Progressive Double Standards Reveal Their True Color

In its insatiable desire to be the wokest in the moment, the progressive left has morphed into a combination of ‘whitey” and the brain and the PC principle of South Park. It is so common place now that they don’t realize how through their double standards that they are revealing their true colors. Imagine for example if a white person said the following:  "This is not going to be the country of [Black] people.” Would this be acceptable? Would this be considered racist or xenophobic? It sure it would be. However, this was not said by a white person, but rather an immigrant refuge named Ilhan Omar and instead of black she used the word white.  Maybe it is no big deal to many but for me, as a black man tired of bigotry and racism regardless of its source, it is a major concern. I hate stereotypes and the collective assignment of categorization over the individual. But this is typical of the virtue signaling, divide and conquer political approach of the left in the United States of America presently. It is as if this is the only thing they can think of or concern themselves with.

As a man born in the segregated South, I can honestly say racism isn’t as bad as many proclaim nor is it as institutional as many desires to believe. If such was the case, all races would be subjugated via the existence of the white Eurocentric political and power structure singularly, but they are not. Take descendants of Asia born in the U.S. including but not limited to Koreans, Indians, Chinese, Koreans and the Japanese.  They too have a history somewhat similar but not the same as slavery. The Japanese could not buy land in in many states and were even interned. The same can be said for the Chinese at the turn of the century. However, these groups do way better in economic and educational outcomes that whites or blacks. Racism would not allow such an outcome on behalf of white benefit if it was a true factor in present day outcomes related to systemic power and oppression. What can be stated is that in these groups, out of wedlock birth is lower and the value of education is higher, as it was for blacks after slavery and during segregation.

Being woke leads to such irrational and spurious conclusions when made in the absence of evidence and data. We see the same when the left harps on Islamophobia and gay rights. On the one had you say to state anything negative about radical Islamic fundamentalist is Islamophobic and xenophobic, yet you paint all white people collectively for the sins of their pigmentation and history and all blacks as being so dumb that we cannot succeed in America because we are black. At the same time with respect to Islamic fundamentalist, claim to be in support of gay rights while ignoring that in Islam being gay is punishable by death historically and presently. Just last week, the Saudi government executed 37 men including many for alleged homosexual acts. But to say this fact is wrong and is considered blatant islamophobia when facts outline this is evident.

Even noting the fact that Ilhan Omar gave a speech at a fundraising event with Hassan Shibly, who is on record for extreme anti-Semitic views against Jews and is the lawyer for Hoda Muthana, a New Jersey–born woman who married an ISIS fighter and in writing has proclaimed her adherence to the Islamic State, is an attack on all Muslims albeit specific individuals are named. This is the issue democrats will have to address - how their double standards and inconsistent logic show that they are not truly concerned about the issues of identity they proclaim to signal support for.

Do not think I am picking on Omar because I am not. Let us take Elizabeth Warren to task equally. The announced Democrat presidential candidate recently penned and op-ed in which she too proclaimed and outlined a serious issue in existence – black female mortality. However, her rationale for the outcome in her view was racism without evidence. Warren promulgated that the reason that “Black women are three to four times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes” was mainly due to Racism. My query was why not sexism? American Medical Association data show that more than 85 percent of obstetricians and gynecologists are women. Moreover, data indicates that “ob-gyns had the highest proportion of underrepresented minorities (combined, 18.4%), especially black (11.1%) and Hispanic (6.7%) physicians” and that “underrepresented minority ob-gyns were more likely than white or Asians to practice in federally funded underserved areas or where poverty levels were high. In fact, among adult medical specialists, greater racial and ethnic diversity is found among obstetrician-gynecologists (ob-gyns).” The more astonishing fact is that black women are more than 10 times more likely to have a black female ob-gyn than a white one, 18 more times than having a white male one. Again, not supported by fact or math.

The double standards continue with regards to other issues equally. On immigration for example, progressives appear to care more about illegal migrants than homeless and poor minorities born in America. It is as if they want an immigration policy for immigrants first versus one that benefits U.S. citizens first. They do this disingenuously also by conflating legal immigration with illegal immigration. They run cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles which are reflective of their policies that result in mass homelessness, failing government public schools and streets littered with syringes and feces.

