected military spending during the time period.
According to the report, three notable changes featured in Washington’s so-called Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) were the development of a low-yield submarine-launched ballistic missile, development of a new sea-launched cruise missile and increased plutonium pit production, further adding that they resulted in an estimated $17 billion cost increase over the time period.
It also emphasized that the figure could further increase should the Trump administration follow through on plans in the NPR to keep the B83 nuclear bomb in service longer than intended, or if it develops a land-based nuclear cruise missile following an expected US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with Russia.
Overall, the report adds, the US Defense Department and the Department of Energy (DOE) intend to spend the funds in the following way:
- $234 billion on strategic nuclear delivery systems and weapons — including submarines, intercontinental ballistic missiles and long-range bombers – as well as the nuclear warheads for use from those systems, and DOE’s funding of nuclear reactors for the submarine fleet.
- $15 billion on tactical nuclear delivery systems and weapons, including tactical aircraft for delivering weapons, management of the warheads for those tactical aircraft; and funding for the new submarine-launched cruise missile.
- $106 billion for DOE’s nuclear weapons laboratories and production facilities, where the US stockpile of nuclear warheads are maintained and developed.
- $77 billion on nuclear command, control, commutations and early warning systems, used to coordinate any nuclear-related issues. This is while Pentagon officials have warned over the past two years that its nuclear command and control is at risk of being outdated without major investments.
The report also points out that the remaining $62 billion in projected costs come from “CBO’s estimate of additional costs that would be incurred over the 2019–2028 period if the costs of nuclear programs exceeded planned amounts at roughly the same rates at which costs for similar programs have grown in the past.”
US plans for space wars are real – Russian Foreign Ministry
RT | January 25, 2019
US plans to pursue development of space-based interceptors signals that Washington would use space for military operations, the Russian Foreign Ministry has warned.
Washington’s concept of a space-based interceptor capable of destroying missiles in the boost phase was presented in the US Missile Defense Review (MDR) last week.
In the speech announcing the publication of the MDR, US President Donald Trump warned that the new strategy will “ensure that enemy missiles find no sanctuary on Earth or in the skies above.”
He also declared that “space is a new war-fighting domain with the Space Force leading the way.”
The US “implementation of its military space plans will hit the current system of space activities’ safety,” stated Moscow, referring to Washington’s previous attempts to achieve dominance in the military sphere resulted in “growing tensions and a spiralling arms race.”
The Foreign Ministry has also expressed regret that the US abandoned “constructive dialogue” and returned to the 1980s ‘Star Wars’ missile defense program of President Ronald Reagan, when the spaced-based interceptors were first envisioned.
Though the MDR only recommends studying the issue at this point, Moscow is convinced that the Trump administration puts a “strong emphasis” on it and will be inclined to go ahead with the development of the spaced-based weapons.
Besides development of space-based capabilities, the MDR describes plans to deploy 20 additional interceptor missiles in Alaska as soon as 2023. Other plans include arming missile facilities in Romania and Poland – part of the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) – with new Aegis SM-3 missiles.
Toxic femininity: ‘Badass’ US women demand right to torture and kill for Empire… just like men
© Global Look Press / Marvel Studios
By Michael McCaffrey | RT | January 25, 2019
Thanks to a new wave of feminism and its call for equality, it isn’t just toxic men who can kill, torture and surveil in the name of US militarism and empire, women can now do it too!
This past weekend was the third annual Women’s March, which is a protest originally triggered by Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election that encourages women across America to rise up against misogyny and patriarchy.
As sincere as these women are in their outrage, in their quest for power they are inadvertently reinforcing the immoral and unethical system that they claim to detest. This is most glaringly apparent when this new feminism boldly embraces the worst traits of the patriarchy in the form of militarism and empire.
The rise of #MeToo, Time’s Up and the anti-Trump Women’s Movement, has brought forth a new wave of politically and culturally active neo-feminists. This modern women’s movement and its adherents demand that “boys not be boys”, and in fact claim that the statement “boys will be boys” is in and of itself an act of patriarchal privilege and male aggression. The irony is that these neo-feminists don’t want boys to be boys, but they do want girls to be like boys.
The inherent contradiction of that ideology was on full display recently when the American Psychological Association (APA) put out a guide to treating men and boys. In the guide’s summary the APA makes the extraordinary claim that “traditional masculinity – marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression – is, on the whole, harmful.”
These APA guidelines blatantly turn “traditional masculinity” and “toxic masculinity” into synonyms, and never once mention testosterone, revealing a staggering ignorance of male biology. The APA is in essence blaming the bull for his horns.
