Tag Archives: Al Qaeda

‘Sacrificial Lamb’: US Troops in Syria and Iraq is a Colonial-Style Occupation Ready to Sacrifice Their Lives for Israel in a Future Middle East Conflict

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By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

The Yemen News Agency (SABA) reported that “A U.S. military official has revealed that U.S. and coalition forces have been subjected to at least 97 attacks in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17 until Wednesday.”  A US official confirmed “that the attacks came at 45 attacks in Iraq, in addition to 52 attacks in Syria.”  In a statement provided by the Islamic Resistance, it said that “the targeting of the US occupation base in al-Shadadi comes in response to the crimes of the enemy in the Gaza Strip.”  The Iraqis and Syrians are legitimately angry that Israel is getting away with genocide in Gaza and that the US government still has troops occupying their lands.  Since the war in Iraq began, the US and its allies including Israel has brought more death and destruction to the Middle East and Africa including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Palestine. 

They see US troops as occupiers just like the Israelis who have been occupying Palestinian land since 1948, so why is the mainstream media surprised that there has been an increase of attacks since the October 7th incident between Hamas and Israel.  The US government has violated international laws and even their own constitution by allowing US troops to remain in Syria. In Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter“ All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” The US government’s own constitution states that “The Congress shall have Power . . .] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.”  Since Washington’s political establishment is beholden to Israel’s agenda, it decided to illegally occupy Syria when war criminal and former US President, Barack Obama declared that Syrian President, Bashar al Assad had lost his legitimacy and that he “must go.” Since then, the US congress still has not declared war, so why are US troops still in Syria? 

Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad never invited US troops to help fight the “Islamic State” known as ISIS, besides it was the US and Israel who funded and armed the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, and other terrorist organizations in the first place.  So, fighting so-called “terrorism” was not the intended goal. 

The US is in Syria to play a significant part of a future war against the Syrian and Iraqi governments and the rest of the Middle East including the resistance on behalf of Israel.  The other reason that US troops are still in Syria is what the former US President Donald Trump had admitted publicly, to “Take the Oil.”    

There are about 900 US troops, including an unspecified number of private contractors and US Special Forces who have been deployed to Syria’s northeastern oil fields including Al-Tanf in the south blocking the Syrian government’s energy supplies. 

The pretext of fighting terrorism is pure propaganda.  The US-NATO Alliance, Israel, and to an extent, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, all played a significant role against Syria that began in 2011 that killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians thus turning millions more into refugees in the process.  It is internationally known that it was mainly the Russian military, Iranian-backed militias who played a major role in the defeat of ISIS.  One of the main reasons that the US is still in Syria is ‘Regime Change’ since it was Washington’s bi-partisan bureaucrats who allocated billions of dollars’ worth of arms to ISIS since the war began. It is well known that members of ISIS are mostly veterans from Al Qaeda and other linked terrorist organizations from Iraq, Afghanistan and other war zones from around the world.

US Troops in Syria and Iraq are Open Targets, Seen as Illegitimate

The corporate mainstream media reports daily on US occupation troops in Syria and Iraq being open targets by various resistance groups since Israel declared war on Hamas.  Al Mayadeen recently had a report based on numerous attacks on US bases in Syria, ‘Iraqi Resistance targets three US occupation bases in Syria ‘reported on several attacks on US bases in Syria and “confirmed that the US occupation military base in the Conoco gas field north of Deir Ezzor in Syria was targeted twice in less than an hour.”  It was also confirmed that “US forces at the al-Shadadi base in Syria was also targeted” and that the Islamic Resistance in Iraq announced in a statement that it targeted the Tanf occupation base and another occupation base in the Rukban camp using drones and achieved direct hits.” The resistance said that “the drones directly hit their targets in the two American bases.”  

The attacks have become a regular occurrence since Israel declared war on Gaza which means war on everyone who is Palestinian.  “Hashem al-Kindi, the head of the Naba Strategic Studies Group, told Al Mayadeen that “the Islamic Resistance in Iraq has carried out more than 70 strikes on American bases, and the escalation is ongoing” adding that “the Resistance in Iraq “used new weapons with long ranges, and it will also escalate by targeting Israel,” confirming that it “can push the confrontation to ranges unknown to the enemy.” 

The Iraqi resistance considers “US occupation bases in Syria and Iraq as legitimate targets” since the US supports Israel unconditionally including its genocide of the Palestinian people.  “On a similar note, the Pentagon said in a statement that the rate of attacks carried out against US personnel in Iraq and Syria has increased by 45% in the past three weeks.” 

FOX News, CNN Ignores Illegal US Occupation and Promotes a War Against Iran

The US mainstream media reports daily on how US troops are being targeted by “Iranian proxies.”  A report by the Zionist-run FOX News, ‘US military bases in Iraq, Syria attacked again, bringing total to at least 90 since Oct. 17’ blames Iran who is Washington’s and Israel’s main adversary in the Middle East, “Iran holds considerable sway in Iraq, and a coalition of Iran-backed groups brought Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to power in October 2022. At the same time, there are some 2,000 U.S. troops in Iraq under an agreement with Baghdad, mainly to counter the militant Islamic State group.”  In another article by FOX News from May 26, 2023, ‘Iran regime close to getting nuclear bomb, but what’s the holdup?’, that “Iran has moved dangerously close to enriching weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb, but the regime has not yet crossed the critical threshold of declaring it has built an atomic weapon.”  

Fox News reached out to Lisa Daftari, an Iran expert and editor-in-chief of the Foreign Desk and said that “If there is reason to believe that there are a number of retardants that have put a pause in their weapons development, they’d relate back to targeted attacks by the U.S. and Israel, who clearly are very much concerned about stopping the mullahs” she continued “Israel has reportedly conducted at least two dozen targeted operations on Iran’s regime in the last 15 or so years, including drone attacks, cyberattacks, if you recall Stuxnet and assassinations of key players in Iran’s nuclear program.” 

Jason Brodsky, policy director of the U.S.-based United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI), was also interviewed by FOX News and said that “I think Iran’s leadership to date has calculated the costs of doing so would outweigh the benefits at this juncture — mainly a destructive attack which targets its entire nuclear infrastructure,” he said that Iran’s leadership is emboldened and will cross international red lines, “But my concern is that calculus risks changing as the U.S. and Europe’s non-response to Iran’s nuclear escalation over the last two years — for example 60% enrichment and production of uranium metal — has emboldened Tehran’s leadership to continue testing international red lines.”  The article mentions that “The United States military and Israel Defense Forces launched a joint drill, Juniper Falcon, in February. The IDF’s website stated, “The exercise tested collective U.S.-Israel readiness and strengthened the interoperability between the two militaries,” the IDF stated on its website after the drill.” 

An article from CNN published on December 8th follows the same line, ‘Iran-backed militia vows more attacks after US Embassy in Iraq comes under fire’ said that “On Friday morning local time, a multi-mortar attack was launched against the US Embassy compound in Iraq, a US official told CNN. There were no injuries or infrastructure damage reported. Hours later, US and coalition forces came under attack three more times – once in Syria, and twice in Iraq – in a mix of rocket and drone attacks.”  The article mentions a man by the name of Abu Alaa al-Walae who is the commander of the Iraqi Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada and said that he “did not claim responsibility for the attacks but said later Friday that they “reject talk about stopping or easing operations as long as Zionist crimes continue in Gaza and the American occupation continues in Iraq.” 

Syrian and Iraqi resistance groups do not need permission from Iran to attack US bases who are illegally occupying their territories to supposedly fight terrorists, it’s all a lie.  They know that the US troops who are in Syria and Iraq are there to counter Israel’s enemies once a major war breaks out.  Stealing the oil and controlling the political landscape is a bonus for Washington and its Big Oil conglomerates.

Washington is Sacrificing their Own Troops at the Behest of Israel

The bottom line is that Washington is preparing for a major war in the Middle East to save Israel by sacrificing its own US troops.  The Jerusalem Post published what US Air Force Third Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Richard Clark had said in 2018:     

Washington and Israel have signed an agreement which would see the US come to assist Israel with missile defense in times of war and, according to Haimovitch, “I am sure once the order comes we will find here US troops on the ground to be part of our deployment and team to defend the State of Israel.”

And those US troops who would be deployed to Israel, are prepared to die for the Jewish state, Clark said, “We are ready to commit to the defense of Israel and anytime we get involved in a kinetic fight there is always the risk that there will be casualties. But we accept that – as every conflict we train for and enter, there is always that possibility,” he said

The US occupation in Syria and Iraq is about assisting Israel’s geopolitical agenda and we must include the US strategic goal to control the abundant natural resources and the political landscape of the Middle East.

If the US and Israel were to be victorious in a world war which is highly unlikely, governments in the Middle East and Africa will be forced to accept Western and Israeli dominance indefinitely, if not, those who want their country to be free and sovereign will be subject to regime change or will face threats of being bombed back to the stone age just like what they are doing to Gaza. The obvious is right in front of our eyes.

The US-Nazi Connection since World War II: From Inspiring the Third Reich to Supporting the Neo-Nazis of Ukraine

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By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

The mafia in Washington, London, Brussels and Tel Aviv would do anything to keep their “Unipolar World Order” project in place, in fact, there are getting desperate to hold on to whatever remaining powers they have left even if it means collaborating with its worst enemies. There is a well-known ancient proverb “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” that rings true today especially since Washington, the CIA, the Military-Industrial Complex, along with Mossad and NATO have supported well-known terrorists including the Islamic State (ISIS), Al Qaeda, and other groups to overthrow governments they don’t approve of especially in the Middle East. However, their support of terrorists who were their enemies at one time or another did not start with their regime change wars against Syria or Libya, the idea of supporting its enemies began during and after World War II when the US government recruited Ukrainian Nazis to counter their new enemy, the Soviet Union. What a strange turn of events knowing that the Soviets who fought the Nazis with their American and European allies during the war were seen as a new threat. Washington and the rest of their mafia cohorts used the Nazis back then as they are now using jihadi terrorists today in their war for world domination no matter what the costs are in the long-term.

So who were the Nazis and why was Washington interested in recruiting them in the first place? For starters, the Nazis had members involved in several scientific and technological disciplines that the US government was interested in and would later utilize them to produce all sorts of weapons of war and psychological operations for its future military operations, but we will get into further details shortly. However, the Nazis did follow a far-right fascist ideology that was authoritarian that coincided with ultranationalist principals that rejected anarchy, communism, democracy, republicanism, socialism and other forms of government that was seen as a threat to their rising power. And as insane as this sounds, the Nazis also used scientific racism, or what we can call eugenics to manipulate human gene pools by separating certain groups of people between those who are considered inferior to advancing those who were deemed superior.  Then there is the element of antisemitism that was prevalent within the Third Reich. Nazism has led to genocide, torture, forced sterilizations, imprisonment of its opposition, deportations and other atrocities among those who did not fit the profile of being an ultra-nationalist especially if you did not have the racial qualities that they demanded for their movement. 

If we look back into the history of fascism, its roots were based in Europe as historians have claimed that Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte ‘aka’ Napoleon III who ruled France with an iron fist from 1848 to 1852 had the elements of a fascist/Nazi state. 

America’s Extermination of Red Savages was Adolf Hitler’s Inspiration 

Adolf Hitler, Germany’s new chancellor took the lead in imposing fascist policies in his country when he came to power. Hitler’s allies also known as the Axis Alliance, Benito Mussolini of Italy and Hirohito of Imperial Japan had similar policies.   

