Tag Archives: Isis

Lookout, Buchanan.

There’s no question but that Donald Trump is the worst president in my lifetime, and I’m fairly certain he’s a serious contender for the worst president in American history. In most of the surveys I’ve seen, that position is held by pre-Civil War POTUS James Buchanan (1857 – 1861), but I think Buchanan’s one distinction is under serious threat … he may be surging to second worst by the end of Trump’s current term.

Of course, Trump doesn’t see it that way. His ranging, incoherent cabinet meeting this past Monday gave him the opportunity to crow about the greatest economy in American history, his single-handed defeat of ISIS, his deal-making acumen, and so on. Sure, he got Turkey mixed up with Iraq at one point, but who’s counting? He claims to be fulfilling a promise to bring American troops home, and one wishes that were true, but of course this claim – like everything else that comes out of his festering gob – is a cheap, transparent lie that wouldn’t fool a five-year-old. Like previous failed presidents, he sold the Kurds down the river, and they are paying a heavy price for his carelessness and self-dealing. (Trump freely admitted prior to the 2016 election that he had a conflict of interest with regard to Turkey, referencing his signature twin towers in Ankara; he still makes a lot of his money there.)

Look out, Jim. He's gaining on you.

You would think it would be easy to compare Trump unfavorably to other recent presidents, but the picture does get kind of complicated kind of fast. There was a discussion of this on Morning Joe this week, wherein Joe, Mika, and historian Jon Meacham talked about leaders putting the nation ahead of their own narrow political interests. Sounds good, but the example Joe gave was that of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich in 1998, at the height of the impeachment conflict, working together to find a way “to contain Saddam Hussein.” I think what he’s referring to is the Iraq Liberation Act, passed in October 1998 and signed by Clinton, which provided the foundation for the 2003 war. This act came through at the peak of our sanction regime against Iraq that cost the lives of 300,000 Iraqi children, conservatively – a cost Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described as worth it. In other words, bad example.

Self-dealing and corruption are bad things, to be sure. They are not the only bad things, however, and we do ourselves no favor by forgetting the failed policies of past leaders in an attempt to single out the current president. It is obvious where he comes from, and we must beat him  next year. But we must also accomplish so much more than that one goal. Status quo ante is not enough.

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jp

The politics of out.

Well, I was half prepared to do a post on General Flynn this week, but with the advent of Trump’s apparently unilateral decision to pull U.S. forces out of Syria and the nearly apoplectic response, it seems more appropriate to concentrate on the broader matter of our foreign policy and how it plays out in what passes for our national conversation.

Look at the shiny, shiny thing.I think it’s worth saying at the outset that I have no idea of what our military’s mission is in Syria. I keep hearing that it’s essentially the same as the one we’re pursuing in Afghanistan – training and equipping a local force to fight the war for us – but that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. It is, in fact, a formula for another unending deployment, one that has the support of most of the foreign policy voices in the media. Much of the criticism of Trump’s abrupt decision has been from a right militarist perspective, though one that is broadly shared, much like the criticism of his Korea policy. The only argument that has merit, in my view, is that we will be leaving the Syrian Kurds twisting in the wind – something we have done to the Kurds in past decades as well (ask Kissinger). Maybe that is worth keeping 2,000 plus U.S. troops in Syria, if protecting Kurdish fighters is in fact what they’re doing, but as always, we are pondering policy stacked on top of bad policy decades in the making.

The foreign policy talking heads that populate Morning Joe and other shows see this withdrawal as great news for Russia (aka Putin) and emboldening ISIS, Iran, Hezbollah, etc. No mention of the fact that the government we stood up in Iraq is now busily executing thousands Sunnis they breezily accuse of being in league with the Islamic State. That is next-generation ISIS in the making, folks, as that is the process the produced the first generation. These movements do not come out of nowhere. Al Qaeda was spawned by our intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s, as was the Taliban. Hezbollah was the product of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. ISIS grew out of Sunni Iraqis who found themselves on the wrong side of the U.S. occupation and subsequent Shia-dominated central government. On and on.

The fact is, we need to change the political calculus around getting out of conflicts. We can discuss the best way to do that – by applying more diplomatic and economic pressure on actors like Turkey, etc., but we need to be able to end these wars. Trump is doing it for all the wrong reasons, in a haphazard and asinine way, but he’s doing it. That after helping to wreck Syria beyond repair. We just should never have been there in the first place … and we need to stop doing this shit.

