Sic Semper Tyrannis

The Republicans prepare for "Opposition" status (and Trump with them)

Consider all this to be an analytic opinion.

1.  The roll out of the Republican insurgent operation for objection to the Electoral College vote on the 6th is indicative of where the party is going.  

Mitch McConnell and the party apparatchiks in congress may think that they will be able to do business with Biden/Harris and their handlers but the the 74 million citizens who voted against the Democrats do not agree.

In this context the 5 January runoffs in Georgia are largely irrelevant.  The Republicans and those who vote with them will be in Opposition no matter who runs the US Senate.

The objecting members of congress know that they cannot succeed in obtaining supporting majorities in both houses of congress in support of their objections.  When pressed they said this on the Sunday morning TeeVee newsies today.  No.  What they are doing is establishing a baseline of political opposition to the results of the 2020 election.  Along this baseline they will insist that Biden/Harris are not legitimately elected and are in fact usurpers against whom any means of resistance is justified.  This closely mirrors Democrat propaganda and tactics throughout the Trump presidency.

People who think that resistance by the Smellies (Deplorables) to Democrat/Marxist rule will disappear as a result of Trump's defeat are deceiving themselves.  It will not.  In this move we see consolidation of Smelly resistance.

2.  When the 6 January rebellion in the congress fails, Trump will be faced by a personal need to maintain himself as party (and Smelly) leader.  One possible course of action would be to start a war against a country so demonized by the media and his own administration that the most recent verbal threats by that country can be said to be a causus belli.   The most obvious target would be Iran, closely followed in order of probability by Syria.

The president/CinC has broad and legal effective powers to wage war against an imminent national threat on a short term basis as opposed to limitations on those powers under the War Powers Act.  He/she has the ability to wage war for 30 days before congress can effectively stop a war.  

Under the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, the military chain of command runs from POTUS to SECDEF to the Combatant Commanders.  Under the same law, the JCS (including the Chairman) and the whole Joint Staff in the Pentagon are merely advisers and planners operating in support of POTUS and SECDEF.  Trump now has the SECDEF he wants and nothing stands between him and the ability to legally launch an air and naval war in the ME.  The small US forces in Iraq and Syria would be greatly endangered by such a move, but ...  In the context of possible action against Iran, the withdrawal of the Nimitz battle group from the Gulf should not be seen as necessarily being a signal of declining US-Iranian tensions.  Perhaps the withdrawal has been long scheduled but elbow room in the Arabian Sea would be needed in a shooting war.

Biden/Harris would be left to deal with the situation.  Trump might face civil or criminal action in the aftermath, but a long, drawn out legal battle with all the opportunity this would present for publicity might suit him well.

Would the Combatant Commanders refuse legal orders to attack?  I doubt that would happen.  pl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldwater%E2%80%93Nichols_Act

Trump signs the pork-laden spending and covid-19 bill. Maybe a vote to come on more money and section 230.

By Robert Willmann

President Trump has signed the estimated $2.3 trillion Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021.  Its 5,593 double-spaced pages are stuffed with pork to grease domestic and foreign hands in order to get it passed for the piddling $600 for some people in the U.S., and possibly more for some illegal immigrants.  Referred to as House Resolution 133, the copy still sits at the House Committee on Rules.  Divided up into Divisions A-FF, it may be the longest law ever passed by Congress.  Divisions 'M' and 'N' are for "corona virus response and relief"--

https://rules.house.gov/sites/democrats.rules.house.gov/files/BILLS-116HR133SA-RCP-116-68.pdf

Trump is signing H.R. 133 in exchange for promises, instead of getting the promises passed by Congress first, and then signing all the bills at once.  But this was probably done because the government would run out of other people's money on Monday night, 28 December, and some sort of partial government shutdown would then happen [1]. 

When the Internet was getting underway for the general public with slow dialup connections over a telephone line using a modem, some computer technology companies planned for the future and got Congress -- under the name of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 -- to give them legal liability protection like a common carrier and almost as good as a telephone company.  If someone uses a telephone to slander and defame someone, or to plan or carry out crime, the telephone company cannot be sued in a civil lawsuit, nor can it be charged with a crime as a party or co-conspirator, including for such things as robbery and murder.  It is a "common carrier", and acts as a neutral carrier of communications between people, although a phone company does have to abide by laws concerning such things as wiretapping.  The phone companies used to keep your call records private (the "subscriber information"), unless a court order was obtained.  However, after the George W. Bush administration started the illegal domestic surveillance program, it also secretly got the phone companies (except for Qwest) to agree to hand over your calling information in clear violation of the law restricting disclosure without a court order.  Lawsuits were filed because a phone company was liable for $1,000 for each disclosure.  With millions of customers, that added up to billions of dollars, but Congress kneeled down and gave the phone companies retroactive immunity for their misconduct.  Then section 215 of the USA Patriot Act amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to allow easier collection of call-detail records, and the FISA court, operating in secret, was told by the government that everybody's phone metadata was "relevant", and the "judges" went along with it.  This misuse of the statute became well known to the public in 2013.  But the computer tech companies quietly got their own protection starting in 1996 [2].

Stolen, a holiday post by Fred

You are probably thinking this is a post about the election, what with that "I voted" sticker in the photo. But if you take another look you'll see something you can really sink your fangs into. MMM mmmmm. Yummy. Speaking of Fang,

'Dr. Li-Meng Yan is not a quack' Tucker Carlson

"Carlson's comments came after Facebook slapped a warning label on video of his Tuesday interview with Chinese virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan, who claimed to have evidence showing China "intentionally" released COVID-19 onto the general population.

"Within a few hours of her interview last night," Carlson said, "a video of the segment reached 1.3 million people on Facebook."

"And why wouldn’t it? The coronavirus pandemic has touched the life of every American. And justifiably, people want to know where it came from. But Facebook still doesn’t want you to know that. So Facebook suppressed the video, presumably on behalf of the Chinese government. Facebook executives made it harder for users to watch our segment. Those who found the video had to navigate a warning that the interview 'repeats information about COVID-19 that independent fact-checkers say is false," he added.

CHINESE VIROLOGIST: CHINA'S GOVERNMENT 'INTENTIONALLY' RELEASED COVID-19

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"Independent fact checkers?"  25 year old Humanities and Social Sciences grads working for Facebook?  Independent of what?  Independent of their mommies  and daddies at long last?

TC points out that what is needed in the censorship struggle is a change in the federal law that protects social media platforms from law suits.  This law was created originally for the purpose of nurturing the growth of these institutions but it now protects them from litigation in arbitrary censorship cases like this one.

BUT!

The main point in this virologists' exposition is her opinion and claimed knowledge that the Chinese Peoples' Liberation Army created the COVID-19 virus as a weapon of war in the Wuhan lab and then at CCP direction deliberately launched it at the world and ultimately at the US in a bioweapons attack.

If this is true, then what we can look forward to is a series of such attacks, with each succeeding virus being engineered to be just enough different to be unaffected by vaccines developed to counter previous viral attacks.

The apologists for the Chinese Communist Party will howl at the thought.  pl

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-facebook-censor-chinese-virologist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Meng_Yan

"HOUTHIS STRIKE RIYADH WITH MISSILES AND DRONES..."

"Late on September 10, the Saudi capital of Riyadh came under a missile and drone attack from the Ansar Allah movement (more widely known as the Houthis).

The Yemeni missile and air forces, loyal to the Houthi government, announced that they struck a “high-value target” in Riyadh with a Zulfiqar ballistic missile and three Samad-3 suicide drones.

“The attacks are a response to the enemy’s permanent escalation and its continuing blockade against our country,” Brig. Gen. Yahya Sari, a spokesman for the Armed Forces of the Houthi government, said in a statement promising more attacks on Saudi Arabia if the Kingdom “continues its aggression and siege” on Yemen.

The Houthis revealed the Samad-3 combat drone, which also can be used as a loitering munition, in 2019. At that time, they claimed that it has a range of up to 1,500km. As to the Zulfiqar ballistic missile, it is one of a variety of ballistic and even cruise missiles widely employed by the Houthis against Saudi-affiliated targets.

Commenting on the September 10 attack, a spokesperson for the Saudi-led coalition said that Houthi forces launched the missiles and drones at civilian targets in Saudi Arabia, without giving more details.

Every Houthi strike on a target inside Saudi Arabia is a painful blow to the Kingdom. Even without the almost lost war in Yemen, Saudi Arabia has been passing through an economic and political crisis. So, it prefers to deny any damage or casualties as a result of such attacks, simultaneously censoring and silencing reports in social media."  SF

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I wonder if Pompous the Great is still mocking and menacing analysts in State INR when they try to tell him that the Yemenis are the people shooting up Saudi deep targets and not the Iranians?  The Iranians have trained a number of Houthi and Yemeni Army engineers but they are building on skills that were already there.  When I was DATT in the YAR in the early 80s, the Yemen Air Force had SCUDS that they operated successfully against rebel targets in the SE quadrant of North Yemen. 

Marib Province is the eastern, desert  region of norther Yemen.  It extends for some distance into the Rub al Khali (Empty Quarter) desert of Saudi Arabia.  Some of the most recent Houthi missile and drone attacks were directed at Saudi sponsored military activities in that region even as the Ansar Allah (Houthis) advance into that region.  There are important oil/gas deposits in the province and the Houthis could use the money.  pl

https://southfront.org/houthis-strike-riyadh-with-missiles-and-drones/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%CA%BCrib

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samad_(UAV)

Biden’s election will show that the Western alliance is no more - Telegraph

"There are, then, two ways in which a Biden presidency will remove the Europeans’ veil of smug superiority. First, he will follow some Trump-era objectives, because that is what American interests demand, thus showing that Trump was no extremist on China. And second, where he does change approach, he will expose European indifference to the Western Alliance as driven, not by distaste for Trump’s policies, but by Europe’s own cynicism, short-termism and willingness to freeload off US military budgets.

In both respects, Biden’s election will reveal Europe’s dirty secret. It was never Donald Trump who stopped the Europeans being their better selves, taking responsibility for the security of their own citizens, and protecting long-term Western interests. It was always Europe itself."  Nick Timothy in The Telegraph.

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I was struck earlier today by English Outsider's admonition (on SST) directed to ConfusedPonderer (archetype of the Teutons) in which EO said that it was vainglorious and vacuous to bitterly claim that the US "occupies" Germany as it did in 1945 while at the same time relying on US funding of Germany's defense through the USA's enormous military expenditures.  

IMO NATO should have ended with the fall of the USSR.  It now "confronts" a largely imaginary threat, concocted for the purpose of maintaining the status quo in US government expenditures for defense and supporting the imperial dreams of the neocons.

Does anyone really think Russia is going to invade the Baltics?  Really?

The US faces a rapidly escalating political crisis.  The losing party in November will undoubtedly go to the federal courts to claim that their opponents cheated in the process.  These charges will eventually reach SCOTUS.  In this environment US interest in European affairs will decline radically.

The kind of symmetrical disinterest described in Timothy's article will encourage the end of Atlanticism.  pl 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/16/bidens-election-will-show-western-alliance-no/

"Let the Cities Burn (or Not)" Real Clear Politics

"There is no police power in the federal Constitution. The police power is left to the states. To the extent the President can send federal officers into Portland, Oregon, and other cities, it should be to protect federal property.

The President cannot save Portland from itself, and he should not. He cannot save the other cities either."  RCP

"When people move out, the tax base collapses and crime goes up, the people will either change their behavior or be democratically marginalized in their voting power. If life goes on as normal, or more people move in to embrace what is happening, then they've chosen it, or the problems have been exaggerated by conservatives, as they claim. Let the market decide by letting the actions of a free people control their fate.

The President should withdraw from Oregon and not send supplemental help to these other cities. Instead, he can campaign on their descent to chaos at the hands of Democratic mayors.

A President sending in a police force to a city is a dangerous precedent that will be expanded upon by future presidents, even though they lack a general police power. A city allowed to choose its own fate is a positive precedent, from which we can all draw lessons.

Let Portland burn or not. Let the other cities descend into violence or not. But let the cities decide without intervention from Washington."  RCP

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There are federal police forces, but they all exist to deal with violations of FEDERAL law.  They were justified when created or developed as regulatory in nature and/or investigative tools intended to provide information for decision making.  The FBI began its existence as a small group manned by lawyers and accountants.  It stayed that way until  Hoover found it useful to his personal needs..

I agree with the opinion expressed by the author of this piece.  The US is a federal republic.  Much power was denied  to the federal government by the states who were and are the contracting parties in the federal constitution.

The ever present consolidating US nationalists have striven endlessly to expand the power of the federal government through the constitutional interpretative power of the federal courts by using such devices as the commerce clause and the 14th Amendment but there limits to the elasticity of the document.

And, of course, there was the outcome of the Civil War which might have settled the matter in favor of federal power but did not because the victorious states found in the post-war years that they needed the political support of the defeated states.  To achieve that end the defeated Confederates were restored to power as the occupation forces were withdrawn.

We should remember that there exists the "Insurrection Act" of 1807.  It has often been used in US history and it may be again although I would advise caution in its application.

Having always been an original intent constitutionalist, I would be a hypocrite if I supported federal occupation and rule of cities and states that resist federal authority in their internal affairs.  pl

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/07/24/let_the_cities_burn_or_not_143792.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_Act_of_1807

In FP Biden is worse than Trump by Ted Rall

"Biden, notes Marcetic, pushed for "the 1999 bombing of Serbia, which actually dissolved the local pro-democracy movement and rallied popular support around the country's dictator." Biden voted for the U.S. wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. "I voted to go into Iraq, and I'd vote to do it again," Biden said in August 2003. Now he defends himself by saying he was so stupid that he fell for Bush's lies about WMDs.