Further diminishing their credibility, how can anyone look at the mess that is the current emotional state of our world and think we need less stoicism and not more?
The hypocrisy of the APA guidelines are glaringly evident because everywhere you look nowadays girls and young women are constantly being urged to be more competitive, dominant and aggressive. I guess when women do it, it is empowering, but when men do it, it is dangerous.
Women, and some men, often tell me that if women were in power, the world would be a better and safer place. But that old trope, which obviously animates the feminist movement of today, is foolishness. I mean have none of these people ever heard of that pernicious beast Margaret Thatcher? And does anyone think that Hillary Clinton’s proposed no-fly zone over Syria or her tough talk about Russia would have led to more peace and less war?
Another example of the vacuity of this ideology is the group of Democratic women with military and intelligence backgrounds who won seats in Congress in 2018. These women, who have dubbed themselves “The Badasses”, how toxically masculine of them, are being touted as the “antidote to Trump.”
No doubt these former military and intelligence “badasses” will be so much less toxic than their male counterparts when they demand the US “get tough” by militarily intervening across the globe to further American interests. This sort of star-spangled belligerence is no less toxic in a pantsuit than a three-piece suit, and will only lead to more victims of America’s “competitiveness, dominance and aggression” around the world.
Other toxically-masculine women in government are also being hailed as great signs of women’s empowerment.
Gina Haspel is the first female director of the CIA and women now also hold the three top directorates in that agency. Ms. Haspel proved herself more than capable of being just as deplorable as any man when she was an active participant in the Bush-era torture program. No doubt the pussy-hat wearing brigade would cheer her “competitiveness, dominance and aggression” when torturing prisoners… most especially the traditionally masculine ones.
Hypocritical Hollywood has long been a haven for toxic masculinity, be it in the form of depraved predators like Harvey Weinstein or Woody Allen or counterfeit tough guys like John Wayne. Hollywood has also long been the propaganda wing of the US military machine. It is well established that for decades Hollywood and the Department of Defense have worked hand in hand in creating movies that tout muscular American militarism and empire.
Now Hollywood and the Department of Defense (DoD) are using the social justice calling card of “diversity and inclusion” to take the next step in indoctrinating young people with the noxious ideology of American exceptionalism and aggression… but this time they are targeting girls and young women.
The latest product of the Hollywood and DoD propaganda machine is the Disney/Marvel movie, Captain Marvel, which comes out this March. The film, which has a budget worth $150 million and stars one of the leading feminist voices in Hollywood, Academy Award winner Brie Larson, tells the story of Carol Danvers, a former Air Force pilot who “turns into one of the galaxy’s mightiest heroes.”
With Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans set to potentially leave their roles as Iron Man and Captain America respectively, Disney is positioning itself to replace them as the face of the multi-billion dollar Marvel Cinematic Universe with Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel, who is described as a “badass superheroine”… one more flag-waving, badass lady for the girls to look up to!
The movie has been described as “the recruiting tool of the Air Force’s dreams”, and will no doubt be a huge boost to female recruitment, much like Tom Cruise and Top Gun boosted male military recruitment in the 1980’s.
The DoD has reportedly been partnered with Marvel since 2008’s Iron Man. The DoD and Air Force demand that any film project with which they assist “portrays the Air Force and military in an accurate way and that it is in the service’s interest to partner on the project.”
It is good to know that feminist Brie Larson is cashing in by partnering with the Air Force to make a movie that indoctrinates millions of US kids, specifically girls, with the dream of being able to bomb innocent people across the globe from miles up in the sky and look really “badass” while doing it.
I’m sure Ms. Larson, a public and outspoken advocate for abuse victims here in America, has meticulously weighed the pros and cons of being a recruitment tool for the US military, which in recent years has aided and abetted, or been directly responsible for, the murder of women and children in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and elsewhere.
The cacophony of feminist voices in the public sphere has effectively challenged some minds about some things, but not the right minds about the right things. The mendacious US establishment and its virulent military industrial complex have co-opted this current feminist moment and are using it to further solidify their deadly stranglehold on the American consciousness and Brie Larson is now an accomplice to that crime.
Is this what the new wave of feminism is all about, putting lipstick on the pig of American empire and militarism and calling it a victory for equality? If so, I’ll pass on that toxic femininity.
I’ll stick with traditional masculinity, you know, the stoic kind, whose adherents, principled men like Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, Daniel Ellsberg, Pat Tillman and Edward Snowden, among many others, all did the right thing in the face of enormous opposition, and who didn’t tout themselves as “badass,” didn’t start fights but finished them, didn’t torture, didn’t spy and didn’t bomb innocent women and children into oblivion.