Another example is abortion. Progressives openly claim to be the party of science but consider a baby in the womb a clump of cells (which anatomy, biology and even ultra-sounds refute) when they are actual human beings. Just this week, an Alabama democrat state lawmaker defended abortion by saying "Some kids are unwanted, so you kill them now or kill them later." This is a pervasive view for these same people advocate for gun control because guns kill but since Roe V. Wade, there have been about 1.5 million deaths because of guns but 60 million due to abortion. But if you support any views in the opposite of liberals, they attempt to silence you and deplatform you.  I know, I have been permanently banned from twitter.

I would hope that facts would be more valuable than the incessant claims of racism that progressives incessantly spew. Sure, racism exist, and it will always exist, but it is not as bad as the left projects. Fact is you will never ever be able to get rid of all racism or individual racist beliefs no more than you can eliminate all murder. This quest for eutopia is delusional and sociopathic. I just want to be treated as a unique individual with my own personal agency, not as a group, for I am an individual first rather than a part of a monolith.

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Spain and the Erdogan Playbook

Over the past decade many have openly complained about the brutal and authoritarian political moves of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.  From his alleged supplying of ISIS jihadist in their effort to assist in the overthrow of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and his helping them to smuggle oil from Iraq and Syria to world markets, to the way in which he dealt with the failed coup attempt against him by arresting his opponents, and closing all their affiliated institutions. There is also the referendum he won to serve both as head of government and the head of state at the same time. However even before this, many came to learn and understand his ruthlessness through his interaction with the Kurdish minority of Turkey, their political representation the Halkların Demokratik Partisi (HDP) and more notably, the Kurdistan Workers, party.

Recently he detained two leaders of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish HDP along with many others accusing them of being supportive of the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) and spreading propaganda. Instead of addressing the vile hazardous actions of ISIS, Turkey under Erdogan has selected to go to war with the Kurds and has been on a continuous exercise attacking Kurdish militias in Syria and bombing Kurdish villages in the region. This is Turkey and how the Turks and Erdogan express their fear of Kurdish independence and self-determination for an ethnic group that make up between 15 and 25 percent of Turkey’s population (8 to 9 million) with an equally long and storied history. 

Now let us imagine a similar ethnic group both in number (6 to 7 million) and disposition with an equally long and storied history (1100 ACE), however they comprise 28 percent of the population. Like the Kurd’s they have their own language and seek to be independent, and practice self-rule. Moreover, as in the case with the Kurds, they have faced continuous opposition  for having such a desire and even more so for promoting the use of suffrage to determine such. This group of people since then has had many local elected officials arrested by the state government, with the regional police force under orders to arrest mayors if they refuse to appear for questioning by the state investigating their desire to hold a vote for independence.  In addition, the nation’s constitutional court has suspended the prosecutor of the region and central authorities have taken over all spending. Although this ethnic region of the nation is responsible for more than 20 percent of the more than 1 trillion-euro economy, the state central government has threatened to take away all its spending and budgetary authority.  This is Spain and this is how the central government in Madrid and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy express their fear of Catalonian independence and self-determination.

Historically, Catalonia is not a part of Spain just as Kurdistan was not a part of Turkey or Iraq.  This isn’t a new proposition for as in both cases war dictates who draws the boarders of conquered, occupied or colonialized nations. This was true with Catalonia as it was with Turkey, Iraq and Kurdistan after the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World War I and both nations’ modern borders being demarcated in 1920 by the League of Nations via the Treaty of Sèvres.  However, just as in Turkey, likewise the Spanish government consider holding an independence referendum illegal and that such a vote would be in violation of the Spanish Constitution. To accentuate his point, the federal authorities have arrested scores of local politicians, seized tens of thousands of ballots and are continuously trying to block the official web site for the independence referendum.