Biden was the guy who convinced Obama to ramp up Bush's drone assassination program, which kills 50 innocent bystanders for every 1 targeted "militant" -- who often gets away and is rarely a threat to the United States, just to our authoritarian allies. Someday soon, Biden's drone killings abroad will be used to justify killing Americans here at home.

Elsewhere, Marcetic writes: "When Reagan invaded Grenada in 1983, bombing a hospital in the process, Biden said he 'did the right thing.' When he bombed Libya three years later, killing 36 civilians and dictator Muammar Gaddafi's 15-month-old daughter, Biden said, 'There can be no question that Gaddafi has asked for and deserves a strong response like this.' And when George H. W. Bush invaded Panama three years after that, an outrageous war to depose a leader who had been a CIA asset and that saw dead civilians 'buried like dogs,' as one witness put it, Biden called it 'appropriate and necessary.'"

A vote for Biden isn't just a vote against Trump. It's a vote in favor of Biden's vote to kill 1 million Iraqis. If we elect Joe Biden, we will send a message to the world: America hates you; we're glad we killed all those people, and we plan to kill more."  Ted Rall

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Rall isn't someone I am likely to cite extensively but in this case I can only agree with much of what he says about these two men in the foreign policy area.

I do not know Trump, have never met him, and wouldn't cross the street to do so.  Actually, that takes some effort these days.

Biden is one of the most belligerent and nastily "pushy" people I have known in the Borg (foreign policy establishment).  He is a screamer who will get right up in your face to see if you will back away from him.  He will stab in the chest with a forefinger for the same purpose.  He will insult you or threaten to fight you in an attempt to intimidate.  He has a bully's personality, and he is not too bright.  Let us not forget his history of plagiarism.

He and Obama seemed to have enjoyed killing "inferiors" around the world and they participated directly in the process of selection of targets for Death by Drone.   LBJ, another loathsome critter, picked individual bombing targets in VN, but I don't think he targeted individuals.

As Rall says, if Biden wins you will see a lot more patriotic Americans condemned to participate in Death by Biden.  pl

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_ted_rall/on_foreign_policy_biden_is_worse_than_trump?utm_campaign=RR07132020DN&utm_source=criticalimpact&utm_medium=email

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Rall

"The Return of the Anti-Antiwar Left" James W. Carden

"only “a few decades ago, “the Left” was considered the center of opposition to imperialism, and champion of the right of peoples to self-determination.”

Johnstone is part of a distinguished line of American expatriate writers, who, perhaps because of an objectivity conferred by distance, saw their country more clearly than many of their stateside contemporaries. Members of the club include William Pfaff who for many years wrote from Paris and the longtime Asia correspondent Patrick Lawrence. The Paris based Johnstone brings a moral clarity to matters of war and peace that is, alas, too often absent from most contemporary foreign affairs writing. Its near total absence on the Left during the Trump years should be cause for reflection, and concern.

As Johnstone recounts, after the Cold War liberals became bewitched by the prospect of waging wars for humanitarian ends. A generation of journalists and foreign policy experts including Samantha Power, Christiane Amanpour, Jamie Rubin, and Christopher Hitchens, would make the Balkans a proving ground for their liberal theories of preventative war, in the process throwing the ancient and venerable tradition of St. Augustine’s Just War theory on the trash heap and paving the way for what was to follow in the coming decades, including Iraq II, Libya, Syria and a global drone war and a “targeted” assassination program."  Carden

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Ah, for the good old days when lefties could be treated as a deluded minority rather than a vanguard party of globalist imperialists.  pl

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/01/the-return-of-the-anti-antiwar-left/

"Defund the Police!" Start with Blue cities...

"America badly needs to rethink its priorities for the whole criminal-justice system, with Floyd’s death drawing urgent, national attention to the necessity for police reform. Activists, civil-rights organizations, academics, policy analysts, and politicians have drawn up a sprawling slate of policies that might help end police brutality, eliminate racist policing, improve trust between cops and the communities they work in, and lower crime levels.

A more radical option, one scrawled on cardboard signs and tagged on buildings and flooding social media, is to defund the cops. What might that mean in practice? Not just smaller budgets and fewer officers, though many activists advocate for that. It would mean ending mass incarceration, cash bail, fines-and-fees policing, the war on drugs, and police militarization, as well as getting cops out of schools. It would also mean funding housing-first programs, creating subsidized jobs for the formerly incarcerated, and expanding initiatives to have mental-health professionals and social workers respond to emergency calls.

Read: How to actually fix America’s police

More broadly, the demand to divest from policing doubles as a call to invest in safety, security, and racial justice. This week, cops in riot gear teargassed teenagers, Humvees patrolled near the White House, and military helicopters buzzed protesters. At the same time, health workers fought COVID-19 wearing reused masks. This is not serving. This is not protecting."  Anne Lowry at The Atlantic

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How did The Atlantic become so Left?  That happened while I was not paying attention.  Ms. Lowry seems a sincere soul.  I wonder which of the Seven Sisters or the Ivies she flowered at.  Ah! I see now that it was Harvard.  One of my ancestors was a Puritan minister who was among the founders of the place.  Would that have made me a "legacy?  She is married to Ezra Klein whom I have thought a sensible fellow.

"Man is born free and is everywhere in chains."  This quote from Jean Jacques Rousseau seem to lie at the heart of  Ms. Lowry's core beliefs as to the possible nature of human societies.  She believes people to be inherently good and capable of living together without rules or sheepdogs to keep them in line and on the job.

Floyd's death and the media induced hysteria that has followed provide a plausible excuse and platform for people like Lowry to push for a well established meme of the far left, i.e., "Defund the Police!"  

Well, pilgrims, I do not believe humans are innately good, quite the opposite.  But, the experiment in abolition of policemen and their replacement with social workers would be interesting.

If the Lowrys of the world want to try this, they should begin with cities controlled by Ms. Lowry's comrades.  Minneapolis would be the ideal place to begin, followed by Los Angeles, Oakland, California and the like.  Ah, I almost forgot Richmond, Virginia.  pl

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/defund-police/612682/

"Not good at the 'vision thing.'" George Bush '41

"Between 1995 and 2009, $32 billion was expended on programs such as the Future Combat System^[220] (2003-2009), with no harvestable content by the time of its cancellation.^[221] The Army has not fielded a new combat system in decades.^{[222][93][223][224][35]}

Secretary of the Army Mark Esper has remarked that AFC will provide the unity of command and purpose needed to reduce the requirements definition phase from 60 months to 12 months.^{[225][25][54]} A simple statement of a problem (rather than a full-blown requirements definition) that the Army is trying to address may suffice for a surprising, usable solution. —General Mike Murray, paraphrasing Trae Stephens^{[43]:minute 41:50} (One task will be to quantify the lead time for identifying a requirement; the next task would then be to learn how to reduce that lead time.—Gap analysis )^{[30]:minute 11:00[226][227][5]} Process changes are expected.^[226][48] The development process will be cyclic, consisting of prototype, demonstration/testing, and evaluation, in an iterative process designed to unearth unrealistic requirements early, before prematurely including that requirement in a program of record. The ASA(ALT) Bruce Jette^[156] has cautioned the acquisition community to 'call-out' unrealistic processes which commit a program to a drawn-out failure,^[228] rather than failing early, and seeking another solution.^[229]

Secretary Esper scrubbed through 800^[230] modernization programs to reprioritize funding^[231] for the top 6 modernization priorities,^[60] which will consume 80% of the modernization funding,^[232] of 18 systems.^[232] The Budget Control Act will restrict funds by 2020.^{[233][234][235][236][237][238][239][240][241][31][32][242][243][244]} Secretary McCarthy has cautioned that a stopgap 2019 Continuing resolution (CR) would halt development of some of the critical modernization projects.^[245][246] Realistically, budget considerations will restrict the fielding of new materiel to one Armor BCT per year;^[247] at that rate, updates would take decades.^[247][243] The Budget Control Act (BCA) expires in 2022.^[248][249] The "night court" budget review process realigned $2.4 billion for modernization away from programs which were not tied to modernization or to the 2018 National Defense Strategy.^[250] The total FY2021 budget request of $178 billion is $2 billion less than the enacted FY2020 budget of $180 billion.  wiki on AFC

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Me dear ol' da' (a cynical old soldier if ever there was one) served for 34 years and cautioned me that "in the Regular Army we cut off anything that sticks out."  That glorious tradition is still alive.

The Army Futures Command, like many previous attempts at enabling rigorous but unimaginative thinkers to try to do "the vision thing"  will probably solve few problems.  The folks they are dealing with just aren't up to the task.  These guys are better suited to drawing up railroad timetables than they are at making an intuitive leap.

This reminds of the British Army leadership who tried to resist the introduction of machine guns before 1914 and who thought that motor vehicles were a bad thing because they would frighten the horses.  To be fair the Ordnance Department of the US Army successfully resisted the introduction of breech loading cannon and repeating rifles on the basis of an anticipated prodigal use of ammunition by the troops.  That was in 1860.

I wish Esper and McCarthy lots of luck in this effort to induce streamlined, creative thought.  They will need it.  The desire to reduce such thought to smaller and smaller bits run by interlocking committees is overwhelming among the people they are working with.  pl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Futures_Command

A few thoughts - 24 April 2020

1.  IMO the US Navy will be doing a good thing if it persuades Trump to restore Captain Crozier to command of USS Theodore Roosevelt.  He did a very foolish thing by appealing to the whole wide world to support his position, but he did have the best interest of the ship's company in mind and as he said, we are not at war in the Pacific.   This would also be a humane decision on the part of the navy toward an officer in command, something unusual for them.

2.  IMO the medico bureaucrat academicians who insist that their group think about how to stop a pandemic are going to be discredited as it becomes clear that COVID-19 is wildly infectious but at the same time not very fatal except for the old, infirm and others compromised in health.  That would include HIV/AIDS sufferers.  You don't hear much about that, but IMO that is because such people are typically members of the LGBTQ "community" and therefore members of a protected group.  In pursuit of the power of policy dictation the doctor philosopher kings have contributed mightily to the near death of the greatest world economy in history (ours).  Let us hope the more sensible state governors can do enough to remedy this disaster to bring back some measure of prosperity.  I hope that Trump realizes that he does not have constitutional power over the governors.  As I have previously written he would have to declare states he targeted to be in rebellion or say that they had lost the power to govern themselves in order to have a claim to that sort of power.

3.  US foreign policy in the greater ME remains the shambles that Zionist and/or neocon infiltration of government and manipulation of election funding have made it.   There is little difference in responsibility  for this in the two major political parties.  As a result of Trump's continuation of the Israel inspired policy of meddling in the affairs of the Islamic culture continent the US now finds itself in a position in which policies of domination have caused us to have a thousand or so US military "hostages" scattered across NE Syria and all over Iraq where they are completely vulnerable to attack from Iran and its allies.  

4.  This potential hostage posture is a major inhibition to US freedom of action in the Gulf where Iranian aggressiveness is targeted toward a withdrawal of the US Navy from the Gulf.  IMO such a forced withdrawal caused by a minor power like Iran because we are afraid to fight would be a major milestone in the decline of America's power in the world.  Our enemies would rejoice.  IMO the navy can easily defeat any Iranian enemy but the hostage situation in Syria, and Iraq is a major impediment to naval action.  We should get out of those two countries. We should not have been there in the first place.   I am clearly on record about that from 2001 onward.  In the case of Afghanistan the hinge of fate swung in 2009 with Obama's disastrous decision to let the COIN generals persuade him to try to build a new and modern Afghanistan.  The resulting state has expenses for its security forces that are greater than its GDP.

5.  Some constitutional mechanism must be developed in the US for forcing the retirement from office of old people who are judged to be demented.  The ice cream interview comes to mind.  pl

 

"Donald Trump warns of consequences if China was knowingly responsible for coronavirus" The Telegraph

""If they were knowingly responsible, certainly," he said. "If it was a mistake, a mistake is a mistake.

"But if they were knowingly responsible, yeah, then there should be consequences.

"Was it a mistake that got out of control or was it done deliberately?

"That's a big difference between those two.

"In either event they should have let us go in.

"We asked to go in early. And they didn't want us in. I think they knew it was something bad and they were embarrassed."

Mr Trump said that China "said they're doing an investigation".

"So let's see what happens with their investigation. But we're doing investigations also," he said.

The Trump administration has said it doesn't rule out that coronavirus was spread - accidentally - from a laboratory researching bat"  

The Telegraph

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I am quite sure that the whole of the USIC (NSA, CIA, DIA, etc.) have been tasked to determine what the circumstances were of the advent of the present catastrophe.

The CCP is extremely worried about this investigative process.

It is easy for me to know this because the amount of really hostile stuff being thrown at me on the blog on this issue has risen exponentially as more and more attention has been focused in the government and even in the China leaning media on the possibilities of the origins of the virus and such things as the number of people who were allowed travel to the whole world but not legally allowed to travel within China.  And then, there is the effort the CCP and Chinese government put into buying up PPE around the world in the period before China acknowledged the severity of the crisis.

Among the various nonsense written to me is the idea that I am a racist anti-Chinese bigot.  Our Chinese family doctor finds that funny.  And then, China was my first choice of area when I volunteered for area specialization around 1970.  Unfortunately, I was put in the Arab World program because I have an unusually high aptitude for languages and Arabic is more difficult than Mandarin.

Somewhere out there is a Chinese who either has or will defect to US Intelligence with the information that is sought.

You don't see a lot of the personal attacks that I am receiving because I don't post them.  I am not interested in providing a platform for Chinese agitprop.  They should know that by now.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/18/donald-trump-warns-consequences-china-knowingly-responsible/

Close the securities markets! Now!

Mnuchin said yesterday when the Dow was higher that "we are not going to close the markets."  IMO he was wrong to oppose closing the damned markets.  Does he want to wait until the market cap of US business is ZERO?  Not only are investors and market traders completely spooked, but the damned machine trading is driving the markets lower and lower.

