The Real Saboteurs of a Trump Foreign Policy
By Pat Buchanan • Unz Review • December 20, 2016
The never-Trumpers are never going to surrender the myth that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the hacking of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee to defeat Clinton and elect Donald Trump.
Their investment in the myth is just too huge.
For Clinton and her campaign, it is the only way to explain how they booted away a presidential election even Trump thought he had lost in November. To the mainstream media, this is the smoking gun in their Acela Corridor conspiracy to delegitimize Trump’s presidency.
Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sees Russian hacking as a way to put a cloud over the administration before it begins. But it is the uber-hawks hereabouts who are after the really big game.
They seek to demonize Putin as the saboteur of democracy — someone who corrupted an American presidential election to bring about victory for a “useful idiot” whom Clinton called Putin’s “puppet.”
If the War Party can convert this “fake story” into the real story of 2016, then they can scuttle any Trump effort to attain the rapprochement with Russia that Trump promised to try to achieve.
If they can stigmatize Trump as “Putin’s president” and Putin as America’s implacable enemy, then the Russophobes are back in business.
Nor is the War Party disguising its goal.
Over the weekend, Sen. John McCain called for a congressional select committee to investigate Russian hacking into the Clinton campaign. The purpose of the investigations, said Sen. Lindsey Graham, “is to put on President Trump’s desk crippling sanctions against Russia.”
“They need to pay a price,” Graham chortled on Twitter.
“Crippling sanctions” would abort any modus vivendi, any deal with Russia, before Trump could negotiate one. Trump would have to refuse to impose them — and face the firestorm to follow. The War Party is out to dynamite any detente with Russia before it begins.
Among the reasons Trump won is that he promised to end U.S. involvement in the costly, bloody and interminable wars in the Middle East the Bushites and President Barack Obama brought us — and the neocons relish — and to reach a new understanding with Russia and Putin.
But to some in Washington, beating up on Russia is a conditioned reflex dating to the Cold War. For others in the media and the front groups called think tanks, Russophobia is in their DNA.
Though Julian Assange says WikiLeaks did not get the emails from Russia, this has to be investigated. Did Russia hack the DNC’s email system and John Podesta’s email account? Did Putin direct that the emails be provided to WikiLeaks to disrupt democracy or defeat Clinton?
Clinton says Putin has had it in for her because he believes she was behind the anti-Putin demonstrations in Moscow in 2011.
But if there is to be an investigation of clandestine interference in the politics and elections of foreign nations, let’s get it all out onto the table.
The CIA director and his deputies should be made to testify under oath, not only as to what they know about Russia’s role in the WikiLeaks email dumps but also about who inside the agency is behind the leaks to The Washington Post designed to put a cloud over the Trump presidency before it begins.
Agents and operatives of the CIA should be subjected to lie detector tests to learn who is leaking to the anti-Trump press.
Before any congressional investigation, President-elect Trump should call in his new director of the CIA, Rep. Mike Pompeo, and tell him to run down and remove, for criminal misconduct, any CIA agents or operatives leaking secrets to discredit his election.
Putin, after all, is not an American. The CIA saboteurs of the Trump presidency are. Will the media investigate the leakers? Not likely, for they are the beneficiaries of the leaks and co-conspirators of the leakers.
The top officials of the CIA and Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy, should be called to testify under oath. Were they behind anti-Putin demonstrations during the Russian elections of 2011?
Did the CIA or NED have a role in the “color-coded” revolutions to dump over pro-Russian governments in Moscow’s “near abroad”?
If Russia did intrude in our election, was it payback for our intrusions to bring about regime change in its neighborhood?
What role did the CIA, the NED and John McCain play in the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine in 2014? McCain was seen cheering on the crowds in Independence Square in Kiev.
Trump has promised a more hopeful foreign policy than that of the Republicans he denounced and is succeeding. No more wars where vital interests are not imperiled. No more U.S. troops arriving as first responders for freeloading allies.
The real saboteurs of his new foreign policy may not be inside the Ring Road in Moscow; rather, they may be inside the Beltway around D.C.
The real danger may be that a new Trump foreign policy could be hijacked or scuttled by anti-Trump Republicans, not only on Capitol Hill but inside the executive branch itself.
Copyright 2016 Creators.com
The Bad Losers (And What They Fear Losing)
Photo by Cliff | CC BY 2.0
By Diana Johnstone | December 19, 2016
Paris – If the 2016 presidential campaign was a national disgrace, the reaction of the losers is an even more disgraceful spectacle. It seems that the political machine backing Hillary Clinton can’t stand losing an election.
And why is that?
Because they are determined to impose “exceptional” America’s hegemony on the entire world, using military-backed regime changes, and Donald Trump seems poised to spoil their plans. The entire Western establishment, roughly composed of neoconservative ideologues, liberal interventionists, financial powers, NATO, mainstream media and politicians in both the United States and Western Europe, committed to remaking the Middle East to suit Israel and Saudi Arabia and to shattering impertinent Russia, have been thrown into an hysterical panic at the prospect of their joint globalization project being sabotaged by in ignorant intruder.
Donald Trump’s expressed desire to improve relations with Russia throws a monkey wrench into the plans endorsed by Hillary Clinton to “make Russia pay” for its bad attitude in the Middle East and elsewhere. If he should do what he has promised, this could be a serious blow to the aggressive NATO buildup on Russia’s European borders, not to mention serious losses to the U.S. arms industry planning to sell billions of dollars worth of superfluous weapons to NATO allies on the pretext of the “Russian threat”.