It appears as if Spain under the direction of Prime Minister Rajoy is following the script designed and practiced by Erdogan word for word and action by action. Just this week in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Turkish President Erdogan warned that an independence referendum among Iraqi Kurds would have serious consequences. He stated, “Steps such as demands for independence that can cause new crises and conflicts in the region must be avoided. We hereby call on the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government to abort the initiative they have launched in that direction.”  Not to be out done in dictatorial prowess, Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy and his Constitutional Court has not only suspended the Catalonia and legislature but has also blocked all and any measures taken by the pro-independence Catalan government. These strong-armed tactics of intimidation did not end there. The Constitutional Court also levied fines of up to €12,000 a day on members of the Catalan electoral board and Prime Minister Rajoy defends detaining accused separatist politicians for promoting “civil disobedience” and acting “profoundly antidemocratic.” Rayjoy has also ordered all Catalan mayors to appear before the state to answer questions about the move toward independence, however the majority have declare exercised their right to remain silent before the court.

One consistent perspective presented by the Spanish authorities is that the referendum would be unconstitutional because all Spanish citizens would not be able to vote.  This is strange since the Spanish Government along with other western nations supported the 1991 Kosovo, Slovenia and Croatia referendums for independence in which Serbian’s were not allowed to vote, nor did they make this sort of argument when the South Sudan was created without all Sudanese not being allowed to vote. In fact, since this time, the Spanish Government has recognized 26 new states the majority which were established independently (a unilateral referendum) of the input of others since that time.

Then there is the issue of when did this become unconstitutional. Some have advocated that the Spanish Constitutional Court’s decision to strike down key elements of the 2006 Catalan statute of autonomy was the actual unconstitutional action that has resulted in what is happening between Spain and Catalonia presently.  Since then, like the big neighborhood bully, Spain has refused to even talk or discuss anything regarding politics (including possible Catalonian succession) with the people of Catalonia and instead forced its opinions and decisions on the citizenry of Catalonia by fiat (speaking of undemocratic).

I used to believe that one of the foremost tenants of democracy was self-determination. The people of Catalonia think in this vein or else they would not have (through their vote) given the Parliament of Catalonia a mandatefor a Proclamation of Independence. Spain and Rajoy may need to find another path of action, for the more they stay on this road, the more they become the mirror image of Turkey and Erdogan.

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Why Black Folks Need Confederate Monuments

Some may or may not know that one of my favorite books of all time is 1984 written by George Orwell. To be honest, since about ten years of age, I’ve must have read this book more than 20 times. Each time I read it I come away with something new. To refresh your memory, the main character in the book is a man named Winston Smith. Smith works in the Records Department in the Ministry of Truth, where his job is to rewrite history per the desires of the Party that runs the totalitarian government of Oceania. Specifically, he revises old writings, politically inconvenient facts and history to advance the propaganda interests of the Oceania government.  One tool Orwell invents for this purpose was the memory hole.

In 1984, Orwell describes a memory hole is an opening in a wall connected to a tube that is connected to an incinerator. It is employed to destroy any inconvenient or embarrassing fact on historical records that is no longer considered useful for politics. In addition, using the memory hole made it easier for the government to get people to engage in “duckspeak” (speaking without thinking), obviate “oldthink” (thoughts, beliefs or ideas enthused by past events, memories and history in the times before the revolution) and to encourage “blackwhite” (getting folks to believe that 2 + 2 is 5, or that white is black and black is white and to forget that one has ever believed anything different.

Over the past few years, a movement in the African American community has been afloat to remove all historical confederate reminders of the period in which the United States was engaged in a Civil War (1861-1865) and this scares me.  Not because I support the confederacy or do not support the confederacy, but because I support history and learning and pedagogy.  Removing these symbols will do nothing for black folk and make things a lot worse in my view.  First, this is just cosmetic, it will not mean nothing, since when do you get your feeling hurt by looking at a flag or a statue of a many you don’t know historically anything about? Robert E. Lee owned slaves sure, and he ran a plantation before the war, but he historically is no different than Thomas Jefferson or George Washington from this perspective.  Are you upset with the state of Virginia too? Will it be next? After all Virginia was named after the person who introduced slavery to America. Half of the folk so offended likely couldn’t tell you when the civil war was fought without the assistance of google nor have read any book about it or any other American wars for that fact.

