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Lebanon president warns of the consequences of Israel threats

MEMO | January 10, 2019

Lebanese President Michel Aoun yesterday warned of the “Israeli threats” which could lead to new wars, displacement and ethnic cleansing.

Speaking before members of the diplomatic corps accredited to Lebanon in the capital Beirut, Aoun said that “peace does not take place while deals are made at the expense of the refugee who was expelled from his land and his identity was stolen”.

“Peace does not come at the expense of manipulating demography and changing the geographical and social parameters of countries. Peace does not result from deepening racism and rejecting the other.”

The Lebanese president was referring to US President Donald Trump’s proposed Middle East peace plan dubbed the “deal of the century”.

In regards Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Aoun said the international community’s position is not clear about whether they should return to their country, warning that the proposed positions which link the refugees’ return to finding a political solution to the Syrian crisis is “worrying” because a solution could take a long time.

More than 1.2 million Syrian refugees live in Lebanon, a majority of them in areas that experience economic, political and security crises.

January 10, 2019 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Palestine, Syria, Zionism | 4 Comments

President Bolton? Or Worse?

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | January 10, 2019

President Trump excited many non-interventionists when he publicly announced that he was ordering an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. Quite quickly, however, Trump bent to pressure and agreed to extend the withdrawal deadline to four months. That caused me to write an article on January 2 entitled “It’s Too Soon to Celebrate Trump’s Syria Withdrawal.”

Then came the stunning announcement by National Security Advisor John Bolton declaring that no U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Syria until ISIS has been totally defeated and only after Turkey has promised not to attack Kurdish forces, which have assisted Trump with his Syria intervention. Bolton’s announcement necessarily means that Trump’s deadline has now been extended far beyond the four-month extension. Indeed, for all practical purposes it implies that U.S. troops are going to remain in Syria indefinitely, the very thing that Trump initially said he was going to end immediately.

The question naturally arises: Who’s in charge here — Trump or Bolton? Wouldn’t one ordinarily think that it’s the president, not the person working for the president, who gives the orders with respect to U.S. troops?

The real answer is that neither Bolton nor Trump is in charge. The entity in charge of U.S. foreign policy is the national-security establishment, which consists of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. They, not Trump or Bolton, decide whether and when U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Syria or anywhere else. They are clearly the ones who have decided that U.S. troops shall remain in Syria.

I highly recommend a book entitled National Security and Double Government by Michael J. Glennon: professor of law at Tufts University. The book explains how the national-security branch is where the real power of the federal government lies. The Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA permit the other three branches to maintain the veneer of power and permit them some latitude but in the final analysis, it is the national-security branch that is actually calling the shots.

It never really made sense that Trump would hire Bolton. He’s one of the fiercest foreign interventionists in the conservative movement. While Trump never professed to be a principled non-interventionist during his presidential campaign, his perspectives on foreign interventionism were extremely at odds with those of Bolton.

By the same token, the fact that Trump immediately surrounded himself with generals after taking office didn’t make much sense either, given Trump’s anti-foreign-wars, America First campaign rhetoric.

So, why did Trump do it? Why did he hire Bolton and all those generals rather than hire people whose views more closely resembled those of Trump?

There exists the possibility that Bolton and those generals weren’t hired by Trump — that they were instead hired by the national-security establishment and sent to work in the White House to keep a tight rein on Trump. That would certainly explain why Bolton would feel comfortable issuing an order contradicting the president. If he was placed in his White House position by the Pentagon and the CIA, he wouldn’t have to concern himself with upsetting the president by issuing a contradictory order. He would simply be carrying out the orders of his real boss, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA.

It is extremely difficult for any of us to realize the tremendous pressure that the national-security establishment can bring against a president to ensure that he doesn’t go off the national-security state reservation.

Consider the federal judiciary. It wasn’t long after the U.S. government was converted into a national-security state after World War II that the judiciary caved and adopted a policy of extreme deference to the national-security establishment. That’s why we have ended up with a government that wields the totalitarian powers of kidnapping, indefinite detention, torture, coups, regime-change operations, and even assassination, all legal thanks to the federal judiciary, which simply decided to overlook the fact that none of those actions are authorized by the U.S. Constitution.

Consider the members of Congress. They don’t dare take on the national-security establishment. The military will threaten to cancel projects or close bases in their districts, which will cause the local media to go ballistic and label that member of Congress as ineffective.

The only president who has had the courage and fortitude to take on the national-security establishment directly was President Kennedy. Not only did he reputedly vow to tear the CIA into a thousand pieces after its Bay of Pigs fiasco, he also threw down the gauntlet at his Peace Speech at American University in June 1963, where, without consulting or advising the Pentagon or the CIA, he publicly declared an end to the Cold War and then proceeded to enter into secret negotiations with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban President Fidel Castro to normalize relations between the United States and the communist world. He also ordered a partial withdrawal of 1,000 troops from Vietnam, which was considered much worse than Trump’s Syria withdrawal, and told close aides that he intended to pull all of them out after winning the 1964 election.

It’s not difficult to understand the extremely adverse reaction of the national-security establishment to Kennedy’s actions. They considered him to be an incompetent, foolish, cowardly, and even treasonous president who was leading America to disaster at the hands of the communists. Take the U.S. national-security establishment’s current anti-Russia mindset with respect to Trump and multiply it by about 1,000 to see how they felt about Kennedy. Also, see FFF’s ebook JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne.

Kennedy was fully aware of the danger of taking on the national-security establishment in such a direct way, especially with respect to foreign policy and its official attitude toward Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union. For one thing, he had listened to President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, where Ike warned about the dangers that the “military-industrial complex” posed to the liberties and democratic processes of the American people. Kennedy had also played a major role in causing the novel Seven Days in May, which posited a military takeover by the Pentagon, to be made into a Hollywood movie. He wanted the movie to serve as a warning to the American people. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, his brother Robert Kennedy told a Soviet diplomat that the president was facing the possibility of a military coup over his handling of the crisis. And Kennedy had once told a friend that if the national-security establishment were to conclude that he was unable or unwilling to take a strong enough stand against the Soviet Union, they wouldn’t hesitate to remove him from office. And, of course, the CIA had done precisely that to the prime minister of Iran in 1953, the president of Guatemala in 1954, and the president of Congo in 1961.

While Trump is periodically willing to make waves, he clearly does not want to go as far as Kennedy did in confronting the national-security establishment. Just look at how he has folded on Syria.

January 10, 2019 Posted by aletho | Book Review, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | CIA, Middle East, NSA, Syria, United States | 2 Comments

With Golan at Stake, Netanyahu, Bolton Set Trump Straight on US Syria Withdrawal Plan

By Whitney Webb | Mint Press News | January 7, 2019

The state of Israel seems to share at least some of the responsibility for the latest shift of U.S. Syria policy — as National Security Adviser John Bolton announced on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s call to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria would now be “coordinated” with Israel, after meeting with top Israeli officials including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel’s main motivation in preventing a swift U.S. exit from Syria was also made explicit by Netanyahu, who openly stated on Twitter that Israel’s push to obtain sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights – which is internationally recognized as part of Syria – was the driving factor behind Israel’s recent efforts to dramatically slow down Trump’s plan for an “immediate” withdrawal of U.S. troops currently occupying Syrian territory illegally.

As MintPress noted at the time of Trump’s withdrawal announcement, Israel’s influence on Trump’s Middle East policy and Israel’s push towards containing “Iranian influence” in Syria would mean that Trump’s plan to withdraw troops over the alleged defeat of ISIS would likely never materialize if it was opposed by Tel Aviv.

This was apparently and not surprisingly the case as, soon after Trump’s announcement that he planned to bring U.S. troops home from Syria last month, Israel’s government announced that it would dramatically rev up its direct involvement in the Syrian conflict in the U.S.’ absence. That involvement had so far been limited to hundreds of unilateral airstrikes on Syrian government and military targets over the course of the nearly eight-year-long war. Israel’s threat of escalation revealed Israel’s unwillingness to see foreign pressure on Damascus reduced.

Israel’s military — currently headed by Netanyahu, who is also serving as Israel’s defense minister — made good on this promise to increase its military involvement in Syria soon after, using civilian airplanes as cover to launch airstrikes on Syria on Christmas Day.