The bottom line is this, I fervently believe that men and women should be equal in their rights and opportunities, but I believe just as fervently that regardless of gender, no one has the right to kill, maim and torture for the American empire.
Michael McCaffrey is a freelance writer, film critic and cultural commentator. He currently resides in Los Angeles where he runs his acting coaching and media consulting business. mpmacting.com/blog/
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The Pentagon & Hollywood’s successful and deadly propaganda alliance
Justifying the 17-Year War
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | January 25, 2019
When I first learned about the Thirty Years War in a history class in college, I was both fascinated and amazed. How in the world could a war go on for 30 years? That just seemed incomprehensible to me.
Not anymore. The U.S. war on Afghanistan has now been going on for 17 years. And if the American people follow the advice of Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, it’s a virtual certainty that the United States will easily surpass the Thirty Years War and, maybe, the Hundred Years War, which needless to say, also amazed and fascinated me when I learned about its existence.
I can just see Americans 83 years from now breaking the 100-year-war record and exclaiming in celebration, “We’re Number One! We’re Number One! KAG! KAG! Keep America Great!”
O’Hanlon’s advice comes in the form of an op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times. It’s entitled “Our Longest War Is Still an Important War.” In his op-ed, O’Hanlon says that it is important that U.S. troops remain occupying Afghanistan, perhaps even in perpetuity.
Why does O’Hanlon feel this way? The thrust of his piece is a variation on the theme that has guided the so-called war on terrorism ever since the 9/11 attacks way back in 2001— that it’s better for U.S. forces to kill the terrorists over there before they come over here to get us.
Not surprisingly, O’Hanlon ignores a very important point about this “war on terrorism” — that it is U.S. interventionism that is the cause of anti-U.S. terrorism.
Why is that important? Because the continued and perhaps perpetual interventionism that he is endorsing produces the very thing that he’s using to justify the continued interventionism.
When U.S. forces kill five “terrorists” over there, they bring into existence ten more terrorists. Those ten new terrorists then become the justification for remaining over there instead of coming home after killing those original five terrorists. Then, once they kill the ten, twenty more come into existence, which is then used to justify staying over there so that they can kill the twenty.
That’s how the “war on terrorism” has become perpetual, which President George W. Bush even suggested would happen way back in 2001.
Interventionists, of course, hate it when we libertarians point out this obvious fact. Recall that famous Republican presidential debate when Ron Paul pointed out that “they” came over here to kill us because the feds were over there killing them. His Republican opponents went ballistic, as did the mainstream press. No one is supposed to say that.
You see, the official position is that the terrorists just spring up and strike a nation, sort of like the flu. Or that they just hate America for its “freedom and values.” I suppose they would say that the Swiss, whose government simply minds its own business, are just plan lucky to have been spared the terrorist flu.
The reality is that the cause of anti-American terrorism is U.S. interventionism. Thus, if you stop the interventionism, the anti-American terrorism stops.
But that’s the last thing interventionists want. Interventionists don’t have any problems with the militarism, the national-security statism, the massive spending, the empire of domestic and foreign military bases, the invasions, the occupations, the CIA, the NSA, the assassinations, coups, partnerships with dictatorial regimes, secret surveillance, and the installing of pro-U.S. regimes around the world.
Interventionists and the national-security establishment always need official enemies. Recall that throughout the Cold War, the official enemy was Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union, along with “godless communism” and the supposed worldwide communist conspiracy to take over the world, which, they said, was based in Moscow.
When they ostensibly lost their official enemy in 1989 with the end of the Cold War, that’s when they began killing people in the Middle East, including during their invasion of Iraq and the subsequent killing of Iraqi children with sanctions. That’s when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein because the official enemy. He was coming to get us, they said, with WMDs.
Then after the blowback of the 9/11 attacks, it was the terrorists, who morphed into the Muslims, who, we learned, were engaged in a centuries-long conspiracy to make the United States a part of a worldwide caliphate based on Sharia law.
Most recently, we’ve come full circle with Russia being made once again into an official enemy, along with terrorists and Muslims and, well, also illegal immigrants and drug dealers.
I wish that I could tell you that was all. If you really want to get scared, read O’Hanlon’s article. It turns out that there are so many more bugaboos out there, which have caused him to embrace a continuation of the 17-year war in Afghanistan. Apparently, there’s al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, “related groups,”and, get this — even ISIS-K! According to O’Hanlon, that stands for ISIS-Khorasan. I’ll bet you hadn’t heard of that last one. Scary!