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jp

Friends and enemies.

Our friends the Saudis are planning to execute a woman for being a dissident. It’s a little hard to imagine how you can be a woman in Saudi Arabia and NOT be considered a dissident, but there you have it. The method will be beheading, which, as I recall, Trump decried furiously during the 2016 campaign as an aberrant ISIS tactic drawn from the middle ages – no one has seen this in centuries! Actually, it’s the preferred method of execution in one of your favorite dictatorships, Mr. Trump. Still, it’s hard to blame the president for this relationship; we’ve been cozy with the Kingdom for decades, regardless of what they do, often bending our own foreign policy to suit their tastes (as long as it remains within the narrow limits of our own imperial policies).

New leaders, same old handshakeWhy? Is it just oil? Well, that’s a complicated issue. Sure, Saudi Arabia wouldn’t have been the center of attention for so long if their chief export had been nutmeg. Their ample supply of easy-to-extract, cheap-to-process crude oil was famously described by our policymakers as a source of enormous strategic power and perhaps the greatest material prize in the history of the world. But it’s that “strategic power” that is the key, as I’ve mentioned previously in these pages. We didn’t need Saudi oil in the 1950s and we don’t need it today, but we do need to have influence and a potential veto over it to maintain our leverage over other nations.

So Saudi is our “friend”, despite the fifteen 9/11 hijackers, and Iran is our “enemy”. Iran is Saudi’s enemy for a range of reasons, not least among them the fact that Saudi has a sizable Shia minority which they fear may be emboldened by a strong Iran. So that puts the Kingdom on the side of the U.S. government and the Israelis (another “friend”). Both Israel and Saudi would love to see us send our troops into Iran … because that’s what friends are for? It sounds chaotic to describe in this brief fashion, but there is a cold imperial logic to this framework – one that opposes secular Arab nationalism, opposes Shia resistance in all of its forms, and supports the enrichment of key U.S. based industries; namely fossil fuels and military technologies, both heavily subsidized by American taxpayers.

So it should come as no surprise that Trump supports an extremist state that beheads its citizens and flies planes into our buildings. In this sense, he’s a real traditionalist.

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jp

Donnie’s excellent adventure.

It’s been quite a week for our low-rent gropen-fuhrer, and as of this writing it’s only Wednesday. First we saw him re-tweet Euro-fascist videos, then excoriate the FBI in response to Flynn’s indictment, followed by a full-throated endorsement of Alabama Senate Candidate, state Supreme Court Justice (twice removed), and mall stalker (many times removed) Roy Moore on Monday, opening of vast Western lands to oil and gas development on Tuesday, and U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on Wednesday. Throw in little details like the travel ban being reinstated by the Supreme Court Tuesday, his allies in the Senate passing a draconian “tax” bill (larded with much else besides) the weekend before, and stepped up provocative war games on the Korean peninsula this week, and you’ve got … well … just what you voted for, America.

Trump lighst the fuse. Again.The Jerusalem announcement basically lights a fuse that’s been rolled out and set for decades. As Trump pointed out, Congress has voted for this more than once, passing resolutions in support of the shift by large bipartisan margins. In terms of the fundamentals, it’s a minor step, but as a symbolic gesture, it has the potential for disaster. I’m certain it is already being used as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda, ISIS, Al-Shabab, and what have you. Another tremendous gift to jihadists the world over. Trump may as well take out full-page ads for them, plaster billboards all around the Muslim world, and flood Facebook with pop-ups – Al Baghdadi wants you!

There’s a temptation to frame this clusterfuck as something uniquely Trump, but that doesn’t even begin to hold water. Trump is truly a reflection of America’s worst tendencies, a fun-house mirror for us to peer into with fascination and horror. But having a drunk at the wheel of the wrecking machine that is Imperial America is only marginally different than having a college professor in the driver’s seat. Yes, Trump is worse than even a neoliberal Democratic administration – court appointments and judicial decisions alone confirm that much. But America as it is currently configured is designed to kill and destroy on a massive scale, regardless of who is running the show. Destruction is the default position, and like any large exploitative enterprise, this machine has its ways of perpetuating itself. Every family Trump (or Obama) shatters in Yemen or Syria or Iraq generates more hatred against us. Our bombs and policies like the Jerusalem decision are investments in future conflicts that will fuel the military machine long after we’re gone.