However, Israel’s reaction to Trump’s announcement appears to have been much more extensive than its decision to increase its airstrikes targeting Syrian territory. After meeting with Netanyahu and the director of Israeli intelligence, Bolton noted on Twitter that the “U.S. drawdown in Syria” would now be “coordinated” with Israel. Also on Sunday, Bolton announced that the U.S. had no timetable for troop withdrawal from Syria and that the troop withdrawal was also conditional.

This is just the latest indication that the state of Israel is acquiring unprecedented influence over U.S. troop deployments in the region, as the commander of U.S. European Command (EURCOM) noted last year that Israeli generals — not American generals — have the power to deploy U.S. troops to Israel to fight on Israel’s behalf. Now, Bolton — after meeting with Israeli officials — has stated that Israel’s government will also wield tremendous influence over whether or not U.S. troops will be leaving Syria.

Spotlight on the Golan Heights

In publicly discussing his meeting with Bolton on Twitter, Netanyahu noted that a key topic of ongoing discussion with Bolton regarding Syria would involve Israel’s claim to the Golan Heights, a plateau bordering Israel, Lebanon and Syria that Israel has occupied since 1967 and later annexed in 1981.

Netanyahu announced that he and Bolton would be traveling together to the area on Monday and added:

The Golan Heights is tremendously important for our security. When you’re there you’ll be able to understand perfectly why we’ll never leave the Golan Heights and why it’s important all countries recognize Israel’s sovereignty over it.”

As MintPress has noted in the past, understanding the significance of the Golan Heights is in many ways key to understanding why the Syrian conflict was engineered by foreign powers in the first place. This is because, with the Golan Heights in mind, Israel hatched a plan in 2006 to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by creating sectarian strife in the country with the hopes that whoever succeeded Assad would be willing to relinquish Syria’s claim to the territory.

Yet, this plan was never designed to be enacted by Israel but instead by the United States. The U.S. eventually adopted the plan and the communications of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealed it was a driving factor in U.S. policy leading up to the genesis of the Syrian conflict. One of her leaked emails, published by WikiLeaks, stated that “the best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad.”

That same email also noted that “a successful intervention in Syria would require substantial diplomatic and military leadership from the United States.” It added that “arming the Syrian rebels and using Western air power to ground Syrian helicopters and airplanes is a low-cost high-payoff approach.”

Unsurprisingly, official recognition of Israel’s annexation of the Golan was prominent among the regime-change promises touted by Syrian “rebels.” Over the course of the war, rebels have, in their bid to overthrow Assad, offered to “trade” or sell the Golan Heights to Israel in exchange for military aid or an Israeli-imposed “no-fly zone.”

This also helps explain why Israel was so eager to fund, arm and aid “rebel” groups along the Syria-Israel border, as it offered the justification for the Israeli occupation of a “buffer zone” that, according to Syrian opposition sources and Israeli-American NGOs, was “intended to keep the Syrian army and its Iranian and Lebanese allies as far away from Israel’s border as possible, as well as solidify Israel’s control over the occupied Golan Heights.” However, the success of the Syrian military’s efforts in southern Syria forced Israel to abandon its buffer zone and seek other means to strengthen its claim to the territory.

The Golan: What’s in it for Israel?

Israel created this plan to weaken or overthrow the Syrian state largely because it is eager to cement its claim to the Golan Heights. In order to accomplish that, regime change in Syria is essential, as the international community still refuses to recognize Israel’s seizure and continued occupation of the Golan as legal. This bars Israel from commercially developing the area’s rich resources, which explains Israel’s willingness to go to war over a seemingly small and insignificant tract of land. However, a new Syrian government, one more “friendly” to Israeli interests, could officially relinquish Syria’s claim to the Golan, paving the way for the complete and official annexation of the territory by Israel.

At the time the plan was created, the main motivator for Israel was the Golan’s freshwater reserves, as the Golan is one of three sources of freshwater available to the Israeli state — and is the largest in size and most abundant, as it includes the mountain streams that feed Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) and the headwaters of the Jordan river.

This makes this area even more important to Israel, given that Israel is in its sixth year of a drought so massive that a NASA study called it the worst drought in the region in nearly 900 years. Thus, the water resources of the Golan Heights are essential to Israel’s existence as well as its expansionist ambitions.

Though recent Israeli investment in desalination plants have since reduced its dependence on Golan water resources, the discovery of oil in the Golan in 2015 dramatically strengthened Israel’s resolve to gain complete sovereignty over the occupied territory.

The oil reserve discovered in the Golan Heights is estimated to contain “billions of barrels” of crude oil that could turn Israel – which currently imports the vast majority of its fuel – into a net oil exporter. Yet, because the Golan Heights are internationally recognized as being under occupation and not an official part of Israel, the commercial extraction and export of this vast oil reserve cannot move forward — until this status changes.

As a result, only exploratory wells have been drilled, mostly by a division of Genie Energy Co., a U.S.-based oil company connected to Rupert Murdoch, Jacob Rothschild, Dick Cheney and former CIA Director James Woolsey, among other powerful individuals in the U.S. and the U.K. The involvement of such influential figures in future oil extraction endeavors in the Golan Heights – dependent as they are on Israel acquiring sovereignty over the territory — likely explains why the U.S., as well as the U.K., has been so willing to help initiate and then perpetuate the Syrian conflict, which is soon to enter its eighth year.

Geopolitics First: The America-Israel Mideast axis

While Netanyahu’s statements show that the Golan Heights is a key driver for Israel in its refusal to let the Syrian conflict wind down, it is important to note that Israel and its allies abroad are also interested in the partitioning of Syria in order to keep the country weak and conflict-ridden for the foreseeable future. This call to partition Syria as well as other countries in the region, such as Iraq, dates back to the Yinon Plan that was developed in 1982 and seeks to partition and weaken other regional states through the engineering of sectarianism, in order to allow Israel to emerge as the region’s sole superpower.

This is worth pointing out, given Israel’s recent effort to take control of the U.S. troop pull-out (or lack thereof) from Syria, as the U.S. State Department is also promoting a plan as of this past weekend that would push for the partition of northeastern Syria were U.S. troops to begin to withdraw from Syrian territory.

Thus, the announcement that the troop “withdrawal” will now be coordinated with Israel and that the U.S.’ new policy for northeastern Syria will involve partition shows that another “America First” Trump policy has quickly morphed instead into an “Israel First” plan.

Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.

January 8, 2019 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Golan Heights, Hillary Clinton, Israel, Middle East, Syria, United States, Zionism | 1 Comment

US Withdrawal from Syria: Postponing the Inevitable

Tim Hayward Blog | January 7, 2019

Peter Ford, former British Ambassador to Bahrain (1999–2003) and Syria (2003–2006), offers the following assessment:

At the start of the year the horizon seems to be dominated by the issue of the possible withdrawal of US troops. In reality however the more important action is elsewhere.

US withdrawal: on or not?

Every day that passes seems to bring fresh evidence that Trump’s decision is being walked back. But appearances can be misleading.

Trump’s ultra-hawkish National Security Adviser, John Bolton, is touring the Middle East apparently setting new conditions for the withdrawal with every stop he makes. We are currently told that the troops will not leave until the remnants of ISIS are mopped up, until there is certainty they cannot remerge, until Erdogan promises not to slaughter the Kurds, and until Israel’s security is absolutely assured.

It is certainly true that crushing those ISIS remnants could take some time, and as for ensuring that ISIS can never re-form that is a recipe for a never-ending US presence. The US allies, the Kurdish-dominated SDF, are currently retreating from parts of Eastern Deir Ez Zor because they are meeting hostility from Arab villagers, who resent the abduction of their young men and even children into the ranks of the SDF. While the departure of the sprinkling of 2000 US troops will hardly leave a vacuum as far as the fight against ISIS is concerned the departure of the SDF from certain areas certainly will. Only the government’s Syrian Arab Army (SAA) could enter these Arab areas, and that is precisely what some clan leaders are calling for (calls ignored of course by our media).

Extracting assurances from Erdogan is also likely to prove difficult, especially if (like Bolton, no doubt) you will perhaps not strain every sinew to extract them. Erdogan however has already said that he will have no need to invade if the Syrian Army interposes itself in a 40 mile deep buffer zone. To guard against this possibility of receiving yes for an answer Ambassador James Jeffrey, presidential envoy for Syria, is being dispatched to talk to the Kurds and deter them from pacting with Assad and the Russians.