So, what inspired this sort of ideology?  Where did the Nazis get their inspiration from?  It’s a known fact that Adolf Hitler admired America’s ways of dealing with certain groups in their short history from the Jim Crow laws against African Americans to the indigenous populations who were sent to prison camps during the American Indian wars.  John Toland’s ‘Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography’ states that “Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history,” and that “He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination—by starvation and uneven combat—of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.”  So, when did the idea of a ‘concentration camp’ came into effect? It was under US President and Democrat, Andrew Jackson who introduced “emigration depots” as part of his Indian Removal Act of 1830 where tens of thousands of Indigenous peoples who were forced into what was called ‘prison camps’ and they included the Seminoles, Cherokee, Choctaw, Muscogee, and other tribal nations mainly in the Southern part of the United States and that included Alabama and Tennessee. 

One other element of how the US model of governance that influenced Nazi Germany was the Jim Crow Laws.  James Q. Whitman, a legal scholar and author of ‘Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law’ wrote an introduction on how the Nazis viewed American race laws:

In the opening minutes, Justice Minister Gurtner presented a memo on American race law, which had been carefully prepared by officials of the ministry for purposes of the gathering; and the participants returned repeatedly to the American models of racist legislation in the course of their discussions.  It is particularly startling to discover that the most radical Nazis present were the most ardent champions of the lessons that American approaches held for Germany.  Not, as we shall see, in this transcript the only record of Nazi engagement with American race law.  In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s many Nazis, not least Hitler himself, took a serious in the racist legislation of the United States.  Indeed in Mein Kampf Hitler praised America as nothing less than “the one state” that had made progress toward the creation of a healthy racist order of the kind the Nuremberg Laws were intended to establish. 

My purpose is to chronicle this neglected history of Nazi efforts to mine American race law for inspiration during the making of the Nuremberg Laws, and to ask what it tells us about Nazi Germany, about the modern history of racism, and especially about America     

The Nazis saw US race laws as a suitable policy that they can implement on various groups such as the Jews who were a wealthy and powerful class of people which many Germans despised at the time, became non-citizens.  Native Americans, Filipinos, African Americans, and others were also considered non-citizens even if they lived in the US or its colonized territories.  But there was one aspect of US race laws that interested the Nazis and that was the anti-miscegenation laws that prohibited interracial marriages in about 30 US states where those who broke the law in the US received a severe criminal punishment.  US-inspired race laws were imposed on German society with the establishment of the Nuremberg laws that was passed on September 15th, 1935.  

Operation Paperclip: Why the US Government Recruited Nazis After WWII

The rumor of a nuclear war is more prevalent today more than ever before since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has taken place.  Ukraine’s actor, oh, excuse me, I meant President, Volodymyr Zelensky has called for “preventive strikes” to deter Russia from using nuclear weapons although he backtracked the claims shortly after, but he did call for for the West to hit Russia with nuclear weapons for preventative measures which was extremely dangerous rhetoric coming out of his mouth.  Speaking of nuclear weapons, do you know who originally proposed the idea of placing nuclear bombs on ballistic missiles in the first place?  It was an idea that was derived from Nazi rocket scientists who was hired by the US government during World War II.  The original program was called Uranprojekt or the “Uranium Project” for the purpose of developing nuclear technology to build weapons and reactors.  

In the last years of World War II, US intelligence agencies and the Military-Industrial Complex secretly transferred more than 1,600 Nazi scientists and their families from Germany who were experts in various fields that included rocket science, aerodynamics, chemical weapons, and medicine in what was called Operation Paperclip.  There were Nazis working for the US military who also prepared intelligence briefs creating fear and panic that the Soviets were going to take over the world which was over-exaggerated.  But what the US government feared most was that the Soviet Union under Operation Osoaviakhim with more than 2,500 former Nazi scientists and engineers who were recruited in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany (SBZ) and the Soviet sector of Berlin would be one step ahead of the US government in weapons development and other areas. 

One important historical fact about America’s Nazi Scientists was the recruitment of Wernher von Braun or known by his full name as Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun who was a member of the Nazi Party and the Allgemeine SS or the “General SS” which was a major branch of Nazi Germany’s paramilitary forces.  Wernher von Braun was also the head of developing rocket technology who is considered the pioneer of rocket and space technology in the US.  He was also the chief architect of the Saturn V super heavy-lift launch vehicle that allegedly helped launch the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon.  

Nazi scientists also helped the US government and the CIA develop chemical and biological weapons programs that included the use of sarin gas and other dangerous weapons of war including VX (nerve agent) and of course, the most used biological weapon during the Vietnam war, Agent Orange.  So, in other words, the US government hired Nazi scientists for their knowledge of creating weapons of mass destruction that has inflicted damage on various populations around the world since then.  During the Vietnam war, the US military unleashed Agent Orange on the Vietnamese population causing more than 3 million people to develop birth defects and other health related problems to this day.  The Nazi scientists were indeed evil geniuses when it came to developing advanced weapons of war and that was something that the US military and the intelligence community were solely interested in and that was and still is a scary thought.      

America’s Frankenstein: The Neo-Nazis of Ukraine

As we know from the valuable lessons of history that the US government and the CIA had supported and trained Ukrainian Nazis since 1946.  The CIA had organized “Stay Behind” operations with the OUN-B (neo-Nazi Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) in Eastern Europe and other areas to assist Ukrainian nationalist who were sent to destabilize Soviet Ukraine with covert operations such as using commandos to assassinate Soviet officials, to sabotage infrastructure and to commit acts of terrorism. 

The history of the US government and its CIA operatives shows that it supported Ukrainian war criminal Stephan Bandera to advance the Ukrainian underground movement to destabilize Soviet Ukraine, so the CIA and their Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) and the Office of Special Operations (OSO) planned covert operations with the OUN-B and provided support to the anti-Soviet Ukraine Insurgent Army (UPA) for psychological warfare within the Soviet sphere of influence.   The CIA declassified their historical account of their association with Ukrainian Nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis during the Cold War in ‘Cold War Allies: The Origins of CIA’s Relationship with Ukrainian Nationalists’ by Kevin C Ruffner detailed how the “CIA reestablished and expanded its contacts with the Ukrainians and others for covert action against the Communists and as wartime assets to be used behind Red Army lines as guerrillas, saboteurs, and resistance leaders.”  The historical account went further and stated that “The sometimes brutal war record of many emigre groups became blurred as they became more critical to the CIA.”

Fast forward to November 2013 were there were large-scale protests which was known as the Euromaidan against the policies of President Victor Yanukovych who made the decision to have closer ties with Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union instead of proceeding with the idea of having a political and economic relationship with the European Union by rejecting their free-trade agreement.  Then in February 2014, what is known as the Maidan Revolution took place that ended up in violent clashes between the protesters and the government’s security forces in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv which led to a coup against the democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych.  Soon after, the Russo-Ukrainian war began and the birth of the Neo-Nazi inspired Azov Battalion was established as they became the resistance against basically, anything Russian.   

On January 22nd of this year, Yahoo News who is part of the mainstream media published an article titled ‘CIA-trained Ukrainian paramilitaries may take central role if Russia invades’ basically admitted that the CIA was secretly training Ukrainian forces since 2015:

While the covert program, run by paramilitaries working for the CIA’s Ground Branch — now officially known as Ground Department — was established by the Obama administration after Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, and expanded under the Trump administration, the Biden administration has further augmented it, said a former senior intelligence official in touch with colleagues in government

According to Yahoo News, an unnamed former senior intelligence official said that “If the Russians invade, those [graduates of the CIA programs] are going to be your militia, your insurgent leaders,” and that “we’ve been training these guys now for eight years. They’re really good fighters. That’s where the agency’s program could have a serious impact.”  One must wonder how many were actually radicalized neo-Nazis. 

In 2018, Reuters published a commentary by Josh Cohen ‘Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem’ that explains Ukraine’s problem with the Nazis filling the ranks of its National Militia.  Cohen said that in “a January 28 demonstration, in Kiev, by 600 members of the so-called “National Militia,” a newly-formed ultranationalist group that vows “to use force to establish order,” illustrates this threat.”  Cohen added that the National Militia has recruited members from the Nazi-affiliated Azov Battalion:

Many of the National Militia’s members come from the Azov movement, one of the 30-odd privately-funded “volunteer battalions” that, in the early days of the war, helped the regular army to defend Ukrainian territory against Russia’s separatist proxies. Although Azov uses Nazi-era symbolism and recruits neo-Nazis into its ranks, a recent article in Foreign Affairs downplayed any risks the group might pose, pointing out that, like other volunteer militias, Azov has been “reined in” through its integration into Ukraine’s armed forces. While it’s true that private militias no longer rule the battlefront, it’s the home front that Kiev needs to worry about now

Cohen obviously is following the mainstream media narrative when he said that Putin seized Crimea which in fact, it was the Russian-speaking Crimean people who voted in a referendum to reunite with the Russian federation.  But to his credit, Cohen does mention the fact that the Azov Battalion and the Right Sector are held in high-regards since they fought Russian-backed separatists.  Cohen also mentioned the Azov battalion’s children’s training camps:   

When Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea four years ago first exposed the decrepit condition of Ukraine’s armed forces, right-wing militias such as Azov and Right Sector stepped into the breach, fending off the Russian-backed separatists while Ukraine’s regular military regrouped. Though, as a result, many Ukrainians continue to regard the militias with gratitude and admiration, the more extreme among these groups promote an intolerant and illiberal ideology that will endanger Ukraine in the long term. Since the Crimean crisis, the militias have been formally integrated into Ukraine’s armed forces, but some have resisted full integration: Azov, for example, runs its own children’s training camp, and the careers section instructs recruits who wish to transfer to Azov from a regular military unit

Although Cohen’s claims expose Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis, he also follows the Western establishment and the mainstream media’s narrative that “the Kremlin’s claims that Ukraine is a hornets’ nest of fascists are false: far-right parties performed poorly in Ukraine’s last parliamentary elections, and Ukrainians reacted with alarm to the National Militia’s demonstration in Kiev” which are all lies.  Cohen’s statement is false, in fact, it’s a contradiction when he wrote at the beginning of his article that the “National Militia’s members were recruited from the Azov movement” but not to worry because “Azov has been “reined in” through its integration into Ukraine’s armed forces” at least according to Cohen who sourced his misinformation from Foreign Affairs magazine which is a publication owned by the Council of Foreign Relations, a favorite of of the US political establishment. 

So, does the US government, the Military-Industrial Complex, and the CIA support Ukrainian Neo-Nazis in their ongoing war efforts against Russia today?  Well, the answer to that question should be obvious by now.     

The Empire Does Not Forgive

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The Americans, like the British and the Soviets before them, dug their own graveyard in Afghanistan.

By Chris Hedges

Source: ScheerPost.com

The Carthaginian general Hannibal, who came close to defeating the Roman Republic in the Second Punic War, committed suicide in 181 BC in exile as Roman soldiers closed in on his residence in the Bithynian village of Libyssa, now modern-day Turkey. It had been more than thirty years since he led his army across the alps and annihilated Roman legions at the Battle of Trebia, Lake Trasimene and Cannae, considered one of the most brilliant tactical victories in warfare which centuries later inspired the plans of the German Army Command in World War I when they invaded Belgium and France. Rome was only able to finally save itself from defeat by replicating Hannibal’s military tactics. 

It did not matter in 181 BC that there had been over 20 Roman emperors since Hannibal’s invasion. It did not matter that Hannibal had been hunted for decades and forced to perpetually flee, always just beyond the reach of Roman authorities. He had humiliated Rome. He had punctured its myth of omnipotence. And he would pay. With his life. Years after Hannibal was gone, the Romans were still not satisfied. They finished their work of apocalyptic vengeance in 146 BC by razing Carthage to the ground and selling its remaining population into slavery. Cato the Censor summed up the sentiments of empire: Carthāgō dēlenda est (Carthage must be destroyed). Nothing about empire, from then until now, has changed.

