Posted on 04/16/2018 10:23:08 AM PDT by WisconsinRep
The President’s Syrian Mistake
The war-hungry neocon crowd just keeps repeating the same discredited dirty trick
The moment Donald Trump became president-elect, the political and governmental establishments of the United States, in particular the intelligence agencies, commenced nonstop efforts to stall, co-opt and dilute the policies on which Trump ran, and was ultimately elected.
On trade, immigration, tax policy and regulatory reform President Trump has managed to accomplish more than many of his critics and even some of his supporters had thought possible. It is vital to note that some of the president’s policy advisors and even White House aides have tried to kill or dilute many of the policy changes and reforms Trump was enacting. Fortunately, they failed.
They tried to reverse the president’s position on climate change, they tried to dilute his tax cuts, they tried to kill the tariffs he enacted, they tried to undermine his travel ban and there are some who continue to insist that the southern border wall cannot be built.
But more than any of the other policy areas, it is in national defense and foreign affairs that President Trump faces the most ruthless and ubiquitous of would-be usurpers: the so-called neoconservatives. The neocons are dead-set on maintaining their vice grip on American foreign policy and continuing to impose on this country their messianic international designs and risky interventionist schemes that seek to use American military might as the tool of their dubious globalist objectives.
The track record of the neocons is as clear as it is dismal and disturbing. This aberrant sect that has burrowed itself within America’s defense, intelligence and diplomatic hierarchies has given us endless war, 100’s of thousands, if not millions, of human beings slaughtered, and trillions of dollars siphoned out of the pockets of America’s taxpayers, present AND future, only to be squandered on aimless overseas misadventures and prolonged military occupations of hostile 3rd-world countries.
Compounding the injuries and costs they have inflicted on the American people with their hubris-driven overseas military interventions, the neocons have systematically, and in many instances illegally, decimated many of the most fundamental safeguards against tyrannical government that comprise the essence of the Constitution of the United States. The rise of the neocons has been directly proportional to the erosion of civil liberties in the United States of America.
The militarists and spooks who serve this neocon agenda color, hype, fabricate and dress up the intelligence given to the president to induce him to abandon his non-interventionist ideals. They abuse their official capacity to promote a political agenda.
President Trump has great reverence for the institutions of our military, and particular affection for those who serve in America’s armed forces. Unfortunately, the president has not recognized the extent to which the Pentagon was, like every other arm of our federal government, cynically politicized under Barack Obama.
Obama’s apparatchiks methodically promoted and empowered personnel whose leanings are decidedly globalist, while retiring if not purging those suspected of having Republican leanings or a traditionalist conservative view of American military power, whereby our fighting forces exist for our national defense, not as an international police force.
The President gives his foreign policy advisors a presumption of honesty they do not deserve. The pardon of Scooter Libby, who was the immediate underling of perhaps the ultimate neocon warmonger Dick Cheney, merely highlights the president’s failure to recognize how the neocons will simply invent a false narrative and spoon feed it to their handmaidens in the pliant corporate media in furtherance of their war agenda.
The very notion that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad would launch a chemical attack defies logic, on the face of it. Assad’s Russian backers asserted to the world community that Assad has no chemical weapons. For Assad to randomly launch a chemical weapons attack, he would not only have to defy the international community but also embarrass his patrons, effectively making liars out of them on the global stage.
Assad currently has the upper hand against the Islamic fundamentalist rebels seeking his overthrow. After the president’s missile strike one year ago, in retaliation for Assad’s alleged (yet still unproven) use of chemical weapons, Assad clearly knows the dire consequences and international condemnation that would result from any use of chemical weapons. Not only would such an act amount to a war crime, but it would also reveal that Assad does, in fact, possess these heinous weapons.
Why would Assad ever do this? Why would he take such an unnecessary and provocative action, just days after President Trump announced his intention to withdraw American troops from the area, as soon as possible?
Use of chemical weapons by Assad would only serve those who wish to further enmesh the United States in Syria’s ongoing civil war –a development that Assad undeniably wishes to avoid, not provoke. In fact, such a move by Assad would play right into the hands of those who seek his downfall and want an escalation of American involvement, not those who support President Trump’s desire to limit the misuse of American military power as an illegitimate tool of ‘regime change’.