The irony here is that it is the very presence of the US (and UK) forces which prevents the US conditions for withdrawal being met. While the US refuses to cooperate with the Syrian Army and Russia in fighting ISIS the holy warriors will always have somewhere to hide. And while the US keeps promising protection to the Kurds, and the Kurds believe them, then the YPG will go on infuriating the Turks and the Turkish threat will not go away.

But will the Kurds believe Jeffrey? Will they put their entire existence at the mercy of Trump’s whims and a frayed US tripwire? It seems not, at least to judge by reports that Kurdish negotiations with Damascus and the Russians are well advanced.

In this game for the prize of Kurdish affections Damascus holds most of the cards. To begin with the Kurds have never fought or wanted to fight the SAA and never wanted independence. They do want a measure of autonomy which they would like to see guaranteed in a new federal constitution. Damascus will have difficulty swallowing that, not least because other restive areas like the South might also want autonomy. Assad will probably reckon that he can clinch a deal with a few concessions rather than a federal constitution: use of Kurdish language in schools, incorporation of the peshmerga into the SAA. He can afford to sit on his hands indefinitely: the small US presence in the remote Syrian Far East is no existential strategic threat to him, while the endless lingering will be a constant embarrassment to Trump. Most crucially of all, the Kurds know now, if they hadn’t realised it before, that one day the US tripwire will indeed be removed and they will get no deal at all from Damascus if they do not strike one now.

We can expect to see bluster, smoke screens, reversals and and posturing on all sides in the coming days but ultimately it must be considered likely that at some point the Kurds, when they judge that no more concessions can be extracted from Assad, could ask the US to leave. Ah! That would upend everything. Actually they won’t even need to ask. All they have to do is conclude a deal. Then it will be game, set and match to Assad and the Russians. The real issue may soon become how to save American face and here we can expect to see some adroit Russian diplomacy. There is already talk of drafting UAE and Egyptian forces into Manbij, the key town under Turkish threat.

Before we reach that point however we must address two loose ends. Firstly Trump’s statement, when he was under fire and needed an excuse, that the Turks were going to deal with ISIS. This idea is a total nonsense but Bolton on the Turkey leg of his tour must go through the motions of exploring it with Erdogan. He will be told that for Turkish troops to cross over a hundred miles of hostile Kurdish territory to deal with ISIS in Deir Ez Zor Turkey would need the support of more US resources than are in the area already. Turkish generals are horrified at the idea. It will be quietly dropped. Anyway the preferred plan is for the US forces with the SDF to use all this new time at their disposal to do the necessary (except that, as mentioned, the SDF is something of a broken reed).

Secondly, and this is even more absurd, Bolton says the US is not going to withdraw its ‘a couple hundred’ troops from the ‘key’ Al Tanf enclave which straddles the Syrian/Jordanian/Iraqi borders, because of its strategic position blocking completion of the fabled ‘land bridge’ which we are told links Iran with Syria and Lebanon. It is quite simply grotesque that anyone with pretentions to being a strategist can appear seriously to believe this and that the media dutifully regurgitate the US talking points on it without question. While it is true that Al Tanf has been an important crossing point, all we are talking about here is bit of inconvenience. There are other crossing points a few miles to the North East. Anyway Iran airlifts most of its supplies to Damascus and Beirut and wouldn’t dream of ferrying sensitive equipment through Iraqi territory, pullulating with US troops and agents. Don’t they have maps in the Pentagon? It can perhaps be most charitably assumed that the Al Tanf gambit is part of the face-saving which has to be done, this time to be able to claim that the US has ensured that Iran will not become more ‘entrenched’ (what does this much bandied about word mean? They never tell us) and Israel’s concerns are not being overlooked.

Assad will not care less if the US wants to stay on in Al Tanf. The only settlement is the Ar Rukban encampment housing about 60,000 displaced persons, many of them ISIS and their families who fled from Raqqa. The US troops do not dare enter this encampment. Assad will be perfectly happy for the US to keep holding this tar baby and can lambast the US for blatant breach of international law, because after ISIS is gone the last vestige of any legal excuse for the US presence will also be gone. (Bolton tells us that the US constitution is basis enough, so now we know.)

Syria comes in from the cold

Meanwhile Syria’s rapprochement with much of the Arab world has proceeded apace. The President of Sudan visited. The UAE reopened its embassy. Bahrain says it will follow. Flights to Tunisia have resumed. It seems likely that Assad will be invited to the Arab Summit in March in Beirut and Syria will be readmitted to the Arab League. Italy is said to be close to reopening its embassy. The British Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has sourly accepted that Assad is going to remain President ‘for a while’. Although reports that the British Embassy are being refurbished may turn out to be a false dawn, the day can surely not be far off when the UK informs Damascus that it proposes to reopen. However the issue will not be what concessions Syria must make to receive this favour but rather what concessions the UK must make if it is not to be even more totally excluded from the diplomacy around the Syrian question than it is already. The Syrians would be remiss not to require a lifting of sanctions as a minimum.

The economic war

The most important aspect of these rapprochements is the economic one. Syria’s immense battle ahead is economic recovery. The gains on the battlefield may be eroded if the government fails to get the country on its feet again. The problems seem never ending. One small example: 84,000 children are fatherless, the offspring resulting from rapes and forced temporary marriages by jihadis.

The Western media gleefully reckons that Syria needs $400 billion for reconstruction. The Western powers currently set their faces against contributing anything to this and indeed seek to push Syria deeper into the mire with punitive sanctions. A surer way of creating the conditions for a resurgence of ISIS could hardly be imagined.

Hence the importance of rapprochement with the Gulf countries. While Trump’s claim that Saudi would pay for recovery was probably another of Trump’s mis-statements, it is not fanciful to imagine the big Gulf development funds – the Saudi, Kuwaiti and Arab Development Funds, and some of the UAE funds – providing enough to make a good start. Syria in any case could not absorb huge amounts to begin with. Not least it would generate massive inflation.

Idlib

The Idlib issue, presently on hold, gets worse rather than better. Hayat Tahrir Ash Sham (HTS), the group everyone (except Qatar) considers terrorists, have fought and displaced other armed groups from a string of towns, some in the buffer zone which the Turks were supposed to have cleansed of the most radical groups. The groups in Idlib mount regular forays or artillery attacks into government-controlled areas, attracting air raids in retaliation.

Lest we forget

Within two days of each other John Bolton and Jeremy Hunt publicly reminded Syria that it must not run away with the idea that it could get away with more chemical attacks now that it seems to be in the ascendant. This seems to be the last lingering hope of all those who can never have too much Western military intervention in Syria, that an incident can be manufactured to justify heavy bombing. Unfortunately for them, the Syrians and Russians appear to be a step ahead: only the Russians seem to be doing any bombing. While a compliant media would dutifully echo possible Pentagon claims that any planes or helicopters were Syrian rather than Russian, or that black is white, this tactic does make that a tad more difficult.

January 7, 2019 Posted by aletho | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | Syria, United States | 1 Comment

There is broad international support for US withdrawal from Syria – but will Washington listen?

21st Century Wire | January 7, 2019

Forward by Daniel McAdams, Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute:

The mainstream press coverage of President Trump’s announcement that he would be removing US troops from Syria has been unanimously apocalyptic. Journos who until a few days ago couldn’t care less about the Kurds (certainly not when US president after US president has used them as a cat’s paw and then abandoned them to their fate), were all of a sudden up in arms warning about an impending slaughter with the blood dripping squarely onto Trump’s hands.

In fact, US weapons, training, and backing had carved out a de facto super-sized Kurd-controlled section of northern Syria which it does not take a geopolitical expert to understand would incense NATO ally Turkey. Why prop up the Kurds and in the process infuriate Erdogan? The US-led regime-change program simply did not have many other boots on the ground to turn to. After years of arming jihadists whose masks slipped quickly thereafter to reveal al-Qaeda or ISIS markings, the game was up for the “Assad must go” crowd and the only move left was to pretend that a proxy Kurd militia was something called the “Syrian Democratic Forces.” When in fact it was nothing of the sort. It was simply the Kurds, rented by Washington.

And the bloodbath the media and neocons warned would come about should Trump dare reconsider another US forever war? More lies and bluster. The Kurds are re-considering their foolish refusal to partner more closely with the Syrian government against foreign-sponsored insurgencies. Just last week, they began negotiations with Damascus to reconcile and forestall a massive Turk incursion.