Close the markets now!!  pl

Would counter-battery attacks in Syria or Turkey trigger NATO Article Five? -revision 1

 

"This map provides a general look at the recent gains by Turkish-led forces in southern Idlib. The Turkish Army and its al-Qaeda-linked allies have retaken several villages from the Syrian army and beiseged the town of Kafr Nabul, which the Syrians had recently liberated from al-Qaeda."  SF

https://southfront.org/map-update-advances-of-turkish-led-forces-in-southern-idlib/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Turkish_Land_Forces

----------------

IMO the gains made by the jihadis and the Turkish Army in Idlib Province are being made because of the masses of artillery weapons and multiple launcher rocket systems (MLRS) that the Turks were equipped with when they were a major factor in NATO plans to halt a possible Soviet attack in the Balkans and from the Caucasus.

A lot of these weapons are old but they still work well and have ranges that can influence the fighting in Syria from positions WITHIN Hatay Province, Turkey (what the Russians now call "the stolen province").   We are talking about 203 MM howitzers and 175 mm long rifles among other weapons.  I can tell you from personal experience that these are devastating weapons.

The appropriate military response to fires from such artillery and MLRS is COUNTER-BATTERY FIRE.  IOW the point of origin of the fires is determined virtually instantaneously by counter-battery radar or satellite observation (Russian) and fires are placed on the firing positions before the guns or MLRS can be moved.  This procedure would kill a lot of Turks and destroy a lot of their equipment.  IMO it would stop the present Turkish counter-offensive.  Could Fatih Sultan Tayyip politically survive such an experience?  Only Allah knows.

The NATO Treaty's Article Five provides for mutual defense against attacks from outside the alliance.  Would counter-battery fire against the Turks, if they are  firing into Syria, trigger Article Five?  I doubt that the Europeans would want to go to war against Russia to protect the sultan's ambitions.  Counter-battery fir against Turkish artillery operating INSIDE Syria would no be a political problem involving NATO.

The Turks must have moved some guns forward into Syria to support the Turco/jihadi force around Saraqib.  Some other group of heavy weapons  must be supporting the Turco/jihadi force near the northern el-Ghaab Plain.  Are they in Syria?  Maybe, but wherever they are, IMO they can be struck without fear of Article Five.

Would the Syrians then be attacked by US forces with or without Article Five?  Maybe they would be.  That would depend on the level of Pompeo's influence with the president.  pl 

Flash! Trump has solved the Israeli-Palestinian problem. (irony)

Bibi Natanyahu was formally indicted today back home in Israel but he and Sarah were there in the WH to celebrate their victory by joining Trump in making a deal over the heads of the Palestinians.

The Palestinians are offered very little in this final reconciliation between the US and the forces of Zionisn within and without the US.  If the sons and daughters of Ishmael (look it up) behave and cooperate with their Israeli guardians, they will be rewarded with development money intended to comfort them in their helotry.  Trump did say to Bibi at the ceremony that Bibi would have the Palestinian money with which to influence future events, but perhaps that was merely clumsy.  Trump also referred to "Israel's Holy Land."  I suppose that still leaves open the possibility of "religious tourism" as the Israelis call pilgrimage?

In Trump's plan Israel will forever control a strip of territory along the Jordanian border as sovereign to themselves.  But, in return the Palestinian "state" might receive an embassy from the US, located in "eastern" Jerusalem.  I suppose that would be out in that valley to the east that the mandatory British government included as being within the boundaries of Jerusalem.

Trump seems really to think that Palestinians are like stray dogs who will lick your hand if you give them something, anything, to eat.  Perhaps that is the general attitude in New York City.  

Mahmoud Abbas has stated that his side will not accept this, but at least there is peace between the US and Israel.  pl

Macgregor got it part right on Carlson's show last night

Colonel (ret.) Douglas Macgregor was on Tucker Carlson's show last night.  He is a smart man.  Tucker is a smart man. Carlson's show is an outpost of sanity in a neocon run US foreign policy establishment (the Borg).  Carlson deserves the ratings he gets.  I hope those will insulate him from the trepidation that his honesty must inspire in the Murdoch brothers.  The rest of Foxnews is much like a clown car show with the clowns clamoring for the approbation of the White House in their eagerness for a neocon war of conquest in the ME.  Some people never learn.  the last 20 years of disaster in the face of Islamic resistance to Western cultural imperialism have taught them nothing.

Trump started his term as an empty headed business hustler eager to make deals wherever he could and who correctly did not see much of anything to be gained by fighting endlessly all over the Islamic World to impose Israel's 1% policy of eliminating all possible threats from the Muslims.

Trump offered Iran peace negotiations in his post Iran strike speech?  No.  He did not.  He once again offered them the opportunity to surrender to Israeli demands relayed to them by the US.

Now, he is transformed into just another neocon, in fact the neocon in chief.  His foreign policy team is run by neocons and bootlickers who fear Pompeo's scorn.  The Defense part of that team is dominated by the Pompous one and his West Point classmate Esper at DoD.  General Milley and the other present chiefs of staff are carefully chosen to eliminate the possibility of "push-back" from the military. I retract anything bad I ever said about Joe Dunford.  I wish he were still here.

Trump is following the neocon/Ziocon line now.  He evidently believes any silly thing they tell him.  I understand that he has said that Soleimani was engaged in beheading Christians.  Well, pilgrims, if you look below about three posts you  will see a video of Soleimani and al-Muhandis being mourned by Christian clergy and congregations in Aleppo.  Of course, you actually have to understand some Arabic to get that from the video.  These Christians mourn these men as being among those who came to fight the Sunni jihadis at Aleppo.

Macgregor rightly understands that there is no there, there for the USA in the Middle East and Central Asia.  He correctly understands that to try to sort out all the intra-regional ethnic and sectarian rivalries is a fool's errand.  He correctly advocates complete withdrawal from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan as does Tulsi Gabbard who was on the same show.

What Macgregor got wrong is that he wants to remain engaged in; Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the GCC generally.  Well, Doug, there is no there, there either.  There is no Soviet threat.  The USA is a net oil and gas exporter.  The Iranians have enemies and quarrels with the Saudis and the Israelis, but, so what?  We are not Israelis.  Neither are we Saudis.

You want to stay engaged in Yemen?  the country is full of nasty little hill men who live to fight.  This is a Saudi problem.

Let all the crazed creatures of that part of the world fight it out.  along the way they will come to muddled partial solutions that will last until the next round of hostility begins.  Tant pis pour eux.  pl

https://www.foxnews.com/media/tucker-carlson-iraq-iran-donald-trump-leave-war

Saudi Arabia - a family holding company, not a friend.

I speak fluent Arabic.  I was the first professor of the Arabic Language and Middle East Studies at West Point where I was twice judged best classroom teacher and was offered permanent tenure which I declined not wishing to become a permanent school teacher rather than a soldier.

I have spent 40+ years working on or in the Middle East as an active duty US Army officer, diplomat, senior civilian DoD official responsible for intelligence on the Middle East, and South Asia and a business executive directly involved with places like Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia was created by the conquest of the Arabian Peninsula after 1900 by tribes loyal to an extreme form of Wahhabi fanatic Islam based on the Hanbali school of Sunni Islam as reinforced by the extremist medieval scholar Ibn Taimmiya.  For him the only good non-Muslims were either slaves or corpses whose women had been taken as booty and distributed among the true Muslims.

The Saudi pseudo state remains largely motivated by the same ideas.  There is no constitution but Sunni Hanbali religious law.  There is no toleration of other than the official cult.  There are Shia Muslims in the Eastern Province but they are in constant danger from the regime.

The Al-Saud family (thousands great and small) run the place as their private holding.  Any talk of Saudi citizenship is a bad joke.  In SA there are; The Family, their toadies and flunkies, the Wahhabi Ulema, foreign guest workers and tribal, rural Arabs some of them migratory and others small town people.  This melange is held together by an effective police state that is restricted in power only by the royal prerogative.

Modernization? Hah! MBS has confessed to the brutal murder of Kashoggi.  The native masses, to the extent that they exist, have been intensively and exclusively conditioned with Ibn Taimmiya's views on the inherent enmity between the Faithful Wahhabi Sunni and the Kuffar (infidels, i.e. us).  The number of Saudi subjects of the king who are not horrified and disgusted by the West is trivially small.

The US has maintained a relationship with this conglomeration since 1944 when FDR met aboard a US cruiser in the Gulf with the creator of The Kingdom.  This symbiosis used to be justifiable on the basis of containment of the USSR and the oil of Arabia.  Neither of those necessities exist any longer.

Donald Trump is driven by  desire to sweeten the balance sheet of the US as well as a deluded belief in whatever it is that he thinks Israel stands for.   Israel seeks to manipulate the medieval barbarism of Saudi Arabia to further its fantasy of regional hegemony.  They should "wise up."

The Saudi who killed three people at Pensacola is representative of the breed.

It is time for a basic re-appraisal of our relationships in the ME.  pl

"Joltin'" Jack Keane wants your kids to fight Russia and Syria over Syrian oil.

"Joltin" Jack Keane, General (ret.), Fox Business Senior Strategery Analyst,  Chairman of the Board of the Kagan run neocon "Institute for the Study of War" (ISW)  and Graduate Extraordinaire of Fordham University, was on with Lou Dobbs last night.  Dobbs appears to have developed a deep suspicion of this paladin.  He stood up to Keane remarkably well.  This was refreshing in light of the fawning deference paid to Keane by all the rest of the Fox crew.

In the course of this dialogue Keane let slip the slightly disguised truth that he and the other warmongers want to keep something like 200 US soldiers and airmen in Syria east of the Euphrates so that they can keep Iran or any other "Iranian proxy forces" from crossing the Euphrates from SAG controlled territory to take control of Syrian sovereign territory and the oil and gas deposits that are rightly the property  of the Syrian people and their government owned oil company.  The map above shows how many of these resources are east of the Euphrates.  Pilgrims!  It is not a lot of oil and gas judged by global needs and markets, but to Syria and its prospects for reconstruction it is a hell of a lot! 

Keane was clear that what he means by "Iranian proxy forces" is the Syrian Arab Army, the national army of that country.  If they dare cross the river, to rest in the shade of their own palm trees, then in his opinion the air forces of FUKUS should attack them and any 3rd party air forces (Russia) who support them

This morning, on said Fox Business News with Charles Payne, Keane was even clearer and stated specifically that if "Syria" tries to cross the river they must be fought.

IMO he and Lindsey Graham are raving lunatics brainwashed for years with the Iran obsession and they are a danger to us all.  pl

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/graham-fox-news-star-showed-trump-map-change-his-mind-n1069901

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Syria

US foreign policy is now based on "virtual facts."

(Munchausen)

Mika B remarked a couple of years ago on the show that she and her sex slave stage in the early morning that the social media were out of control because it is the job of the MSM to tell people what to think.  The Hillary stated recently that life was better when there were only three TeeVee news outlets because it was easier to keep things under control.  Now?  My God! Any damned fool can propagate unauthorized "facts." What?  Who?

Well, pilgrims, the US government (along with our British and Israeli helpmates and masters) are the preeminent creators and purveyors  of the manufactured virtual facts on which we base our policy.  These "facts" are "ginned up" in the well moneyed hidden staff groups of "hidden" candidates that are devoted to the seizure of power made possible by a deluded electorate.  These "facts" are then propagated and reinforced through relentless IO campaigns run by executive "bots" in the MSM and in such remarkable and imaginative efforts as the "White Helmets" film company manned by jihadis and managed by clubby Brits left over from the Days of The Raj (sob).  These "facts" are now so entrenched in the general mind that they can be used to denounce people like Rep. (major ) Gabbard as traitors because they challenge them.

Some of the "virtual facts:"

• The Soviet Union never ended.  Russia is still communist and an inevitable and indeed indispensable enemy of the US.  Anyone who challenges that certitude is an obvious agent of the Russian government.
• Iran is the "greatest supporter of terrorism" in the world."   Iran is so designated by the State Department on the annual list of terrorism supporting states which asserts this to be true on the basis of Iranian support of Lebanese Hizbullah and Palestinian Hamas, calling them "terrorist" groups rather than anti -Israeli nationalist resistance organizations.  This Zionist inspired propaganda is spread far and wide by neocon "useful idiots" like Maria Bartiromo and Jesse Watters.
• The Syrian Arab Government is an abomination on the scale of Nazi Germany and must be destroyed and replaced by God knows what ...  "They gassed their own people!"  Bullshit!  There is no objective evidence for that.  There are nothing but propaganda statements by the FUKUS governments unsupported by any real evidence.  The MI-6 funded (with USAID money) Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (located in a basement in England) as well as the White Helmets murder/propaganda operation states that the SAG is guilty as charged but independent investigation says that assertions of SAG guilt are untrue.
• Saudi Arabia is a deeply friendly state and ally of the US.  How mad an idea is this!  This theocratic, absolute monarchy is a friend of the US?  How insane an idea!  Trump has a balance sheet where a soul should be and that is the basis for the belief that MBS and/or his "country" are our friends.  pl

 

Turn and face the strange* - TTG

*from David Bowie’s “Changes”

Keith Harbaugh recently posed the following question as a comment to my old post where, a few months ago, I confessed to being a latent SJW.

TTG, since you are 

a) a native New Englander, 

b) a Catholic, and 

c) have said in the past, I believe, words to the effect "I see no problem with immigration as long as it does not exceed the capacity of America to assimilate the incoming migrants", I invite you, if you are reading this comment made three months after your post above, to read and if you care to comment on, two articles discussing efforts, and results, of something called "Catholic Charities" (whose mission statement seems to epitomize the POV of the SJW) to increase the flow of immigrants to Portland, Maine:

"Such a Disgrace: How Ethan Strimling Betrayed the People of Portland", and

"The Way Life Should Be? Vol. I: From Parts Unknown to Streets Paved with Gold".

