No matter how it appears, Trump isn’t getting out of Syria and Afghanistan

Click here to access article by Stephen Gowans from his blog What's Left. (Bloggers note: I added Bernhard to the list of top geopolitical analysts at 8:27 AM CT on 12/25/2018.)

I regard Stephen Gowans (along with Pepe Escobar, Tony Cartalucci, and Bernhard of Moon of Alabama) as one of the top geopolitical analysts in the world.

Gowans argues, with considerable supporting documentation, that Trump has not changed the fundamental policies of the Empire's imperialist policies, but there is a change in methods to finance foreign military adventure. True to the views which Trump as consistently argued in the past, he wants our allies to bear more of the cost of maintaining these foreign adventures. Gowans further argues that Mattis's resignation was motivated by the opposite view: that the USA must maintain its predominate role. It is a debate between imperialist policies, not imperialism itself. Thus, there is no fundamental shift in the Empire's funding of imperialism. (However, I doubt that USA's allies will be willing to replace US troops in eastern Syria.)

I think that the Mattis camp is right in their opinion that the Trump decision to cut back on the cost to the USA will eventually lead to the weakening of the Empire's control of the world. But Trump is simply recognizing reality: the USA simply can't afford to supply troops and other financing of these adventures any longer. We are too broke to do this. 

Trump's decision puts another marker on the beginning of the end of the US Empire. To be sure, the capitalist ruling classes of the US's subordinate allies will pick up the military and financial burden because they have no other choice. They too have financial problems of their own, and cannot much longer fund such adventures. So, I view Trump's decision to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan in order to shift more of the burden on their partners-in-crime to maintain the Empire as a positive sign in the long run.

Recommended articles for Wednesday, August 8, 2018

• Washington allies with ISIS as great power conflict trumps “war on terror” by Bill Van Auken from World Socialist Web Site.

• Eternity, nature, society and the absurd fantasies of the rich by Kurt Cobb from Resource Insights.

• Trump’s Talk of Isolating Iran Speaks More to US Global Isolation by independent Irish journalist Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation.  

I thoroughly agree with his argument that Trump's sanctions against Iran is very likely to backfire to the detriment of the US economy and ultimately the hegemony of the US Empire over the entire world. However, I would not lay the responsibility for this foreign policy entirely on Trump. I think that the entire American (and much of the British) ruling class supports such a move, and this support would exist whoever was president. However, there is a split among European corporations over this policy, and the policy is likely to sow dissension among Europeans and ultimately impact NATO.

Together with the trade war against China, such policies illustrate the desperation that the American capitalist ruling class are now experiencing. Hopefully they will not do something foolish that will have much worse consequences. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans remain unaware as to the ultimate effects of these policies on their already deteriorating standard of living, and it will be a rude awakening for them.

The End of the "Wars on the Cheap" for the United States

Click here to access article by "The Saker" from The Unz Review.  (Edited for correction on 8/5/2017 at 3:40 PM)

I think he makes a good point that "wars on the cheap" are no longer available to the Empire's ruling capitalist class. He provides a very good description of "wars on the cheap" strategy, and develops a good argument that this strategy, which the Empire's directors have been using so successfully since Nicaragua and the Contras, is over. [Actually CIA support for the rebel Mujaheddin in Afghanistan (later to become Al Qaeda in Iraq) began a little over two years earlier under the Carter administration) He argues that people have learned how to combat the highly sophisticated weapons supplied by the Empire and its allies so that the economic and political costs of the Empire's use of this strategy is becoming prohibitive. And when other powerful nations assist targeted governments such as Russia is doing in Syria, this strategy is completely ineffective. 

What I believe the author doesn't emphasize enough is that the strategy is fundamentally ineffective because highly motivated "boots on the ground" are missing for nearly all of the foreign adventures contemplated by the Empire's directorate. To be sure, people are learning how to fight back against superior equipped forces. However, to me, this suggests that the 9/11 effect of motivating Americans and others to go on the offensive in foreign countries in expensive prolonged wars is coming to an end. Might this reality spur the ruling class directors to create another incident such as 9/11? Stay tuned (def. #2), or better yet, stay politically active and informed.