Imperial powers do not forgive those who expose their weaknesses or make public the sordid and immoral inner workings of empire. Empires are fragile constructions. Their power is as much one of perception as of military strength. The virtues they claim to uphold and defend, usually in the name of their superior civilization, are a mask for pillage, the exploitation of cheap labor, indiscriminate violence, and state terror.

The current American empire, damaged and humiliated by the troves of internal documents published by WikiLeaks, will, for this reason, persecute Julian Assange for the rest of his life. It does not matter who is president or which political party is in power. Imperialists speak with one voice. The killing of thirteen U.S. troops by a suicide bomber at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Thursday evoked from Joe Biden the full-throated cry of all imperialists: “To those who carried out this attack … we will not forgive, we will not forget, we will hunt you down and make you pay.” This was swiftly followed by two drone strikes in Kabul against suspected members of the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K), which took credit for the suicide bombing that left some 170 dead, including 28 members of the Taliban.

The Taliban, which defeated U.S. and coalition forces in a 20-year war, is about to be confronted with the wrath of a wounded empire. The Cuban, Vietnamese, Iranian, Venezuelan and Haitian governments know what comes next. The ghosts of Toussaint Louverture, Emilio Aguinaldo, Mohammad Mossadegh, Jacobo Arbenz, Omar Torrijos, Gamal Abdul Nasser, Juan Velasco, Salvador Allende, Andreas Papandreou, Juan Bosh, Patrice Lumumba, and Hugo Chavez know what comes next. It isn’t pretty. It will be paid for by the poorest and most vulnerable Afghans. 

The faux pity for the Afghan people, which has defined the coverage of the desperate collaborators with the U.S. and coalition occupying forces and educated elites fleeing to the Kabul airport, begins and ends with the plight of the evacuees. There were few tears shed for the families routinely terrorized by coalition forces or the some 70,000 civilians who were obliterated by U.S. air strikes, drone attacks, missiles, and artillery, or gunned down by nervous occupying forces who saw every Afghan, with some justification, as the enemy during the war. And there will be few tears for the humanitarian catastrophe the empire is orchestrating on the 38 million Afghans, who live in one of the poorest and most aid-dependent countries in the world.

Since the 2001 invasion the United States deployed about 775,000 military personnel to subdue Afghanistan and poured $143 billion into the country, with 60 percent of the money going to prop up the corrupt Afghan military and the rest devoted to funding economic development projects, aid programs and anti-drug initiatives, with the bulk of those funds being siphoned off by foreign aid groups, private contractors, and outside consultants.

Grants from the United States and other countries accounted for 75 percent of the Afghan government budget. That assistance has evaporated. Afghanistan’s reserves and other financial accounts have been frozen, meaning the new government cannot access some $9.5 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank. Shipments of cash to Afghanistan have been stopped. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that Afghanistan will no longer be able to access the lender’s resources.

Things are already dire. There are some 14 million Afghans, one in three, who lack sufficient food. There are two million Afghan children who are malnourished. There are 3.5 million people in Afghanistan who have been displaced from their homes. The war has wrecked infrastructure. A drought destroyed 40 percent of the nation’s crops last year. The assault on the Afghan economy is already seeing food prices skyrocket. The sanctions and severance of aid will force civil servants to go without salaries and the health service, already chronically short of medicine and equipment, will collapse. The suffering orchestrated by the empire will be of Biblical proportions. And this is what the empire wants.

UNICEF estimates that 500,000 children were killed as a direct result of sanctions on Iraq.  Expect child deaths in Afghanistan to soar above that horrifying figure. And expect the same imperial heartlessness Madeline Albright, then the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, exhibited when she told “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children because of the sanctions was “worth it.” Or the heartlessness of Hillary Clinton who joked “We came, we saw, he died,” when informed of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s brutal death. Or the demand by Democratic Senator Zell Miller of Georgia who after the attacks of 9/11 declared, “I say, bomb the hell out of them. If there’s collateral damage, so be it.” No matter that the empire has since turned Libya along with Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen into cauldrons of violence, chaos, and misery. The power to destroy is an intoxicating drug that is its own justification.

Like Cato the Censor, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies are, if history is any guide, at this moment planning to destabilize Afghanistan by funding, arming, and backing any militia, warlord or terrorist organization willing to strike at the Taliban. The CIA, which should exclusively gather intelligence, is a rogue paramilitary organization that oversees secret kidnappings, interrogation at black sites, torture, manhunts, and targeted assassinations across the globe. It carried out commando raids in Afghanistan that killed a large number of Afghan civilians, which repeatedly sent enraged family members and villagers into the arms of the Taliban. It is, I expect, reaching out to Amrullah Saleh, who was Ashraf Ghani’s vice president and who has declared himself “the legitimate caretaker president” of Afghanistan. Saleh is holed up in the Panjashir Valley.  He, along with warlords Afgand Massoud, Mohammad Atta Noor and Abdul Rashid Dostum, are clamoring to be armed and supported to perpetuate conflict in Afghanistan.

“I write from the Panjshir Valley today, ready to follow in my father’s footsteps, with mujahideen fighters who are prepared to once again take on the Taliban,” Ahmad Massoud wrote in an opinion piece in The Washington Post. “The United States and its allies have left the battlefield, but America can still be a ‘great arsenal of democracy,’ as Franklin D. Roosevelt said when coming to the aid of the beleaguered British before the U.S. entry into World War II,” he went on, adding that he and his fighters need “more weapons, more ammunition and more supplies.”

These warlords have done the bidding of the Americans before. They will do the bidding of the Americans again. And since the hubris of empire is unaffected by reality, the empire will continue to sow dragon’s teeth in Afghanistan as it has since it spent $9 billion—some estimates double that figure—to back the mujahedeen that fought the Soviets, leading to a bloody civil war between rival warlords once the Soviets withdrew in 1989 and the ascendancy in 1996 of the Taliban.

The cynicism of arming and funding the mujahedeen against the Soviets exposes the lie of America’s humanitarian concerns in Afghanistan. One million Afghan civilians were killed in the nine-year conflict with the Soviets, along with 90,000 mujahedeen fighters, 18,000 Afghan troops, and 14,500 Soviet soldiers.  But these deaths, along with the destruction of Afghanistan, were “worth it” to cripple the Soviets.

Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, along with the Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, oversaw the arming of the most radical Islamic mujahedeen groups fighting the Soviet occupation forces, leading to the extinguishing of the secular, democratic Afghan opposition. Brzezinski detailed the strategy, designed as he said to give the Soviet Union its Vietnam, taken by the Carter administration following the 1979 Soviet invasion to prop up the Marxist regime of Hafizullah Amin in Kabul:

We immediately launched a twofold process when we heard that the Soviets had entered Afghanistan. The first involved direct reactions and sanctions focused on the Soviet   Union, and both the State Department and the National Security Agency prepared long lists of sanctions to be adopted, of steps to be taken to increase the international costs to the Soviet Union of their actions. And the second course of action led to my going to Pakistan a month or so after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for the purpose of coordinating with the Pakistanis a joint response, the purpose of which would be to   make the Soviets bleed for as much and as long as is possible; and we engaged in that effort in a collaborative sense with the Saudis, the Egyptians, the British, the Chinese, and we started providing weapons to the Mujaheddin, from various sources again — for example, some Soviet arms from the Egyptians and the Chinese. We even got Soviet arms from the Czechoslovak communist government, since it was obviously susceptible to material incentives; and at some point we started buying arms for the Mujahedeen from the Soviet army in Afghanistan, because that army was increasingly corrupt.

The clandestine campaign to destabilize the Soviet Union by making it “bleed for as much and as long as is possible” was carried out, like the arming of the contra forces in Nicaragua, largely off the books. It did not, as far as official Washington was concerned, exist, a way to avoid the unwelcome scrutiny of covert operations carried out by the Church Committee hearings in the 1970s that made public the three decades of CIA-backed coups, assassinations, blackmail, intimidation, dark propaganda, and torture. The Saudi government agreed to match the U.S. funding for the Afghan insurgents. The Saudi involvement gave rise to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, which fought with the mujahedeen. The rogue operation, led by Brzezinski, organized secret units of assassination teams and paramilitary squads that carried out lethal attacks on perceived enemies around the globe. It trained Afghan mujahedeen in Pakistan and China’s Xinjiang province. It shifted the heroin trade, used to fund the insurgency, from southeast Asia to the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This pattern of behavior, which destabilized Afghanistan and the region, is reflexive in the military and the intelligence community. It will, without doubt, be repeated now in Afghanistan, with the same catastrophic results. The chaos these intelligence agencies create becomes the chaos that justifies their existence and the chaos that sees them demand more resources and ever greater levels of violence.

All empires die. The end is usually unpleasant. The American empire, humiliated in Afghanistan, as it was in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, as it was at the Bay of Pigs and in Vietnam, is blind to its own declining strength, ineptitude, and savagery. Its entire economy, a “military Keynesianism,” revolves around the war industry. Military spending and war are the engine behind the nation’s economic survival and identity. It does not matter that with each new debacle the United States turns larger and larger parts of the globe against it and all it claims to represent. It has no mechanism to stop itself, despite its numerous defeats, fiascos, blunders and diminishing power, from striking out irrationally like a wounded animal. The mandarins who oversee our collective suicide, despite repeated failure, doggedly insist we can reshape the world in our own image. This myopia creates the very conditions that accelerate the empire’s demise.

The Soviet Union collapsed, like all empires, because of its ossified, out-of-touch rulers, its imperial overreach, and its inability to critique and reform itself. We are not immune from these fatal diseases. We silence our most prescient critics of empire, such as Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Andrew Bacevich, Alfred McCoy, and Ralph Nader, and persecute those who expose the truths about empire, including Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Daniel Hale, and John Kiriakou. At the same time a bankrupt media, whether on MSNBC, CNN or FOX, lionizes and amplifies the voices of the inept and corrupt political, military and intelligence class including John Bolton, Leon Panetta, Karl Rove, H.R. McMaster and David Petraeus, which blindly drives the nation into the morass.

Chalmers Johnson in his trilogy on the fall of the American empire – “Blowback,” “The Sorrows of Empire” and “Nemesis” – reminds readers that the Greek goddess Nemesis is “the spirit of retribution, a corrective to the greed and stupidity that sometimes governs relations among people.” She stands for “righteous anger,” a deity who “punishes human transgression of the natural, right order of things and the arrogance that causes it.” He warns that if we continue to cling to our empire, as the Roman Republic did, “we will certainly lose our democracy and grimly await the eventual blowback that imperialism generates.”

“I believe that to maintain our empire abroad requires resources and commitments that will inevitably undercut our domestic democracy and, in the end, produce a military dictatorship or its civilian equivalent,” Johnson writes. “The founders of our nation understood this well and tried to create a form of government – a republic – that would prevent this from occurring. But the combination of huge standing armies, almost continuous wars, military Keynesianism, and ruinous military expenses have destroyed our republican structure in favor of an imperial presidency. We are on the cusp of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire. Once a nation is started down that path, the dynamics that apply to all empires come into play – isolation, overstretch, the uniting of forces opposed to imperialism, and bankruptcy. Nemesis stalks our life as a free nation.”

If the empire was capable of introspection and forgiveness, it could free itself from its death spiral. If the empire disbanded, much as the British empire did, and retreated to focus on the ills that beset the United States it could free itself from its death spiral. But those who manipulate the levers of empire are unaccountable. They are hidden from public view and beyond public scrutiny. They are determined to keep playing the great game, rolling the dice with lives and national treasure. They will, I expect, preside gleefully over the deaths of even more Afghans, assuring themselves it is worth it, without realizing that the gallows they erect are for themselves.  

Biden Could Have Spared Afghanistan and US 6 Months of Pointless War by Just Ending It

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By Dave Lindorff

Source: This Can’t Be Happening!