In particular, do you think the authors of these articles have a point in the concerns they express? Or are they expressing concerns that deserve no respect, in your view? Or perhaps some intermediate position. BTW, I sympathize with the concerns expressed. But as the saying goes "Your mileage may vary".

————

Kieth also posed another cogent question. “The issue, IMO, is: Should that culture be preserved or replaced (in the name of "progress", of course)?”

Well Keith, since you took the time to ask, I’ll take the time to answer. In general, I can find articles expressing support for the rapid influx of immigrants to Portland as easily as finding article expressing alarm such as the two you noted. The two you found do express valid concerns about real challenges. The influx of so many immigrants so fast is taxing social services in Portland and across Maine. Portland’s elected leaders acknowledge this cost and are addressing it. If the people of Portland disagree, they will vote in new leadership. A lot of Portland residents themselves stepped up to help as do private groups like Catholic Charities. Catholic Charities USA is a national network which does SJW work across the country. It helps poor and needy long term local residents as well as recent immigrants.

Another factor is that Portland is not a quaint New England seaside town. Most Mainiacs don’t even consider Portland to be a Maine city anymore, almost an extension of Boston. It is a liberal city, a historically liberal city. The non-immigrant professionals who moved into Portland made it even more liberal. It is also these professional newcomers who are raising the rent in Portland, not the immigrants from Africa.   

So, does Portland gain anything by taking in all these immigrants? Without these overwhelmingly young immigrants, the population of Portland and all Maine would be on the road to extinction. They are aging out. The money spent educating and supporting these new arrivals is an investment in the future of Maine. These immigrant families are initially content with a far lower standard of living as they take their place in the existing society. That’s how immigrants have always moved into our society. Of course they do change that society in the process of integrating into the society. And that’s the crux of the controversy.

New England has changed dramatically over its long history, but there is a continuity. The Puritans of the 17th century slowly gave way to the abrasive and insular New England Yankee. Although a caricature, the Yankees of the “Bert and I” stories did exist and, in rare corners of Maine, still do. Portland is not one of those corners. Today’s New Englanders are as different from those Down East Yankees as the Yankees are from their ancestral Puritan forefathers. Time and immigrants do that to a society. Both sides change and the way things were are no more.   

I saw that in my Connecticut hometown. The old community of rural Congregationalists more than doubled in size with the influx of Catholic immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. Those immigrants largely worked in the mills in nearby Waterbury. The character and culture of my town changed forever. One factor that eased the cultural transition was what I saw as an outsized effort to educate the newcomers (my family included) as citizens of Prospect, Connecticut. In our grammar school, we were infused with countless lessons in history, literature and citizenship. The Saint Anthony’s RC Church and the Prospect Congregational Church played an important part in this education. Tolerance, mutual courtesy and the imperative duties of citizens and Christians were common lessons from the pulpits. Through those efforts, Prospect became something new rather than a hilltop littered with abandoned houses, barns and fields. We newcomers were not totally assimilated, nor did the older residents remain unchanged. Since the attitude and actions of the people of Portland seem to mirror the attitude and actions of the original population of my hometown, I think Portland will enjoy (or suffer) a similar future. 

There are a lot of communities in the US that are in much worse condition than Portland ever was. The native people are aging out and what kids there are are moving out. They are becoming ghost towns. Refugees and immigrants might be a shot in the arm to those towns, but only if those townspeople are open to give it a try and SJWs like Catholic Charities USA pitch in. I guarantee a lot of the old timers will grouse about the newcomers and their strange ways. They will long for the old days. I guarantee there will be troublemakers among the kids. There always are. But as both sides change willingly or unwittingly, those dying towns may metamorphize into something new. 

OTOH, there is a chance that an influx of immigrants could be so large that the older population is simply driven to extinction. I see no reason to hasten that kind of outcome.

TTG

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2019/07/confessions-of-a-latent-sjw-ttg.html#comment-6a00d8341c72e153ef0240a4dd79c8200b  

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/23/us/portland-maine-african-migrants.html

Where we are now in Afghanistan- Editorial Opinion by PL

(Lt. Hamilton VC at Kabul where he commanded Sir Louis Cavangnari's escort)

A year or so after the US intervention in Afghanistan began in 2001 I perceived that there was a danger that US public and government opinion might begin to favor the idea of "nation building" in Afghanistan.  From long experience in and study of the area of Islamicate civilization and its history it seemed clear to me that such an effort would be doomed to failure at any price that one should be willing to pay in; expended effort over time, money and blood shed on all sides. 

The basic problem with Afghanistan is that there "is no there there."  Afghanistan is really a geographical expression rather than a country in the sense understood of the word in the post-Westphalian system of independent states.

Across the Islamicate world from Mauritania to Bangla Desh and beyond to Oceania there is a pronounced tendency to atomization in group perception of identity. Arabs do not identify with Berbers, etc., Tribes and clans within these groups regard all others as rivals and often enemies unless they are needed as temporary allies.

The Islamic religion which holds unity to be an ideal is often thought to be a unifier against the atomizing tendency in these cultures, but in fact there are many, many varieties of Islam, each one believing that it is uniquely favored by God.  This often cancels out whatever unifying effect Islam, as religion, can have.

Afghanistan, created as a buffer between imperial Russia and British India, is an extreme case of atomization among the inhabitants of a state which has recognition in the world political system including membership in the UN.  In spite of that status , a status that might deceive one into believing that there is such a thing as "the Afghan People,"the population of Afghanistan is actually made up of a number of different ethnic nations; Pushtuns, Hazzara, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turcomans, Arabs, etc.  These different  peoples all speak mutually unintelligible languages which often have such extreme separation in dialect that this amounts to uninteligibility as well.   Some of these groups are Sunni and others Shia.  This is yet another factor in the separation of the segments of the population.

The country has little substantial physical infrastructure.  What there is was largely constructed in the 50s and 60s as part of Cold War competition between the USSR and the US.  There is very little legal or governmental infrastructure.  A commercial company investing its own or borrowed money in Afghanistan is taking a great risk of never being able  to recover its investment from the local "pirates."  Government is generally predatory in its attitude toward foreign investment funds.  I tried to find a safe haven in Afghanistan for some of my company's funds and could find none.  Senior Afghan government people would typically respond to questions about legal infrastructure with exhortations to "bring your project, all will be well."  Needless to say ...

US intervention in this place was inevitable after 9/11, but what was not necessary or wise were repeated US decisions for a COIN nation building campaign.  As this tendency began to be evident I argued for a much more limited goal in which the US would keep about 20K troops in country to maintain a government controlled enclave around Kabul and Bagram.  This would enable pursuit of located international  terrorist groups through raiding operations from that base area.  The basis for this strategy was my conclusion that the US could never "pacify" all of the territory of Afghanistan and that we would "break our teeth" trying.

I pressed this belief in various fora and with various individuals within the Obama Administration even as Obama endlessly contemplated the entreaties of the COINista generals, Petraeus, Mattis, McChrystal etc. for a country wide nation building COIN campaign.   The most interesting of these encounters was at an IQ2 debate at NYU in 2009 where I (and teammates) argued that "The US can never win in Afghanistan."  My side lost on points but the leader of the other team recently told me that he knows now that we were completely correct.  Obama gave in to the generals, and gave them the COIN war that they wanted.  I suppose that for "Barry" it was immensely flattering to have them "butter him up."

It is clear now that the COIN strategy has failed miserable and totally.  Afghanistan is not one bit more united or modernized than it has ever been.  The US has spent a sea of money there and many brave people have perished or been wrecked in chasing the idea of Afghanistan as a Central Asian Switzerland.

Trump has allowed Zalmai Khalilzad to attempt to achieve a negotiated peace with the Taliban, the former salafi takfiri, Pushtun rulers of Afghanistan, in the apparent belief that they could be "talked down out of the tree" just as his business competitors could always be talked down to meet at a "closing" table where his supposed "closing genius' would bring a DEAL.

Unfortunately this belief  in his closing talent goes unrewarded in Palestine, Syria, Turkey,Yemen, Iran, China (not yet), North Korea and Afghanistan.  IMO his difficulty in finding solutions lies in his entrapment within his own New York City business model, a model in which everything is for sale if the deal is structured skillfully to advantage the stronger party while all the while claiming that the party you are screwing is your friend.

Sadly for The Donald all those "stupid" foreigners do not understand that "everything is for sale."  Among them, the Taliban, an army and religio-political movement are notable for a lack of belief in the commercial possibilities of selling out to Donald Trump for a "mess of pottage"  or thirty pieces of silver whichever reference you prefer.  They want to win, and they want to be seen to have driven the "crusaders" from Afghanistan and in the process to have humiliated the US as the leading infidel state.  To that end they lie, prevaricate and await the day when they can crush the puny forces of "modernism" after the American departure.  Zalmai Khalilzad is an Afghan pushtun Sunni by birth and rearing.  Did he not know that they could not be trusted in dealings with the US?  I do not blame the Taliban for being what they are.  I blame all the American and NATO fools for believing that they could make the Taliban either go away or become "happy campers."  They were never going to do either of those things.  We should have known that.  Some of us did, but Americans are addicted to all the melting pot, right side of history foolishness so common in "levelled" America,

What should the US do now that the scales have fallen from Trump's eyes and the time of "good faith" negotiation with the Taliban is "dead?"  The first thing to do is to fire Khalilzad.

Last night, Col. (ret.) Douglas Macgregor told Tucker Carlson that the US should simply leave, and should have never intervened.  IOW we should get the hell out totally and forever.  This is a tempting thought.  I have wrestled with the attractiveness of the idea but there are certain problems with it.

1.  We should not want to give the jihadi movements proof of our feckless defeatability.  IMO if we leave suddenly the Afghan government and armed forces will soon collapse.  The country will then further disintegrate into a welter of jihadi factions and regional tribal strongmen, the strongest of which will be the Taliban.

2.  We have encouraged modernist Afghan men, women and girls to emerge from the shadows.  Shall we leave them to their fates under the rule of the jihadis.

3. What about all the translators, base workers and other people who have cast their lots with us.  The Taliban and other jihadis will simply kill them as apostates.  We abandoned a lot of such people in Iraq.  Will we do it again?

On balance I would say Macgregor is right that we must leave.  The time for a small remaining presence is past.  The forces in the field are too strong for a small force to maintain itself even with massive long range air support.  Think of Sir Louis Cavangnari.   No, we should leave, but we should leave on a schedule that will enable us to control the timing of our going and to protect the departure of those who wish to leave with us.  pl

BTW, SWMBO says that no mutually understood languages = no country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Louis_Napoleon_Cavagnari

Does Trump believe what he says about Syria? - Opinion

Why does Donald Trump say the things he does about Syria and its government?

He insists that the SAG attacks its people with chemical weapons when such attacks have never been proven.  They have only been asserted by opponents of the government and in fact there exists a lot of evidence that these attacks have been staged by information operations projects like the White Helmets film production group with the surreptitious backing of a network of covert action people within the the UK government and money from USAID.

He insists that the jihadi defenders of their lodgement in Idlib Province are somehow worthy of American protection when in fact they are the same breed of salafi takfiri fanatics that he boasts of having defeated in the "caliphate."

He insists that the SAA and its allies are in the process of massacring the civilian population of Idlib Province when in fact the opposite is true.  Is it not clear that the usual blizzard of anti-government propaganda has been generated solely because the SAA is winning the day in Idlib Province?

He seems oblivious or indifferent to the fact that the Syrian Government are the protectors of the Christian and other minorities in the country.  Is he not a Christian?

His positions seem to imitate precisely the attitude of the the Israeli Likud run government and its closest US supporters like Sheldon Adelson, the casino man.  These forces have made it clear that they prefer that Syria be made into a Hobbesian maelstrom in which many small groups fight among themselves forever rather than that the present multi-confessional government should survive.

Where does Trump get such ideas?  Is it from his addiction to Fox News personalities like Jack Keane, Lou Dobbs, Brian Kilmeade and Sean Hannity?  These are people who collectively have no real understanding of the realities of the Middle East but they all have a lot of opinions seemingly based on free floating hostility toward anything in the world that does not serve their hyper-nationalism.

Is it the Turks who tell him such self serving untruths?  Is it not clear that Erdogan and company are intent on splitting off parts of Syria for future annexation?

Do CIA, DIA, State INR and the rest of the IC also feed him such nonsense?  The analysts must know the truth if they are not swept up in massive group think.  Perhaps their leaders are simply afraid to tell him the truth in the face of the opposition of people like Jared Kushner and his allies in Bolton's NSC staff.

I support many  of Trump's positions with regard to the economy, immigration and his trade struggle with China.  I may even vote for him considering the choices likely to be advanced by the Democrats but I am at a loss to understand why he claims to believe his own foolish statements about Syria.  pl

 

"... Not the men we thought we were ..."

Newt Gingrich once explained to me whilst sitting in my map room in the Pentagon how it was  that Japan decided to go to war against the United States in World War II.

He recounted that the decision had much to do with US embargoes of sales to Japan of strategic commodities such as; scrap steel, rubber and oil.  Japan in the late 30s was resource poor and skills rich.   The government was then in the hands of a clique of militaristic nationalists intent on winning lebensraum for their island empire.  To accomplish that, the Tojo government needed the instruments of war as well as a lack of effective US and British resistance to their ambitions.