I fear that without these historical reminders, being as lazy as we are with respect to reading and our penchant to watch TV more than we read, we will have forgot about this tragic and painful part of U.S. History and sleep walk back into a similar predicament in future generations. It isn’t like we discuss history with our children anyway especially with this most recent generation.  This is one reason why Marcus Garvey wrote “A people without the knowledge of their history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”

Our incessant focus on memory holing history is idiotic and ridiculous.  Why is it that we put more time into complaining about statues and flags than our kids killing each other on the streets of Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans or Memphis every day? Why do we spend more energy on superficial actions when we can go around to any government public school and find more than half of the kids not proficient in ANY subject on grade level? Now these are worth attention, but nope, not sexy or dramatic enough (Deray trained yawl hypocrites well).  I’m not offended or traumatized by any statute or flag.  Why are we as black folk offended and traumatized by historical fact? Will removing them take the historical record away? Will it make more black folk richer? Will less of us live in poverty? Will we start more business? Will it lower STI rates in our community? NOPE – NOT ONE BIT. Because this is misdirected and misguided energy aimed at something that has no tangible impact on any black person in America unless you a puzzy with a soft as wet toilet paper mentally.

It seems as this fake synthetic outrage is becoming a contagious pandemic.  Baltimore City Council has voted to remove four Confederate monuments in the city. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus want to remove all Confederate statues from the Capitol. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), told the Hill that “Confederate memorabilia have no place in this country and especially not in the United States Capitol. These images symbolize a time of racial discrimination and segregation that continues to haunt this country and many African-Americans who still to this day face racism and bigotry.”  Can’t make this up, so now black folks are afraid of ghost and haunted by images and symbols? Even more comedic is that magically, by removing these images and symbols, the past “time of racial discrimination and segregation” will either be forgotten or vaporize and end. Simple ain’t it? Talk about historical revisionism and make-believe.

Bishop James Dukes, pastor of Liberation Christian Center, in Chicago is calling for the removal of a statue of statue George Washington and his and President Andrew Jackson’s name removed from Washington and Jackson parks respectively, because they owned slaves. I suspect cats will be going after all confederate cemeteries and even the Confederate monuments in Gettysburg National Military Park (although Park and State officials say they will never be removed)

What will be next, removing all members of the confederacy or former slave owners from history books? Removing said history books from the libraries’? Preventing people from even writing books on the confederacy or slavery because “these images symbolize a time of racial discrimination and segregation that continues to haunt this country and many African-Americans who still to this day face racism and bigotry?” Will John C. Calhoun, a former vice president and staunch supporter of slavery be next? What about the Dallas Cowboy football team whose blue star is from the Bonnie Blue Flag (a banner of the Confederate States of America at the start of the American Civil War in 1861).  Since many of us black folks do not read as much as previous generations, these two may be safe for as they say “to hide something from a nigg@, put it in a book.”

Yes, one day our kids will not know anything about US history, slavery, the civil war or the deeds of many, good or bad, for the fear of as then Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake noted in signs that confederate monuments were just “part of a propaganda campaign” to “perpetuate the beliefs of white supremacy. “Again, although I am a black man, I will likely be called a racist piece of uninformed white trash, or worse – described as not being woke - for not supporting non-substantive cosmetic actions under the guise of African American self-determination and empowerment. But like the Taliban who destroyed the historical largest standing Buddha’s, in the world in Bamiyan, who had been standing since the century. In Afghanistan, or ISIS, who destroyed the Temple of Baalshamin at the Syrian site of Palmyra because they found the offensive to Allah, similar suggestions about confederate monuments are equally claims of bull shit.

You do not have to agree with me but this is how I see it.  If you do not believe me, just try to take down Auschwitz, Dachau or Buchenwald: Jews will never let it happen because they do not want ANYONE to forget about what happened to them so it will never happen again.  Not us. They write and make documentaries incessantly on every aspect of the Holocaust and you will see at least one every day or weekly on TV around the world.  Whether is on the Kristallnacht or the  Nuremberg Laws or the Jews of Poland or the Jews of Lithuania or the human experimentation they tolerated, they telling their story. Not US.  Instead we get mad and formulate #Noconfederate because we too lazy to write and make our own and/or tell our own historical reality. Like I said. try to take down Auschwitz, Dachau or Buchenwald: Jews will never let it happen because they do not want ANYONE to forget about what happened to them so it will never happen again.  Not us.