There are two things I suppose everyone would agree are true about the remarkable events of the past several weeks in Afghanistan.

One is that we are witnessing the latest  major loss in a string of wars and “incursions” that the US has lost since the end of World War II. The other is that the entire  two-decade-long, $2.3-trillion US invasion, war and occupation of  one of the poorest countries in the world, was an abject failure from the beginning.

Officially, the US invaded Afghanistan because its ruling Taliban government had allegedly permitted Al Qaeda, a shadowy jihadist fighting organization founded by the Saudi Osama Bin Laden (with CIA assistance), to establish several training camps there where he purportedly plotted the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and perhaps the Capitol building or White House.

The attack, by some 20,000 US Special Forces troops backed by US air power, smashed the camps (and a lot of other things and people), but most of the Al Qaeda forces, including Bin Laden, escaped to the mountains of Tora Bora. The US had rejected a Taliban offer to surrender Bin Laden to a “third country”, a deal which could have eliminated the need for the ensuing war, but the Bush/Cheney administration would not accept the terms:  a halt to the bombing of the country, and  presentation of evidence that Bin Laden had been behind the attacks on the US.

In any event, once Bin Laden and his band were surrounded, trapped in caves on a mountain in eastern Afghanistan, the US pulled troops out and started sending many of them to Kuwait and other Persian Gulf countries in preparation for a second larger war against Iraq, which was portrayed fraudulently as having been involved in 9-11 and as having plans to develop “weapons of mass destruction.”   Bin Laden and his men were forgotten.

The US forces in Afghanistan were ordered to abandon the original mission of killing or capturing Bin Laden and destroying Al Qaeda, and instead proceeded to drive the Taliban out of the capital of Kabul and other Afghan cities into the countryside and neighboring Pakistan. At which point the war became the US vs. the Taliban, and the Taliban became, in US and complicit US media parlance, “insurgents.” From their own vantage point, they were patriots and Islamists battling the evil US occupier of the country and the puppet government the Great Satan”  had installed.

For the next 19 years, the US, with the most powerful military the world has ever known, has fought futilly against a  force of  tens of thousands of rag-tag Kalashnikov-toting Taliban fighters, gradually losing control of most of the rural parts of the vast country, and unable to protect the cities from bombings, assassinations of officials, and the occasional overrunning of various provincial cities.

For 20 years, top military brass and advisors with ties to the US arms industry, lied that the US was “winning” the war in Afghanistan, all the while knowing the whole thing was a fool’s errand that could only end with the Taliban eventually returning to power. For the military, the war was a way to earn battle credits, get promotions, and for higher officers, to end up on arms industry boards of directors. For the Arms industry, the war was a bottomless pot of money. For American troops it was a pointless hell-hole, and for the Afghan people an endless slaughter.

To his credit, President Biden did one thing right. He called an end to the bloody 20-year stalemate.  He for sure could have handled it better. Had he simply admitted upon taking office that the US had made a terrible mistake and immediately sued for peace with the Taliban, whom everyone involved knew would eventually be back in power in Kabul one way or another once the US left, more than half a year of bloody fighting and bombing could have been avoided entirely. Instead, Biden continued the war, making it his own, but announcing a pull-out that would be completed on the fake symbolic date of September 11. (Fake because no Taliban  or Afghan was involved in the 9-11 attacks!) Given that ridiculously long timetable and the continued US air strikes on the Taliban in the meantime, the Taliban opted to push the US out. Understandably, they did not believe that Biden was any more sincere about ending the war and leaving their country than were presidents Bush, Obama or Trump before him.

All kinds of justifications have been given over the years for the US staying in Afghanistan for two decades of war:   women would be oppressed under the Taliban; the Taliban would replace Afghanistan’s puppet “democratic” government with a theocratic autocracy; if the US left, Iran, or Russia or China would gain influence there; if the US left, Afghanistan would again be a haven for terrorists threatening the US; and of course that old standby when all else failed — that the US had to stand firm lest the world think the US was weak.

None of these excuses held up on inspection. Women were always oppressed in Afghanistan,  were oppressed even when the US was there in force, and would inevitably be oppressed as they are in most islamic countries that the US considers allies (think Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, etc.). Afghanistan is bordered by Iran, China and Pakistan and by countries where Russia wields considerable influence. Of course those countries, as well as india, would compete for control in Afghanistan. As for becoming a haven for terrorists, there are plenty of those already, many created by the chaos sown by meddling US military forces as in Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Niger, Libya, Yemen and Colombia, for example.  And cutting and running in Afghanistan, which the US is doing now, as it did in Vietnam in 1975, would have been nothing new had the US done it sooner, instead of waiting to be shown the door. What would have been new would have been admitting the war was a mistake and leaving through negotiations instead of being humiliatingly driven out as now, yet again.

The American people should be outraged about this two-decade fiasco. Instead we’re being treated to all manner of nonsense in our supposedly free and independent media,  attacking Biden for “losing” Afghanistan. The focus of criticism is on how Biden handled the ending of the war, not as it should be, on who got the US involved in the first place (Bush, Cheney and virtually the entirety of Democrats and Republicans in Congress), and who kept us there (President Obama with the support of Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and  Trump, again with the support of Democrats and Republicans, and a media that played along with the charade that Afghanistan was an existential threat to America).

Will there be any effort to assign blame for those who caused this catastrophe? Any atonement or reparations to the people of Afghanistan for how we’ve tortured them and their country for decades (going back to when President Jimmy Carter began arming and training jihadi fighters to overthrow the country’s Russian-backed communist government (which was at least gave women equal rights and educated them)?

No of course not. The US doesn’t do soul searching, or historical re-examination,never admits it was wrong and certainly never pays reparations for its crimes.

Thankfully, the US puppet regime in Kabul collapsed like a house of cards, and so the Taliban won’t have to fight to enter that last unliberated city of five million. Now maybe Afghanis can have peace again. They may be stuck with a medieval  theocratic government again, but they’ve been there before. Life will go on, and they’ll have to work it out themselves.  It’s not our business, and our way of “fixing” things for other countries is generally to create a bloody mess and then leave,  and doesn’t work anyhow.

That is the lesson the world is gradually learning, even if the US and its people won’t.

Trump’s Murder of Qassem Soleimani: Why We Must Stand Up to the Christianity of Brutality.

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ISTANBUL, TURKEY – JANUARY 05: People hold posters showing the portrait of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Major General Qassem Soleimani and chant slogans during a protest outside the U.S. Consulate on January 05, 2020 in Istanbul, Turkey. Major General Qassem Soleimani, was killed by a U.S. drone strike outside the Baghdad Airport on January 3. Since the incident, tensions have risen across the Middle East. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

By Sander Hicks

Source: New York Megaphone

This is the investigation that prompted our publication to establish an online conference on Nonviolence, and the Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, Oct. 2, 2020. It’s essential we understand how Pompeo and the GOP justify their violence in the name of Christianity. The future of nonviolence must stand apart from the “Christianity of Brutality.” That’s what Jesus would do.

Earlier this year, President Trump shocked the world by murdering a high-ranking Iranian government official. Pressured by Secretary Pompeo, Trump ordered the assassination of an Iranian general who enjoyed movie-star celebrity status in his home country, General Qassem Soleimani. The killing brought the world to the brink of a major new war. Among the many laws this act broke, it violated Iraqi sovereignty, as it took place in Iraq. It happened in the middle of the night on January 3rd, 2020, using an American MQ-6 Reaper drone.

Dexter Filkins, in the New Yorker, called the hit on Soleimani, “the most consequential act taken against the regime in Tehran in thirty years.” And that’s saying a lot, because the US has inflicted much suffering on Iran over time, from CIA coups, to pushing Iraq to kill a million Iranians in the “Iran-Iraq War,” to today’s harsh economic sanctions. Yet Iran has grown into an influential regional superpower able to stand toe-to-toe with US proxies, Israel and Saudi Arabia, to see through the hypocrisy and the posturing of the War on Terror.

Trump, earlier, wanted to re-open negotiations towards a new Nuclear Agreement with Iran. He was in contact with President Rhouhani. But killing the charismatic Soleimani shut down any chance of a new nuclear deal. Now the Iranians are free to develop their nuclear power capabilities, unhindered.

Trump was left to explain himself. How could the US President justify this attack?

Remember that one year ago, things were boiling over in Iraq/Iran. Various Iran-backed militias rioted in Baghdad and broke the windows at US consulates. An American contractor was killed and US officials feared another Benghazi, or a new Tehran-style Embassy hostage crisis like in 1979. The US Military and Trump responded by killing 25 Shi’a militia members. Pentagon top brass then offered killing Soleimani as an additional option but assumed Trump wouldn’t be so brash. That was like giving a pyromaniac teenager a set of matches and five gallons of gasoline.

Killing a foreign government official is illegal, according to US policy and international law. Trump, at first, asserted Soleimani had plans to target four U.S. embassies, a claim that his own Defense Secretary Esper was not able to substantiate.  It “seems to be totally made up,” said Congressman Justin Amash from Michigan.

On Twitter, Trump tried to give the last word by claiming that the US acted in self-defense because Soleimani posed an “imminent threat.” But Trump seemed unconvinced himself, as he tweeted that it “doesn’t really matter because of his horrible past.”

Ah, but it does matter.

Killing people is a crime, you see, and a lot of people think so. The US has written laws that restrain this kind of thing from coming out of the White House, as it does so much damage to the U.S.’s moral standing in the world. (If capitalism and imperialism haven’t mangled that reputation forever.)

Former DA Vincent Bugliosi, in his book The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, showed that presidents could well go to prison for the extrajudicial killings and illegal wars they engage in. The Hague Convention of 1907 and the UN ban the killing of a foreign government official, outside of wartime. Even Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to James Madison, denounced “assassination, poison, perjury” as brutal statecraft, “held in just horror.”

In the wake of the killings of JFK and MLK and the targeted domestic killings of COINTEL-PRO, the US Congress convened the Church Committee and the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the mid and late ’70s. President Gerald Ford responded by issuing an executive order that has since become standard US policy. No US government employee “shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.”

President Reagan affirmed and expanded this policy against assassination. But back at the Trump White House, the pressure to kill Soleimani came from evangelical Christian Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. CNN reported that White House insiders said Pompeo “was the one who made the case to take out Soleimani, it was him absolutely.” Pompeo also made a claim that Soleimani posed an “imminent threat,” but later backed off that claim, and instead explained that Soleimani had the “blood of American [soldiers]” on his hands from working with the Iraqi resistance.

At a loss for legal justification, Vice President Mike Pence stepped up with a “Hail Mary” kind of throw. He asserted that there may be a connection between Soleimani and “the 12 9/11 attackers.” (But Mike, there were 19 hijackers on 9/11.) Students of history will note that the NeoCon Right still invokes 9/11 when it’s desperate to justify a crime. 9/11 still has that power 20 years later. It’s like a myth that is eternal. If we allow it.

 

Who Was Qassem Soleimani

Millions of Iranians poured out into the streets for a three-day funeral in all top Iranian cities and towns. Hamed Ghashgavi in Tehran, told me, “General Soleimani, we know he was popular but none of us thought millions will mourn his death!”

Qassem Soleimani “had a command presence,” CIA Veteran John Maguire said. “He walked into the room and you could feel him.” Maguire had negotiated with Soleimani in Baghdad in 2004.

A native of the more tribal Southern Iranian province of Kerman, Soleimani was born in 1957. He fought at the front lines of the Iran/Iraq war, that nine-year slog fought with chemical weapon assaults, compliments of Iraq. The grinding agony, often in trenches, was compared to World War I. Inside Iran, the conflict is known as the “War of Holy Defense.” But the Reagan White House viewed the Iran/Iraq War as a chance to get aggressive and retaliate for the late 70’s hostage crisis. The US supported Iran‘s biggest rival, Saddam Hussein, as he invaded Iran. The USA gave Hussein several billions in economic aid and military training to help attack the nascent Islamic Republic.