The embargoes of the materials needed for Japanese industry were seen by the government as a major obstacle to territorial expansion and a profound indication of the permanent hostility of the United States, a country that was the only other serious Pacific Ocean naval power as well as the possessor of a major land base in the Philippine Islands, then an American territory.  With these beliefs as background, the Imperial War Council met in 1941 to consider options.  The Navy tended to believe that it could not win a protracted struggle with the US, but the Army insisted that whatever the risk Japan must fight the US to find its place "in the sun."  After long discussion the council recommended war to the Emperor in the belief that unless they were willing to fight the US and Britain they "would not be the men they had thought they were." 

IMO we are creating an analogous situation in US-Iranian relations.  The neocon imperialists present in both parties are riding high in the foreign policy apparatus of the United States.  As part of their program of gaining a thinly disguised global hegemony they are steadily squeezing Iran into a smaller and smaller "box."  The abandonment of JCPOA and the demand for a new agreement that would require Iran to abandon any effort to be a regional power is at the core of that effort.  The insistence that Hizbullah, Hamas and the IRGC are terrorist groups that may not be maintained or supported is a direct challenge to Iranian sovereignty.  As I have previously written, the terrorist designation of these groups makes them legal targets for military action under the US AUMF.  Add to these things, the effort to reduce Iranian oil exports to zero and you may well have a situation in which the Iranians decide that they must hit back or accept that they are not the men they thought they were.  pl

Turkey, NATO and Russia

Let's have a discussion of what is going to happen with regard to Turkey in light of:

1.  The S-400 sale

2.  The F-35 sale

3.  Pom-pom and the 'stache.

4.  Putin's amused trouble-making

5.  Trumps unpredictability

6.  Erdo's recent defeat in the Istanbul municipal election.

7.  Neo-Ottoman irredentism

Whatever ...   pl

“US Ramps Up Online Attacks on Russian Power Grid, NYT Says” - TTG

Walrus has already started an engaging conversation on this subject. As someone deeply involved in the early development of DoD cyber operations, I wanted to add  my two cents from a different angle. I am not as horrified by this development as many here are. But I am very uneasy with the apparent involvement of Bonkers Bolton. That creature is as dangerous as a malfunctioning Dalek. I'm pretty sure he doesn't understand these things. Even if he did, he wouldn't care.

—————

The U.S. is stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid in a warning to President Vladimir Putin, the New York Times reported, citing current and former government officials. While the U.S. has probed the Russian grid since at least 2012 and there’s no evidence it has turned off power, the Trump administration’s strategy has shifted more toward offense with the deployment of U.S. computer code inside the grid and other targets, the newspaper said. The effort has gotten far more aggressive over the past year, the Times quoted an unidentified senior intelligence official as saying.

The administration declined to disclose specifics, according to the report. However, National Security Adviser John Bolton said publicly on Tuesday that the U.S. is taking a broader view “to say to Russia, or anybody else that’s engaged in cyberoperations against us, ‘You will pay a price,”’ the Times said. (Bloomberg)

—————

This is a far cry from our early attempts at preparing to conduct offensive cyber operations. I remember attending several briefings at one of these early organizations at the NSA. The control of offensive tools was as restrictive as the control of nuclear weapons. It was obvious these things scared the crap out of DoD and NSA back then. It’s equally obvious DoD and now CYBERCOM have learned to stop worrying and love the “Cyber-Bomb.” Our use of the Stuxnet worm to sabotage Iranian centrifuges was proof of our growing comfort with these things. 

However, Stuxnet was used against Iran. We’re comfortable with raining all kinds of death and destruction throughout the Middle East. Now we’re taking actions to disrupt Russia’s power grid. That’s playing with raining death and destruction upon a nuclear capable peer competitor. Hacking the grid is one thing. We’ve all done that for many years. That’s just part of the intelligence preparation of the battlespace (IPB). Implanting weapons to disable the Russian grid is a leap beyond that. Seems CYBERCOM has embraced the concept of operational preparation of the battlespace (OPB), a concept widely practiced in JSOC and in other parts of the special operations community. MG Michael Repass, a former 10th Group Commander, wrote a paper in 2003 describing these things. 

"Advanced Force Operations consists of US SecDef-approved military operations such as clandestine operations. It is logically part of Operational Preparation of the Battlespace (OPB), which follows the Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace, a concept well-known in U.S. and NATO doctrine, OPB is seldom used outside of SOF channels. OPB is defined by the U.S. Special Operations Command as "Non-intelligence activities conducted prior to D-Day, H-Hour, in likely or potential areas of employment, to train and prepare for follow-on military operations.” 

I don’t think this was ever official policy, but OPB was widely viewed as a powerful tool to break the CIA’s stranglehold on covert action, at least on the operational level. Given that CYBERCOM is a unified combatant command finally gaining independence from NSA and the IC in general, this embrace of OPB is a natural progression. What else CYBERCOM copies from JSOC’s authorities and tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) will be interesting. It could also be quite dangerous. Cyber operations are here to stay. They are becoming more effective for reconnaissance and attribution, for disrupting a target’s networks and infrastructure and for perception management. The inhibitions against engaging in these operations are relaxing.

An interesting point in the NYT story is that it appears Trump has not been briefed on this stuff. Perhaps CYBERCOM and DoD don’t consider this level of OPB rising to the level of Presidential decision making. Pulling the trigger on grid disruption certainly should. Why wouldn’t they brief the President? Is it to keep him in the dark out of a lack of trust? That’s disheartening. Now with the story published all over the world, DoD should feel impelled to fully brief the President. The best outcome would be Trump pushing for negotiations with Russia, China and maybe others to develop a de-escalation/non-proliferation treaty on cyber operations with the same vigor and earnestness that we once approached nuclear weapons.

TTG

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-15/u-s-ramps-up-online-attacks-on-russian-power-grid-nyt-says

“Combating Terrorism with Preparation of the Battlespace”

“Trump calls newspaper report on Russia power grid treason”

HARPER: POMPEO PRONOUNCES KUSHNER PLAN DOA

On May 28, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in New York City for a closed-door meeting with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.  In remarks that were covertly recorded and passed along to the Washington Post, Pompeo effectively declared that the Middle East peace plan conjured by First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner was a non-starter and would be rejected by most parties.  Instead of the "deal of the century" touted by President Donald Trump, Pompeo conceded that the peace scheme was a losing proposition.  "I get why people think this is a deal that only Israel could love.  I understand the perception of that.  I just hope everyone will give the space to listen and settle in a bit." Pompeo continued his blunt remarks:  "I don't want to call it failing.  Call it whatever.  I fail a lot, so it's not about using a word like that."  Pompeo admitted that the State Department is giving a good deal of attention to what to do next if the Kushner Plan flops.

Until Prime Minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu failed to put together a majority cabinet this week and had to call snap elections for September, it had been expected that the long-awaited Kushner Plan would be rolled out this month.  Now the launch date is delayed until late September or early October after a new Israeli government is formed and sworn in.

Pompeo has shown some unexpected political savvy by distancing himself from the doomed "peace plan," which appears to be little more than a scheme to buy Palestinian capitulation through a combination of promises of Arab money and political strong-arming from the Gulf States and Israel.

It’s time for Trump to stop John Bolton and Mike Pompeo from sabotaging his foreign policy | Mulshine

"I put that question to another military vet, former Vietnam Green Beret Pat Lang.

“Once he’s committed to a war in the Mideast, he’s just screwed,” said Lang of Trump.

But Lang, who later spent more than a decade in the Mideast, noted that Bolton has no direct control over the military.

“Bolton has a problem,” he said. “If he can just get the generals to obey him, he can start all the wars he wants. But they don’t obey him.”

They obey the commander-in-chief. And Trump has a history of hiring war-crazed advisors who end up losing their jobs when they get a bit too bellicose. Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley comes to mind."

" In Lang’s view, anyone who sees Trump as some sort of ideologue is missing the point.

“He’s an entrepreneurial businessman who hires consultants for their advice and then gets rid of them when he doesn’t want that advice,” he said.

So far that advice hasn’t been very helpful, at least in the case of Bolton. His big mouth seems to have deep-sixed Trump’s chance of a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. And that failed coup in Venezuela has brought up comparisons to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion during the Kennedy administration."  Mulshine

--------------

Well, pilgrims, I worked exclusively on the subject of the Islamic culture continent for the USG from 1972 to 1994 and then in business from 1994 to 2006.  I suppose I am still working on the subject.  pl

https://www.nj.com/opinion/2019/05/its-time-for-trump-to-stop-john-bolton-and-mike-pompeo-from-sabotaging-his-foreign-policy-mulshine.html

Venezuela - Bay of Pigs Redux?

In the Spring of 1961 a lightly armed group of Cuban exiles invaded the south coast of Cuba.  They had little air support and were dwarfed in number by the armed forces of revolutionary Cuba which when brought to bear at the site of the invasion quickly crushed them.  The members of the invading force were captured and imprisoned.  They were held for a time and then released to the US after prolonged negotiations.  Some of them were offered admission to the US armed forces and a number accepted.

The Eisenhower Administration had approved this project.  It was meant to overthrow the new  Communist government of Cuba. In 1960 when it became apparent that the Fidelistas were intent on allying themselves with the USSR Eisenhower decided to try to remove that government.  Before the intentions and true loyalties of the revolutionaries became clear the US government as well as most Americans had been romantically sympathetic to the notion of a tiny band of long exiled rebels having incited a country wide rebellion that overthrew the dastardly caudillo Fulgencio Batista from a base in the jungled mountains of eastern Cuba.  How grand, Robin Hoods with beards come to free the people!  Unfortunately for that view, the emerging Cuba/USSR alliance quickly showed that it would bear fruit in something really dangerous like the emplacement of Soviet IRBMs in Cuba in 1962.

In response to a perceived emerging threat Eisenhower authorized the Bay of Pigs invasion project in a presidential finding that was altogether legal under US law.  The laws in question were the 1947/1958 National Security Acts which allowed the president to order the CIA (not the armed forces) to carry out covert military actions of the Bay of Pigs variety.  The operation was planned by CIA in the expectation that the Cuban people, if given the inspiration of a Cuban manned invasion force, would rise and throw out the Communists.  The plan included stand-by US air support in case things got "sticky" after the landing.  On that basis the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave the CIA plan their blessing.

The new Kennedy Administration detested the Castro government and decided to continue invasion preparations with one critical emendation.  The open use of US air power to support the invasion was taken out of the plan.  The Camelot crew at the Kennedy White House did not realize how dangerous it was to remove that pillar of the plan.  No one bothered to inform the JCS that the plan had been changed.

In the event, the Cuban people did not rise to support the invasion, The Cuban armed forces crushed the effort and a key part of that success was the uncontested application of Cuban air attacks on the beachhead.

The whole thing had been a shoestring operation concocted by the militarily inept paramilitary section of the CIA run by former but failed junior military officers assisted by a few  sergeants borrowed from the active armed forces for this project.

I knew one such.  When I was in the 8th SFGA in the Panama Canal Zone I was for a time in the staff intelligence section of group headquarters.  The senior sergeant in the section was a master sergeant of Nicaraguan birth who had been borrowed by CIA to be the chief trainer of the paratroop component of the invasion force.  He trained these Cubans in Guatemala while posing as a retired US Army senior airborne officer and then sent them on their way to the Bay of Pigs while standing alongside the runway waving at each plane as it took off.

Does this sound fantastical and unlikely?  It does to me as well, but it was all true.  One day I was in the Ft. Gulick PX with Sergeant Gonzalo ------- when we were approached by a US Army captain who looked Gonzalo up and down and said "Colonel Jim!  You are a sergeant?"  He was amazed.  He was one of the Bay of Pigs prisoners who had been taken into the US Army after release from prison.  "Colonel Jim" had trained him and his comrades for war in Cuba.

The  analogy to whatever it is that the US has been covertly trying to do in Venezuela is obvious with some differences:

1.  There is no exile military force trained by the CIA for insertion as a rallying point for the the anti-Communist forces among the people and armed forces of Venezuela.

2.  There is no evidence that First in his Class and the Stache have persuaded the Commander in Chief to commit US military support in any way to the Venezuela project of regime change.  In the Bay of Pigs case the US military stood ready in the background to intervene if ordered to do so but were never so ordered.  That does not seem to be the case now.

3.  There is some evidence that most Latin American states would like to see regime change in Venezuela.  That was not true in 1961.

4.  There is no USSR.  The attempt to portray the Communist government of Venezuela as a Russian or Chinese bridgehead in the Western Hemisphere is just absurd.

My SWAG is that Maduro's troops and police will crush today's "revolt," arrest Guaido and his handful of military supporters and put them on trial. The US will do nothing but wring its hands in frustration. 

Remember - Analysis is not Advocacy.  I would love to see the Maduro government fall.  pl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs

Analysis is not advocacy. The Lebanese should understand that truth.

(This is ONE B-52 plane load)

"Analysis is not advocacy."

How many times have I written that on SST?

Unless you want to live in fantasy you must have the ability to think outside the box created by what you want rather than what is or is likely to be.

The Israelis live in such a box.  In their box the world is filled with gentile monsters who must be dominated and manipulated.  The manipulation part of that illusion is reinforced in their minds by their incredible success in forming public opinion in the US.

The Lebanese live in a different box in which they, in their collective mind's eye, are far more important to the rest of the world than they really are.  A Lebanese I knew well often told other Lebanese that their mistake was in thinking that Bill and Hillary woke up every morning and asked each other " I wonder what is happening in Beirut today?"  The truth is that Lebanon is only important to the Lebanese and that has always been true.  It is particularly true now in the age of neo-neocon domination of US foreign policy.  The cartoon like simplicity with which Bolton, Pompeo and Trump misunderstand realities on the ground in places like Lebanon is striking.

In service to Israeli ambitions for hegemony throughout the ME, these people have no interest whatever in the welfare of the Lebanese.  In particular they are incapable of seeing Hizbullah as anything like an integral part of Lebanese society.  No, they see these Lebanese Shia as nothing more than a threat to Israel.  As I have pointed out, war against Hizbullah is already authorized under American law by their designation as a terrorist group and the AUMF against terrorism.