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The Snap, Crackle & Pop of Susan Rice

Now I don’t watch the Sunday network talk shows, but I do get to read the transcripts.  I was sent one via email from a friend of mine on Susan Rice’s appearance on the Sunday talk show hosted by Former Bill Clinton Press Secretary George Stephanopoulos.  My friend was cracking up and couldn’t stop laughing. Now for the record I like Susan Rice, I may not agree with her often, but I do like her (nothing like a smart black woman to make me smile). I digress. Nonetheless, it was obvious the powers that be on the mainstream media wanted or needed to get former Ambassador Susan Rice into the collective unconscious of the public left.

From reading the transcript, the first thing that jumped out was that Stephanopoulos was tossing former Ambassador Rice under hand softball pitches or even worse, setting the ball on the T for her to hit without much difficulty. The set up (as has been the case since the presidential primary), is to first use a few of Trump tweets like they were chum (fish parts, bone and blood) to attract the anger and lure Ambassador Rice like a shark to the Trump smell. This is followed by the introduction of the Great White or Tiger Shark they are baiting (chumming) for: this time it being the person who served as national security adviser and UN ambassador under President Obama. His first question, referring to the commixture of tweets pertained to how alarmed should we be because of the recent terrorist attacks in London? Rice gave the basic scripted Benghazi type answer: “We need to remain very focused on dealing with that threat. But at the same time, we need to recognize that there will be homegrown extremists in all our countries. And there is no easy way to predict and defeat every single one of them.” 

Stephanopoulos’s next question was pure chum. "You heard the president say that travel ban would bring an extra level of safety. Your response?”

RICE: “Well, George, there's really no evidence to suggest that by banning Muslims or banning Muslims from a particular set of six countries that we would make ours here in the United States safer. And that's, I believe, one of the major reasons why the courts thus far have been very skeptical of the travel ban. Moreover, I think there's a very real risk that by stigmatizing and isolating Muslims from particular countries and Muslims in general that we alienate the very communities here in the United States whose cooperation we most need to detect and prevent these homegrown extremists from being able to carry out the attacks.”

Yes, that is correct, targeting the same predominantly Muslim nations Obama did in 2011 would only result in the “real risk that by stigmatizing and isolating Muslims from particular countries and Muslims in general that we alienate the very communities here in the United States.” It would be easy to conclude then that Obama’s slowing down of refugees and the level of Iraqi resettlement, would have resulted in the same. Now both programs are different, but it is the logic (or illogic) that sticks out as peculiar.

His next line of questioning briefly (and I mean briefly) addressed leaks.  From reading the transcript and lack of follow-up by Stephanopoulos it was clear he did not want to accidently ask her about possible leaks and unmasking by Obama administration appointees so he deftly moved to the next subject which was her critique of President Trump published in The New York Times. Stephanopoulos stated, “… one of the things you wrote is that Russia has been a big winner under President Trump. How so?”

RICE: "Well, George, the United States has been the leader of the world because the world trusts and respects us, because we have an unprecedented network of alliances with close partners that work with us, whether it's to defeat ISIS, whether it's to deal with a threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon, or to go after challenges of a new sort like pandemic disease or climate change. We need these partners. And when we alienate our western allies, when the president went to NATO and failed to reaffirm, as every president has since 1948, that we're committed and remain committed to the defense of our NATO partners, he sent shockwaves through Europe. And that is exactly what Vladimir Putin wants. Because Putin's interests, as he reaffirmed just on Friday, is to see NATO weakened and ultimately destroyed. And when the United States, the most important player in NATO, casts doubt about our commitment to that vital alliance, it undermines our security. It undermines the security of our closest allies. And it's a big win for Vladimir Putin.”

