AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
Upon occasion, in human affairs, it becomes necessary to remind the functionaries that they are not proprietors. This observation has reference to that Euro-American mélange of colossal dummies who self-identify as the foreign policy establishment (FPE) and intelligence community (IC).
FWIW, my best inference at this time: CIA-State desired to arm and train Salafi (Moslem Brotherhood-related) trans-nationals, to include those forming as ISIL, in order to prevent Assad from partnering with Russia and, instead, remain with the Salafi-Shiite Jihad state-sponsored primarily by Iran and Qatar. Drugs and communications (aka money), road and pipe, were next in importance after ideology for inspiring this desire. CIA-State enemy was Christian Russia and USA and Hindu-Christian India, not the effectively-agnostic Assad regime. So CIA-State stirred up the Homs rebellion (Sunnis, potentially Salafist) to keep Assad busy and then looked for ways to arm them off-the-books while training them as well.
They thought they could simmer the Salafis without their boiling over to depose Assad. But they could not do that, so they induced introduction of US Armed Forces to contain Moslem Brotherhood-related Salafis but not annihilate them. This is the definition of endless wars. John McCain was a key enabler of this particular one, in both concept and operation.
Kaddafi was the chosen lamb, possessing copious arms which could be supplied to Salafis across the Mediterranean, and done beyond notice. With Kaddafi murdered, CIA-State immediately began shipping his armory to Power’s, Rice’s, Monaco’s, Clinton’s oppressed peoples (aka Syrian and trans-national Sunni Salafis) whose — paraphrasing Shakespeare –– hearts and minds already they had stirred to mutiny and rage. Transferring his armory from Libya to Salafi Jihadists in Syria (and beyond?) was the reason for murdering Kaddafi.
What happened to Libyans, their country, and their neighbors afterwards . . . well, what difference, at this point, does it make? Who cares about them anyway? So what? They were just unlucky small potatoes, not our concern. CIA-State personnel left to be murdered in Libya a year later? Same, we must think of the greater good. So goes CIA-State’s gangrene logic. Theirs is the logic of frat rats and sorority society, who acquire diplomas but not enlightenment and incline toward tricks rather than truth and stealth rather than strength.
Whatever CIA-State did anywhere in the world was in furtherance of what the US FPE and IC deemed profitable to their — not Americans’ or America’s — welter of — paraphrasing Shakespeare, again — plots, inductions dangerous, drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams, starting with drugs and moving on to money and sex.
All sophistry, no statecraft. Let’s masticate the conservative principles of a tiddlywink’s size, as a test of its nutritional content, meanwhile ignoring the context of the game in which a tiddlywink is of less import than a cupcake at a wedding feast, three waiters at a funeral, or ten mollusks at a horserace.
Russia and Syria are moving to protect Kurds as a means of protecting Syria and Russia, and, US straddles Soleimani’s plan to complete a speed-run between Tehran and Damascus/Beirut.
Soleimani descends, penultimately, from a Kurdish victor over Crusaders and, ultimately, a King of Israel. The patronymic means My God Is The Sun.
The PKK represents a grave threat to the Turkish Republic, and Turks across the political spectrum loathe it.
PKK is Communist. Kurds of other factions are communistic. Of course Obama supported them. And also Turkey insofar as she is now Moslem Brotherhood. And he supported Iran most of all, for personal tribal reasons.
Communists and Salafis/Moslem Brotherhood are sister hegemons but not sisters by blood. Communists are Judeo/Christian, Salafi/Moslem Brotherhood are Moslem, by heritage. (Salafis and Shiites also are sister hegemons but not sisters by blood.)
Kurds have moved way, way south into areas that are not theirs historically, namely rich Euphrates bottom lands and Syrian oil fields. They have not developed full-spectrum diplomatic skills on their own, let Brett McGurk handle much or most of that for them. In other words, hide behind American skirts. McGurk arrogantly and therefore stupidly acquiesced to be played by Kurds for their own ends.
Russia and Syria are coming to Kurds’ defense, no doubt strongly. Both have long history of friendship with Kurds. Let them work it out between Turkey and Iran. Russia also has in deep background desire to liberate Constantinople, at least the European side. Iran wants Highway 2 for a speedway between Tehran and Damascus/Beirut.
Watch developments at Al-Tanf . . . .
Good. Kurds, Russia, EU, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq now get to take responsibility for their affairs in the region, see who can sit at the table with the big boys. Underneath, as the announcement says, this is about responsibility for POWs. US now has it not. Yeah! Way, way underneath, this is about US having now no strategic interests in the region. Again, Yeah!
PaulStPaul to David R. Graham
I’d include the rest of the OIC nations, especially those in the near region, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Tunisia, Morocco, & others.
Then, because that is such a war-torn region the U.S. should not allow any immigrants or “refugees” from that are to come to the U.S. The U.S. may be prepared to provide humanitarian assistance for countries in the region which give safe haven to refugees for a limited period of time.