To be blunt, the sudden, inexplicable use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad would be highly convenient only to those who seek to execute the foreign policy not of Donald Trump, but of the miserable failure he defeated in the 2016 election, Barack Obama’s bellicose foreign policy underling, Hillary Clinton.
The last time Assad was accused of using chemical weapons, the bloodthirsty presidential loser Clinton called for the bombing of Syrian airfields, and is on record as rejecting her former master Barack Obama’s decision not to enforce a no-fly zone over Syria. Such a dangerous and provocative insinuation as Clinton was pushing would certainly antagonize the Russians and create the constant risk of direct military conflict with a heavily-armed nuclear power, if only by accident, that could quickly spin out of control.
Just as the warhawks around the President are selling him a bill of goods on Syria, they also seek to keep the U.S. mired in Afghanistan, perpetuating what is already the longest continuous military conflict in American history, at nearly 17 years and still going.
They are constantly pushing for more and more sanctions against Russia, to punish offenses they can’t even prove were committed by that nation, and are constantly instigating against the Chinese, just as the president seeks to deepen the dialog with each of these countries, towards a strategy of playing the two nations off against each other, while securing from each the most favorable trade deals possible for the United States.
As far as the new strikes in Syria are concerned, let’s not forget how these same underhanded elements incessantly pushing America towards aggressive militarism abroad used the same exact allegation, also totally-unfounded, that Assad had used chemical weapons as their way of stampeding the president into ordering the first airstrikes on Syria, almost exactly one year ago. Even General Mattis had to finally admit, many months after the airstrikes, that there was no proof that Assad had, in fact, used chemical weapons.
This war-hungry neocon crowd just keeps repeating the same discredited dirty trick. They are clearly intent on taking our country to war and undermining Donald Trump’s efforts to de-escalate America’s perpetual military presence in hostile foreign lands, and perhaps even facilitate peace, for a change.
I will continue to support the President but in a few weeks, or perhaps months, it will likely become clear that the alleged chemical weapons attack attributed to Assad was, in fact, a fraud…a ruse…and, ultimately, that these military strikes against Syria were a grave mistake.
Let us hope the neocons have no other dirty tricks up their sleeves, before the president can get a handle on the situation and ascertain the truth of the matter, before he — and our country — are pushed further down the road to yet another fruitless, destructive war…or worse.
Please enlighten me on how Roger Stone is connected to Russia.
All the hand wringing over this is absurd so long as American lives aren't being lost.
Trump even gave them a heads-up with his appearance on tv to announce the strike so Syrians could leave and prepare.
It was all done for show to quiet hawks who were demanding Trump 'do something'.
If we see an escalation in chem and terror attacks it will prove some group or nation is trying to provoke a war.
If Trump gets sucked-in then we've got a problem.
Use of chemical weapons and nuclear weapons are verboten. This isn't about anything else. Surgical strikes to eliminate these where necessary is absolutely proper per all conventions and treaties.
WWI and II settled that issue. Not to strike would be the epitome of cowardice and irresponsibility.
People so damn ignorant of history should STFU in my humble opinion.
Don’t agree it was a mistake. The US response to assads launching WMD was proportional and appropriate.
As for Stone’s assertion that it didn’t make sense for assad to use them? Lots of things happen which don’t make sense.
I don’t think the neocons have had much sway since their badly managed Iraq occupation. Our current involvement in Syria, and other failed states, is limited and designed to prevent another 911.
How on earth would killing MORE people rescue Syria?Since the question is framed as "How on earth..." let me ask the question this way:
How many Jews would it have been acceptable to gas before the world is motivated to stop a crime against "humanity?"
The cry of "never again" was meant to set a line in the sand that some forms of warfare are unacceptable to a humane civilization. Using chemicals against people was decided by all to be one of them.
The question then becomes whether the powers of the world are: 1) willing to live up to the expectation, and 2) capable of acting to punish to send the message that "the earth" is serious about this.
So the answer to Hitchens' question might be that it might not "rescue Syria," but it reminds "the earth" that the red line of chemical warfare is still going to be defended.
If chemical weapons can be determined to have been used, it can be debated whether the Syrian government used it or rebel groups used it or disguised actors used it to frame another, but "the earth" cannot let that confusion serve to dissuade them from acting if the underlying fact is that chemical weapons were used. It's not on the governments who retaliate if they hit the wrong actor, it's on the participants of the conflict to police themselves in the rules of engagement and act accordingly.