The experience of Iraq invading Iran was deeply formative on young Soleimani, who lost many friends in the war. But Soleimani there became a legend known as “The Goat Burglar” for his talents at slipping behind enemy lines and coming back with live goats to feed his platoon. He regularly volunteered to fight at the front lines. He had a deep camaraderie with his fellows. Before battle, he would kiss each of them on the forehead and pray with them to be martyred.

From the end of the War, to 1997, Soleimani laid low, he didn’t get on well with President Rafsanjanhi. But sooner after that period, he rose to lead the elite “Quds” aka “Jerusalem” Force division of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. His power grew, as did his closeness with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Gen. Petreaus once recalled that Soleimani told him, “You should know that I, Qassem Soleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan.”

Soleimani as US Ally Against Terrorism

In the corporate US media, Soleimani’s death was brushed off. He was expendable. A “terrorist.”

But a deeper look past the demonization shows an interesting pattern. Soleimani had a history of working with the Americans. Every time he worked with the USA, it went well for the Americans. In the end, the USA just stabbed him in the back.

When 9/11 happened, the Bush/Cheney regime decided to target Afghanistan and its Taliban regime. Qassem Soleimani saw an opportunity to reduce terrorism in the land immediately to the east of Iran. Soleimani worked with the US attacking forces. He and Iranian diplomats shared intelligence with the US on Taliban positions. The Americans informed the Iranians about an al-Qa`ida agent hiding out in Mashhad in eastern Iran.  Soleimani was, “pleased with [the] cooperation,” and spoke at this time that “maybe it’s time to rethink our relationship with the Americans.”

It was not to be.

Bush and Cheney bowed to pressure from their Zionist wing and slapped the Iranians in the face with the “Axis of Evil” speech. It has been a long-standing policy of Israel to block any rapprochement between the US and Iran. Bush named Iran as a leading proponent of terrorism, despite its recent work against terrorism, with the Americans in Afghanistan. Soleimani felt betrayed.

Cut to 2014, and the US is back asking for Iran’s help, when US coalition forces are losing in Iraq. The jihadists were on the offensive, taking territory in Iraq, including the major city of Mosul. Iraq’s leading Shia cleric Ali al-Sistani, issued a call-to-arms to fight the Sunni extremists. Young Shia men volunteered by the thousands. Soleimani and his elite Quds Force helped organize them.

For the next three years, until 2017, Iran helped turn the tide there against ISIS and Al Nusra. On a number of occasions, Americans were hitting Islamic State targets from the air while General Soleimani directed ground forces against the militants.

At the same time, the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel were working against Soleimani and Iran in Syria. The US had decided to work against the Ba’ath Arab Socialist, Bashar Assad, who sometimes enjoyed the support of Russia and Iran.

When Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) flew to Syria in 2017, it was to better understand the Syrian civil war. She met Assad and top Syrian officials. In the street, Syrian citizens begged her to stop the US funding of ISIS. She returned to Congress and proposed HR 608, the Stop Arming Terrorists Act. Because at this point, the US was fighting ISIS in Iraq, but working with ISIS in Syria. On the ground in Tehran, in 2017 at the New Horizon conference, when I asked Saudis, Arabs, and other locals from the region, who is funding ISIS? People uniformly named either Saudi Arabia or the USA.

Pop Quiz. Name the only country that has consistently opposed the Islamic State and al-Qaeda?

The Answer? No, it’s not the USA. It’s Iran.

The History of the US/Iran Relationship: 

A Crash Course from 1953 to the Present

Iran is a regional superpower in a kind of local “cold war” against Saudi Arabia and Israel. There are a set of facts that no one should do without when trying to figure out the real history of the Iran/US relationship.  A deeper understanding of this history could begin to lay the groundwork to re-establish diplomatic ties, which have been suspended since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

In 2000, even Madeline Albright recognized that the CIA’s brutal 1953 coup overthrew the democratically-elected progressive Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, and replaced him with the fickle Iranian king, Reza Shah. With their SAVAK secret police, the Shahs repressed dissidents and communists, and so Islam became the legal method of resistance. When President Jimmy Carter allowed the ailing Shah to travel to the USA to receive healthcare, Ayatollah Khomeini called for a general strike in Iran and flew back to Iran from his exile in France. 98% of the population voted to replace the monarchy with the Islamic Republic, in a referendum vote.

Because of the US’s support of the Shah, the Islamic Revolution resulted in an unplanned take-over of the US embassy. 53 US hostages were kept for 444 days until they were released on the day of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration.

During the Iran/Iraq War, it’s worth noting that young Qassem Soleimani met the young Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when both were fighting the Iraqi invasion. They would have a long, complicated relationship, as Adhmadinejad would go on to become elected President of Iran, from 2005 to 2013. His politics were “hardliner” compared to his successor, the more moderate Rouhani. Ahmadinejad may be most famous for his 2010 speech in front of the United Nations, in which he questioned the official story about 9/11.

Regarding 9/11/01, Iran was not involved, but US Allies were. The USA’s CIA Counterintelligence Database reports that two Mossad agents were among five Israelis arrested by NJ Police, on 9/11/01, for celebrating the attacks publicly, as they watched the World Trade Center burn. Held in custody for two months by FBI, Bush officials intervened and all five were released to go back to Israel. On Israeli television, they were celebrated as heroes.

15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, including two with ties to Saudi intelligence (Al Mihdhar and Al Hamzi). When Congress’s suppressed “28 Pages” of its own 9/11 Report were released in 2016, they documented Saudi funding of the 19 hijackers, from none other than US Ambassador from Saudi Arabia,  Prince Bandar bin Sultan (aka “Bandar Bush”). But even Bandar’s many appearances in the suppressed “28 Pages” have yet to prompt a grand jury investigation in US courts.

Later that month, in September 2001, General Wesley Clark, reported that a senior general inside the Pentagon told him, “Here’s the paper from the Office of the Secretary of Defense [Rumsfeld] outlining the strategy. We’re going to take out seven countries in five years.’ And he named them…ending with Iran.”

The Iraq War officially started in 2003 and phase one didn’t end until 2011. Similar to the 9/11 official story, the premise for the Iraq War was a loose set of assumptions and insinuations, not hard facts or evidence of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Hussein’s overthrow and execution was another targeted killing on a grander scale, similar to that of Soleimani. The Bush/Cheney “War on Terror” was a colossal waste of money, even by the libertarian think tank Cato Institute. “A recent study…puts the cost of the War on Terror at roughly $5 trillion — a truly astonishing number. Even if one believes American efforts have made the nation marginally safer, the United States could have achieved far greater improvements in safety and security at far less cost through other means.”

In 2007, German news magazine Die Spiegel leaked that Vice President Dick Cheney had a secret plan to invade Iran next.

Barack Obama was elected as a symbol of hope and change, but his pick of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State was tragic for Iran. Hillary Clinton removed the Iranian terrorist group MEK from the State Department’s “Terrorism Watch List” in 2012. The media crowed that the lobbyists had done it again, as MEK represents big money ex-patriate Iranians who would like to see violent regime change in Iran. MEK was once a bizarre culty Islamic splinter group, banished to Albania, and hated in Iran for backing Iraq in the Iran/Iraq War. But money changes everything, and now with lavish funding, these days the MEK throws huge gala events in DC and NYC and pays Rudy Giuliani and John Bolton to come speak.

After President Barack Obama jettisoned Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, he did some ground-breaking work by working with moderate President Rouhani and signing the “Iran Nuclear Deal,” the JCPOA in 2015.

In 2017, with Trump in Office, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and others routinely ignored the Trump White House’s multiple calls to pressure Iran militarily. Their belief was that Syria’s Assad had effectively won the Syrian civil war, thanks to Iran and Russia, and now the war on ISIS took priority. Mattis quit at the end of 2018 when Trump demanded US withdrawal from Syria.

In 2018, former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson quit as Secretary of State, and Mike Pompeo succeeded him. Pompeo lost no time in focussing a target on his longtime nemesis, Qassem Soleimani. It started in April of 2019, with the shocking designation of Iran’s entire Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) as a “terrorist organization.” According to The Iran Agenda book by Reuters reporter Reese Erlich, the IRGC is a huge economic entity in Iran, and it controls about 10% of the entire Iranian economy. So declaring IRGC a terrorist organization would be like declaring Amazon a terrorist organization in the US.

But there were more than words in the declaration. The knives were coming out. “Bolton and Pompeo knew that that designation opened up the targeting aperture,” one former senior Trump administration official said.

 

War Powers

In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution. It requires the President to report to Congress whenever armed forces are introduced “into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated,” and to terminate any hostilities after 60 days unless authorized by Congress.

But since 1973, Congress has done little to reclaim its constitutional responsibility to control the war machine. Professor Jack Goldsmith points out, “Our country has, quite self-consciously, given one person, the President, an enormous sprawling military and enormous discretion to use it in ways that can easily lead to a massive war.”

If there’s any one issue that may someday inspire a US Constitutional Convention, it may be the long history the USA has had with a “unitary executive” who abuses their powers to wage undeclared wars on smaller, weaker nations. Our system is running contrary to the spirit and the letter of the US Constitution. What happened in the Soleimani case is more than just the murder of one man. It shows that our current class of leadership, from Clinton to Trump, is so in love with violence, it crosses a line into contempt for the Constitution. The love of war is all.

What could possess their souls?

 

The Christianity of Brutality

The flaws of the American brand of evangelical Christianity led directly to Soleimani’s fiery death with nine others. The dominant religion in America birthed a bloody global trauma that caused the whole planet to smell the stench of World War III. However, any student of the New Testament will notice that Jesus actually stood against the nationalism and the exclusionary practices of the Jewish leadership. He called the Pharisees and Scribes, “vipers” and even worse, “lawyers.”

Jesus’s pivotal lesson about the Good Samaritan exposes the hypocrisy of the “purity” of the High Priests. They were so obsessed with purity, they wouldn’t help a man beaten up in the street. Their religion blinded them to the basic humanity in all of us. At a time of crisis, when we need something to unite us, religion could reveal an inner light within us all. The Good Samaritan story holds up the forgotten and hated people of our day.  The one who is hated most by society turns out to have the most heart. The outsider, the Samaritan ignores all the codes of the day and stops to care for the crushed and bloodied man. That’s the path. Actions of compassion and healing are the true way, not a religion of showiness, prestige, and power.

Mike Pompeo and the neoConservative Christians are super Pro-Israel, because their Christianity is based in the Old Testament, where God is oftentimes a violent, nationalistic force who favors his “Chosen People” in their many wars.  Pompeo has compared Trump to King Cyrus, and likes to dwell on the Book of Esther, in which the Jewish people commit genocide on the Iranians/Persians, killing over 5,000 in one fell swoop. (An event celebrated every year with the Jewish feast of Purim.)

The Old Testament also has eternal wisdom, great laws, and lessons in it, like “Thou Shalt Not Kill” from the Ten Commandments. The Wisdom literature, such as Psalms and Proverbs, show the universal conception of God, evolving into a more compassionate, loving vision over time. But to rely on the Old Testament as a true book of history is shaky ground. To base US Foreign Policy on it is ahistorical. Most of the Old Testament is war stories, in which genocide and exclusion are held up as ideals. A little-known fact is that some early Christians didn’t at first want to include the Old Testament in their Bible. They felt that the teachings of Christ were complete: be humble, be of service, make your life about truth, integrity, and nonviolence. These were so much more substantial than the old books, which had led directly to the superficial posturing of the Pharisees, and the “Simple Way” resistance of Jesus of Nazareth.