The war party’s fears may be exaggerated, inasmuch as Trump’s appointments indicate that the United States’ claim to be the “exceptional”, indispensable nation will probably survive the changes in top personnel. But the emphasis may be different. And those accustomed to absolute rule cannot tolerate the challenge.
Bad Losers On the Top
Members of the U.S. Congress, the mainstream media, the CIA and even President Obama have made fools of themselves and the nation by claiming that the Clintonite cabal lost because of Vladimir Putin. Insofar as the rest of the world takes this whining seriously, it should further increase Putin’s already considerable prestige. If true, the notion that Moscovite hacking could defeat the favorite candidate of the entire U.S. power establishment can only mean that the United States’ political structure is so fragile that a few disclosed emails can cause its collapse. A government notorious for snooping into everybody’s private communication, as well as for overthrowing one government after another by less subtle means, and whose agents boasted of scaring the Russians into re-elected the abysmally unpopular Boris Yeltsin in 1996, now seems to be crying pathetically, “Mommy, Vlady is playing with my hacking toys!”
Of course, Russians would quite naturally prefer a U.S. president who openly shies away from the possibility of starting a nuclear war with Russia. That doesn’t make Russia “an enemy”, it is just a sign of good sense. Nor does it mean that Putin is so naïve as to imagine that Moscow could throw the election by a few dirty tricks. The current Russian leaders, unlike their Washington counterparts, tend to take a longer view, rather than imagining that the course of history can be changed by a banana peel.
This whole miserable spectacle is nothing but a continuation of the Russophobia exploited by Hillary Clinton to distract from her own multiple scandals. As the worst loser in American electoral history, she must blame Russia, rather than recognize that there were multiple reasons to vote against her.
The propaganda machine has found a response to unwelcome news: it must be fake. The Washington conspiracy theorists are outdoing themselves this time. The Russian geeks supposedly knew that by revealing a few Democratic National Committee internal messages, they could ensure the election of Donald Trump. What tremendous prescience!
Obama promises retaliation against Russia for treating the United States the way the United States treats, well, Honduras (and even Russia itself until blocked by Putin). Putin retorted that so far as he knew, the United States was not a banana republic, but a great power able to protect its elections. Washington is loudly denying that. The same mainstream media who brought you Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction” are now bringing you this preposterous conspiracy theory with straight faces.
When intelligence agencies become aware of the activities of rival intelligence agencies, they usually keep the knowledge to themselves, as part of the mutual spook game. Going public with this wild tale shows that the whole point is to persuade the American public that Trump’s election is illegitimate, in the hope of defeating him in the electoral college or, if that fails, of crippling his presidency by labeling him a “Putin stooge”.
Bad Losers On the Bottom
At least the bad losers on the top know what they are doing and have a purpose. The bad losers on the bottom are expressing emotions without clear objectives. It is false self-dramatization to call for “Resistance” as if the country had been invaded by extraterrestrials. The U.S. electoral system is outmoded and bizarre, but Trump played the game by the rules. He campaigned to win swing states, not a popular majority, and that’s what he got.
The problem isn’t Trump but a political system which reduces the people’s choice to two hated candidates, backed by big bucks.
Whatever they think or feel, the largely youthful anti-Trump protesters in the streets create an image of hedonistic consumer society’s spoiled brats who throw tantrums when they don’t get what they want. Of course, some are genuinely concerned about friends who are illegal immigrants and fear deportation. It is quite possible to organize in their defense. The protesters may be mostly disappointed Bernie Sanders supporters, but whether they like it or not, their protests amount to a continuation of the dominant themes in Hillary Clinton’s negative campaign. She ran on fear. In the absence of any economic program to respond to the needs of millions of voters who showed their preference for Sanders, and of those who turned to Trump simply because of his vague promise to create jobs, her campaign exaggerated the portent of Trump’s most politically incorrect statements, creating the illusion that Trump was a violent racist whose only program was to arouse hatred. Still worse, Hillary stigmatized millions of voters as “a basket of deplorables, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.” These remarks were made to an LGBT rally, as part of her identity politics campaign to win over a clientele of minorities by stigmatizing the dwindling white majority. The identity politics premise is that ethnic and sexual minorities are oppressed and thus morally superior to the white majority, which is the implied oppressor. It is this tendency to sort people into morally distinct categories that divides Americans against each other, every bit as much – or more – than Trump’s hyperbole about Mexican or Islamic immigrants. It has served to convince many devotees of political correctness to regard white working class Americans in the “fly-over” regions as enemy invaders who threaten to send them all to concentration camps.
Terrified of what Trump may do, his opponents tend to ignore what the lame ducks are actually doing. The last gasp Clintonite campaign to blame Hillary’s defeat on “fake news”, supposedly inspired by The Enemy, Russia, is a facet of the growing drive to censor the Internet – previously for child pornography, or for anti-Semitism, and next on the pretext of combating “fake news”, meaning whatever goes contrary to the official line. This threat to freedom of expression is more sinister than eleven-year-old locker-room macho boasts by Trump.
There will and should be strong political opposition to whatever reactionary domestic policies are adopted by the Trump administration. But such opposition should define the issues and work for specific goals, instead of expressing a global rejection that is non-functional.