But the Kurds acting in their own best interest is a big problem for the neocons. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has given himself credit for slowing Trump’s announced withdrawal from Syria, has gone on record claiming it would be a “major disaster” if the Kurds in Syria aligned themselves with the Syrian (aka their own) government. To Graham and his neocon cohort, the US can never leave any war. Undeclared wars are just fine with them, but declared peace is a “major disaster.”

Which brings us back to public opinion. With the neocons clogging up the airwaves with predictions of gloom and doom if the US ends its illegal occupation of Syria and with the mainstream media in its continuing Pravda-esque lock-step when it comes to the US global military empire, something quite remarkable has happened: the American people are happy that Trump plans to bring the troops home. According to a recent poll, more than half of Americans surveyed support the removal of US troops from Syria and Afghanistan.

Overseas, support for President Trump’s moves is also significant. The Baroness Caroline Cox of the UK House of Lords, has sent President Trump a letter, with former UK Ambassador to Syria Peter Ford, and on behalf of a network of “concerned parliamentarians, senior clerics, former ambassadors and academics,” congratulating the president on his announced pull-out.

The Baroness writes:

Your courage in doing the right thing, in the face of conflicting advice and an onslaught from ill-informed politicians, a blinkered media and brittle allies, commands respect. We salute you.

The letter continues with a call for the end of US sanctions on Syria, which, she writes “only hobble its economy, hamper refugee return, cause mass unemployment, hinder recovery and create conditions for a re-emergence of ISIS.”

She warns Trump that there’s nothing his critics (like Lindsey Graham) would like more than a resurgence of ISIS in the areas left by US troops so as to make Trump look wrong in withdrawing. An end of sanctions would help strengthen the Syrian government and better enable it to fight against ISIS.

Let’s hope President Trump heeds the wise counsel of very engaged experts like Baroness Cox. Perhaps next time Sen. Graham demands a meeting to harangue Trump on a troop pull-out he can beg off. Let Graham and Bolton stew in their own juices in some West Wing broom closet. Better yet…maybe Trump should consider some additional personnel changes.

This OpEd was originally published at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Below is the full text of the letter to President Trump…

OPEN LETTER OF THANKS TO PRESIDENT TRUMP FROM CO-FOUNDERS OF THE GLOBAL NETWORK FOR SYRIA (GNS)

The Honorable Donald John Trump,
President of the United States of America
White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington DC 20500
United States of America.

December 31st 2018

Dear Mr President,

Please allow us to thank you for your bold decision to bring American forces home from Syria, mission accomplished.

Our Network of concerned parliamentarians, senior clerics, former ambassadors and academics has campaigned for just such an essential step on the way to bringing peace and stability back to Syria.

Your courage in doing the right thing, in the face of conflicting advice and an onslaught from ill-informed politicians, a blinkered media and brittle allies, commands respect. We salute you.

We urge you now to carry on as you have started by lifting sanctions on Syria. Keeping sanctions on Syria to keep it weak can only hobble its economy, hamper refugee return, cause mass unemployment, hinder recovery and create conditions for a re-emergence of ISIS. This will be a gift to your enemies, who long to see you proven wrong on the defeat of ISIS.

Continuing sanctions will also prevent American firms from benefitting from the multi-billion dollar recovery projects which will be funded by rich Arabs and otherwise benefit the Chinese and the Russians.

Congratulations, Mr President, on taking a momentous step which shows true statesmanship. We pray that you continue on this wise path and take the follow up steps essential so that your actions are not undermined.

Yours sincerely,

The Baroness Cox, Independent Member of the House of Lords, London
Peter Ford, British Ambassador to Syria, 2003-6

***

A copy of the original letter can be found here: Open Letter to President Tr… on Scribd

January 7, 2019 Posted by aletho | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | Syria, United States | 1 Comment

Syria: US-Led Coalition Creating Appropriate Conditions for ISIL to Survive, Expand

Al-Manar | January 6, 2019

Syrian Foreign Ministry lashed out at the US-led coalition over crimes committed against civilians in the war-torn country, stressing that the coalition have been creating appropriate conditions for ISIL terror group to survive.

In a letter sent on Saturday to both UN Secretary-General and the UN Security Council, the Syrian ministry said “the continuous massacres against the Syrian civilians and destroying their houses and livelihoods by the illegitimate US-led coalition confirms the necessity to address the disregard showed by countries of this coalition with regard to UN Charter and the provisions of international law.”

The ministry was referring to strikes carried out by warplanes of the US-led coalition in Syria, the last of which were in al-kishkiah and al-Shaf’a villages in Deir Ezzor southeastern countryside.

“Since its establishment, the international coalition’s practices only served to create the appropriate conditions to enable Daesh (ISIS) terrorist organization to survive and expand again,” the letter read, according to SANA news agency.

The ministry meanwhile, renewed its demand that the Security Council “should shoulder its responsibilities and take immediate action to stop these crimes, attacks, massacres, and systematic destruction of infrastructure in Syria and punish their perpetrators.”

January 6, 2019 Posted by aletho | Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | Syria, United States | 2 Comments

Senate’s First Act: “An Implicit Rebuke” Of Trump’s Syria Draw Down

By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 01/05/2019

The Republican-held Senate’s first order of business as it reconvened on Friday for 2019 was to push back against President Trump’s planned Syria withdrawal, as the first bill Republican leadership introduced, led by hawk Marco Rubio, is being described as “an implicit rebuke” of the president’s Syria policy.

Senate Bill 1, expected to be one of the first pieces of legislation under consideration of the new Senate, was introduced Thursday by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is being co-sponsored by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and incoming Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch of Idaho. Sen. McConnel subsequently announced this means Congress is finally set to debate Syria policy; however ironically at the very moment Trump is attempting a “full” and “immediate” pull out of some 2,000+ US forces. This after US officials reiterated on Friday that “no fixed deadline” for troop withdrawal has been given and they would seek to ensure “no power vacuum” in previously occupied northeast Syria would remain.

NBC describes the proposed legislation, which focuses on a new round of sanctions against Damascus, as follows:

Although Congress can’t force the commander-in-chief to keep troops in Syria, Senate aides say the move is designed to illustrate the need for a strong, continuing U.S. presence in the Middle East and re-assert the role of Congress on national security. It comes as many of Trump’s GOP allies have joined Democrats in deploring his announcement of a Syria withdrawal without consulting allies and lamenting the subsequent resignation of former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

The Senate is moving quickly to assert its point-of-view on U.S. policy regarding Syria and in the broader Middle East, and it could serve as a rebuttal to the decision by President Donald Trump to pull back U.S. forces from Syria.

Of note is that Congress is only attempting to “re-assert” its role on national security the moment a US president is seeking to pull out of the Middle East.

Statements by the bill sponsors referenced consulting “steadfast” allies first. While naming Israel and Jordan specifically, Foreign Relations Chairman Jim Risch said, “This package of legislation is an important step toward finishing the work of the last Congress. Israel and Jordan have been steadfast allies of the United States that deserve this support.”

Also noticeable was the complete lack of appeal to American self-defense and the unpopularity among the American public of remaining in Syria, according to recent polls.

Sen. Risc continued to cite foreign allies first and foremost as necessitating the bill: “Also, it is vital to confront Syrian government atrocities and end discrimination against Israel,” he said while calling for it to move forward rapidly.

And well-known Iran hawk Sen. Rubio echoed the same:

It is in America’s national security interests to ensure that our allies in the Middle East like Israel and Jordan remain secure amid the region’s growing destabilizing threats posed by Iran and Syria’s Assad regime… This important bill will also impose new sanctions against the Assad regime and its supporters who continue to commit horrific human rights violations against the Syrian people.

On Wednesday President Trump altered his language after immense pushback in Washington, saying the US will get out of Syria “over a period of time” and in such a way that will protect America’s Kurdish partners on the ground, at a moment pro-Turkish forces backed by Turkey’s army are set to invade and annex Kurdish enclaves in the north of the country.

Notably, Trump also told reporters on Wednesday: “Syria was lost long ago. we’re not talking about vast wealth. we’re talking about sand and death,” while also noting: “It’s not my fault. I didn’t put us there.”

But it appears senators like Rubio, McConnell and Risch want to come keep the US there indefinitely, continuing what’s unfortunately becoming an American tradition of “forever wars” and quagmires.