It seems that with the killing of Soleimani, something has hijacked the spirituality of a man like Mike Pompeo. He became a “born-again Christian” inside the super-powered pressure-cooker of West Point US Military Academy. It’s like someone only gave him half the story. The American right-wing wants the righteousness of religion without doing the real work of Jesus’s core command, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”

The story of the New Testament is really this: a young, passionate, former carpenter from the sticks, Jesus of Nazareth, picks up the oral traditions of  a “street rabbi.” Able to quote the prophets, see people’s problems, and inspire people to change, he becomes a traveling street preacher, able to talk about the love of God in a radical new way. He challenges the aristocracy of the high priests and denounces their rigidity and formalism. He gathers a wide range of people “from below.” He teaches and heals among the peasant and working classes (without excluding Roman soldiers). Drawing on the Wisdom literature, he expands and radicalizes his message, in a time in which occupied Palestine was seeking ways to resist the violence of the Roman Empire.  Influenced by the Zealots, and tempted by the lure of political power, Jesus ultimately rejected that path. He did consider it but rejected driving Rome out of Palestine with a sword. He even welcomed Pharisees at his gatherings and teaching sessions. His challenge to “love our enemies” was really a challenge to see that there is a light within all of us, including Americans, Israelis, and Iranians, and that it’s a common love of the truth. The historical Jesus never endorses killing people. He says we should “turn the other cheek” rather than retaliate with violence.

Essentially we have here an avatar, one of history’s most dynamic and radical figures, revered today in both Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam, because he opened up a new space of what is possible for humanity: living in a place of dialogue, a love for the Word, sharing, truth, eating together, healing each other, reveling in our common humanity, and working out problems without violence. That is the space of God.

The violent Christianity of Mike Pompeo feels about as authentic as his boss, Donald Trump, wielding a Bible like a weapon, as a vague warning to protestors and radicals fed up with racism and police brutality.

They need to look deeper, because 2000 years ago, Jesus would have been among those protestors. According to the book Rabbi Jesus by Bruce Chilton, when Jesus cleared the Temple in Jerusalem, he went in with an affinity group of 50-100 followers. It was an “Occupy the Temple” action, in which Jesus stood up to capitalism: the money-changers, animal-sellers, and merchants who had turned religion into a business. Jesus and crew literally pushed over the tables and set the doves free. It clarified Jesus’s work and became one of his last public acts of direct action.

In their zeal to make Christianity about violence and Old Testament rivalries against Iran, Pompeo and Trump totally miss the revolutionary spirituality of compassion for all beings and the essentially anti-capitalist message of Jesus. I am reminded of the young, rich kid who comes up to Jesus in the New Testament and says, “Hey, I have followed all the rules, but nothing is working for me!” So Jesus says, You must give up all your wealth, your power, your status, all you cling to, and get on the road with us, follow this path, be inside our movement, follow me. But the kid couldn’t do it because he was too attached: to luxury, to his self-concept, to his fragile and tender illusions, to a status quo of empire, class, and power.

It’s like that kid today is Mike Pompeo, and all the American Christians who do what he does. They want to follow Jesus, but can’t escape their formalism, their illusions, they can’t give up the habits of easy nationalism, their remote-control high tech violence, their sloganeering and stereotyping. Jesus says something truly radical – it’s not too late to turn around – give up all you have and follow me.

Instead the modern day Pharisees have been sending the FBI out to harass American activists.

 

Summer of 2019: FBI at My Front Door

I have been researching this article for six weeks, but I began to write the first draft on August 6, 2020. That date is actually the one year anniversary of the FBI visiting my home to stifle my international travel plans to advocate for peace with Iran. It seems that calling for peace has become something of a crime, in the time of Trump and Pompeo.

The FBI also visited such US dissidents as former Pentagon official Michael Malouf, and former US-Saudi diplomatic attaché Michael Springmann, and about fifteen others. What we all had in common was that we had previously attended the Iranian’s New Horizon conference, where dissidents from the USA and other countries were able to gather, share views, network, and brainstorm solutions to the problems of aggression, imperialism, and world peace.

When the FBI was at my house, they handed over a copy of a recent indictment of an American who had defected to Iran. But this situation had nothing to do with the New Horizon conference. The US Treasury, however, had sent the FBI to enforce their recent harsh economic sanctions against New Horizon. Four Iranians from New Horizon were sanctioned for hosting this  international think tank, a kind of “Davos of the Global South.”

The FBI home visit was a gross violation of my core rights to free speech, religion, and the right to peaceably assemble and tackle grievances. The Bill of Rights took a backseat to an obsession with killing. We had been planning to attend the next New Horizon in Beirut that Fall.

This was certainly a nadir for US activists, but shortly thereafter, there was a bit of a thaw, when in September 2019, President Trump fired his White House war-monger, John Bolton.  And then, the next month after that, the “mastermind” of the Trump White Houses’s sanctions on Iran, Sigal Pearl-Mandelker, resigned after being harassed by peace activists at a public event.

 

Against the Balance of Power, Towards the Balance of Peace

President Woodrow Wilson, once said, “Peace cannot…rest upon an armed balance of power.” Lasting peace, he maintained, required “not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.”

So instead of old religions, old rivalries, and old prejudices being given all of the power, what if the world could coalesce around a new vision, in which political assassination was banned, and just not required, because the balance of power was no longer based on violence.

The next step would be to map out a path to a place where we as one people on Earth can declare that war itself is simply out of date. How can we get to a place where we have outgrown it? The answer is to grow. We are close to being capable of global nonviolence. Gandhi said that the roots of nonviolence were already in the heart of all the world’s great religions.

The words of President Wilson ring true, “There is only one power to put behind the liberation of mankind, and that is…the power of the united moral forces of the world.”

“The power of the united moral forces of the world” is a power that peoples of all religions, and no religions, could get behind, support, and live.

Practical Proposals for Global Social Change

It’s time for a Truth and Reconciliation Conference around the murder of Qassem Soleimani. It will be a way to start to talk about the truth behind the “balance of power” and begin the healing among the peoples of the world.

So that’s why, this article is not just some investigative journalism about a criminal act, I have created a way for you to get involved, in an international dialogue, with Iranian and American activists, on Zoon, this Friday, on October 2, the International Day of NonViolence. From 4 PM to 9 PM, we will have political and spiritual speakers from Iran, and the USA, and other countries.

We will hold a global Truth and Reconciliation Conference, to talk about a global cultural shift, to change the entire system. We have a great bunch of speakers: everyone from Lt. Col. (Ret.) Lawrence Wilkerson, to radical priest Fr. John Dear, to Iranian film-maker Nader Talebzedeh.

Qassem Soleimani did not die in vain. He wanted to be a martyr. Now, let us work to have his death help to transform the world.

 

Come Celebrate Peace and Nonviolence, Celebrate Gandhi’s Birthday.

4PM – 9 PM Oct. 2 on Zoom. More Info:

https://www.newyorkmegaphone.com/oct-2-gandhi-nonviolence-day

The author of the article above wishes to acknowledge Porsché Mysticque Steele for her editorial work, and thanks also to C. Maupin for advice.

Passing the Point of No Return, A World War is Upon Us

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By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

War is inevitable. More innocent people will be murdered, maimed, raped or sold into slavery. War is indescribable, a nightmare, yet those who are currently in power, the establishment or what some like to call “the elite” are on Trump’s team leading the world into another war In the Middle East that can go nuclear. Trump has not drained the swamp, in fact he has filled his administration with war hawks, bankers, Zionists and the Neoconservatives (Neocons) who are all inter-connected to various corporations and special interests. It was reported by NBC news that Trump had actually approved the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani several months ago “President Donald Trump authorized the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani seven months ago if Iran’s increased aggression resulted in the death of an American, according to five current and former senior administration officials. The presidential directive in June came with the condition that Trump would have final signoff on any specific operation to kill Soleimani, officials said.” Trump’s decision to assassinate Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, a popular figure among Muslims and Christians who fought against ISIS, Al-Nusra and other terrorist organizations in Syria and Iraq was the powder keg that has exploded in the Middle East and now there is no turning back. Real terrorists were actually celebrating the death of Soleimani. RT news reported that “the weekly Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) newspaper Al-Naba portrayed Soleimani’s death as an act of god in support of its cause, and Muslims in general, according to BBC Monitoring.” What was interesting was that “an editorial in the jihadi paper was careful not to credit the US or even mention Soleimani by name.” My guess is that terrorists know the rules, never rat on your friends! However, it’s also noteworthy to consider that the strike could lead ISIS and the other terrorist organizations to regroup as “the paper also reported on the US and its allies suspending operations against IS as an opportunity for the group’s resurgence, according to BBC journalist Mina Al-Lami.” The world will once again see a new push into Syria by ISIS and other terrorist groups with US and Israeli support in an effort to remove Syrian President, Bashar Al-Assad. That is why Russian President Vladimir Putin went to Syria for talks with President Assad as reported by RT news:

The two leaders were briefed on the military situation in Syria, including the northwestern province of Idlib, occupied by militants linked to Al-Qaeda. Assad thanked Putin and Russia for their support in restoring peace in Syria. Russian troops have been assisting the Syrian army since September 2015 in battling various terrorist groups, including Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS)

All anti-US and anti-Israel movements from Lebanon to Iran and all the way to central Asia with Afghanistan and Pakistan are now united for one cause, and that is to end US presence in the Middle East by targeting all US bases, embassies and other installations.

I could just imagine what world leaders are thinking at this point, especially those who are in some form of conflict with Washington including Russia, China, Syria, Lebanon, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Argentina, the Palestinians, Pakistan, past and re-emerging former Latin American presidents Lula de Silva of Brazil and Evo Morales of Bolivia, leaders from political, social and Indigenous movements including those within the US and occupied territories must be saying to themselves: What will America do to us? Would they drone strike me if I don’t obey them? The Trump regime has stepped-up its economic wars with sanctions that has caused mass suffering among populations in the Middle East with Iran and Syria as their targets and in Latin America with Venezuela and don’t forget that 59 year embargo on Cuba that Trump has kept going, so Trump is already a war president. Trump is a typical example of what you would call a “Chicken hawk” a term particularly used in the US which is defined by Wikipedia as “a person who strongly supports war or other military action yet who actively avoids or avoided military service when of age.” Newsweek magazine reported that “In all, Trump secured five deferments from the Vietnam War draft, four of which were because he was still studying at college. The fifth and final deferment was granted on medical grounds after a doctor signed Trump off as having bone spurs in his heels.” The article also claimed the following:

The daughters of the late podiatrist in question, Dr. Larry Braunstein, told The New York Times that their father did it as a favor to Fred Trump, the president’s father, who owned the building in which the doctor had an office. They said the suggestion from their father in his oft-told story was that Trump did not have a foot problem that should have disqualified him from the Vietnam troop drafts, and it was not clear if the podiatrist had ever examined him

I do not know if the claims made by Newsweek or The New York Times who have credibility issues are true or not, but if Dr. Larry Braunstein did do Trump’s father a favor, then it should be of no surprise because many wealthy people especially those in the East Coast of the United States did have the right connections to pull the strings to prevent their children from getting drafted into the Vietnam war. However, Trump has committed young men and women who mostly come from poor families to the coming war effort against Iran. Not only will US forces be fighting another war for oil and other natural resources, they will be fighting for Israel. Trump decisions concerning Israel has made his close friend and ally, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu very happy because Israel needs Iran and Syria to become another Iraq. US troops will be used for the protection and expansion of Israel who will become a powerful player in the Middle East with nuclear weapons. One thing is certain, the Muslim world is not going to except that under any circumstances.