The hysterical anti-Trump reaction is unable to grasp the implications of the campaign to blame Hillary’s defeat on Putin. Do the kids in the street really want war with Russia? I doubt it. But they do not perceive that for all its glaring faults, the Trump presidency provides an opportunity to avoid war with Russia. This is a window of opportunity than will be slammed shut if the Clintonite establishment and the War Party get their way. Whether they realize it or not, the street protesters are helping that establishment delegitimatize Trump and sabotage the one positive element in his program: peace with Russia.
Adjustments in the Enemy List
By its fatally flawed choices in the Middle East and in Ukraine, the United States foreign policy establishment has driven itself into a collision course with Russia. Unable to admit that the United States backed the wrong horse in Syria, the War Party sees no choice but to demonize and “punish” Russia, with the risk of dipping into the Pentagon’s vast arsenal of argument-winning nuclear weapons. Anti-Russian propaganda has reached extremes exceeding those of the Cold War. What can put an end to this madness? What can serve to create normal attitudes and relations concerning that proud nation which aspires primarily simply to be respected and to promote old-fashioned international law based on national sovereignty? How can the United States make peace with Russia?
It is clear that in capitalist, chauvinist America there is no prospect of shifting to a peace policy by putting David Swanson in charge of U.S. foreign relations, however desirable that might be.
Realistically, the only way that capitalist America can make peace with Russia is through capitalist business. And that is what Trump proposes to do.
A bit of realism helps when dealing with reality. The choice of Exxon CEO Rex W. Tillerson as Secretary of State is the best step toward ending the current race toward war with Russia. “Make money not war” is the pragmatic American slogan for peace at this stage.
But the “resistance” to Trump is not likely to show support for this pragmatic peace policy. It is already encountering opposition in the war-loving Congress. Instead, by shouting “Trump is not my President!” the disoriented leftists are inadvertently strengthening that opposition, which is worse than Trump.
Avoiding war with Russia will not transform Washington into a haven of sweetness and light. Trump is an aggressive personality, and the opportunistic aggressive personalities of the establishment, notably his pro-Israel friends, will help him turn U.S. aggression in other directions. Trump’s attachment to Israel is nothing new, but appears to be particularly uncompromising. In that context, Trump’s extremely harsh words for Iran are ominous, and one must hope that his stated rejection of “regime change” war applies in that case as well as others. Trump’s anti-China rhetoric also sounds bad, but in the long run there is little he or the United States can do to prevent China from becoming once again the “indispensable nation” it used to be during most of its long history. Tougher trade deals will not lead to the Apocalypse.
The Failure of the Intellectual Establishment
The sad image today of Americans as bad losers, unable to face reality, must be attributed in part to the ethical failure of the so-called 1968 generation of intellectuals. In a democratic society, the first duty of men and women with the time, inclination and capacity to study reality seriously is to share their knowledge and understanding with people who lack those privileges. The generation of academics whose political consciousness was temporarily raised by the tragedy of the Vietnam war should have realized that their duty was to use their position to educate the American people, notably about the world that Washington proposed to redesign and its history. However, the new phase of hedonistic capitalism offered the greatest opportunities for intellectuals in manipulating the masses rather than educating them. The consumer society marketing even invented a new phase of identity politics, with the youth market, the gay market, and so on. In the universities, a critical mass of “progressive” academics retreated into the abstract world of post-modernism, and have ended up focusing the attention of youth on how to react to other people’s sex lives or “gender identification”. Such esoteric stuff feeds the publish or perish syndrome and prevents academics in the humanities from having to teach anything that might be deemed critical of U.S. military spending or its failing efforts to assert its eternal domination of the globalized world. The worst controversy coming out of academia concerns who should use which toilet.
If the intellectual snobs on the coasts can sneer with such self-satisfaction at the poor “deplorables” in flyover land, it is because they themselves have ignored their primary social duty of seeking truth and sharing it. Scolding people for their “wrong” attitudes while setting the social example of unrestrained personal promotion can only produce the anti-elite reaction called “populism”. Trump is the revenge of people who feel manipulated, forgotten and despised. However flawed, he is the only choice they had to express their revolt in a rotten election. The United States is deeply divided ideologically, as well as economically. The United States is threatened, not by Russia, but by its own internal divisions and the inability of Americans not only to understand the world, but even to understand each other.
Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. Her new book is Queen of Chaos: the Misadventures of Hillary Clinton. She can be reached at diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr
Bitter in Aleppo Defeat, US and EU Seek to Further Demonize Russia
By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 17.12.2016
As Russian forces help liberate the Syrian city of Aleppo this week from a four-year terrorist siege, Washington and Europe step up threats of cyber war and economic aggression with sanctions. That’s no coincidence. It is the response of accomplices bitter in defeat.
Perverse isn’t it? Instead of celebrating with the people of Syria over the liberation of Aleppo from terrorists; instead of sending massive humanitarian aid to the tens of thousands of civilians freed after being held under siege for four years by terrorist gangs; instead of commending Russia for its decisive role in restoring peace to Syria’s second biggest city, the US and European Union turn reality on its head and further demonize Moscow.
The perverse behavior by Washington and its European satraps is simply a case of sour grapes. Very sour grapes.
They have been proven spectacularly wrong about Syria. The liberation of Aleppo this week exposes the Western governments and media in their unrelenting falsehoods and systematic complicity in the Syrian war. This was never a pro-democracy uprising. It was a Western-backed criminal regime-change operation that was unleashed in March 2011, and which is now staring at ignominious defeat.
The blood of up to half a million people and many more maimed is on the hands of American and European governments.