When there becomes a nation or a group of Islamic nations which are dominate then the U.S. must make clear that we’ll defend our interests against any Islamic threat. That will not be happening this century, however.
David R. Graham to PaulStPaul
Christian Europe’s 15th Century push westward across the Atlantic was to find trade routes to India and China which did not have to cross Moslem-held lands or circle Africa. Christian Europe’s Suez Canal was possible only by subjugating Moslems and forcing them to develop habits and institutions which interface cooperatively with Christian Europeans.
During our lives, west-looking Christian Americans, with at best tepid and always self-serving now-Socialist Europeans’ participation — and with non-unanimous but significant Moslem assistance — undertook to throttle a recrudescence of Moslem neo-barbarism aimed, as always, at tolling or eliminating Euro-American trade with India and China, which are to Europeans the Far East and to Americans the Far West (the difference is significant conceptually and therefore in labors of strategic assessment and policy-development).
My point, long coming to, is that, per your point, Islam’s impulse (to be precise, Asharite/Salafi and Shiia Islam’s impulse) to deconstruct history in favor of extortion, murder, and no comms, like in the good old days, runs against the natural human desire, nay need, to trade this and that, to include thoughts and feelings along with goods and services, in orderly and predictable chains of causation.
As you say, Moslems are to be given to resign themselves to the reality that their days of comprising obstacles to open, fair, and reciprocal trade across the globe are distant past and not returning.
You know, in a way Salafis are accurate in calling us Crusaders. Their epithet has verisimilitude, though not as an epithet. It has been Christians’ intent, since Moslems resolved to toll or close their comms with India and China, to cut a way through or around those Moslem-built obstacles. The Crusades were and remain to accomplish that mission. How much easier, and happier, is it to maintain clean pipes that it is to bustle about plugging them?
GalosGann
It’s Reason, so I assume they half-assed the analysis like they do everything else. The Trump hotel crack shows the level of their “thinking” these days. I expect the noise about it being an uninformed chaotic shambles is wrong, as it always is.
The key fact is that Turkey is a member of NATO. They’re an ally, officially, and NATO has no interest in kicking them out. We’re not going to war with Turkey to protect Syria so our options are pretty limited. The Kurds, unfortunately, are caught in the middle and they’ll just have to figure it out.
Better that the Kurds know they’re on their own than expect the US to protect them when we have no will to do so.
David R. Graham to GalosGann
Your final sentence is true, of course, and raises an important point, I think. Three, maybe even one, years ago US had a will to protect Kurds. Certainly I did, conditionally. But by today that will is gone. Why? I submit it is gone because Kurds have not shown will to stand on their own, united, diplomatically and financially, to take responsibility for their affairs as a nation state would and could. In fact, they have used their military skill and significant unity — and US-based empowerment — to punch into Syrian territory not traditionally theirs to obtain agriculture and oil there.
And more importantly, with some self-serving but intelligent, exceptions, they have not shown full-spectrum diplomatic skill or unity or tried systemically to generate the same. (That is important where nations are concerned.) In fact, they have countenanced internal strifes between fractious leaders, especially among Northern Iraqi Kurds.
I think a combination of circumstances brought us and Kurds, of which there are four groups spanning Syria and Iraq, to this pass. PDJT pulled off their trainer wheels. I think they will manage, and I also think Turkey is in no mood to launch an Operation Barbarossa into Syria at Kurds. Remember, PDJT has Turkey in the palm of his hand financially. And Russians are Kurdish friends also, with no taste for Turkey/Moslem Brotherhood rampancy anywhere. In fact, Russia would like to rescue Constantinople, at least the European side, to the Christian orbit, which would be a good thing to happen, geo-politically.
Upon occasion, in human affairs, it becomes necessary to remind bullies that they do not have matters as sewn up as they represent to themselves that they do. Hurray for the genius of the species!
Update 1: Sundance: Mitch McConnell Warns President Trump Not to Remove Troops from Syria, Or Else
Update 2: Arron Stein does not get it, but he backs into elements of reason willy-nilly nonetheless: U.S. Officials Ignored Trump On Syria And We Are All Paying The Price. War On The Rocks is hyperbolic and easily excitable but useful to scan now and again.
Update 3: Rand Paul: There Are GOP Senators ‘Whose Allegiance Is More to the Deep State’ Than Trump
Lindsey [Graham] has always fought for allowing these to be done secretly. These FISA warrants, even allowing Americans to end up — Americans be caught up in these.
And so this is something that there may be a concern that if we look at the Intelligence state — the deep state — that as we find out things that some of their power may diminish, and so there might be a philosophical difference that he wants them to maintain their power. He wants to maintain the Intelligence Community’s enormous grip on things.
Update 4: Abu Baker al-Baghdadi delenda est.
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