America is trying to block the path of the “Shiite crescent” from Syria and is preparing the ground for a “new Middle East”.

Click here to access article by Elijah J. Magnier from his website.

If my memory serves me correctly, Magnier is a Kuwaiti analyst of Middle East military and political events. He has also earned the respect of one of America's foremost independent political bloggers at Moon of Alabama (Bernhard) who wrote on one of his posts referring to Magnier: "As he is one of the most knowledgeable experts on the war in Syria and Iraq his thoughts deserve a wider discussion."

The main point that I am trying to convince my readers is that this post of Magnier's and a prior post of mine entitled "Three Green Berets killed by ISIS infiltrator after CIA ignored warnings" (sourced from a website operated by veterans of Special Operations) offers more evidence that the US is training, funding, organizing, and weaponizing terrorist armies in Syria. (That is, if you had any doubts!)

The numerous terrorist armies have been assigned various names--probably to add more confusion to foreigners trying to figure out what is happening in Syria (also their attempt to separate terrorist armies from rebel armies)--have been recruited among Sunnis that had supported President Sadam Hussein and experienced torture at Abu Ghraib operated by the US military in Iraq, from the jails of Saudi Arabia, and dissidents from a variety of other Muslim countries in the Middle East. They have been trained and issued weapons by Saudi Arabia (and other affiliated Gulf feudal kingdoms, the US, and Turkey; and launched from Turkey, western Iraq, and Jordan to destabilize Syria. They have also been supported militarily and medically by Israel. Each of these players continue to have their own reasons for regime change in Syria.

Notice on this map that Sweida is, as Magnier wrote, near the Jordanian border, and Abu Kamal is in eastern Syria which lends support to his argument:

The United States has provided the necessary weapons for these rebel forces – the intensity of the usage of the anti-tank and anti-personnel TOWs laser guided missile is the best indicator. If these forces reach alBu [sic] Kamal (about 700 km from Suwayda), they would stop any possible intervention of Iraqi forces in Syria, under the pretext of hunting down ISIS to prevent their return to Iraq. In fact, this plan is not innocently aiming to disrupt the ISIS connection between Syria and Iraq, but to put an end to the “Shiite crescent”.

This “Shiite crescent” that the Sunni Gulf countries fear – not feared by the United States because it doesn’t represent any threat to the US security – is connecting Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut.

How Come Central Asian States have Become a Breading [sic] Ground for Terrorism

Click here to access article by Jean Perier from New Eastern Outlook. (All I was able to find about the author was this note from The News Doctor's website: "Jean Périer is an independent researcher and analyst and a renowned expert on the Near and Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”. He is likely French and his use of English is rather awkward if not in error in some places. Also "CIS" means Commonwealth of Independent States.)

The author provides a very good understanding of why so many people from mostly Muslim countries are so easily recruited into terrorist armies.

Large criminal groups or other marginal social groups that are turning individuals into would-be-terrorists if they are to be approached by radical recruiters. However, at the heart of any criminal activities lies the economic situation that a state has found itself into. Countries with weak economies and high unemployment rates are virtually pushing the lowest strata of the population into getting engaged in offensive activities. That is where extremist recruiters come in, offering both significant financial benefits to those willing to take the risk of becoming a terrorist and the long-time occupation to all sorts of marginals. If there’s no financing, there’s no terrorism. [my emphasis]

The low cultural level of the marginals that are usually getting recruited by terrorist groups usually can be easily transformed into the fanatical devotions to the ideas of radicalism, that exists with the sole purpose of reducing the costs of needed to stage a terrorist act.

The UNO, the EU and Daesh schizophrenia

Click here to access article by Thierry Meyssan from his blog Voltaire Network (France).