It is no coincidence that Barack Obama this week invoked his putative presidential authority to double down on US intelligence claims that Russia hacked into the American elections to get Donald Trump into the White House. The stakes were raised to new unwieldy heights with White House claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally sanctioned the alleged hacking of Hillary Clinton’s emails. And Obama is now recklessly warning that his country will respond with cyber-warfare «at a place and time of our choosing».
Meanwhile, European Union leaders this week decreed that economic and diplomatic sanctions on Russia would be extended for another six months. The official reason for the measures was the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, but it is obvious that the dramatic developments in Syria were the real motivating factor behind the EU’s decision to further penalize Russia.
Addressing the EU summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel deplored atrocities allegedly committed in the northern city of Aleppo by Syrian state forces and their Russian and Iranian allies. European Council President Donald Tusk lamented that the EU was not «indifferent to the suffering of civilians in Aleppo».
But where is the evidence either from Obama on alleged Russian cyberattacks to subvert the American presidential election or from the EU on alleged Russian (and Syrian) atrocities in Aleppo. There is, glaringly, no evidence. Yet on the back of breathless assertions, Washington is threatening to «retaliate», and European leaders are slapping more damaging sanctions on Russia. This is an insane policy of unjustified aggression.
It is especially insane considering that present and former members of US intelligence agencies do not support the White House’s assertions about Russian cyberattacks. Indeed respected former US intelligence experts have cogently argued that Washington’s claims of Russian hacking are completely spurious. Moreover, two polls reported by the Washington Times and Washington Post this week also show that the majority of American people do not believe that Russia interfered in the US election.
As for the American and European claims about «massacres» in Aleppo, amplified by the dutiful mainstream media all week, there is neither evidence nor testimonies from the tens of thousands of civilians pouring out of the former terror enclaves. The reckless claims are merely propaganda rumors put out by terrorist apologists and recycled by Western media. Perversely unreported in the Western media are the real stories of civilians having lived under horror imposed by the Western-backed so-called «rebels». Largely unreported by the Western media is the dominant mood of celebration and relief among civilians for having been liberated by the combined efforts of the Syrian army and its Russian, Iranian and Lebanese allies.
Where are the «moderate rebels» now that the veil of secrecy has finally been lifted from eastern Aleppo? Where are the so-called neutral rescuers belonging to the White Helmets, who only a few weeks ago Western media were championing for a Nobel peace prize? They are all piling on to the same buses with the jihadi terrorists to be evacuated to nearby Idlib city as part of a surrender deal. In other words, the West has been all along backing terrorists, and now their terrorist proxies are seen by the whole world as being routed from Aleppo after four years of holding the eastern side of the city hostage.
Liberated civilians tell of a reign of terror, how their family members were threatened by the Western-backed jihadis with execution if any of them dared to escape from the captive terror enclaves. Buildings recovered by the Syrian army have shown humanitarian aid, medicines and food stockpiled by the terrorists which they used to extort the civilian population. None of this is broadcast by the Western news media of course. Instead, they indulged in gory fantasies about the Syrian army committing summary executions and other atrocities against women and children. Stories, it should be noted, which have since petered out because there is no evidence to back them up.
CNN’s self-important journalist Christiane Amanpour this week gave a platform to an alleged doctor, Hamza al-Khatib, who made unsubstantiated claims that children were being massacred in a basement by Syrian forces. Amanpour expressed horror as if the allegation was fact. The same «fact» was then reiterated by US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power. Turns out that Hamza al-Khatib is not even a doctor, according the Aleppo University records, where he once studied.
CNN’s alleged doctor Hamza Al Khatib with head-chopping jihadi friends
In the past, he has been photographed in the company of the jihadi terrorists who were were responsible for the beheading of a 12-year-old Palestinian refugee boy Abdullah Issa near Aleppo. Reliable sources dispute that Hamza al-Khatib is even residing in east Aleppo where he claims to be. It is believed he is hiding out in neighboring Turkey, from where he gives interviews to gullible hacks like Amanpour. (Notice his smirk in the linked interview video when Amanpour naively asks how he remains safe in Aleppo.)
Western lies and fake narratives about Syria were torn asunder this week. Sanctimonious Washington and European lackeys are exposed in their responsibility for fueling the war in Syria by giving cover to terrorist gangs as supposed «moderate rebels».
Western governments, UN diplomats and media organizations are shown to be complicit in a state-sponsored terrorist conspiracy against the Syrian nation.
Russia has played a vital and truly heroic role in saving Syria from a Western-imposed charnel house.
And so, with the bitter taste of defeat over the historic battle for Aleppo, Washington and Europe are lashing out irrationally to further demonize Russia. Cyber war threats and economic aggression through sanctions are the Western response to bitter defeat.
British military specialists arrive in Middle East to train Syrian rebels
RT | December 15, 2016
Their arrival was announced as the UK hosts a conference of defense ministers from countries involved in the coalition fighting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).
The 20 trainers – who are likely to be special forces soldiers – will teach so-called ‘moderate’ fighters infantry skills, combat first aid and other battlefield tactics.
The existing deployment is thought to be made up of around 500 soldiers from the 4 Rifles infantry regiment, which is based near the Kurdish-held city of Erbil alongside specialist soldiers from the Royal Engineers and Royal Signals.
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has previously stated that anyone receiving UK training would be vetted to ensure that no knowledge was passed on to jihadist groups.
The deployment of UK special forces has come under increasing scrutiny, with critics claiming that it has now become the basic form of UK military operations and as such should be brought under democratic oversight.