January 5, 2019 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Wars for Israel | Israel, Marco Rubio, Mitch McConnell, Syria, United States, Zionism | 3 Comments

Imperialism Abhors a Void: Guest: Sarah Abed

The Rabbit Hole | January 3, 2019

Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox

Final Podcast 2018

Guest: Sarah Abed
Topic: US “Withdrawal” from Syria

On this episode of Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox we discussed Trump’s announcement to withdraw US troops from Syria, the media’s reaction, and the impact this will have on Kurdish militias and Syria’s ultimate fight against imperialism.

Below are some of the points that I made during our chat (this is not a full transcript) or some thoughts I would like to expand on.

Cindy asked what I make of Trump’s announcement to withdraw 2,000 troops from Syria.

My response:

Trump had stated during his campaign and his presidency and even prior to that during Obama’s presidency in 2013 that he did not think we should be in Syria, nor should we be bombing Syria, that it was a waste of money and lives and that the Arab League and neighboring countries should be the ones to step up to the plate.

I think this was one of the reasons that many people voted for him, because of his non-interventionist foreign policy, which was in stark contrast to that of Hillary Clinton.

In April, of this year he had announced that he wanted to pull the US out of Syria and then just days later there was an alleged chemical weapons attack that was pinned on the Syrian government in Douma, to which Trump responded with attacking multiple targets along with his allies the UK and France.

This of course derailed his plan to pull out US troops, which is the exact outcome that the terrorists that staged the whole theatrical performance had wanted. And we have seen this sort of thing happen time and time again during the war. Whenever the Syrian army and government have made significant progress new allegations and attacks are made against them in corporate media in order to garner international support for military, political intervention as well as increased sanctions.

There are other factors at play with this latest withdraw announcement which was made on December 19th, in addition to standing by his America first promise, campaign statements, saving money and lives, there’s the fact that Turkey’s president Erdogan had threatened to attack the Kurdish militias on his border, if the US didn’t have them removed. He sees the YPG (People’s Protection Units) which was rebranded at the request of the US into the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) as an extension of the PKK (Kurdistan workers party) which is a terrorist group that has been in conflict with the Turkish state for decades.

As I had written about back in March the Olive branch operation in Afrin proved that NATO alliances are stronger than any other alliances and that the US will choose Turkey over the Kurds and that’s what we are seeing happen right now. Some have also speculated that Israel may have given the US a heads up that it would be engaging in an intense bombing campaign and that US troops should be sent home so that they are not caught in the crosshairs.

Cindy asked what I make of the reaction by democrats, liberals, celebrities etc.

My response:

It would be comical if it wasn’t actually dangerous. In their blind opposition to anything and everything that Trump says these overnight analysts and pundits started claiming that if US troops were to withdraw from Syria then Kurds would be annihilated by Turkey or succumb to some other equally horrible fate.

What we have seen over the past few days however is that leaders of Kurdish militias have actually reached out to the Syrian government and asked that they step in and take back Manbij and all the territory under their control west of the Euphrates in order to protect them against Turkey. This is a clear shift in their political alliance away from the US and towards Syria and Russia. Turkey will not directly confront the Syrian army so Trump’s announcement could actually signify a big step towards peace in this almost eight-year western imposed insurrection.

The US entered Syria illegally and has since set up over a dozen military bases and supported the Kurdish militias during the last few years only. Prior to using the Kurdish militias as a tool to create chaos and division in Syria, the US was predominately supporting the hardcore Al Qaeda-linked terrorists in the Free Syrian Army and an assortment of other alphabet soup groups who they affectionately referred to as “moderate rebels” to topple the secular Syrian government.

Had the US not supported the Kurdish militias they would have not had the motivation to turn against the Syrian state. During the beginning of the war, the Kurds were fighting with the Syrian army against terrorists, by the way some still are and many Kurds in Syria are not in agreement with the separatist ambitions of the Kurdish militias.

I want to stress the fact that before 2011 Kurds, Arabs, and Christian minorities lived peacefully in Syria and till now they are NOT the majority. They do not have any justifiable claims to the north eastern region (which also happens to be the most agriculturally and oil rich part of the country) or any other part of Syria. They are a nomadic people and I do not mean that in a condescending way at all but to illustrate that they came into Syria in waves to escape mistreatment in neighboring countries and were treated fairly and given equal rights. Not all Kurds envision a unified Kurdistan that would span four different sovereign countries (Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran). Most Kurdish movements and political parties are focused on the concerns and autonomy of Kurds within their respective countries. Within each country, there are Kurds who have assimilated and whose aspirations may be limited to greater cultural freedoms and political recognition.

It’s also worth noting that only Israel is their main and really only supporter and their plans for an independent Kurdistan align almost perfectly with Israel’s greater Israel plan. They have historically been used by Israel and NATO.

Cindy asked about the demands being made that Russia or Iran should withdraw from Syria if US troops are to be withdrawn.

My response was basically that Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah are there with the Syrian government’s permission. Whereas the US, UK, France, and Turkey are there illegally and need to leave. Cindy noted and I agreed that it’s a false equivalency and a logical fallacy.

We also spoke about fasting to raise awareness #illuminateYemen for the entirely man-made and avoidable Saudi war and genocide that’s been going on for over three years and nine months. We discussed the latest developments and how Saudi Arabia is outsourcing their front line fighters with children and men from Dafur, Sudan and paying their families $10,000.

My response:

Fasting for seven days was a very humbling experience. The war on Yemen is truly heartbreaking especially because it is entirely man-made and avoidable. It’s so important for us to continue to raise awareness and get people to talk about it to literally everyone they know. For the past 3 years and nine months the murderous Al Saud regime, has been bombing civilians using weapons bought from the US, UK, and Germany, what they are doing is nothing short of committing genocide and deliberately starving Yemeni’s them through blockades. Tens of thousands have been killed since it began.

There was actually a report in the New York Times today that Saudi Arabia was recruiting children from Darfur to fight on the front lines and paying their families $10,000. Sudan has been part of the Saudi-led alliance, and deployed thousands of ground troops to Yemen. In the NYT report they said that five Sudanese fighters who had returned from Yemen told them that that children made up 20-40 percent of their units in Yemen.

The fact that House of Saud is on the UN human and woman’s rights council while also being the leading violator in crimes against humanity and the main sponsor of terror in the world shows the western worlds blatant hypocrisy. A United Nations-sponsored peace agreement was signed in Sweden earlier this month, and was agreed upon by both sides to implement a ceasefire in Hodeida. The panel will be meeting again on January 1 to discuss “detailed plans for full redeployment”. Every effort needs to be made for this conflict to end.

January 3, 2019 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite | France, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United States, Yemen, Zionism | Leave a comment

More Reckless Behavior by Israel: Netanyahu Plays by His Own Rules

By Philip M. GIRALDI | Strategic Culture Foundation | 03.01.2019

As has become the normal practice, Christmas Day’s air raid by Israel directed against targets near Damascus was largely ignored by the US media. Given the fact that Israel has bombed Syria more than two hundred times, the attack itself, which wounded three soldiers at a warehouse, was not particularly notable. But what was significant was the fact that it was the second time that Israel has used other planes to mask the approach of its own warplanes to the target. On this occasion, the masks consisted of two civilian airliners making their approaches to the airports in Beirut and Damascus. Fortunately, the Syrian Arab Air Defense Forces made the decision to delay the deployment of surface-to-air missiles and electronic jamming “to prevent a tragedy” and air traffic control was able to divert one of the passenger jets landing at Damascus to the reserve military airport in Khmeimim in southern Latakia.

Syrian anti-aircraft crews did manage to intercept and shoot down fourteen of the sixteen incoming missiles that were launched by six Israeli F-16 warplanes using US-made GPS-guided GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs (SDBs). If the Syrian air defenses had been more reckless and gone after the F-16s themselves, they might have hit an airliner by mistake and hundreds of lives could have been lost.

The Russian Ministry of Defense, which was able to reconstruct the attack from radar imaging, condemned the incident, stating that “Provocative acts by the Israeli Air Force endangered two passenger jets when six of their F-16s carried out airstrikes on Syria from Lebanese airspace.” The terse Russian announcement reveals that beyond endangering hundreds of civilians, Israel had committed several war crimes in its action, which the Israeli government claimed was intended to destroy a shipment of Iranian-made Fajir-5 rockets, which was allegedly on its way to Hezbollah.