It’s not hopeless, people. We live in a democratic society. We can change how we do things, but we have to get started … like, now.

luv u,

jp

 

Peachfuzz bridge.

It is astonishing to see how astonished people are at the President’s last couple of weeks. Reality check: we elected Donald Trump President of the United States. That’s why this administration is unloading like a clown car at a funeral. There’s no other way for me to put this: the man is a hyper-narcissistic dolt with the emotional maturity of a 7-year-old. He is temperamentally unfit for this or any political office. He has not even a vague understanding of the structure or traditions of our constitutional system, and has no interest in learning. Verily, he has little interest in anything other than large piles of money. When he told the Russian ambassador about the intel on ISIS , that was probably the first time that information had offered any utility from his perspective – he could use it to impress someone, at least. Otherwise, he has no interest in intelligence briefings and confines himself to a single page of bulleted items that he proceeds to ignore.

Captain PeachfuzzSo, what to do about this dolt? It’s hard to imagine the GOP-led House taking up impeachment proceedings, even with this level of ludicrousness. Investigations can swirl around Trump and criminal accusations may mount, but basically the only process by which he can be removed from office is a political one, and that is a non-starter with regard to a caucus that sees him as a signing machine. I’m thinking the republicans in the House and Senate will use something like the Captain Peachfuzz approach with Trump.

How does that work? Simple. On Rocky and Bullwinkle, all Captain “Wrongway” Peachfuzz’s crew needed to do was create a phony bridge, lead the captain into it, and then go about their normal duties. Captain Peachfuzz would be shouting commands, pulling levers, twisting knobs and the like, none of which were attached to anything. THAT’S what we need for Trump. Of course, we would have to avoid the problem that Peachfuzz’s crew encountered when the crackpot captain wandered by mistake onto the real bridge one day and started driving the ship like the proverbial drunken sailor. Of course, that’s what we have now, right?

Phony up a war room for the guy, people. Do it now before it’s too late. Your nation will thank you.

luv u,

jp

A look overseas.

Another turn at the fire hose. Man, this is kind of dizzying. We’ve just seen a week in which the President has essentially undone the clean power plant rules, scuttled the Paris Accords on climate change, approved the Keystone XL pipeline project, and escalated his attacks on undocumented residents and on the poor miserable souls in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen who cope with our bombs on a daily basis. I could write five posts, but that would take the rest of human history, so suffice with this sorry tirade on foreign policy.

Making Mosul great (again).I didn’t want to let the week go by without saying something about the hundred-plus killed in a coalition raid in Mosul. Civilian deaths have been on the rise in that conflict since our military began its air assault on the more densely populated western side of Mosul. Well, that’s predictable enough. We are fighting the legacy of the previous decade’s catastrophic policy, which was itself a response to another previous decade’s catastrophic policy, and so on. ISIS or ISIL is Al Qaeda in Iraq 2.0, drawing on ex Baathist military personnel for many of its cadres, as well as disaffected Sunni youth, targeted by both the U.S. and the Baghdad government. The destruction/”liberation” of Mosul will not change the fundamental problems that prompted these people to turn, in desperation, to the extremists they once fought against.

We are also doubling down in Syria, now with hundreds of Special Forces on the ground. And as actual journalists like Anand Ghopal have reported, the U.S. is effectively fighting in tandem with the Syrian government, particularly in places like Palmyra, where nominally pro-western groups like the Free Syrian Army cannot operate. Our bombers hit a mosque a few weeks back – like the Mosul raid, our military denied it, then gradually admitted it. Each one of these generates more converts to the jihadi cause, and contributes to another catastrophic policy that we will be grappling with in the next decade.

Then there’s the bleeding sore that is Yemen. The Intercept’s Iona Craig has reported extensively on the Al Ghayil raid that killed dozens of civilians in a mountainside village on the pretext that Al Qaeda leadership were in hiding there. They weren’t – some low-level operatives were reportedly in one of the buildings. The village has been in the thick of the Yemeni civil war, and residents thought the U.S. attackers were Houthi rebels – hence the armed resistance. Again … this “highly” successful raid appears to have aided the side we officially oppose in that fight, though that’s a minor consideration in light of the heavy casualties suffered by the people of Al Ghayil.