The UK is one of the few countries which flatly refuses to comment on covert military activities to either the media or to questions by elected lawmakers in parliament.
Calls for a new war powers act have been backed by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, among others, who made his case to the Middle East Eye website in August.
“I’m very concerned about this because [former Prime Minister] David Cameron – I imagine [Prime Minister] Theresa May would say the same – would say parliamentary convention requires a parliamentary mandate to deploy British troops. Except, and they’ve all used the ‘except,’ when special forces are involved,” Corbyn said.
His comments were immediately attacked by former soldier-turned-Tory MP Bob Stewart, who told the Times that the PM must have the opportunity to deploy troops “when they think it’s crucial.”
US troops rushed to Poland before Trump’s inauguration
RT | December 14, 2016
More than 4,000 US troops are presently on their way to Poland, as part of a test deployment intended to “deter” Russia. Citing “Russian aggression” in Ukraine, NATO has planned to station four battalions in Poland and the Baltic states by May 2017.
Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz made the announcement on Wednesday in the Silesian town of Zagan, where he met with Lieutenant-General Ben Hodges, commander of US land forces in Europe, according to AP.
The unit was identified as the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, part of the 4th Infantry Division stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado. The armor-heavy team is also known as the “Iron Brigade” and recently celebrated its centenary.
Hodges said that the unit has already moved out of Fort Carson and its equipment is being loaded onto ships. The troops will arrive to the German port of Bremerhaven on January 6 and immediately deploy to Poland, the Baltic states and Romania, in a test of “how fast the force can move from port to field.”
“I’m confident in the very powerful signal, the message it will send [that] the United States, along with the rest of NATO, is committed to deterrence,” Hodges said.
With the Iron Brigade headed for Zagan, it appears its deployment will be in addition to the four battalions NATO had decided to permanently station in member states bordering Russia. According to the decision reached at the alliance’s Warsaw summit in July, some 1,000 US soldiers currently stationed in Germany would be moved to Poland. AP has identified their location as Orzysz, a town in eastern Poland close to Russia’s Kaliningrad Region.
Some 2,000 British and Canadian troops would be stationed in Estonia and Latvia, respectively, while a 1,000-strong German-led armored battalion would be deployed in Lithuania, for the first time since WWII. The reinforcements were supposed to be in place by April 2017.
“I am very happy that a decision has been taken by the US side for an earlier deployment,” Macierewicz said, according to AP.
No reason was given for the extraordinary deployment by either Hodges or Macierewicz. President-elect Donald Trump, who has criticized NATO for being obsolete and voiced intentions to mend relations between the US and Russia, is scheduled to take the oath of office on January 20.
Bipartisan War
A new study urges more U.S. interventions
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • December 13, 2016
The Establishment and Realist foreign policy communities in the United States often seem separated by language which leads them to talk past each other. When a realist or Libertarian talks about non-intervention or restraint in foreign policy, as Ron Paul did in 2008 and 2012, the Establishment response is to denounce isolationism. As Dr. Paul noted during his campaigns, non-interventionism and isolationism have nothing to do with each other as a country that does not meddle in the affairs of others can nevertheless be accessible and open in dealing with other nations in many other ways. Non-interventionists are fond of quoting George Washington’s Farewell Address, in which he recommended that “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible… Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest.” Establishment pundits tend to dismiss that “little political connection” bit, preferring instead to warn how detachment from foreign politics might lead to the rise of a new Adolph Hitler.
I was reminded of the language barrier while reading the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Strategy Task Force report, which appeared on November 30th. The report, which promises a new “Compact for the Middle East” while also asserting that “isolationism is a dangerous delusion,” might be regarded as a quintessential document laying out the Establishment position on what should be done in the region. It is ostensibly the product of two co-chairs, Madeleine Albright and Stephen Hadley, but it is also credited to an Executive Team headed by Executive Director Stephen Grand and Deputy Executive Director Jessica Ashooh, who in all probability were responsible for the actual drafting and editing.
The report also appears to have numerous high profile advisers who might or might not have had some hand in the final product. Running through the list of associates in the project which appears at the end of the report, one notes immediately that there is no individual or group identified that would contest the notion that the U.S. must have a leadership role in the Middle East. Indeed, many of those named derive considerable status from being part or supportive of America’s engagement in the region.
I would unambiguously describe Albright and Hadley as interventionists, a label that they might object to. Albright was Bill Clinton’s aggressive Secretary of State who is famous for her endorsement of American exceptionalism, stating that “We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future…” She also is notorious for her approval of sanctions on Iraq that might have killed 500,000 children as “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it” and she also once asked Colin Powell “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”
Stephen Hadley was the hawkish National Security Advisor under George W. Bush. He was one of the most outspoken advocates of military action against Iraq. During the essentially phony Syrian chemical weapons crisis in September 2013, he appeared on the media advocating attacking Syria with missiles. At the time, he was on the board at Raytheon and owned 11,477 shares of stock, which some considered to be a conflict of interest.
Albright and Hadley clearly were selected as co-Chairs to make the report bipartisan, an imperative for the Atlantic Council, which prides itself on being non-political, describing itself in its website as “a nonpartisan organization that promotes constructive U.S. leadership and engagement in international affairs based on the central role of the Atlantic community.” That self-definition suggests active engagement by the United States that goes well beyond George Washington’s advice. And if you look at the list of the Council’s executives and review their writings you will be able to confirm that they are pretty much inside the Beltway status quo in terms of supporting an assertive U.S. role in world affairs.