As Israel is not at war with Iran or Syria or Lebanon and it persists in attacking targets in Syria based on its own perception of threats, it meets the United Nations definition of an aggressor. And its violation of Lebanese air space to stage the attack on Syria was also an act of aggression. Both would normally be condemned in the UN Security Council but for the American veto protecting Israel.

Analysts have confirmed that the Israelis carried out the strikes in Syria by deliberately using scheduled airline departures and arrivals as cover to foil the improved and upgraded Syrian air defenses. Security sources in the region now believe that any civilian flights entering or leaving Damascus or Beirut are potentially in danger due to the Israeli tactics, which clearly accept endangering civilians to mask the movements of the warplanes.

The Israelis also used a Russian intelligence plane as a mask off the coast of Syria back in September, with fatal results for the crew after Syrian air defenses responded to the attack. Israel, of course, claimed innocence, insisting that it was the Syrians who shot down the Russian aircraft while the Israeli jets were legitimately targeting a Syrian army facility “from which weapons-manufacturing systems were supposed to be transferred to Iran and Hezbollah.”

The Russian aircraft was returning to base after a mission over the Mediterranean off the Syrian coast monitoring the activities of a French warship and at least one British RAF plane. As a large and relatively slow propeller driven aircraft on a routine intelligence gathering mission, the Ilyushin-20 had no reason to conceal its presence. It was apparently preparing to land at its airbase at Khmeimim when the incident took place.

Syrian air defenses were on high alert because Israel had attacked targets near Damascus on the previous day, including a Boeing 747 on the ground that Israel claimed to be transporting weapons.

The Israelis used four F-16 fighter bombers to stage the surprise night attack targeting sites near Latakia, close to the airbase being used by the Russians. They came in from the Mediterranean Sea using the Russian plane to mask their approach as the Ilyushin 20 would have presented a much larger radar profile for the air defenses.

The Israelis might have been expecting that the Syrians would not fire at all at the incoming planes knowing that one of them at least was being flown by their Russian allies. If that was the expectation, it proved wrong and it was indeed a Syrian S-200 ground to air missile directed by its guidance system to the larger target that brought down the plane and killed its fourteen crew members.

There was also a back story. The Israelis and Russian military had established a hotline precisely intended to avoid accidents. Israel reportedly used the line but only one minute before the incident took place, leaving no time for the Russian plane to take evasive action.

The Russian Ministry of Defense was irate. It saw the exploitation of the intelligence plane by the Israelis as a deliberate high-risk initiative. It warned “We consider these provocative actions by Israel as hostile. Fifteen Russian military service members have died because of the irresponsible actions of the Israeli military. This is absolutely contrary to the spirit of the Russian-Israeli partnership. We reserve the right for an adequate response.”

It’s the same old story. Israel does risky things like attacking its neighbors because it knows it will pay no price due to Washington’s support. The downing of the Russian plane and the current endangering civil aviation has created a situation that could easily escalate. What Israel is really thinking when it seeks to create anarchy all around its borders is anyone’s guess, but it is, to be sure, in no one’s interest to allow the process to continue.

January 3, 2019 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Israel, Lebanon, Syria | 2 Comments

SYRIA: The Western Rogue States Must Confess their Crimes Against Humanity and be held Accountable

Christmas 2018 in Damascus, Old City, without mortars from Eastern Ghouta since its liberation in April 2018. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

By Vanessa Beeley | 21st Century Wire | January 2, 2019

The West and its allies in the Gulf States, Turkey and Israel have waged an eight year war against the Syrian people. The West has besieged, starved and deprived the Syrian people of humanitarian aid while pouring “aid” into the areas controlled by their extremist sectarian proxy armies.

The West has violated international law and it has enabled the destruction of Syria’s history, heritage and cultural footprint. The West has behaved as a collective rogue state without conscience and without pity for a people its media has systematically dehumanised to enable such a crime to take place.

Despite this war of attrition and despite battling disproportionate force, the Syrian people have refused to capitulate or to abandon their secularism in favour of an extremist tyranny that would destroy their society and persecute the minority communities into extinction. Christmas 2018 has demonstrated the victory of Syrian unity over the regime change project incubated in the West which is now a failed campaign lying in tatters at the feet of the self determination of the Syrian people, the valiant defence by the Syrian Arab Army and the steadfastness of the Syrian Government and its President, Bashar Al Assad.

In Aleppo I spoke with Pastor Ibrahim Nseir of Aleppo’s Presbyterian Church, whom I had also interviewed in 2017. The following is a mixture of quotes and paraphrase from our conversation on New Year’s Eve 2018/19.

Reverend Ibrahim Nseir, Presbyterian Church, Aleppo. December 31st 2018. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

The Presbyterian Church in the Old City of Aleppo was destroyed by the Western-backed terrorist groups in November 2012. An article in the Mennonite World Review in July 2018 described the destruction of the church – “In the old city of Aleppo, Syria, Ibrahim Nseir stands on the pile of rubble that used to be his church. The building where his congregation worshiped is now broken stones and dust. It’s a sunny day, the bright sky a stark contrast to the destruction on the ground.”

After eight years of resistance against the threat of persecution and mass exodus of Christians from Aleppo, Nseir remains defiant and upbeat about the future of Aleppo and Syria. Of the 300,000 Syrian Christians in Aleppo, only 30,000 remain. This is the legacy of sectarian oppression that has been imprinted upon Syria by Western hegemony and it will take generations for it be turned around.

Nseir described the rebuilding process for the Presbyterian Church as difficult but he insisted that it would be rebuilt from its original stones to preserve its historical identity. For Nseir the priorities for Aleppo and Syria are to address the economic situation which has clearly taken a hit on many levels and is suffering in a typical post-war slump. Education is another top priority for this intelligent and enthusiastic Reverend. The intention is to create a center for retreats and conferences at the current Presbyterian Church offices in the center of Aleppo, including a student dormitory.

“We will increase educational capacity by 1000 in the very near future and continue to build upon this progress” Nseir told me.

Education, according to Nseir, is the greatest weapon against extremism and is the only way to re-habilitate children who spent seven of their formative years under occupation of extremist and sectarian factions who worked hard to brainwash almost an entire generation of Syria’s children.

“Ethically the West and the East are responsible for Syria’s destruction. This is not a “Christian” issue, it is a World issue.” Nseir insisted.

The role of the Western media in manufacturing consent for the collective punishment of the Syrian people was clearly a primary cause of the devastation that Nseir and other faith leaders across Syria are now dealing with:

“Western media played more than a negative role, they literally urged the terrorists to take action against the Syrian people by providing false information and blinding people in the West to what was really happening in Syria for eight years. This should never be forgotten.”

Nseir stressed that the healing process for children traumatised by the war would not be easy.

“How do you erase the hatred and horror planted in the brains of 7-10-year-old children by these fanatics? What do you expect from children who have played football with the head of a Syrian Arab Army soldier or who have witnessed the violent abuse of their mother by these terrorists or have seen their father executed by the armed groups? This is the greatest challenge for Humanity and for Syria to put right these terrible wrongs.”

Nseir spoke of the shocking estimated figures of 82,000 children whose father is unknown, referring to the huge number of young women raped or forced into multiple marriages by the terrorist groups and their fighters. How do these children regain their identity and re-integrate into Syrian society? The rebuilding of schools and hospitals must be a priority. The terrorists destroyed “the most developed hospital in the Middle East, Al Kindi” in 2013 and since then, and the destruction of more hospitals across Syria by the terrorist groups, Nseir told me Syria has seen an increase in Cancer and new diseases. Nseir also suggested that this may be attributed to the weapons used by the US Coalition proxies and the U.S itself, which include depleted uranium.

Another important challenge, according to Nseir, is the environmental one. Syria needs to rebuild its natural environment which has also been hugely affected by the conflict. 100,000 trees have been destroyed in Aleppo alone which could lead eventually to desertification of the province if not dealt with. The Governor of Aleppo has recently planted 2,000 new trees but this is an issue that must be addressed with urgency for Nseir.

Nseir strongly believes that Western people should come to Syria independently to see the truth for themselves and report the truth as they see it without any agenda. The Church and the media in the West have maintained a sectarian, divisve narrative which is confusing for people in the West and far from reality.