If one side moves to frame the other, so be it if both sides feel the wrath of response. The message is still sent that chemical warfare will not be tolerated and it behooves all sides of a conflict to move to make sure to "the earth's" satisfaction that they are not prepared to cross that red line.
Original poster responds:There is absolutely no concrete proof of people being killed by chemical weapons etc. in Syria in the alleged attacks in recent years.
Its made up videos of alleged victims done by jihadists and spread by mainstream media followed by government officials claiming horrible things have happened.
Those who rant against Assad are allied with the MSM and their spreading of Al Qaeda jihadist lies about chemical attacks in Syria.
My reply:
Killed, non-lethally used, or faked?
My point still stands. If the world drew a red line at the use of chemical weapons, and a terrorist group fakes the use of weapons as a means of war, it's still on those who harbor the terrorists to be responsible for those acts.
Either deny the Jihadists safe passage, or be culpable for their acts as if you had done them yourself. It's the same principle as when an accomplice to a crime is charged with first degree murder when another actually pulled the trigger.
If Assad (or anyone else) doesn't want to be blamed, then they need to act to be above reproach. If the argument is that they are -- now, then is this a new behavior of convenience or have they demonstrated over enough of history to show that they are a maligned country? Should they have done more in the past to deflect assumptions of guilt on them now?
Keep in mind that I'm not talking about your "routine" despotic dictatorship, I'm talking about the use of chemical weapons. Did Syria at one time accept a cache of weapons, was Syria at one time forced to destroy discovered chemical weapons, or does Syria have a history of unilaterally rejecting chemical weapons?
What is Syria's level of culpability in being accused as a credible user of chemical weapons? Is it high enough to justify a response as a deterrent to others to not get involved at all with chemical weapons to avoid the perception of guilt?
If you're looking for someone who set off a bomb, who are you more likely to suspect, the person found with a box of matches or the person who carries nothing?
-PJ
His book about Hillarys crimes against women makes some pretty good points, but his nonsense that the Mossad killed Robert Maxwell, detracts from it.
What a stupid attitude. You don’t care about us killing innocents under false pretenses? Furthering the bogus Russia-is-our-enemy claims of the neocons? Fraying still more our relationship with Russia?
The dishonesty is probably the worst of all, but it is all bad.
You can’t possibly believe that Assad did the gassing—if any gassing at all actually took place—can you?
And most likely those were empty sheds by the time they were struck. Give enough notice to get the people out and the chemicals can be got out too.
I’m pretty sure I’m not the ignorant one on this thread.
As someone who is a Jew and is, of course, faithful to a different country than America (sarc/), I realize that Tucker Carlson makes a good point that we do not definitely know who did the gas attack in Syria; however, I am glad my President struck those Syrian gas stores because Assad threatned to use them against Israel and the neo-Nazis; e.g., the author of “The Turner Diaries,” expressed the hope that Syria would use them against Israel before he died of cancer. I do not want to see another holocuast on film or in real life.
The Mossad doesn’t represent the Jewish people.
Lets stop the name-calling.
So we hit their chemical weapons depots.
I don’t see where this is unnecessarily entangles us any more than we already were. It seems to me that we can still exit Syria. Only we are leaving them with a lot fewer chem weapons and have put the world on notice that if you use such weapons, you bring down the international community on you.
Roger is right, unfortunately. It was a fun ride while it lasted.
Haven’t you heard? Roger Stone is now a Russian agent/s
Yes, Assad and Russia would and have used chemical weapons and are killing for more innocents than we did. I see nothing wrong diminishing their capacity to kill more innocents by doing it again.
Stop listening to Alex Jones and reading Prison Planet. You make conservatives sound crazy.
Why would Assad use chemical weapons? To regain control of his country faster.
Why would he think he could get away with it? Because he has many times before with Uncle Vlady's help.
You are out to lunch. Assad was winning, we had said we were withdrawing. The evidence doesn’t begin to fit the neocon spin.
Try to use your critical facilities—if you have some—to think this through. This is just one more in a long line of false flags from the warmongers of the world—and those (hello, SA and Israel) who don’t want us to leave the region.
The ad hominem attack does nothing for your baseless position.
Guccifer is a GRU agent, Stone had repeated contacts and leaks from Guccifer. Q.E.D.
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