Albright and Hadley brought with them a certain point of view which was certainly recognized by the initiators of the project and one might assume that the Atlantic Council pretty much knew what the report would endorse even before it was written. The report, which runs to 105 pages, explores what it describes as a new strategic vision for the Middle East that will “change the political trajectory of the region.” It goes something like this: the states in the region must work together to create a “positive vision for their societies” to include “unlock[ing] the region’s rich, but largely untapped, human capital – especially the underutilized talents of youth and women.” Meanwhile, outside forces like the United States would have the responsibility of taking the lead to wind down the “violent conflicts” that have rocked the region. That means that the local governments will be responsible for haggling their way to some kind of acceptable modus vivendi while the U.S. must become more deeply involved militarily and using intelligence resources to stabilize Syria, Yemen and Libya.
In the case of Syria, which is the focus of the report, the argument is made that Bashar al-Assad’s reactionary regime is the root cause of the violence that has cost more than 200,000 lives and dislocated at least a third of the country’s population. This assessment is not necessarily universally accepted since 80% of the Syrian population lives in areas controlled by the government, which is about to increase its dominance by taking all of Aleppo, and there are no reports of civilians fleeing en masse to the greater freedom afforded by the rebel held areas, rather the reverse being true.
The report recommends using the U.S. military to establish safe areas in Syria to protect civilian populations, to include no-fly zones, which would bring about direct contact with the air forces of both Damascus and Moscow. It explicitly calls for direct military action against Syrian government forces including the employment of “air power, stand-off weapons, covert measures and enhanced support for opposition forces to break the current siege of Aleppo and frustrate Assad’s attempts to consolidate control over western Syria’s population centers.”
This judgment has been overtaken by events, but the co-authors do not really discuss what such an intervention would mean as it would involve the United States in an actual war based on executive fiat without any declaration from Congress. It also ignores reality on the ground, to include some politico-military reliance on the mythical moderate rebels while choosing not to recognize that the U.S. military is the intruder in Syria which, like it or not, has a legitimate government and a legal ally in Russia. The possibility of a second war with Russia is largely ignored in the report though there is an assumption that military pressure from the U.S. would push Damascus and Moscow towards a “political settlement” of the conflict after Russia becomes convinced through the assertion of American military power that “defeat, or stalemate, not victory, are the only realistic military outcomes.”
The report was initially intended to serve as a bipartisan rebuke to the current Barack Obama policy which limits direct American involvement in the conflict. Written before the presidential election, the co-authors could not have anticipated a Donald Trump victory, but they might be hoping that the report would serve as a guideline for the new administration. Hopefully they will be wrong in that expectation, but it is difficult at this point to see where the next White House will be going with its Middle Eastern policy.
There are a number of things wrong with the report from my perspective. Most significant, it assigns to the United States the responsibility to set and enforce standards of governance in parts of the world where the American people have little in the way of actual interests. The report refers to this oversight role as part of “enabling American global military operations,” an odd objective and also a point at which the language and perceptual problems come in – I am hearing intervention, which has been a failed policy since 2001, where Albright and Hadley construe a humanitarian mission based on American interests. They also have difficulty in conceptualizing that what they describe as the “debilitating cycle of conflict” in the Middle East might actually have been caused in large part by Washington’s involvement in that region, starting with the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Second, the authors assume that the countries in the region, all of which have disparate interests, will act in good faith to support the “unlocking of the region’s human potential,” as the report enthuses, as part of its “positive vision.” It sounds good and probably is pleasing to globalists, but I would be skeptical of any kumbaya moments that require bringing together players like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey into one harmonic movement to better everyone in the region. Such pie in the sky is not even close to credible.
Third, when the report was issued Stephen Hadley told Reuters that “It may not work. But one of the things we know is that what’s going on now isn’t working.” No, it isn’t, but that might be based on a faulty assessment of the nature of the conflict. And this is thin gruel indeed to use as justification for going to war against Syria and possibly Russia.
One of the report’s obvious weaknesses derives from its Establishment-centric worldview. It calls for building stronger political institutions among the Palestinians in order to achieve a two-state solution without any serious examination of what the Israeli occupation is doing or not doing to impede any real movement in that direction. It treats Iran as an enemy of the “positive vision” that is “interfering” with its neighbors with the U.S. willing to “deter and contain Iran’s hegemonic activity,” making any real progress towards regional rapprochement unlikely. It sees a liberal democratic solution to all ills and judges multifaceted regional conflicts in purely “us against them” terms, favoring its “friends and allies” against the numerous other forces that are not on the same page.
The Atlantic Council’s Middle East Strategy Task Force Final Report argues that a transformation of the entire region, starting with establishment of security by replacing al-Assad and defeating ISIS, is both desirable and attainable. And it is an enterprise that has to be left to local players for the necessary social and political constructs with the U.S. providing leadership and direction, particularly when it comes to repressing “violent conflicts.” It is a utopian vision of what might be but one has to be concerned that the simplistic application of military force as a remedy for the regional cycle of violence ignores the probability that the reliance on such a solution in the first place has been a key element in the evolution of the current instability. That Syria will be fixed by coming in with force majeure on the side of what is being promoted as a progressive and humanitarian alternative to Bashar al-Assad borders on the ridiculous, but it is characteristic of the default position that many in Washington adopt when considering how to solve the problems in the Middle East.
Will Trump Defy McCain & Marco?