Nseir addressed the position and status of Syria in the Middle East and described how it has not changed, all that has changed is the perception of Syria portrayed by the media and world leaders who have aligned themselves with the West’s criminal project to partition Syria into sectarian statelets and to remove the elected Syrian government from power by force:

“What has changed since 2011 in reality? Nothing. Syria has always been the protector of the Middle East before 2011, during the conflict and now. The only thing that has changed is the positions of those who turned against Syria, betrayed Syria and who now wish to come back to Syria for protection. We see the Gulf States now change their stance and the UAE has re-opened its embassy in Damascus. The Arab League will welcome Syria back into its fold. Nothing has changed, Syria has remained the same while others have been opportunists and traitors.”

The fact that Syria will forgive its betrayers is testament to what has given Syria victory over its enemies throughout history. With regards to the West, Nseir is not so forgiving:

“The West must go beyond simply stopping its financing of terrorism and the supply of weapons. The West must confess to its crimes against the Syrian people in order to be forgiven. The West must lift the economic sanctions which are a siege upon the Syrian people and it must allow the Syrian people to rebuild in peace without meddling in their affairs. The Syrian people will rebuild according to what the Syrian people want not what the East or the West want. The West has sold the idea that this war was against President Assad but in reality it was against the will of a nation and the people of that nation must be respected”.

Nseir confirmed that the western NGOs are nothing more than political instruments and devices who further the cause of war but he insisted that the West must effectively pay reparations to Syria and expect nothing in return. This is the only way the West can be forgiven by Syria.

Nseir told me that his church will be establishing a medical and health center in the coming months which will be open to everyone in Aleppo to offer medical check-ups and treatment for free. Staff will be trained to deal with the children afflicted by the effects of the war and the terrorist occupation and the plan is to eventually set up special schools to continue the work of rehabilitation for these children. This will enable the coming generations to stand against radicalism and terrorism in the future.

“The West has a duty to respect our dignity and territorial integrity. The Syrian Arab Army has saved the image of our God of Peace, Love and Unity – this has been a spiritual war in Syria not only a military war. The God of love has been embodied by the SAA and our allies and has been victorious over the God of terrorism and hatred. The whole world will change after this war and after Syria’s victory. Syria will be a transformational catalyst for all of Humanity. Syria was never going to be defeated, you only have to study our history to know this. Our society has always embraced diversity and this is the essence of our country. Fanaticism was never going to survive breathing the pure oxygen of our humanity. Actually this demonstrates the stupidity of leaders in the West – to even imagine that extremism has a place in our culture”. Nseir told me.

Nseir ended our talk by stating that the crisis in Syria must be an alarm bell for the country and for its leaders.

“We must re-prioritise our schedule, our agenda and make sure it is not only political but that we address all issues – religious, educational, health care. We must rethink our priorities to ensure a future of peace and stability. At the end I believe strongly that all the negative consequences of this terrible war will be transformed into positive consequences if we address them in the right way. Out of adversity are born the greatest opportunities for the future of Syria and Humanity.”

Horse rides on offer at the foot of the Citadel in the Old City of Aleppo. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

***

Vanessa Beeley is an independent journalist, peace activist, photographer and associate editor at 21st Century Wire.

January 3, 2019 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | France, Israel, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, UAE, UK, United States | 3 Comments

How the War Party Lost the Middle East

By Pat Buchanan • Unz Review • January 1, 2019

“Assad must go, Obama says.”

So read the headline in The Washington Post, Aug. 18, 2011.

The story quoted President Barack Obama directly:

“The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. … the time has come for President Assad to step aside.”

France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain’s David Cameron signed on to the Obama ultimatum: Assad must go!

Seven years and 500,000 dead Syrians later, it is Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron who are gone. Assad still rules in Damascus, and the 2,000 Americans in Syria are coming home. Soon, says President Donald Trump.

But we cannot “leave now,” insists Sen. Lindsey Graham, or “the Kurds are going to get slaughtered.”

Question: Who plunged us into a Syrian civil war, and so managed our intervention that were we to go home after seven years our enemies will be victorious and our allies will “get slaughtered”?

Seventeen years ago, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban for granting sanctuary to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden.

U.S. diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad is today negotiating for peace talks with that same Taliban. Yet, according to former CIA director Mike Morell, writing in The Washington Post today, the “remnants of al-Qaeda work closely” with today’s Taliban.

It would appear that 17 years of fighting in Afghanistan has left us with these alternatives: Stay there, and fight a forever war to keep the Taliban out of Kabul, or withdraw and let the Taliban overrun the place.

Who got us into this debacle?

After Trump flew into Iraq over Christmas but failed to meet with its president, the Iraqi Parliament, calling this a “U.S. disregard for other nations’ sovereignty” and a national insult, began debating whether to expel the 5,000 U.S. troops still in their country.

George W. Bush launched Operation Iraq Freedom to strip Saddam Hussein of WMD he did not have and to convert Iraq into a democracy and Western bastion in the Arab and Islamic world.

Fifteen years later, Iraqis are debating our expulsion.

Muqtada al-Sadr, the cleric with American blood on his hands from the fighting of a decade ago, is leading the charge to have us booted out. He heads the party with the largest number of members in the parliament.

Consider Yemen. For three years, the U.S. has supported with planes, precision-guided munitions, air-to-air refueling and targeting information, a Saudi war on Houthi rebels that degenerated into one of the worst humanitarian disasters of the 21st century.

Belatedly, Congress is moving to cut off U.S. support for this war. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, its architect, has been condemned by Congress for complicity in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the consulate in Istanbul. And the U.S. is seeking a truce in the fighting.

Who got us into this war? And what have years of killing Yemenis, in which we have been collaborators, done to make Americans safer?

Consider Libya. In 2011, the U.S. attacked the forces of dictator Moammar Gadhafi and helped to effect his ouster, which led to his murder.

Told of news reports of Gadhafi’s death, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joked, “We came, we saw, he died.”

The Libyan conflict has since produced tens of thousands of dead. The output of Libya’s crucial oil industry has collapsed to a fraction of what it was. In 2016, Obama said that not preparing for a post-Gadhafi Libya was probably the “worst mistake” of his presidency.

The price of all these interventions for the United States?

Some 7,000 dead, 40,000 wounded and trillions of dollars.

For the Arab and Muslim world, the cost has been far greater. Hundreds of thousands of dead in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya, civilian and soldier alike, pogroms against Christians, massacres, and millions uprooted and driven from their homes.

How has all this invading, bombing and killing made the Middle East a better place or Americans more secure? One May 2018 poll of young people in the Middle East and North Africa found that more of them felt that Russia was a closer partner than was the United States of America.

The fruits of American intervention?

We are told ISIS is not dead but alive in the hearts of tens of thousands of Muslims, that if we leave Syria and Afghanistan, our enemies will take over and our friends will be massacred, and that if we stop helping Saudis and Emiratis kill Houthis in Yemen, Iran will notch a victory.

In his decision to leave Syria and withdraw half of the 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, Trump enraged our foreign policy elites, though millions of Americans cannot get out of there soon enough.

In Monday’s editorial celebrating major figures of foreign policy in the past half-century, The New York Times wrote, “As these leaders pass from the scene, it will be left to a new generation to find a way forward from the wreckage Mr. Trump has already created.”

Correction: Make that “the wreckage Mr. Trump inherited.”

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”

January 1, 2019 Posted by aletho | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Afghanistan, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, Libya, Middle East, New York Times, Obama, Syria, United States, Yemen | Leave a comment

Israel Is Bad for America

A New York Times Columnist explains why

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • January 1, 2019

American journalism has become in its mainstream exponents a compendium of half-truths and out-and-out lies. The public, though poorly informed on most issues as a result, has generally figured out that it is being hoodwinked and trust in the Fourth Estate has plummeted over the past twenty years. The skepticism about what is being reported has enabled President Donald Trump and other politicians to evade serious questions about policy by claiming that what is being reported is little more than “fake news.”

No news is more fake than the reporting in the U.S. media that relates to the state of Israel. Former Illinois congressman Paul Findley in his seminal book They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby observed that nearly all the foreign press correspondents working out of Israel are Jewish while most of the editors that they report to at news desks are also Jews, guaranteeing that the articles that eventually surface in the newspapers will be carefully constructed to minimize any criticism of the Jewish state. The same goes for television news, particularly on cable news stations like CNN.