The Lebanese in Lebanon should understand that US Embassy Beirut has no policy influence in Washington.  None!  The true believer neo-neocons have no interest whatever in the opinions of State Department career bureaucrats who usually do not share their imperialist faith in the global destiny and mission of the US.  Remember that truth when you are tempted to shower praise and attention on the inhabitants of Fort America in east Beirut.  They are in exile among you.

Does any of this mean that I favor the aggressive and disrespectful bullying that emanates from Washington in the era of the neo-neocons?  It does not, but I can recognize reality and this attitude toward Lebanon is real and must be recognized.  The neo-neocons would not shrink from devastating southern Lebanon in order to wreck Hizbullah.  pl 

The Collapse of Deterrence with Iran by Christopher J. Bolan

Earlier this month, the U.S. administration announced its decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).  Just this week, the Trump administration said that it will no longer exempt any country from U.S. sanctions if they continue to buy Iranian oil.  These moves are justifiably sparking renewed debate about U.S. strategy for Iran. 

The White House portrays these steps as a natural progression in its ‘maximum pressure’ campaign to deprive Iran of “funds that it has used to destabilize the Middle East for decades.”

The reaction among policy pundits has been mixed but imminently predictable.  Supporters of regime change in Iran, like Mark Dubowitz at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, have long pushed for such moves.  On the opposing side, advocates of rapprochement such as Trita Parsi have sounded alarmist assessments indicating that the IRGC designation alone represents a dangerous escalation that might well lead to war.  Still others see the combination of the IRGC designation and the imposition of crippling new sanctions as part of an orchestrated public information campaign to build a U.S. case for war against Iran. 

Meanwhile, others in the analytical community including Suzanne Maloney at Brookings have characterized the IRGC designation as an action that will ultimately prove to be of little consequence.  Similarly, while the threat of additional U.S. sanctions on countries importing Iranian oil have already predictably led to a short-term increase in oil prices, some oil analysts have suggested that the U.S. drive to get Iranian oil exports to zero will ultimately fail and characterize such policies as more “feel-good rather than strategy-driven.”

Whichever side of this debate you find yourself, it is imperative to recognize that – whether by happenstance or design – these steps are dangerously degrading the pillars of a successful U.S. deterrence strategy against Iran. 

The GOP will be "the party of health care?"

"“Secretary Azar fully supports the Administration’s litigation position in the ACA case, which bears his name,” HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley said in a statement. “Any insinuation that Secretary Azar has ‘butted heads’ with Mulvaney on this issue is false.”

Barr also opposed the decision, and now finds himself in the uncomfortable position of running the department that leads the new charge against Obamacare. His opposition was based in part on skepticism among conservative lawyers about the wisdom of seeking to overturn the law, officially known as the Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court in 2012 upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare's individual mandate, which the current lawsuit is once again challenging. The attorney general, who was confirmed only a month ago, was overruled by the White House.

The lawsuit at issue seeks to invalidate the entire health care law. Previously, the Trump administration had only supported challenges to parts of Obamacare without backing its complete invalidation — an outcome that would throw the U.S. health care system into chaos if an alternative system is not put into place by Republicans who have so far been unable to agree on a plan. The current challenge to the law was brought by a group of state GOP attorneys general.

Monday's Justice Department letter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said federal lawyers would file a brief in support of a district court judge’s finding that the individual mandate included in the Obama-era law is now invalid as a tax because the GOP Congress reduced to the fine to zero dollars, and the government cannot levy a zero-dollar tax."  Politico

-------------

Secretary Azar and AG Barr opposed this statement that the United States will not seek to defend the ACA against the decision of a US district court that the disappearance of the personal mandate in the ACA invalidates the whole law constitutionally.

I can see why they opposed this policy.  Azar is the Secretary of Health and Human Services.  He and Barr know that the GOP does not have a substitute law waiting to take the place of a fallen ACA.  For Trump to say that the Republicans will take charge of health care as an issue seems an act of bravado motivated by the Democratic Party's effective use of this as a weapon in the 2018 election.

Well, pilgrims, if the Republicans cannot produce on this over the objections of the Democratic House of Representatives, they will be hurt badly in 2020.  pl

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/26/trump-obamacare-reversal-cabinet-1238359

Persuading the king ...

I watched Trump's Rose Garden session in which he announced that he would sign the appropriation bill and also declare a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act.  IMO he will win whatever court challenges are made because his authority to do this is clear in "black letter" law and the opposition will have to base their plaints on a judgment as to whether or not there is an emergency.  IMO there is nothing in the constitution or law that makes the judgment or the courts competent to overrule his judgment in this case.  If they don't like the National Emergencies Law, let the Congress repeal it. 

On the other hand, Trump also told the world that because of a personal appeal by a woman from Idlib Province in Syria who came to see him in the Oval Office, he called Putin and argued him into calling off the preparations for a massive Russo/Syrian/Iranian offensive that would IMO have recovered Idlib for the SAG.

I am recalling here roughly what he said.

The lady's argument was that she believed that the millions who lived in the province would be killed or maimed in the process and all the towns destroyed.  Her parents lived in the province.  And, after all, she said, there are only 45,000 jihadis in the province.  I was not in the room, but would be willing to bet that she was; well spoken, well dressed, and reasonably attractive.  Trump was persuaded and Idlib remains a cancer in the side of the Syrian state, the Russians, having listened to Trump, attempted to create a de-militarized zone around Idlib Province within which the jihadis have consolidated power.

Some years ago I was asked to speak at a two or three day discussion of the Middle East at Mississippi State University.  This is a big school.  Attendance was in the thousands. On the program with me (or I with him) was, then TV personality, (later governor of Ohio) John Kasich.  At a pre-conference dinner, Kasich sought to dominate the table talk and me (his principal competition) at this conference.  There were numerous senior faculty present at table.  Kasich sought to belittle whatever knowledge I might have of the MENA region and of the peoples and cultures there.  In particular he said that I did not understand Islam at all because I said that the jihadis were among the various forms of Islam, a religion which I foolishly claimed had no central authority structure and in which the "true Islam" was not to be known except in the consensus (ijma') of various groups of Muslims.

Having heard him out, I explained to him my background and experience.  He grew more and more sober, clearly unused to opposition.  I asked him what the basis was for his opinion that the various jihadis were not real Muslims at all.

He told us that a number of beauteous Muslim ladies had been brought to see him.  He said they were well spoken, well dressed (some in French couture clothing) and that they smelled good.  This last was said after I asked him about it having run into this phenomenon before. 

These ladies were all at pains to explain to him that the jihadis were outside Islam because they did not accept the ijma' of the scholars of whatever "school" (mathab) of Sunni Sharia these ladies adhered to.

The lesson - Beware of well dressed ladies who smell of Chanel #5.  pl

Trump is playing the Dems about the wall. - Republished 16 Feb 2019

"§2808. Construction authority in the event of a declaration of war or national emergency (a) In the event of a declaration of war or the declaration by the President of a national emergency in accordance with the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.) that requires use of the armed forces, the Secretary of Defense, without regard to any other provision of law, may undertake military construction projects, and may authorize the Secretaries of the military departments to undertake military construction projects, not otherwise authorized by law that are necessary to support such use of the armed forces. Such projects may be undertaken only within the total amount of funds that have been appropriated for military construction, including funds appropriated for family housing, that have not been obligated. (b) When a decision is made to undertake military construction projects authorized by this section, the Secretary of Defense shall notify, in an electronic medium pursuant to section 480 of this title, the appropriate committees of Congress of the decision and of the estimated cost of the construction projects, including the cost of any real estate action pertaining to those construction projects. (c) The authority described in subsection (a) shall terminate with respect to any war or national emergency at the end of the war or national emergency."

******

"After saying that the federal government could use eminent domain to secure the land for the wall, Trump responded to a question about using his emergency powers to build the wall with a definitive "yes."

"Absolutely, we can call a national emergency. I haven’t done it. I may do it. I may do it. We can call a national emergency and build it very quickly."

"It’s another way of doing it. If we can do it through a negotiated process, we’re giving that a shot.""  DJT

------------

I am not a lawyer but this section of the Emergencies Act seems very clear to me.   The authority does not seem to be limited to land already owned by the federal government.  How much money that is in the DoD accounts for construction in this fiscal year is "unobligated?"  This is probably a large number.

So, what is really occurring in this food fight?  IMO Trump is positioning the Democrats so that that they will be completely uncooperative about the border barriers and then he will declare a national emergency in defense of what is so far an unarmed invasion by inundation and employ this section of the Emergencies Act to build out a large piece of the barrier system.

The Democrats and their marchers will scream and curse but what could they actually do to stop him?  They would undoubtedly obtain an injunction from a federal district court judge, probably in the 9th Circuit's area, but this injunction would probably be based on questioning the President/CinC's judgment concerning national defense, which IMO is outside the competence or power of the Article 3 courts.  IMO he would be justified in simply ignoring such an injunction.  The Dems would then try to impeach him.  Good luck on that one!

Having dealt with this issue, Trump would then be free to re-open the closed parts of the government.  pl

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-04/trump-could-declare-national-emergency-bypass-congress-and-build-wall

Look for the fine print about two separate things: 1- border control and barriers, and 2 - general immigration law

By Robert Willmann

As president Trump is speaking about the U.S. southern border and a national emergency, here is the law that was passed yesterday when probably no one had read all of it, certainly not the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, whose position is that in a "democracy", you have to pass a law before you can find out what is in it--

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/immigration-116hjres31enr.pdf

And this was the recorded vote--

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2019/roll087.xml

I have to tend to some other things right now, but if you look at this new law, it is useful to think not only about a border wall and border control, which has been the subject of all the talk and political posturing, but also about language in this new legislation about other parts of the immigration law.  Changes or additions to the existing immigration law separate and apart from border control can have a greater effect on not controlling legal and illegal immigration than features of a border wall would.

Also, after a national emergency is declared, and if court action follows, the legal debate will be largely about "statutory construction" -- the interplay of two or more laws about a particular subject -- and the interpretation of words in different sections of different federal laws and words in the U.S. Constitution.

Update:  The National Emergencies Act--

http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/[email protected]/chapter34&edition=prelim

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/chapter-34

Update 2:  Regarding the thought above that changes or additions to immigration law separate and apart from the effects of a border wall can be significant, I am trying to emphasize that changes to general immigration law can lead to less control over legal and illegal immigration, and can cause more problems with illegal immigration, than border control itself, even when border control is quite effective.

 

Concerning the partial shutdown and and the border barriers

1 - The banks, credit unions and any other financial institutions that can lend money are missing a chance to build a lot of good will in this situation.  Good will is an item that any good business plan must take into account even of it is impossible to quantify on paper.  Good will leads to more customers.  Businesses want to acquire more customers.  The 800k federal employees now on furlough have legislated assurance that their back pay will be quickly forthcoming when the pause ends.  Sooo!  Make them no interest loans in the amount of their postponed pay.  You will not be sorry if you do that.  I don't know if that could be extended to contract employees since the contract that includes their services may not insure back pay.

2 - The wall, barrier system or whatever you want to call it presently exists on a number of sections of the border.  Pelosi, Schumer and the other Democrats who prattle about the "immorality" and uselessness of physical border defenses should be asked each and every day if they want the present border barriers demolished so that anyone can cross the border whenever they want and anywhere they want.  California is the destination of choice of these economic migrants.   If the border barriers are taken down, there will be IMO a mass migration into what is now the United States and especially into California from Latin American and then inevitably from all over the world.  Ask the Democrats, every day if they want the existing border barriers taken down,  Ask them!  pl

150 Central Americans tried by force this week to enter the US illegally en masse

"US agents have fired tear gas over the border into Mexico at migrants trying to enter the country illegally.

Around 150 Central Americans tried to make the crossing near the town of Tijuana to the south of California on New Year's Day.

One US official described the migrants as a "violent mob".

It comes as the US federal government remains shut down as President Donald Trump and Congress argue over funding for his proposed border wall."  BBC

------------

The BBC does not seem to know that the US voluntarily admits over one million legal IMMIGRANTS per year.  These people are automatically on a track to full citizenship after five years residence if they behave themselves, pay their taxes, do not commit criminal acts, etc.  They can accelerate that process if they join the US armed forces and serve honorably. 

The people now seeking to force their way across the border seem to think that they are justified in crashing across the US border with Mexico without regard to US law.  To willingly cross the US border illegally is a misdemeanor crime.  The US government has a duty under the constitution to defend the borders of the US against foreign invasion.  How are foreign people trying to crash through the border not an invasion?  Tear gas?  Yes, it makes you cry and choke.  The alternative is force escalating to deadly force. 

The US listens to petitions for asylum from conditions that threaten life.  The US does not recognize petitions for asylum based on poor conditions of local economy or crime in countries of origin.  If the US did accept such petitions, most of the population of the planet would be eligible for asylum in the US.

The argument is raised that the US should make Central America an earthly paradise, a veritable Nebraska in which Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans would be content to abide.  Well, pilgrims, as I have explained here several times, the US has been trying to do that in Latin America ever since the Kennedy Administration with minimal success.  Do these little countries wish to surrender their sovereignty to the US so that we might perform our magic of enrichment and creation of actual democracy upon them?  I think they do not.  They approach our borders waving the various flags of their wretched countries even while asking for ASYLUM from those countries, countries that cannot run their own affairs well enough to make people want to stay home and live the good life Latino style.