Intergovernmental organisations are supposed to unite the efforts of member-states in order to achieve results that they could not manage alone. We might therefore conclude that the UNO and the EU are coordinating the fight against Daesh. Instead of which, these two organisations are hindering the forces on the ground and masking state support for international terrorism.

I often have difficulties with the English translations of Meyssan's articles (from French), but this essay is much better than most. I only had a problem with the use of "occulting" in this sentence:

It would be a mistake to believe that the occulting of the documents mentioned above is the result of anti-Iraqi, anti-Syrian or anti-Russian prejudice.

I had never heard of this use of "occult" as a verb. So in place of this obscure usage, it would have been much better to have used "excluding" instead. Otherwise I think his essay is well developed with linked references to support his thesis.

Insurgency, conflict, and communalism in Colombia

Click here to access this fairly lengthy interview conducted by Janet Biehl, a companion of Murray Bookchin for many years, with José Antonio Gutiérrez D., a Colombian activist teaching in Ireland.

I have followed events in Colombia sporadically for the past several decades. The country has always impressed me as being steeped in the most extreme form of class war, drug kings, terrorism, brutal paramilitary armies, assassinations of unionists, teachers, organizers, etc. And, of course as usual, the leaders of this country have always enjoyed strong support of US leaders and the US ruling capitalist class. 

The US gives money to Colombia for eradication purposes, but the government mainly uses it against insurgents, in the areas that are under FARC influence, and not in areas controlled by right-wing paramilitaries, who operate in compliance with the national army more often than not.

The point is, it’s the lower chains of production that absorb the risk; the peasants in Colombia and, the small-time street dealers in the US. They bear the brunt of the War on Drugs. The cocaine users on Wall Street are never touched. Nor are the financial advisers, the real estate dealers, all the rest who participate in the most profitable activities in this industry. It’s the peasantry that carries the burden. The narcotics mirage distorts our understanding of the basic reality of class struggle.

Judged by its own stated objectives, the War on Drugs has been a failed policy. .... It succeeds in driving drug prices up. And being a criminal operation is part of what makes the drug industry profitable. It also helps drive peasant farmers off the land, and it allows the US to meddle in Latin American affairs with absolute impunity, as some form of moral crusader.

But this article has given me hope that things are changing for the better politically, at least for the numerous small farmers.

...a new way of doing things is coming into being, although I wish it were more horizontal. But each struggle is what it is, and you have to work with what you have and try to improve every day. But there’s a lot of participation today, far more than in traditional politics. The guerrilla force [FARC] has taken a step back, and that space has been reclaimed by communities working in a more autonomous way. That is starting to happen in many parts of the country. People come to meetings. They can speak freely in the assemblies. 

The US School That Trains Dictators & Death Squads

Click here to access introduction by "Don Quijones" to the following 28:18 video from his website Raging Bull-Shit.

I am on an email list from a human rights watch-dog group--for example, see this--that currently reports on human rights violations in Honduras and Guatemala. I receive almost weekly reports of horrendous violations committed by the militaries and paramilitaries (essentially private terrorist armies) of these countries. It is likely that graduates of this school are involved in these crimes. 

Although the following video report mostly focuses on the activities of this school in the 1980s and 90s in Central America to promote the interests of US and Canadian mining corporations, this report is not merely an historical account because the school is still very active today.

Moving Closer to Europe: ISIL Sets Its Sights on Expansion in Libya

Click here to access article from Sputnik (based in Russia).

The Islamic State has increased its presence in the Mediterranean city of Sirte in Libya from 200 fighters at the start of the year to a force of 5,000 men, including administrators and financiers; the base is the first to be directly established by ISIL outside Syria and Iraq, and brings the terrorists closer to Europe.

This report is corroborated by a similar report in the Wall Street Journal. It has been speculated that the large buildup in Libya has been from ISIS soldiers fleeing from Syria where their forces have been besieged by Russian and Coalition bombing raids, and ground forces of the Syrian and Kurdish armies.