By Pat Buchanan • Unz Review • December 13, 2016
When word leaked that Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, a holder of the Order of Friendship award in Putin’s Russia, was Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of state, John McCain had this thoughtful response:
“Vladimir Putin is a thug, a bully, and a murderer and anybody else who describes him as anything else is lying.”
Yet, Putin is something else, the leader of the largest nation on earth, a great power with enough nuclear weapons to wipe the United States off the face of the earth. And we have to deal with him.
McCain was echoed by the senior Democrat on foreign relations, Bob Menendez, who said naming Tillerson secretary of state would be “alarming and absurd … guaranteeing Russia has a willing accomplice in the (Trump) Cabinet guiding our nation’s foreign policy.”
Sen Marco Rubio chimed in: “Being a ‘friend of Vladimir’ is not an attribute I am hoping for from a Secretary of State.”
If just three GOP senators vote no on Tillerson, and Democrats vote as a bloc against him, his nomination would go down. President Trump would sustain a major and humiliating defeat.
Who is Tillerson? A corporate titan, he has traveled the world, represented Exxon in 60 countries, is on a first-name basis with countless leaders, and is endorsed by Condi Rice and Robert Gates.
Dr. Samuel Johnson’s observation — “A man is seldom more innocently occupied than when he is engaged in making money” — may be a bit of a stretch when it comes to OPEC and the global oil market.
Yet there is truth to it. Most businessmen are interested in doing deals, making money, and, if the terms are not met, walking away, not starting a war.
And here is the heart of the objection to Tillerson. He wants to end sanctions and partner with Putin’s Russia, as does Trump. But among many in the mainstream media, think tanks, websites, and on the Hill, this is craven appeasement. For such as these, the Cold War is never over.
The attacks on Tillerson coincide with new attacks on Russia, based on CIA sources, alleging that not only did Moscow hack into the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign, and leak what it found to hurt Hillary Clinton, but Russia was trying to help elect Trump, and succeeded.
Why would Moscow do this?
Monday’s editorial in The New York Times explains: “In Mr. Trump, the Russians had reason to see a malleable political novice, one who had surrounded himself with Kremlin lackeys.”
Backed by Democratic leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, McCain has announced an investigation. The goal, said the Times, is to determine “whether anyone within Trump’s inner circle coordinated with the Kremlin and whether Moscow spread fake news to hurt Mrs. Clinton.”
What is going on here? More than meets the eye.
The people who most indignantly condemned Trump’s questioning of Obama’s birth certificate as a scurrilous scheme to delegitimize his presidency, now seek to delegitimize Trump’s presidency.
The Times editorial spoke of a “darkening cloud” already over the Trump presidency, and warned that a failure to investigate and discover the full truth of Russia’s hacking could only “feed suspicion among millions of Americans that … (t)he election was indeed rigged.”
Behind the effort to smear Tillerson and delegitimize Trump lies a larger motive. Trump has antagonists in both parties who alarmed at his triumph because it imperils the foreign policy agenda that is their raison d’etre, their reason for being.
These people do not want to lift sanctions on Moscow. They do not want an end to the confrontation with Russia. As is seen by their bringing in tiny Montenegro, they want to enlarge NATO to encompass Sweden, Finland, Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova.
They have in mind the permanent U.S. encirclement of Russia.
They want to provide offensive weapons to Kiev to reignite the civil war in the Donbass and enable Ukraine to move on Crimea. This would mean a war with Russia that Ukraine would lose and we and our NATO allies would be called upon to intervene in and fight.
Their goal is to bring down Putin and bring about “regime change” in Moscow.
In the campaign, Trump said he wanted to get along with Russia, to support all the forces inside Syria and Iraq fighting to wipe out ISIS and al-Qaida, and to stay out of any new Middle East wars — like the disaster in Iraq — that have cost us “six trillion dollars.”
This is what America voted for when it voted for Trump — to put America First and “make America great again.” But War Party agitators are already beating the drums for confrontation with Iran.
Early in his presidency, if not before, Trump is going to have to impose his foreign policy upon his own party and, indeed, upon his own government. Or his presidency will be broken, as was Lyndon Johnson’s.
A good place to begin is by accepting the McCain-Marco challenge and nominating Rex Tillerson for secretary of state. Let’s get it on.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.”
Copyright 2016 Creators.com
‘US nukes in Germany are Cold War relics, should go in dustbin of history’ – top Russian diplomat
RT | December 12, 2016
American nuclear weapons placed in Germany during the Cold War are relics of that era and should be removed as they no longer serve any purpose, according to a senior diplomat at the Russian Foreign Ministry.
“American nuclear weapons in Germany are relics of the Cold War, for a long time they do not serve the implementation of any practical tasks and are subject to being thrown down the dustbin of history,” Sergey Nechayev, chief of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s department responsible for relations with Germany, among a number of other European countries, said in an interview with RIA Novosti.
He noted that US nuclear weapons first appeared on the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1953, and since then have been a constant presence – although their placement was only approved by the German authorities retroactively in 1958.
“All the related issues are regulated in the context of Germany’s obligations in the framework of its NATO cooperation. Since Berlin does not have full sovereignty in making decisions in this regard too, the topic is not the subject of [Russia’s] negotiations with the German side,” Nechayev noted.
According to Nechayev, the issue of the deployment of US nuclear weapons has been the focus of political debate in Germany for some time now.