Make no mistake.  If these migrants, who think nothing of using little children as human shields, force surrender of control of immigration, there will be a tidal wave coming behind them.  pl

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46739126

Trump Fought For His Withdrawal For a Year by Willy B

Gareth Porter, in an article published in the American Conservative, definitively shows that Trump's Dec. 19 announcement of the US withdrawal from Syria was, in fact, the end of a fight of at least a year, between Trump on the one side and his national security team, lead by Mattis and Dunford on the other. Published accounts of the policy process over the past year "show that senior national security officials and self-interested institutions have been playing a complicated political game for months aimed at keeping Trump from wavering on our indefinite presence on the ground in Syria," Porter writes. "The entire episode thus represents a new variant of a familiar pattern dating back to Vietnam in which national security advisors put pressure on reluctant presidents to go along with existing or proposed military deployments in a war zone. The difference here is that Trump, by publicly choosing a different policy, has blown up their transparent schemes and offered the country a new course, one that does not involve a permanent war state."

Porter cites an April 2018 Associated Press account of an NSC meeting at which Trump's impatience with his national security team boiled over. At that meeting, Trump ordered them unequivocally to accept a fundamentally different Syria deployment policy. Instead, they framed the options as a binary choice—either an immediate pullout or an indefinite presence in order to ensure the complete and permanent defeat of Islamic State. Mattis and Dunford, Porter continues, were consciously exploiting Trump's own defensiveness about a timeline–he had attacked Obama during the 2016 campaign for imposing a timeline in Afghanistan–"to press ahead with their own strategy unless and until Trump publicly called them on it."

"The Syria withdrawal affair is a dramatic illustration of the fundamental quandary of the Trump presidency in regard to ending the state of permanent war that previous administrations created. Although a solid majority of Americans want to rein in U.S. military deployments in the Middle East and Africa, Trump's national security team is committed to doing the opposite," Porter concludes. "Trump is now well aware that it is virtually impossible to carry out the foreign policy that he wants without advisors who are committed to the same objective. That means that he must find people who have remained outside the system during the permanent war years while being highly critical of its whole ideology and culture. If he can fill key positions with truly dissident figures, the last two years of this term in office could decisively clip the wings of the bureaucrats and generals who have created the permanent war state we find ourselves in today."

Trump has called the bluff of the permanent warfare crowd and now has his decision, but the possibility of sabotage by that crowd's assets inside the Pentagon cannot yet be discounted. This is indicated by an exclusive Reuters report claiming that planners at the Pentagon are proposing that the YPG be allowed to keep the heavy weapons that the US has supplied it with, though Reuters' sources stress that the planning is still at an early stage and nothing's been decided yet. And yet, there must be a reason why this is being reported now. It obviously would throw a monkey wrench in the arrangements that Trump is trying to make with Erdogan to keep eastern Syria stable in the wake of the US withdrawal. It would also represent a back down from US promises made earlier to the Turks to retrieve the weapons and Erdogan would throw a fit. Certainly, the idea that the U.S. military can retrieve all of the weapons that it handed over is a dubious one, at best,  and there are legitimate questions about whether or not Turkish troops could really operate in the Middle Euphrates valley near the Iraqi border, hundreds of kilometers from the Turkish border.

But the key to the proposal is this: The recommendation "is a rejection of Trump's policy to withdraw from Syria," a person familiar with the discussions told Reuters. So, really, it is an attempt at sabotage.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/trump-scores-breaks-generals-50-year-war-record-syria-mattis-dunford/

https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-u-commanders-recommend-letting-kurdish-fighters-syria-233235271.html 

 

His "gut," and not his brain is how he runs everything?

Yes.  Trump says that is how he "rolls."  The indicators that this is true are everywhere.  He does not believe what the "swampies" tell him.  He listens to the State Department, the CIA, DoD, etc. and then acts on ill informed instinct and information provided by; lobbies, political donors, foreign embassies, and his personal impressions of people who have every reason to want to deceive him.

As I wrote earlier he sees the world through an entrepreneurial hustler's lens.  He crudely assigns absolute dollar values to policy outcomes and actions which rarely have much to do with the actual world even if they might have related to the arena of contract negotiations.  He evidently learned about balance sheets at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and wishes to apply the principle of the bottom line to everything.

I will guess that he resisted taking elective courses in the Humanities as much as he could believing them to be useless.  That is unfortunate since such courses tend to provide context for present day decisions.  I have known several very rich businessmen of similar type who sent their children to business school with exactly that instruction with regard to literature, history, philosophy, etc.

From an espionage case officer's perspective he is an easy mark.  If you are in regular contact with him, all that is needed to recruit him is to convince him that you believe in the "genius" manifested in his mighty ego and swaggering bluster and then slowly feed him what you want him to "know."  That does not mean that he has been recruited by someone or something but the vulnerability is evident.

IMO the mistake he has made in surrounding himself with neocons and other special pleaders, people like Pompeo and Bolton is evidence that he is very controllable by the clever and subtle.  pl

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/27/president-trumps-full-washington-post-interview-transcript-annotated/?utm_term=.5172b1459bbf

https://southfront.org/trump-good-us-saudi-relations-are-important-for-israel/

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/us-troops-to-remain-in-middle-east-for-israel-trump/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_sheet

Nationalism and Patriotism

 

Elie Kedourie wrote in "Nationalism," perhaps his greatest work, that "Patriotism is the love of one's country or group, while Nationalism is the love of one's country or group at the expense of everyone else."

George Orwell wrote in "Notes on Nationalism," that "By 'patriotism' I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality."  

I have tried to act as I imagine a patriot should and in a way that Kedourie and Orwell might approve.  I long ago decided that Nationalism as these two great minds defined it was a bad thing and that I hoped the United States would not descend to such a depth of false pride as to become nationalistic in this sense.  I have lived to be disappointed in this.

In general I support Macron's expressed view on this subject but it should be said that much of his vehemence on this subject is caused by his own search for approval in France and reluctance to see Europe deprived of the post WW2 economic benefits and subsidized defense against the USSR long provided by the United States.  From my point of view Macron appears a self serving politician in this matter.

We should all be careful not to confuse Patriotism and Nationalism.  pl 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriotism

What is this Administration’s real policy towards Syria? - TTG

I doubt we have to worry about Nikki Haley or even her handler/assistant, Jon Lerner. Most of what they can do at the UN is the equivalent of howling from the trees and flinging their poo at people passing by. Now Brian Hook and his Iran Action Group (IAG) may actually be capable of biting. In addition to the IAG, there is another dangerous beast, James Jeffrey, the State Department’s special representative for Syria. Two days ago, Jeffrey spelled out the Trump Administration’s present policy towards Syria quite clearly.

************************   

The US will not withdraw its military presence from Syria, as announced by the US special representative for Syria, James Jeffrey on September 6th.

According to Jeffrey, the Trump administration is shifting towards a more expansive plan for Syria that involves not just the defeat of ISIS, but also reducing Iranian influence and preventing Bashar al-Assad from consolidating power.

According to James Jeffrey, President Donald Trump supports the strategy that envisions an indefinite military and diplomatic presence in Syria, contrary to the President’s previous inclination to withdraw US troops after defeating ISIS.

“The new policy is we’re no longer pulling out by the end of the year,” he told reporters in Washington. Initially the 2,200 US troops deployed to eastern Syria in support of the multi-national coalition against ISIS was supposed to leave. Instead, they will remain in support of a combined military and diplomatic effort to limit Iranian and Russian influence over post-war reconstruction. “That means we are not in a hurry,” Jeffrey said, adding that he was “confident” Trump supports what he called a “more active approach” in Syria.

As reported by the Daily Caller, the strategy had reportedly been under consideration for within the Trump administration for months, however it was not employed mostly because of Donald Trump’s reluctance to deepen the US involvement in Syria.

As reported by Hurriyet daily news, James Jeffrey’s remarks also hint at a more active US diplomacy against the Bashar al-Assad rule and its main supporters, Russia and Iran, in the new term. This new policy has already been observed at the U.N. Security Council in the last few days where the US, France and Britain have taken a very sharp position against the potential use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government in Idlib and elsewhere in the country.  (SouthFront)

************************

At some point even the most ardent Trump acolyte will have to admit this is now Trump’s policy. It is not something done by the neocons, the deep state, the anonymous resister or the ghost of John McCain without Trump's acquiescence. He is not some clueless, oblivious Governor Willian J. LePetomane. Trump may not give a rat’s ass about Israel, the Palestinians or Assad, but he has a real hard on against Iran or to be more exact, Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. It’s all personal. The recently stated Syria policy is all about Iran. Now he’s tweeting warnings to Assad and Putin to leave Idlib alone. He’s not thinking geopolitically. It’s becoming more personal with every tweet. If Putin and Assad defy Trump’s tweet warnings, as they surely will, he’s liable to strike back in rage. And all those around him will goad him on. And then, good buddy, the shit will truly be on.

TTG

https://southfront.org/us-officially-admits-its-not-going-to-withdraw-forces-from-syria/

http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-syria-idlib-strikes-20180904-story.html#

US to lead Security Council talks on Iran in late September: Haley

 

"With the United States now holding the presidency of the Security Council, Haley said the aim is to put further pressure on Tehran over its alleged violations of council resolutions.

"President (Donald) Trump is very adamant that we have to start making sure that Iran is falling in line with international order," Haley told reporters.

"If you continue to look at the spread Iran has had in supporting terrorism, if you continue to look at the ballistic missile testing that they are doing, if you continue to look at the sales of weapons we see with the Huthis in Yemen -- these are all violations of security council resolutions," she said.

"These are all threats to the region, and these are all things that the international community needs to talk about."

Washington has sought to build up international pressure on Iran after reimposing tough, unilateral sanctions on August 7 and setting a November 5 deadline for halting Iran's oil exports."  Al Monitor

-------------

This sounds like a disaster in the making.

If past behavior is a guide to the future, the emperor Donald I will seek to bully the Security Council into accepting universal application of his program of intimidation against Iran.  The spectacle of him in the chair glowering at the assembled heads of state is a prospect beyond anything seen as yet in his ham-handed attempts at imposing his fantasies upon the world.,

If he fails in demonstrating the triumph of his will, it should be expected that he will proceed to further withdraw funds from the UN as a punitive disciplinary move imposed to enforce his decrees in the future. 

In my opinion Bibi is telling him that all that is needed is a firm hand.  PL

https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/contents/afp/2018/09/un-us-iran-politics-sanction.html

King Salman "walks" on Jared's "good deal"

"Saudi Arabia has reassured Arab allies it will not endorse any Middle East peace plan that fails to address Jerusalem’s status or refugees’ right of return, easing their concerns that the kingdom might back a nascent U.S. deal which aligns with Israel on key issues. "  Reuters

 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-paelestinians-usa-saudi/as-u-s-pushes-for-mideast-peace-saudi-king-reassures-allies-idUSKBN1KJ0F9

******

I published the  following post on 3 January 2018:  It is as true now as it was then that man does not live by bread alone.

"... we have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table.  We pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They don't even want to negotiate a long overdue peace treaty with Israel," Trump tweeted. "We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more. But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?" CNN quoting DJT

 

"We are not taking a position on any of the final status issues including the final boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem," Trump said last month as he made his Jerusalem announcement. "Those questions are up to the parties involved. The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides."  Quoting DJT

 

Trump's statement at the announcement was intended to reassure Palestinians and the broader Arab and Muslim world that the US was not giving away control of Jerusalem to Israel or forsaking Palestinian claims to the holy city."  CNN

 

---------------

 

DJT's statements concerning the effect of his recognition of the Holy City as Israel's capital are nonsensical.   The Israelis, the Palestinians, the Europeans and every Muslim in the world understand that by taking Jerusalem "off the table" DJT has effectively eliminated the possibility of a negotiation over the city that would in any way relate to the real world.

 

Evidently DJT thinks that an issue like this that concerns the essential identity and self image of millions and millions of Muslims can be handled as though the adversaries in this dispute are business people in a contract discussion.  In that setting a feature of the proposed contract that cannot be agreed on is removed from consideration so that closure can occur on the rest.

 

Well, pilgrims,  the ownership of Jerusalem is not a hotel or skyscraper deal.  Trump's evident belief that the US has hired the Palestinian people through USAID projects and budget support is altogether incorrect.  His belief that the Palestinians are effectively his employees and therefore must settle for a Bantustan created out of some part of what is left without Jerusalem is delusional.

 

The Israelis and other Zionists, like Kushner and Ivanka, have long held the Palestinians in contempt as inferior beings fit only to be cheap labor in the Israeli economy.  That they could have sold that idea to Trump is the measure of the man.  pl"

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/02/politics/trump-palestinian-aid/index.html 

 http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2018/01/httpwwwcnncom20180102politicstrump-palestinian-aidindexhtml.html

"Inside the tent peeing out" - LBJ

 

"National security adviser John Bolton once said Russia's election interference was "truly an act of war" against the US, and that a policy based on trusting Russia was "doomed to failure."

• Bolton's tune changed completely after he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.
• He also said President Donald Trump and Putin will likely discuss Trump's recent calls for Russia to be readmitted to the G7 alliance.
• When confronted by a reporter about his shift on Russia, Bolton said he would not address the discrepancy."  Insider

--------------

Is a puzzlement?  Not really.  It seems that John Boy would rather have a job than not.  And, then, there is the sheer exaltation of having been acknowledged as grand by The Devils themselves.

Maybe the prez should send fightin' Jack Keane on a trip like this to provide him with an opportunity for an attitude adjustment.  pl 

http://www.thisisinsider.com/john-bolton-putin-meeting-russia-policy-shift-2018-6

Trump's next Syria move - "A War Game."

(editorial analysis)

It seems evident that the SAA will clean up the rebel held area in Sweida east of the M-5 highway.  When that is done they will line up north of Daraa City facing the Israeli occupied Syrian Golan Heights.  The deployment should be 20 miles or so wide.  They will then attack toward the Heights to clear rebels from SW Syria.  This will be "all in," an attack with "horse, foot and guns" as they said in olden times.  IMO they will make good progress since most of the really hard asses in the SAA have been assembled for the task. 