A particularly galling aspect of the sanitization of news reports regarding Israel is the underlying assumption that Israelis share American values and interests, to include freedom and democracy. This leads to the perception that Israelis are just like Americans with Israel’s enemies being America’s enemies. Given that, it is natural to believe that the United States and Israel are permanent allies and friends and that it is in the U.S. interest to do whatever is necessary to support Israel, including providing billions of dollars in aid to a country that is already wealthy as well as unlimited political cover in international bodies like the United Nations.

That bogus but nevertheless seemingly eternal bond is essentially the point from which a December 26^th op-ed in The New York Times departs. The piece is by one of the Times’ resident opinion writers Bret Stephens and is entitled Donald Trump is Bad for Israel.

Stephens gets to the point rather quickly, claiming that “The president has abruptly undermined Israel’s security following a phone call with an Islamist strongman in Turkey. So much for the idea, common on the right, that this is the most pro-Israel administration ever. I write this as someone who supported Trump moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and who praised his decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal as courageous and correct. I also would have opposed the president’s decision to remove U.S. forces from Syria under nearly any circumstances. Contrary to the invidious myth that neoconservatives always put Israel first, the reasons for staying in Syria have everything to do with core U.S. interests. Among them: Keeping ISIS beaten, keeping faith with the Kurds, maintaining leverage in Syria and preventing Russia and Iran from consolidating their grip on the Levant.”

The beauty of Stephens overwrought prose is that the careful reader might realize from the git-go that the argument being promoted makes no sense. Bret has a big heart for the Kurds but the Palestinians are invisible in his piece while his knowledge of other developments in the Middle East is superficial. First of all, the phone call with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had nothing to do with “undermining Israel’s security.” It concerned the northern border of Syria, which Turkey shares, and arrangements for working with the Kurds, which is a vital interest for both Ankara and Washington. And it might be added that from a U.S. national security point of view Turkey is an essential partner for the United States in the region while Israel is not, no matter what it pretends to be.

Stephens then goes on to demonstrate what he claims to be a libel, that for him and other neocons Israel always comes first, an odd assertion given the fact that he spends 80% of his article discussing what is or isn’t good for Israel. He supports the U.S. Embassy move to Jerusalem, the end of the nuclear agreement with Iran, both of which were applauded in Israel but which are extremely damaging to American interests. He attacks the planned withdrawal from Syria because it is a “core interest” for the U.S., which is complete nonsense.

Contrary to Stephens’ no evidence assertion, Russia and Iran have neither the resources nor the desire to “consolidate[e] their grip on the Levant” while it is the United States that has no right and no real interest to “maintain leverage” on Syria by invading and occupying the country. But, of course, invading and occupying are practices that Israel is good at, so Stephens’ brain fart on the issue can perhaps be attributed to confusion over whose bad policies he was defending. Stephens also demonstrates confusion over his insistence that the U.S. must “resist foreign aggressors… the Russians and Iranians in Syria in this decade,” suggesting that he is unaware that both nations are providing assistance at the request of the legitimate government in Damascus. It is the U.S. and Israel that are the aggressors in Syria.

Stephens then looks at the situation from the “Israeli standpoint,” which, presumably, is easy for him to do as that is how he looks at everything given the fact that he is far more concerned about Israel’s interests than those of the United States. Indeed, all of his opinions are based on the assumption that U.S. policy should be supportive of a rightwing Israeli government, that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has recently been indicted for corruption and has called for an early election to subvert the process.

Bret finally comes to the point, writing that “What Israel most needs from the U.S. today is what it needed at its birth in 1948: an America committed to defending the liberal-international order against totalitarian enemies, as opposed to one that conducts a purely transactional foreign policy based on the needs of the moment or the whims of a president.”

Stephens then expands on what it means to be liberal-international: “It means we should oppose militant religious fundamentalism, whether it is Wahhabis in Riyadh or Khomeinists in Tehran or Muslim Brothers in Cairo and Ankara. It means we should advocate human rights, civil liberties, and democratic institutions, in that order.”

Bret also throws America’s two most recent presidents under the bus in his jeremiad, saying “During the eight years of the Obama presidency, I thought U.S. policy toward Israel — the hectoring, the incompetent diplomatic interventions, the moral equivocations, the Iran deal, the backstabbing at the U.N. — couldn’t get worse. As with so much else, Donald Trump succeeds in making his predecessors look good.” He then asks “Is any of this good for Israel?” and he answers “no.”

Bret Stephens in his complaining reveals himself to be undeniably all about Israel, but consider what he is actually saying. He claims to be against “militant religious fundamentalism,” but isn’t that what Israeli Zionism is all about, with more than a dash of racism and fanaticism thrown in for good measure? One Israeli Chief Rabbi has called black people “monkeys” while another has declared that gentiles cannot live in Israel. Right-wing religious fundamentalist parties currently are in power with Netanyahu and are policy making for the Israeli Government: Shas, Jewish Home, and United Torah Judaism. None of them could be regarded as a moderating influence on their thuggish serial financial lawbreaker Prime Minister.

And isn’t Israel’s record on human rights and civil liberties among the worst in the world? Here is the Human Rights Watch’s assessment of Israel:

“Israel maintains entrenched discriminatory systems that treat Palestinians unequally. Its 50-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza involves systematic rights abuses, including collective punishment, routine use of excessive lethal force, and prolonged administrative detention without charge or trial for hundreds. It builds and supports illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, expropriating Palestinian land and imposing burdens on Palestinians but not on settlers, restricting their access to basic services and making it nearly impossible for them to build in much of the West Bank without risking demolition. Israel’s decade-long closure of Gaza, supported by Egypt, severely restricts the movement of people and goods, with devastating humanitarian impact.”

Israel, if one is considering the entire population under its rule, is among the most undemocratic states that chooses to call itself democratic. Much of the population living in lands that Israel claims cannot vote, they have no freedom of movement in their homeland, and they have no right of return to homes that they were forced to abandon. Israeli army snipers blithely shoot unarmed demonstrators while Netanyahu’s government kills, beats and imprisons children. And the Jewish state does not even operate very democratically even inside Israel itself, with special rights for Jewish citizens and areas and whole towns where Muslims or Christians are not allowed to buy property or reside.

It is time for American Jews like Bret Stephens to come to the realization that not everything that is good for Israel is good for the U.S. The strategic interests of the two countries, if they were openly discussed in either the media or in congress, would be seen to be often in direct conflict. Somehow in Stephens’ twisted mind the 1948 theft of Palestinian lands and the imposition of an apartheid system to control the people is in some way representative of a liberal world order.

If one were to suggest that Stephens should move to Israel since his primary loyalty clearly lies there, there would be accusations of anti-Semitism, but in a sense, it is far better to have him stick around blathering from the pulpit of The New York Times. When he writes so ineptly about how Donald Trump Is Bad for Israel the real message that comes through loud and clear is how bad Israel is for America.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

January 1, 2019 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Bret Stephens, Israel, Middle East, New York Times, Syria, United States, Zionism | 5 Comments

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Instead of high-quality education, these institutions are fostering a global neo-feudal system reminiscent of the British Raj

By Dr. Mathew Maavak | RT | May 30, 2025

In a move that has ignited a global uproar, US President Donald Trump banned international students from Harvard University, citing “national security” and ideological infiltration. The decision, which has been widely condemned by academics and foreign governments alike, apparently threatens to undermine America’s “intellectual leadership and soft power.” At stake is not just Harvard’s global appeal, but the very premise of open academic exchange that has long defined elite higher education in the US.

But exactly how ‘open’ is Harvard’s admissions process? Every year, highly qualified students – many with top-tier SAT or GMAT test scores – are rejected, often with little explanation. Critics argue that behind the prestigious Ivy League brand lies an opaque system shaped by legacy preferences, DEI imperatives, geopolitical interests, and outright bribes. George Soros, for instance, once pledged $1 billion to open up elite university admissions to drones who would read from his Open Society script.

China’s swift condemnation of Trump’s policy added a layer of geopolitical irony to the debate. Why would Beijing feign concern for “America’s international standing” amid a bitter trade war? The international standing of US universities has long been tarnished by a woke psychosis which spread like cancer to all branches of the government.

So, what was behind China’s latest gripe? ... continue

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