“In March 2010, the majority in the Bundestag voted to call upon the German government to persistently work with US allies on ensuring the withdrawal of US nuclear arsenal from the country. […]
“The last time the public’s attention was drawn to the presence of US nuclear weapons in Germany was a little over a year ago, when Washington decided to modernize 20 of its nuclear warheads, which are stationed at a base in Büchel [Rhineland-Palatinate region],” the minister said.
He also mentioned that among those most consistently expressing their opposition to the presence – or deployment – of US nuclear weapons in Germany were the Left Party, the liberal FDP and Alternative for Germany (AfD). This position is also shared by many members of the ruling parties.
“However, the German authorities do not dare to put the issue up before Washington,” Nechayev stated.
According to public data, since the end of the Cold War, US aerial nuclear bombs have remained in five countries on the other side of the Atlantic: Belgium, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and Turkey. In August this year, German media reported that the US was planning to modernize its nuclear arsenal stationed at Büchel air base, placing there a latest generation V61-12 atomic bomb. It is estimated that between 10 and 20 nuclear warheads from the Cold War period are stationed in Büchel today. The area is under strict protection, with US soldiers also stationed there.
The German government has long wanted US nuclear weapons to be removed from the German soil, but so far this has not happened.
“We have by no means given up on this matter, but it is just as difficult as it has been over the past few years,” Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in parliament last spring. And given Germany’s obligations to NATO, it may have become even more difficult.
READ MORE: ‘We’ve never sought enemies, we need friends’: Top quotes from Putin’s annual address
NATO has been actively deploying weapons to Eastern European states in the recent months, as well as conducting showy military drills right along Russia’s borders – including in the Baltic Sea. Its official position has long been that military activity in Eastern Europe was a defensive response to alleged Russian “aggression” in Ukraine. NATO said Russia was responsible for “annexing” Crimea from Ukraine, although the region voted to join the Russian Federation in March 2014 in a referendum, following the coup that overthrew Ukraine’s elected government. In September this year, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the bloc was ready to further increase its presence in the area, as a gesture of support to its Eastern European members. NATO has also just finished the ‘Iron Sword’ military exercises, which started on November 20 and involved 4,000 troops from 11 NATO countries. The drills were taking place in Lithuania, Russia’s neighbor and the largest Baltic nation.
Moscow has not let NATO activity go unanswered, as it repeatedly addressed it as infringement on Russia’s sovereignty and safety. In August this year, Russia deployed S-400 missile defense systems to Crimea, while ballistic Iskander missiles were deployed in the Kaliningrad exclave after an American ABM (anti-ballistic missile) system was stationed in two Eastern European NATO countries – Romania and Poland.
In his annual address to the Federal Assembly earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed regret that the time since the end of the Cold War had passed by in vain for NATO, which continues to “infringe on the interests of the Russian Federation.” Putin noted, however, that if unprovoked, Russia “does not want confrontation” and “does not seek enemies.”
“We are committed to a friendly, equal dialogue, to upholding the principles of justice and mutual respect in international affairs; we are ready for serious discussion on the creation of a stable system of international relations in the 21st century. Unfortunately, in this respect, the decades since the end of the Cold War have gone by in vain,” he said.
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Fanatical Followers of the Covid Regime: A Jim Jones-Style Cult?
By Professor Roger Watson and Dr. Niall McCrae | The Daily Sceptic | November 15, 2021
As scholars at leading British universities over recent decades, we witnessed the replacement of critical thinking and debate by narrative: facts are discrimination and scientific method is imperialism; truth, instead, is derived from ‘progressive’ values. This educational trend may be a major contributory factor to the ease in which society has been inculcated to the Covid ‘new normal’ of masking, testing, and repeated doses of vaccines for a disease of similar risk to severe influenza.
One doesn’t need much critical reasoning to observe the flawed logic of some vaccination enthusiasts, such as people who respond to experiencing any side effects, however debilitating, by saying “at least I know it’s working”, or, after contracting the disease despite their promised inoculation (over 90% effective, according to initial drug company claims), “I’d have been worse off without the jab.” … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- EU Council Advances Chat Control 2.0 Scanning Proposal
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- ‘Grave, alarming’: Iran mission on Trump’s UNGA ‘annihilation’ threats
- Najaf airport to reopen to Iranian flights within 24 hours: Ambassador
- From ‘How Will This End For Iran’ to ‘When America Walks Away’: A tale of two Economist covers
- Tehran blasts ‘baseless’ speculation linking Iran to alleged bomb plot at UK air base
- The Rise And… Rise Of ‘Color Revolutions’
- The Coming GOP Bloodbath?
- Arctic Scare Stories Melt Away
- If Americans Knew
- Netanyahu Asked UAE Leader to Deny Report on Oct. 7 Warning in Secret Visit, Sources Say
- CNN Chief Int’l Correspondent Clarissa Ward on Journalists in Gaza
- Democratic Party Consultants Surround Troy Jackson with Pro-Israel Donors
- Christian Leader Responds To Netanyahu’s Claims Regarding Palestinian Christians
- In Gaza, ‘Whoever Survives the Bombing Won’t Survive the Rubble’
- Israel kills more Palestinians, amid push to resettle Gaza – Daily Update
- Israel forces Gazans to live in constant peril – Daily Update
- Deconstructing Netanyahu’s pants-on-fire UN rant – Daily Update
- Trump betrayed voters with his campaign lies and prioritized a foreign country once he took office
- Netanyahu calls Israel’s war in Gaza ‘opposite of genocide’ in UN speech to near-empty hall
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