DJT will then hear the siren song of his family, the Zionist lobby, Bibi's government and various cats and dogs insisting that US Air be committed against this "threat against Israel."  The nuttier people in Israel have been trying to claim that the attacking force will have in it a lot of Iranians and Hizbullahis in SAA uniform.  That suggestion fell apart when the IDF G-2 himself stated that it was untrue.  Even Liberman the Mad has admitted it is not true.  How inconvenient.  Well, the White Helmets will probably come forward to say that the IDF was mistaken.

DJT is making peacemaker noises.  By his actions we will judge him.  pl

For the summit, legal documents about the Korean War period are hard to find - By Robert Willmann

Even though the circus has come to town in Singapore this week with performers Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un and various supporting actors, it can distract from the serious business of Korea after World War 2.  Since governments present themselves through documents claiming to authorize their creation, and more papers are said to establish laws, departments, organizations, decrees, and orders that people are expected to follow, the documents about Korea after Japan officially lost it as a colony following the Second World War are important.  However, they are hard to find [1].

The U.S. Government Printing Office, now called the publishing office, no longer prints treaties and agreements, and from what I have been able to find out, does not publish them in digital form.  I think the reason is that Congress did not give the printing/publishing office money to do so.  The State Department is now supposed to publish them, but only more recent ones, starting in 1996; some of them amend earlier treaties.  The Library of Congress is trying to get all treaties also published in digital form, but is still working on the period from 1950-1984 and has not yet finished [2].

Although not emphasized to the public in the past, Congress did not declare war to start the U.S. involvement in the Korean War (there was a United Nations resolution), and no treaty was signed to conclude it.  As a technical legal matter, the Korean War has not ended.  There was an "agreement concerning a military armistice in Korea, with annex," and a "temporary agreement supplementary to the armistice agreement in Korea," signed at Panmunjom on 27 July 1953.

Citations to treaties and agreements regarding Korea are usually done in the form of:  [number] UST [number], and TIAS [number].  UST refers to the "United States Treaties and Other International Agreements", which is a bound volume made up of the individual documents.  TIAS refers to "Texts of International Agreements" and "Treaties and Other International Acts Series", and is the individual treaty or agreement published as a separate item, which would then became part of the bound volume, the UST.

Here is a list of documents from my brief research I think are relevant to the time frame of the Korean conflict.

1.  Agreement concerning interim military and security matters during the transitional period.  Signed at Seoul August 24, 1948. Entered into force August 24, 1948. 62 Stat. 3817; TIAS 1918; 9 Bevans 477; 79 UNTS 57.

http://www.loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/b-korea-ust000009-0477.pdf

2.  Mutual defense assistance agreement.  Signed at Seoul January 26, 1950. Entered into force January 26, 1950. 1 UST 137; TIAS 2019; 80 UNTS 205.

 

Yemen as exemplar - Re-published 7 June 2018

"Yemeni Shi'ite Muslim Houthi fighters backed by government forces drove the local wing of al Qaeda from one of its last strongholds in central Yemen on Friday in intense fighting that killed at least 35 people, tribal sources said.

The Houthis' Ansarullah movement has become the main political force in Western-allied Yemen since capturing Sanaa in September and then pushing south and west into the Sunni Muslim heartland of al-Bayda province, where Ansar al-Sharia has allied itself with local tribes. 

Yemen has been in turmoil since 2011, to the dismay of neighboring Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, and of the Western powers who want to prevent instability in the Arabian peninsula threatening their crude supplies or giving al Qaeda a base for overseas attacks. 

Tribal sources said the Houthis had met stiff resistance as they pushed towards the village of Khobza district using Katuysha rockets and heavy artillery. 

They said at least 25 Houthis and 10 Ansar al-Sharia and tribal fighters had died in the fighting, which began on Thursday afternoon. Ansar al-Sharia and its allies withdrew to Yakla district, on the border with Maarib province."  Reuters

-----------

Full disclosure - I was once DEFATT in Yemen at Sanaa.

 A primer on some aspects of Yemen:

- Zeidi (fiver) Shia  Muslims are so conservative (restrained) religiously that they are sometimes thought of as a fifth Sunni mathab.  Their theology and general view of the religious sciences follow the mu'tazilite tradition.  They are quite distinct from and have little allegiance to the 12er Shia in Iran, Lebanon and other scattered places.

- From a few miles south of Sanaa to the northern reaches of the country where it "borders" Saudi Arabia the country is almost altogether Zeidi Shia in population.  Those people are tough little mountaineers, who are extremely tribal in their lives and who are generally aligned in two major tribal confederations, the Baqil and the Hashid.  These tribal confederations are the real power in Yemen north of Sanaa.  they possess a lot of military equipment that was mainly stolen from the government when officers who are members of these confederations defected back to their true allegiance taking their gear and often soldiers with them.

- The former president, Ali Abdullah Salih, was a Zeidi tribesman of the Sanhan minor tribe of the Hashid confederation.

 - From Sanaa south, Yemen is primarily inhabited by much less tribal villagers who are Sunni and usually of the shafa'i mathab.  These folks are the recruiting ground for AQAP, Ansar al-Sharia and similar Sunni salafi jihadi groups for whom the Zaidi tribesmen of the north are just another kind of murtadoon (heretics) to be fought to the death.

- Further complicating the mozaic of groups that is Yemen is the lingering effect of British possession of the Aden crown colony for many years.  In the course of that period a lot of Yemenis from Aden attended such schools as the London School of Economics where they became  both atheistical  and left wing politically.  Such people are still on the scene in the cities and continue to be active in the government of a united Yemen.

- The Houthis are a Zeidi Shia reformist movement that draws solely on the Zeidi population of the north.  It does not have and cannot have any friendly relations with the Sunni jihadi groups of the south.  The movement started in the al-houthi clan and has since spread to the two major confederations of Zeidi tribesmen.  The Houthis as a cult prefer not to fight if it can be avoided and captured the capital, Sanaa, with very little violence.  Salih, a Zeidi tribesman understandably sides with the Houthis as opposed to the Sunni, left oriented people now running the government of the United Yemen.

- A government of national unity has been formed among; the Houthis and their army, the national army and the nationalist/left dominated functionaries now in office in Sanaa.  This coalition is actively and successfully fighting the Sunni jihadis.

The US government response to all this is to denounce the Houthis and Salih as interfering with stability and the integrity of the Yemeni state.  This reflects the ignorant, obsessive, insistence of the American foreign policy establishment that "one size fits all" in terms of the norms of governance across the world with the implication that the US embassies in such countries as Yemen are actually pro-consular outposts from which the ambassador/governor guides and controls the province/country in which he/she is located.  When this attitude, derived from notions of "exceptionalism," is accompanied by the IR/Poly Sci paradigm of foreign relations now so evident in the US government, the result is the noxious self-defeating  environment in which US decisions are now made.  pl  

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/14/us-yemen-security-idUSKCN0IY1Q120141114

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar_al-Sharia_(Yemen)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthis

 

Translation of the Houthi logo:

"God is Great

Death to America

Death to Israel

Rejection by God of the Jews

Victory for Islam."

 

You should not take the words in this too seriously.  This is standard populist cant in the Muslim World.  pl

 

Pompeo as imperial proconsul - Part two

 

"In the past couple days, the vice president and the secretary of state have threatened to go to war against Iran and North Korea if those countries’ leaders don’t bend to President Donald Trump’s will.

The nation’s top diplomat, Mike Pompeo, said in a speech on Monday that the United States would “crush” Iran, through economic and military pressure, if it did not change its behavior in the Middle East. Trump’s right-hand man, Mike Pence, told Fox News, on the same day, that North Korea would wind up like Libya “if Kim Jong-un doesn’t make a deal” to get rid of his nuclear weapons. Asked if this could be interpreted as a threat, he said, “Well, I think it’s more of a fact.”

Pence brought up Libya to clarify the recent remarks by Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, who likened an acceptable deal with North Korea to the one struck in the early 2000s with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, who gave up his nascent nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. A few years later, Qaddafi was overthrown in a Western-backed revolt, then killed. North Koreans’ leaders were not amused by the comparison.

Pompeo and Pence issued these threats without the slightest backing of a single foreign ally or international institution. Their statements—along with Trump’s recent abrogation of the Iran nuclear deal, despite the uncontested fact that Iran has abided by its terms—have, in fact, alienated the European leaders who co-signed the deal.

An actual attack on either country would likely have catastrophic consequences. A tangible buildup to war with North Korea would arouse opposition from South Korea and Japan—and, possibly, resistance from China. Sunni Arabs and Israel’s political leadership might welcome an attack on Iran, but it would embroil the United States in an even deeper, deadlier conflict than the war in Iraq. For one thing, Iran is much larger than Iraq; for another, though most of its people despise their regime, history suggests that they detest foreign invaders even more."  Kaplan in Slate

---------------

 1.  To my certain knowledge Libya did not have a "nascent" nuclear program.  What it had was a large collection of crates filled with bits and pieces of technology that it had purchased across the globe.  Surrendering this materiel was intended to give George W. Bush a political ally in the Arab World after 9/11 and in return Libya was let back in the house after a long stint in the dog house.

2.  IMO the fantasy life of the Trumpians in the ME will yield nothing except the possibility of a major US war in the ME, a war fought in furtherance of Israel's paranoia about Iran.

3.  IMO Russia, China, India and the EU WILL NOT yield to Trump's fantasy.

4.  The worst part of this speech is little quoted.  Pompeo said in the speech that we would apply such demands to ANY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD that misbehaves.  pl 

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/05/the-trump-administration-is-threatening-to-destroy-the-regimes-of-two-different-countries-unless-they-bend-to-americas-will.html

Mookie and Nasrullah, a tale of two Shia

(editorial comment)

Muqtada al-Sadr.  When he led the Army of the Mahdi against US occupation of Iraq, American troops called him Mookie.  He was a nasty fat fils a papa and spawn of a distinguished Shia scholar.  In those days he  had very little in the way of religious credentials, but he summoned many who hoped for the return of the Shia Mahdi (perhaps the occulted Imam himself?) . The summoned 12ers often followed him and for a time his followers were a major problem for the US mission civilisatrice in the ME.  After all, how could one "get on" with the region-wide campaign to geld forces hostile to Israel when this pest with his "simple minded" fanatics opposed.  Sooo, a solution was devised.  The US Army and USMC massed their highly trained enlisted snipers against those awaiting the Mahdi and killed near on a thousand of them.   Mookie understood that it was only a matter of time for him personally.  When that happened he decided that Western style politics were not as bad as he had thought and went to Iran to work on his religious qualifications pending a return to politics in Iraq.  Babak will know but I recall that he became something like a Hojjat al-Islam.  Now he is back and somehow unaccountably at least mildly anti-Iranian.  He is the principal winner in the recent parliamentary election along with his communist party allies.  He now has the problem of finding enough coalition partners to form a government.  He cannot be PM because he did not win a seat himself, but will dictate the identity of the victim.  I would not be surprised if the US courts him, seeking a good relationship.  After all, he is supposedly anti-Iranian and that is the touchstone of American policy in the region, that, and indifference to the Palestinians.

Hassan Nasrullah.  Since the last Lebanese general election the US has steadfastly sought to obey Israeli guidance in opposing the presence of the Hizbullah Party, as opposed to the Hizbullah Army in the government of Lebanon.  Feltman and Satterfield were ambassador there throughout that period.  Feltman is a "coach" for Nikki at the UN and David Satterfield is now acting Assistant Secretary of State for the Near Est.  They brought him back from retirement for that.  He must have done an effective job in Lebanon.  In the recent election the March 8 Alliance (Hizbullah, Amal, Aounists, Druze, and various cats and dogs) seem to me to have 55 seats in parliament.  That appears to be a majority, and that coalition will dominate the new parliament.  This is a big problem for the US.  Hizbullah sits on Israel's northern border poised to rain fire and death on a wide range of Israeli targets of both the counter-value and counter-force types.  A big enough bombardment could cripple Eretz Israel for a long time.  Ah, no, I forgot.  Trump and the US branch of the Knesset would immediately vote an immense amount of borrowed money for Israel.  Ah, no, I forgot again. B-52s over the Tabbouleh Line would be another likely response.  pl

Israel will now drive the US to war with Iran.

 

"President Trump said Tuesday that the United States will withdraw from the landmark Iran nuclear agreement and re-impose sanctions on Tehran, a decision that angered allies who fear the prospect of a nuclear arms race in the heart of the Middle East.

 Declaring that "the decaying and the rotten structure" of the 2015 agreement does not block Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Trump said during a speech at the White House that "the Iran deal is defective at its core."

The decision drew criticism from Trump predecessor Barack Obama, who argued in a Facebook post that the deal is working and withdrawing from it is a serious mistake.

"The United States could eventually be left with a losing choice between a nuclear-armed Iran or another war in the Middle East," Obama said."  USA Today

---------------

IMO Israel achieved  a major victory today when the mentally limited US president, a man who cannot deal with complex phenomena, was herded by; the Israelis, their  American Zionist allies and the chickenhawks  now surrounding  him across the goal line to withdrawal of the US from JCPOA.

The imperialists (neocon faction) are SURE that Europe and Russia will kneel before the throne of  Trump the First in his City on the Hill. 

The Israelis want the phantom menace of antisemitism crushed.   The turn of Iran, Syria and Lebanon has now come for a "cleansing."  They want the Iranians made into a pastoral people who have no foreign policy at all.

I am told that Israeli electronic counter-measure units started a massive jamming effort against air defense assets in Syria three days ago.  Israeli ground forces on the Golan Front have been placed on high alert.  IMO a false flag attack on Israel is likely.  pl

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/05/08/trump-set-announce-his-iran-nuclear-deal-decisio

imn-blasts-kerry/589417002/