Only eight weeks in and these conflicts are getting even more septic. Not a good sign.

luv u,

jp

Week to forget.

Another one of those weeks when it’s hard to know what to focus on. So many disasters and revelations in such a short time, I’m guessing that many of the media folks who took this week off (and you all know who you are) are chomping at the bit to get back. I, for one, am disgusted by what’s happened this week, and frankly I can’t find anything positive to say about it.

It keeps on giving.It was a week that started with the obscene bombing in Baghdad, the death toll for which has exceeded 250. As has long been the case, this provoked some small response in American culture because of the magnitude of the crime, but the degree of “hair-on-fire” apoplexy about terrorism has been relatively minimal due to the cultural distance between Iraq and the United States. As these attacks move closer culturally to the U.S., our politicians get more worked up. Forget this export we call “freedom” – that bombing is our gift to the Iraqi people and it just keeps on giving.

Decisions were handed down on Hillary Clinton’s damn email and Tony Blair’s god-awful warmongering. Guess which one got more coverage in the U.S. It gives you some notion of what’s important to our great leaders. They lose their minds over some freaking private email server, but news about the enormous case against Blair and Bush over the Iraq invasion – the act that spawned the bombing I spoke of earlier – is met with a collective yawn.

What really disgusted me, beyond the sickening loss of life in Baghdad, Turkey, and Bangladesh, are the domestic shootings that made their way into the news cycle this week. The senseless killing of Philando Castile, caught on his girlfriend’s smartphone, is just sickening, as was the point-blank shooting of Alton Sterling – both incidents illustrating that there is no way for African Americans to feel safe.

Cap that off with the vicious, calculated assassination of five police officers in Dallas (six other officers wounded, as well as one civilian) during what was otherwise a very peaceful, very positive protest march, and it’s clear that we have some serious challenges before us. By all accounts, the police in Dallas behaved very well during the protest, which makes this last piece all the more painful. My hope is that the entire Dallas community can come together and show the rest of us how to overcome violence with compassion.

So yes, you can have this week, totally. I’m out.

luv u,

jp

Rights and wrongs.

Remarkable week in so many ways. Where to begin? At the beginning.

Attack at Attaturk Airport. The horrendous bombing in Turkey was reportedly the work of three Central Asian extremists, presumably with ISIS though the group has not as of this writing taken responsibility for the attack. Two things come to mind in the wake of this atrocity. The first is that the Syrian conflict is this decade’s gathering place for psycho-fanatical killers from every corner of the region, just as Iraq was in the 2000s, Bosnia in the 1990s, and Afghanistan in the 1980s; hence, jihadists from Uzbekistan as well as the gulf. Second, ISIS is in a love-hate relationship with the Turkish government like the one between the Taliban and Pakistan. This is a monster Turkey (with our support) helped to create, and tragically it’s preying on their good people. Sickening.

Tenney: NY-22's own little Trump cloneRestored Right to Choose. The Whole Women’s Health decision by the Supreme Court has moved the needle in a positive direction on the abortion issue for the first time in many years. I’m hoping that this is the death knell for this generation of TRAP (targeted restrictions on abortion providers) laws taking hold across the country over the past few years. What the anti-choice crowd will try next is anyone’s guess. Another example of why, on the basis of the Supreme Court alone, it is well worth bothering to get out and vote the right way this fall. Just saying.

Primary Colors. Speaking of voting, New York had its federal office primary … another in a series of primary days in the Empire State. What a stupid system! In any case, my home congressional district (NY 22) only had a contest on the Republican side. Our incumbent is the centrist Republican Richard Hanna; those vying to replace him in his party are all significantly to his right: Claudia Tenney, who once referred to Oneida Indian leader Ray Halbritter as “spray-tan Ray” on Twitter; businessman Steven Wells, whose ridiculous commercials appeared to suggest that he would keep ISIS out with a chain link fence at the border; and some other conservative asshole. Tenney won, so now our district stands a fair chance of lurching significantly to the right of where it’s been pretty much my entire life. Tenney will run against Kim Myers, a mainstream Democrat from the Binghamton area.

Suggest people get their asses out and vote for this Myers person, even if she’s not a white-hot progressive. The last thing we need is to be represented in Washington by an anti-choice bigot like Tenney.

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jp

The end, again.