How can any American citizen buy into this nonsense? Bring the troops home, now. All of them. And discharge them. Interventionists have done enough damage to our nation and to the people of Afghanistan (and Iraq, Syria, Libya, and so many other countries). It’s time to return to founding principles, especially America’s founding principle of non-interventionism.
Trump, Pull Them Out of Syria Now, Not Later
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | January 24, 2019
In December, President Trump announced that he was finally ordering an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Syria. Almost immediately, under pressure from the interventionist crowd, including the national-security branch of the U.S. government, Trump reversed course and announced that he intended to delay the pullout by another four months. Today, it’s not clear that he even intends to abide by that deadline.
Meanwhile, while Trump dawdled with the withdrawal, four more Americans were killed in a suicide-bombing attack carried out by ISIS in Syria. They included two U.S. soldiers, a former U.S. soldier serving as a contractor, and an interpreter. Three other Americans were wounded in the attack.
What did those Americans die for? Nothing. All four died for nothing.
They died for nothing because the U.S. government has no business being in Syria. It never has had any business being in Syria. Those 2,000 U.S. troops don’t belong in Syria. Those four Americans deserve to be alive today. So do all other Americans who are killed in Syria the longer that Trump delays the pullout of all U.S. troops from the country.
Interventionists, not surprisingly, are saying that the ISIS attack instead shows that Trump needs to keep U.S. troops in Syria. They’re saying that the attack shows that ISIS hasn’t really been “defeated,” as Trump claimed when he was justifying his original withdrawal order.
But whether ISIS has been defeated or not is quite besides the point. The point is that the U.S., government has no business in Syria, ISIS or no ISIS.
Moreover, let’s not forget something important: It is interventionists who are responsible for the rise of ISIS. The organization did not exist prior to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Never mind that Iraq had never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. What mattered was that interventionists felt that Iraq’s dictator, who had partnered with the U.S. government in the 1980s, now had to go and be replaced with another pro-U.S. dictator.
Interventionists cheered as U.S. forces were invading and occupying the country for many years. But while they were celebrating the destruction of Iraq and the killing and torturing of tens of thousands of Iraqis (none of whom had ever attacked the United States), interventionists were refusing to take personal responsibility for what their interventionism had brought into existence — ISIS, which consisted largely of people who opposed the U.S. interventionist war against Iraq.
So, ISIS, which was a direct result of the U.S. intervention in Iraq, become the new official enemy, which now, interventionists said, required even more interventionism. The idea was that if the U.S. government didn’t now stop ISIS , ISIS would supposedly establish a worldwide Muslim caliphate that would end up conquering the United States and taking over the federal government, much like Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, with whom U.S. officials had partnered in the 1980s, was supposedly going to do if the U.S. government didn’t intervene against him.
The notion was ridiculous from the get-go. ISIS was never coming to get us, any more than Saddam was coming to get us. It was just one more of a series of official bugaboos that interventionists have used to justify their forever foreign interventions and ever-increasing tax-funded largess for the military-industrial complex, the CIA, and the NSA.
Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment have used SIS to justify the stationing of those 2000 troops in Syria. But it’s been a lie from the beginning. The real reason those troops are there is to attempt to achieve regime change in Syria, just like they got regime change in Iraq. That’s ultimately what those four Americans died for—regime change, which is the same thing as dying for nothing. That’s because the U.S. government has no business engaging in the business of regime change. It is not a legitimate role of the U.S. government to be deciding who should be in power in foreign countries and engaging in actions to buttress or remove foreign regimes.
Of course, that’s not the mindset of interventionists, including those who pressured Trump into immediately modifying his withdrawal order on Syria. What we hear from them is classic imperialism. “If we get out, there will be a power vacuum that will be filled by Russia, which is our rival.” “We need to counterbalance Iran.” “We need to block our NATO ally Turkey.” “ISIS could become a regional hegemon.”
All that is Empire Talk 101. After all, do you see Switzerland, a country whose government is limited to defense of the country, talking like that? Do you see Swiss officials referring to rivals, counterbalancing, blocking, or the rise of regional hegemons?
Meanwhile, while Trump dawdles with his withdrawal from Syria, he’s now stating that US. military intervention is a possibility for Venezuela, on top of the interventionist sanctions that Trump has already imposed on that country. Just more interventionism from America’s interventionist-in-chief.
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Israel’s recurring use of terror on civilians
By Bob Finch | January 26, 2009
Insanely disproportionate use of violence against unarmed civilians… continue
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