Prepare Now, The War Has Begun

A report by the Financial Times on December 27th, 2019 ‘Russia, China and Iran Launch Gulf of Oman War Games’:

Russia, China and Iran launched their first joint naval exercises in the Gulf of Oman on Friday in a direct challenge to US influence in the Middle East. The move reflects growing co-operation between the US’s two main rivals and the Islamic republic, which is under sanctions imposed by Washington. 

“The most important achievement of these drills . . . is this message that the Islamic republic of Iran cannot be isolated,” vice-admiral Gholamreza Tahani, a deputy naval commander, said. “These exercises show that relations between Iran, Russia and China have reached a new high level while this trend will continue in the coming years” 

After Trump’s reckless strike against Soleimani, Russia and China quickly condemned the actions. It was reported by RT news that “Moscow considers the operation “an adventurous move that will lead to an escalation of tension throughout the region.” China’s response was similar. CNBC reported that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had said that “China opposes the use of force in international relations” and that “Military means will lead nowhere. Maximum pressure won’t work either. China urges the U.S. to seek resolutions through dialogue instead of abusing force.” China will be monitoring the crisis very closely “China will continue to uphold an objective and just position and play a constructive role in safeguarding peace and security in the Gulf region of the Middle East.“ Trump and the neoconservatives have now escalated tensions in the Middle East and in almost every region in the world with economic sanctions, failed coup attempts on Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and the other coup that succeeded in Bolivia. The Trump regime also managed to instigate a trade war with China while funding protests in Hong Kong to create instability in Asia and the list goes on.

A new resistance has become a reality in the Middle East that will eventually force US troops out of the region. Expect more anti-war protests to grow substantially across the world as the US and its allies become more aggressive. The US economy is also collapsing, putting its own national security at risk with a $22 trillion in debt because let’s face it, when the US economy collapses, all of the debt bubbles will pop and all hell will break out across the US. However, Trump proudly tweeted that “The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment. We are the biggest and by far the BEST in the World! If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand new beautiful equipment their way…and without hesitation!” There is a new neoconservative movement within the Trump White House driving foreign policy in the Middle East with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice-President Mike Pence leading the charge thus bringing back the memories of the Bush Neocons.  Let’s go back to an interesting Christian Science Monitor article from 2003 which can also be found on Global Research that describes what the Neocons believe in. The article ‘Neocon 101: What do Neoconservatives Believe?’ said the following:

What does a neoconservative dream world look like? Neocons envision a world in which the United States is the unchallenged superpower, immune to threats. They believe that the US has a responsibility to act as a “benevolent global hegemon.” In this capacity, the US would maintain an empire of sorts by helping to create democratic, economically liberal governments in place of “failed states” or oppressive regimes they deem threatening to the US or its interests. In the neocon dream world the entire Middle East would be democratized in the belief that this would eliminate a prime breeding ground for terrorists. This approach, they claim, is not only best for the US; it is best for the world. In their view, the world can only achieve peace through strong US leadership backed with credible force, not weak treaties to be disrespected by tyrants.  

Any regime that is outwardly hostile to the US and could pose a threat would be confronted aggressively, not “appeased” or merely contained. The US military would be reconfigured around the world to allow for greater flexibility and quicker deployment to hot spots in the Middle East, as well as Central and Southeast Asia. The US would spend more on defense, particularly for high-tech, precision weaponry that could be used in preemptive strikes. It would work through multilateral institutions such as the United Nations when possible, but must never be constrained from acting in its best interests whenever necessary

In an important note, neoconservative ideology is not limited to the Republicans. Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept published a report in 2017 titled ‘With New D.C. Policy Group, Dems Continue to Rehabilitate and Unify With Bush-Era Neocons’ pointed out that “one of the most under-discussed yet consequential changes in the American political landscape is the reunion between the Democratic Party and the country’s most extreme and discredited neocons.” The report continued:

A newly formed and, by all appearances, well-funded national security advocacy group, devoted to more hawkish U.S. policies toward Russia and other adversaries, provides the most vivid evidence yet of this alliance. Calling itself the Alliance for Securing Democracy, the group describes itself as “a bipartisan, transatlantic initiative” that “will develop comprehensive strategies to defend against, deter, and raise the costs on Russian and other state actors’ efforts to undermine democracy and democratic institutions,” and also “will work to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin’s ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States and Europe.” 

It is, in fact, the ultimate union of mainstream Democratic foreign policy officials and the world’s most militant, and militaristic, neocons. The group is led by two longtime Washington foreign policy hands, one from the establishment Democratic wing and the other a key figure among leading GOP neocons. 

The Democrat, Laura Rosenberger, served as a foreign policy adviser for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and chief of staff to two Obama national security officials. The Republican is Jamie Fly, who spent the last four years as counselor for foreign and national security affairs to one of the Senate’s most hawkish members, Marco Rubio; prior to that, he served in various capacities in the Bush Pentagon and National Security Council 

The neocons are back in the White House, reminiscent of the Bush regime, so another war is on the table. Be prepared, for the worst is yet to come.

 

Butcher of the Worst Kind: The Deeper Story Behind Trump’s Assassination of Soleimani

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BAGHDAD, IRAQ – JANUARY 05: Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi (L) attends an Iraqi parliament session in Baghdad, Iraq, 05 January 2020. Iraqi parliamentarians attended a session to discuss the presence of US forces in the country after Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds force, was killed in a U.S. drone airstrike in Iraq. (Photo by Iraqi prime minister office /Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

By Federico Pieraccini

Source: Covert Geopolitics

Mainstream media pundits are now talking about “de-escalation” between Iran and the US, after “both sides have fooled everyone that they have achieved victory.” Is that how cheap the life of a man who dedicated his better days fighting against the Deep State controlled ISIS and Al Qaeda terror groups?

Most people in the West believed as Trump, the Democrats, and the CIA mainstream media, were saying that Soleimani was a terrorist, who orchestrated the killing of hundreds of US troops and civilians throughout the Middle East. Yet, it was the US Air Force planes which were airdropping military supplies to terrorist positions in Syria.

It was Gen. Soleimani who directed and coordinated the movements of different forces which successfully averted the fall of Syria and Iraq during the onslaught of ISIS terror in 2011 and onwards. All sides of the conflict have acknowledged the key role played by Soleimani in counter-terrorism.

What has transpired immediately prior to the assassination of Gen. Soleimani should give the Americans an overview of the true nature of the Trump presidency, amidst their high expectations of a meaningful change away from their endless wars abroad.

The Deeper Story Behind the Assassination of Soleimani

Days after the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, new and important information is coming to light from a speech given by the Iraqi prime minister. The story behind Soleimani’s assassination seems to go much deeper than what has thus far been reported, involving Saudi Arabia and China as well the U.S. dollar’s role as the global reserve currency.

The Iraqi prime minister, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, has revealed details of his interactions with Trump in the weeks leading up to Soleimani’s assassination in a speech to the Iraqi parliament. He tried to explain several times on live television how Washington had been browbeating him and other Iraqi members of parliament to toe the American line, even threatening to engage in false-flag sniper shootings of both protesters and security personnel in order to inflame the situation, recalling similar modi operandi seen in Cairo in 2009, Libya in 2011, and Maidan in 2014. The purpose of such cynicism was to throw Iraq into chaos.

Here is the reconstruction of the story:

[Speaker of the Council of Representatives of Iraq] Halbousi attended the parliamentary session while almost none of the Sunni members did. This was because the Americans had learned that Abdul-Mehdi was planning to reveal sensitive secrets in the session and sent Halbousi to prevent this. Halbousi cut Abdul-Mehdi off at the commencement of his speech and then asked for the live airing of the session to be stopped. After this, Halbousi together with other members, sat next to Abdul-Mehdi, speaking openly with him but without it being recorded. This is what was discussed in that session that was not broadcast: 

Abdul-Mehdi spoke angrily about how the Americans had ruined the country and now refused to complete infrastructure and electricity grid projects unless they were promised 50% of oil revenues, which Abdul-Mehdi refused.

The complete (translated) words of Abdul-Mahdi’s speech to parliament:

This is why I visited China and signed an important agreement with them to undertake the construction instead. Upon my return, Trump called me to ask me to reject this agreement. When I refused, he threatened to unleash huge demonstrations against me that would end my premiership.

Huge demonstrations against me duly materialized and Trump called again to threaten that if I did not comply with his demands, then he would have Marine snipers on tall buildings target protesters and security personnel alike in order to pressure me.

I refused again and handed in my resignation. To this day the Americans insist on us rescinding our deal with the Chinese.

After this, when our Minister of Defense publicly stated that a third party was targeting both protestors and security personnel alike (just as Trump had threatened he would do), I received a new call from Trump threatening to kill both me and the Minister of Defense if we kept on talking about this “third party”.

Nobody imagined that the threat was to be applied to General Soleimani, but it was difficult for Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi to reveal the weekslong backstory behind the terrorist attack.

I was supposed to meet him [Soleimani] later in the morning when he was killed. He came to deliver a message from Iran in response to the message we had delivered to the Iranians from the Saudis.

We can surmise, judging by Saudi Arabia’s reaction, that some kind of negotiation was going on between Tehran and Riyadh:

The Kingdom’s statement regarding the events in Iraq stresses the Kingdom’s view of the importance of de-escalation to save the countries of the region and their people from the risks of any escalation.

Above all, the Saudi Royal family wanted to let people know immediately that they had not been informed of the U.S. operation:

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia was not consulted regarding the U.S. strike. In light of the rapid developments, the Kingdom stresses the importance of exercising restraint to guard against all acts that may lead to escalation, with severe consequences.

And to emphasize his reluctance for war, Mohammad bin Salman sent a delegation to the United States. Liz Sly, the Washington Post Beirut bureau chief, tweeted:

Saudi Arabia is sending a delegation to Washington to urge restraint with Iran on behalf of [Persian] Gulf states. The message will be: ‘Please spare us the pain of going through another war’.

What clearly emerges is that the success of the operation against Soleimani had nothing to do with the intelligence gathering of the U.S. or Israel. It was known to all and sundry that Soleimani was heading to Baghdad in a diplomatic capacity that acknowledged Iraq’s efforts to mediate a solution to the regional crisis with Saudi Arabia.

It would seem that the Saudis, Iranians and Iraqis were well on the way towards averting a regional conflict involving Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Riyadh’s reaction to the American strike evinced no public joy or celebration. Qatar, while not seeing eye to eye with Riyadh on many issues, also immediately expressed solidarity with Tehran, hosting a meeting at a senior government level with Mohammad Zarif Jarif, the Iranian foreign minister. Even Turkey and Egypt, when commenting on the asassination, employed moderating language.

This could reflect a fear of being on the receiving end of Iran’s retaliation. Qatar, the country from which the drone that killed Soleimani took off, is only a stone’s throw away from Iran, situated on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz. Riyadh and Tel Aviv, Tehran’s regional enemies, both know that a military conflict with Iran would mean the end of the Saudi royal family.

When the words of the Iraqi prime minister are linked back to the geopolitical and energy agreements in the region, then the worrying picture starts to emerge of a desperate U.S. lashing out at a world turning its back on a unipolar world order in favor of the emerging multipolar about which I have long written.

The US, now considering itself a net energy exporter as a result of the shale-oil revolution (on which the jury is still out), no longer needs to import oil from the Middle East. However, this does not mean that oil can now be traded in any other currency other than the U.S. dollar.

The petrodollar is what ensures that the U.S. dollar retains its status as the global reserve currency, granting the U.S. a monopolistic position from which it derives enormous benefits from playing the role of regional hegemon.

This privileged position of holding the global reserve currency also ensures that the U.S. can easily fund its war machine by virtue of the fact that much of the world is obliged to buy its treasury bonds that it is simply able to conjure out of thin air. To threaten this comfortable arrangement is to threaten Washington’s global power.