Troops are rolling into Fallujah once again, under the cover of our air force and whatever deadly ordinance it’s dropping this time around. Last time, during the “second battle of Fallujah,” our arsenal included depleted uranium and white phosphorus. Fallujah was one of the first points of resistance to our 2003 invasion. U.S. forces rolled into town and set up shop in a school building. There were protests about their presence as well as their use of the facility and on April 28, 2003 and again two days later, members of the U.S. 82nd Airborne fired on the crowd, killing 17 Iraqis. (See this synopsis in TruthOut, drawing on reporting by Jeremy Scahill.) That was the start of a long and beautiful friendship.

What "success" looks like.Today, the Baghdad government is ripping Fallujah yet another new asshole. It’s worth recalling that the ISIS militants they are fighting in that unfortunate city are mostly disaffected Sunnis, the most senior of which were probably part of Saddam’s army, the younger ones simply kids with no future, like so many Gazans or West Bank Palestinians. Malcolm Nance reminds us that, prior to our 2003 invasion, there were no Al Qaida to speak of in Iraq; after the invasion, they numbered in the low thousands. It wasn’t until the utter failure of the post-invasion regime to incorporate Sunnis into society (and, yes, the arrest and disappearance of many at the hands of the Iraqi security forces) that these young people became fodder for opportunistic Salafi organizations like ISIS.

Trouble is, we don’t remember much about even our most recent wars, let alone those fought decades ago. I heard an interview on NPR today with two New York Times reporters based in Beirut, reporting on the Syrian conflict, and they suggested that the rules of war are being broken in an unprecedented way in Syria. My first thought upon hearing this was, hadn’t these people heard of, say, Fallujah in 2004? Then a few minutes later in the broadcast, the reporters said one of them had covered the second Fallujah battle. So …. were we following any rules of war worth mentioning? Do we ever? Did we in Vietnam, really? Where did the Phoenix program fit into those “rules”? How about Operation Ranch Hand?

The Syrian conflict is horrible, truly. It won’t stop until the belligerents and all interested parties (including us) let go of their maximal objectives. But let’s not pretend it’s uniquely horrible. Not when we have the rubble of Fallujah to consider.

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jp

 

And the winner is …

It seems like just yesterday we were staring at a line of 20 or more lunatics vying for the Republican nomination. And now, a few short months later, it’s all over bar the shouting. And there will be shouting, make no mistake. Donald Trump is now the presumptive nominee of the Republican party, as per Reince Priebus, and his two last competitors, “lyin'” Ted Cruz and “non-descript” John Kasich have dropped out of the race. Poor Kasich … he never did well enough even to get a decent Trump nickname. That’s got to hurt.

Trump's secret plan to stop ISIS.Kidding aside, we have a major problem – namely that one of the two people that can possibly become president of the United States is now Donald Trump. With regard to governing policy, foreign or domestic, this man is a monumental ignoramus and a congenital liar. Worse, he engages in these incendiary rants that stoke the flames of hatred and bigotry, recalling a violent past that he often invokes when urging his flock towards toughness. Perhaps most infuriating is the story about General Pershing and the execution bullets dipped in pig’s blood. Trump’s recounting goes something like this: We need to be tough, like in the good old days. Pershing was tough – he both desecrated and executed captured Muslims during the conflict in the Philippines at the turn of the last century. Ergo, we must follow the same standard as Pershing and abandon our squeamish “political correctness”.

Interestingly, none of the news networks appeared to look much closer at his story, nor the context within which it would have occurred. The American takeover of the Philippines was one of the bloodiest colonial conflicts we have ever engaged in. No one seems all that bothered by this. What I hear more about from the mainstream media is how Trump is likely to be “on the left” of Hillary Clinton on trade and on foreign policy. That is a hard circle to square. Yes, Clinton is a virtual neocon on a lot of this stuff and has an enthusiasm for intervention that outstrips that of her husband. But Trump is no pacifist. When he talks about destroying ISIS, it’s pretty clear what he means, and his hostility towards trade deals is conditional and not very principled. The left will have no influence on him whatsoever. But Hillary? That depends on us.

We will be working against the election of Trump this fall – that much is for sure. It’s likely to be a tough slog, but it’s one that must be won. We cannot afford a Trump presidency, and that particularly applies to the more economically insecure among us.

luv u,

jp