Even so, the geopolitical and economic trend is inexorably towards a multipolar world order, with China increasingly playing a leading role, especially in the Middle East and South America.

Venezuela, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Qatar and Saudi Arabia together make up the overwhelming majority of oil and gas reserves in the world. The first three have an elevated relationship with Beijing and are very much in the multipolar camp, something that China and Russia are keen to further consolidate in order to ensure the future growth for the Eurasian supercontinent without war and conflict.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is pro-US but could gravitate towards the Sino-Russian camp both militarily and in terms of energy. The same process is going on with Iraq and Qatar thanks to Washington’s numerous strategic errors in the region starting from Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011 and Syria and Yemen in recent years.

The agreement between Iraq and China is a prime example of how Beijing intends to use the Iraq-Iran-Syria troika to revive the Middle East and and link it to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.

While Doha and Riyadh would be the first to suffer economically from such an agreement, Beijing’s economic power is such that, with its win-win approach, there is room for everyone.

Saudi Arabia provides China with most of its oil and Qatar, together with the Russian Federation, supply China with most of its LNG needs, which lines up with Xi Jinping’s 2030 vision that aims to greatly reduce polluting emissions.

The U.S. is absent in this picture, with little ability to influence events or offer any appealing economic alternatives.

Washington would like to prevent any Eurasian integration by unleashing chaos and destruction in the region, and killing Soleimani served this purpose.  The U.S. cannot contemplate the idea of the dollar losing its status as the global reserve currency. Trump is engaging in a desperate gamble that could have disastrous consequences.

The region, in a worst-case scenario, could be engulfed in a devastating war involving multiple countries. Oil refineries could be destroyed all across the region, a quarter of the world’s oil transit could be blocked, oil prices would skyrocket ($200-$300 a barrel) and dozens of countries would be plunged into a global financial crisis. The blame would be laid squarely at Trump’s feet, ending his chances for re-election.

To try and keep everyone in line, Washington is left to resort to terrorism, lies and unspecified threats of visiting destruction on friends and enemies alike.

Trump has evidently been convinced by someone that the U.S. can do without the Middle East, that it can do without allies in the region, and that nobody would ever dare to sell oil in any other currency than the U.S. dollar.

Soleimani’s death is the result of a convergence of U.S. and Israeli interests. With no other way of halting Eurasian integration, Washington can only throw the region into chaos by targeting countries like Iran, Iraq and Syria that are central to the Eurasian project. While Israel has never had the ability or audacity to carry out such an assassination itself, the importance of the Israel Lobby to Trump’s electoral success would have influenced his decision, all the more so in an election year.

Trump believed his drone attack could solve all his problems by frightening his opponents, winning the support of his voters (by equating Soleimani’s assassination to Osama bin Laden’s), and sending a warning to Arab countries of the dangers of deepening their ties with China.

The assassination of Soleimani is the U.S. lashing out at its steady loss of influence in the region. The Iraqi attempt to mediate a lasting peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia has been scuppered by the U.S. and Israel’s determination to prevent peace in the region and instead increase chaos and instability.

Washington has not achieved its hegemonic status through a preference for diplomacy and calm dialogue, and Trump has no intention of departing from this approach.

Washington’s friends and enemies alike must acknowledge this reality and implement the countermeasures necessary to contain the madness.

 

Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies.

 

The War Pigs Are Finally Revealing Themselves – And This Is Just The Beginning…

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By Brandon Smith

Source: Alt-Market

In 2016 during the election campaign of Donald Trump one of the primary factors of his popularity among conservatives was that he was one of the first candidates since Ron Paul to argue for bringing US troops home and ending American involvement in the various elitist fabricated wars in the Middle East. From Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Syria and Yemen and beyond, the Neo-Cons and Neo-Libs at the behest of their globalist masters had been waging war oversees unabated for over 15 years. The time was ripe for a change and people felt certain that if Hillary Clinton entered the White House, another 4-8 years of war were guaranteed.

There was nothing to be gained from these wars. They were only dragging the US down socially and economically, and even the idea of “getting the oil” had turned into a farce as the majority of Iraqi oil has been going to China, not the US. General estimates on the costs of the wars stand at $5 trillion US tax dollars and over 4500 American dead along with around 40,000 wounded. The only people that were benefiting from the situation were globalists and banking elites, who had been clamoring to destabilize the Middle East since the day they launched their “Project For A New American Century” (PNAC). Truly, all wars are banker wars.

The Obama Administration’s attempts to lure Americans into supporting open war with the Assad regime in Syria had failed. Consistent attempts by George W. Bush and Obama to increase tensions with Iran had fizzled. Americans were showing signs of fatigue, FINALLY fed up with the lies being constructed to trick them into being complicit in the banker wars. Trump was a breath of fresh air…but of course, like all other puppets of the globalists, his promises were empty.

In my article ‘Clinton vs. Trump And The Co-Option Of The Liberty Movement’, published before the 2016 election, I warned that Trump’s rhetoric might be a grand show, and that it could be scripted by the establishment to bring conservatives back into the Republican/Neo-Con fold. At the time, leftist media outlet Bloomberg openly reveled in the idea that Trump might absorb and destroy the “Tea Party” and liberty movement and turn them into something far more manageable. The question was whether or not the liberty movement would buy into Trump completely, or remain skeptical.

Initially, I do not think the movement held onto its objectivity at all. Far too many people bought into Trump blindly and immediately based on misguided hopes and a desire to “win” against the leftists. The insane cultism of the political left didn’t help matters much, either.

When Trump started saturating his cabinet with banking elites and globalists from the CFR the moment he entered office, I knew without any doubt that he was a fraud. Close associations with establishment swamp creatures was something he had consistently criticized Clinton and other politicians for during the campaign, but Trump was no better or different than Clinton; he was just an errand boy for the elites. The singular difference was that his rhetoric was designed to appeal directly to liberty minded conservatives.

This meant that it was only a matter of time before Trump broke most of his campaign promises, including his assertions that he would bring US troops home. Eventually, the mask had to come off if Trump was going to continue carrying out the agenda of his masters.

Today, the mask has indeed come off. For the past three years Trump has made announcements of an imminent pull back of troops in the Middle East, including the recent claim that troops would be leaving Syria. All of the announcements were followed by an INCREASE in US troop presence in the region. Consistent attempts have been made to foment renewed strife with Iran. The build-up to war has been obvious, but some people on the Trump train still didn’t get it.

The most common argument I heard when pointing out all the inconsistencies in Trump’s claims as well as his direct links to globalists was that “He hadn’t started any wars, so how could he be a globalist puppet…?” My response has always been “Give it a little time, and he will.”

One of my readers noted recently that “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (TDS) actually goes both ways. Leftists double down on their hatred of Trump at every opportunity, but Trump cultists double down on their support for Trump regardless of how many promises he breaks. This has always been my biggest concern – That conservatives in the liberty movement would ultimately abandon their principles of limited government, the end to banking elites in the White House and ending illegal wars because they had invested themselves so completely in the Trump farce that they would be too embarrassed to admit they had been conned.

Another concern is that the liberty movement would be infected by an influx of people who are neo-conservative statists at their core. These people pretend to be liberty minded conservatives, but when the veil is lifted they show their true colors as the War Pigs they really are. A distinction has to be made between Bush era Neo-Con control freaks and constitutional conservatives; there are few if any similarities between the two groups, but the establishment hopes that the former will devour the latter.

I’ve noticed that the War Pigs are out in force this past week, beating their chests and calling for more blood. The US government has assassinated Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, retaliations against US targets have begun, and now the Iraqi government has demanded that US troops be removed from the region, to which Trump has said “no” and demanded payment instead. A new troop surge has been initiated and this WILL end in all out war. The tit-for-tat has just begun.

How do Trump cultists respond? “Kill those terrorists!”

Yes, many of the same people that applauded Trump’s supposed opposition to the wars three years ago are now fanatically cheering for the beginning of perhaps the most destructive war of all. The rationalizations for this abound. Soleimani was planning attacks on US targets in Iraq, they say. And, this might be true, though no hard proof has yet been presented.

I’m reminded of the Bush era claims of Iraqi “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, the weapons that were never found and no proof was found that they ever existed. The only weapons Iraq had were the weapons the US sold to them decades ago. Any government can fabricate an excuse for assassination or war for public consumption; the Trump Administration is no different.

That said, I think the most important factor in this debate has fallen by the wayside. The bottom line is, US troops and US bases should NOT be in Iraq in the first place. Trump himself stated this time and time again. Even if Soleimani was behind the attacks and riots in Iraq, US assets cannot be attacked in the region if they are REMOVED from the region as Trump said he would do.

There is only one reason to keep US assets in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria at this time, and that is to create ongoing tensions in the area which can be used by the establishment to trigger a new war, specifically with Iran.

The War Pigs always have reasons and rationales, though. They say the Muslim world is a threat to our way of life, and I agree that their ideology is completely incompatible with Western values. That said, the solution is not sending young Americans to die overseas in wars based on lies. Again, these wars only benefit the bankers and globalists; they do not make us safer as a people. The only moral solution is to make sure the fascist elements of Muslim extremism are not imported to our shores.

The War Pigs say that we deserve payment for our “services rendered” in the region before we leave, echoing the sentiments of Donald Trump. I ask, what services? Payment for what? The invasion the Iraqi’s didn’t want, based on fallacies that have been publicly exposed? The US bases that should not be there in the first place? The hundreds of thousands dead from a war that had no purpose except to deliberately destabilize the region?

We will never get “payment” from the Iraqis as compensation for these mad endeavors, and the War Pigs know this. They want war. They want it to go on forever. They want to attach their egos to the event. They want to claim glory for themselves vicariously when we win, and they want to claim victimhood for themselves vicariously when our soldiers or citizens get killed. They are losers that can only be winners through the sacrifices of others.

The War Pigs defend the notion that the president should be allowed to make war unilaterally without support from congress. They say that this type of action is legal, and technically they are right. It is “legal” because the checks and balances of war were removed under the Bush and Obama Administrations. The passage of the AUMF (Authorization For Use Of Military Force) in 2001 gave the Executive Branch dictatorial powers to initiate war on a whim without oversight. Just because it is “legal” does not mean it is constitutional, or right.

In the end, the Trump bandwagon is meant to accomplish many things for the globalists; the main goal though is that it is designed to change liberty conservatives into rabid statists. It is designed to make anti-war pro-constitution activists into war mongers and supporters of big government, as long as it is big government under “our control”. But it’s not under our control. Trump is NOT our guy. He is an agent of the establishment and always has been.

For now, the saber rattling is aggressive but the actions have been limited. This will not be the case for long.  Some may ask why the establishment has not simply launched all out war now?  Why start out small?  Firstly, they need conservatives psychologically invested in the idea.  This may require a false flag event or attack on American civilians.  Secondly, they need to execute an extensive troop build-up, which could take a few months.  Declarations of a “need for peace” are always used to stall for time while the elites position for war.

War with Iran is pointless, and frankly, unwinnable, and the elites know this. It’s not just a war with Iran, it is a war with Iran, their allies, and every other nation that reacts negatively to our actions.  And, these nations do not have to react militarily, they can react economically by dumping US treasuries and the dollar as world reserve.

The establishment wants the US embroiled in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, etc. until we are so hollowed out from conflict that we collapse.

They also need a considerable distraction to hide their responsibility for the implosion of the Everything Bubble and the economic pain that will come with it. The end game for the establishment is for America to self destruct, so that it can be rebuilt into something unrecognizable and eternally monstrous. They want every vestige of our original principles to be erased, and to do that, they need us to be complicit in our own destruction. They need us to participate. Don’t participate, and refuse to support new banker wars. Don’t be a War Pig.