Now what is missing from this response you might ask? For starters, it is questionable if the prior administration tried to or wanted to go after ISIS. Obama did call them the JV team and blamed everyone in the universe (Bush, the second amendment & even global warming) for his not recognizing them as a threat.  In fact, Obama was occupied with Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden so much so that he basically breast fed ISIS into existence with his policy of unilateral invasion of Libya under the dress of NATO. Which reminds us of how poorly he and Rice responded to the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens. Moreover, the concept that Iran as a major nuclear threat is also laughable given that they are still on the path and the deal negotiated by team Obama does nothing to prevent them from becoming a nuclear power. Not to mention the illegal and off the record $1.7 billion payment to Iran in 2016 made entirely in cash, with non-U.S. currency.

When asked about President Putin, Rice quickly responded that “he's lying” and that "The reality is, …the Russian government, at the highest levels, was behind the very unprecedented effort to meddle in our 2016 presidential election.” Continuing she said, “Russia is an adversary. Russia not only has invaded a sovereign country and annexed part of it in Ukraine and Crimea [After Obama orchestrated coup]. It's not only in cahoots with a regime in Syria that uses chemical weapons [yet to be proven], it has interfered directly and deliberately at the direction of the highest levels of its government in our democratic process…That is a threat to the integrity of our democracy. That's a threat to our country on a bipartisan basis. And we need to hold Russia accountable.”

Who else to know if someone is lying than the always honest Susan Rice who had the gumption to go on national television and lie to hundreds of millions of U.S. citizens and people around the globe when on one news show she said: “Based on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is at present is in fact what began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy, sparked by this hateful video.…We do not — we do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned. I think it’s clear that there were extremist elements that joined in and escalated the violence. Whether they were al-Qaeda affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremists or al-Qaeda itself I think is one of the things we’ll have to determine.”

Again Stephanopoulos let her hit the pitch right up the middle of the field without making a play on the ball. Without a transition, it was easy for him too move to the next point of liberal discontent – when he asked, “Would it have been appropriate for Jared Kushner to have a back-channel during the transition? Your successor, General McMaster, has suggested there's nothing wrong with it.”

RICE: "Well, George, I think, these reports, if accurate, are concerning, not just because of communication between the Trump transition and the Russian government, and we do have communications between transition teams and foreign governments, but rarely with adversaries like the Russians, and rarely with the frequency that we have seen. But what I found most concerning about that report, which, if true, is that Jared Kushner suggested to the Russian ambassador that they communicate using Russian communications in a Russian diplomatic facility to hide their conversation from the United States government. That's extraordinary, if not mind-boggling from the point of view of a national security professional. I have worked in this field for 25 years. And I have never heard of such a thing. The United States -- and from one administration to the next -- has one government, one president at a time. And we worked very hard to do a professional and effective handoff. A seamless one. We worked very hard in this transition to accomplish that and to do so transparently.”

This was probably the most historically inaccurate and artfully mendacious crock of Buffalo feces of the entire interview. First communication alone is not as heinous as Rice makes it out to regardless of who is President or what country it is, even Russia. And the part about advisories is either the result of a historically ill-informed person or a calculated lie.

After the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, his future national security adviser Henry Kissinger set up a back-channel to contact and communicate with the Soviet leadership via a known KGB operative named Boris Sedov, whom Kissinger had come to know from interactions at Harvard. Even before Nixon, FDR’s used a long time fried Harry Hopkins as a go between the U.S., U.K. and Stalin. Only difference was that Roosevelt was President at the time. Then there’s Obama’s backchannel fiasco with Iran which occurred in 2008 while he was running for president in which prior to even being elected, his staff established secret communications with the Iranian leadership using William Miller to relay how they planned to interact with Iran if Obama was elected.

I don’t know if Rice believes what she says in interviews or rather if she just like hearing herself talk. One thing for certain is that she has a short memory span and here knowledge of history is suspect or intentionally confined. I mean, the Obama administration and the democrats went from loving Russia to hating Russia and calling the nation the greatest threat in the world when just a little while back it wasn't.

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After Mosul, Will it be Erdogan or The Kurds?

This past week President Tayyip Erdogan had a meeting with President Trump. As observed before when he met with President Obama, once again his goons took to beating up and violently attacking protestors.  But this is not important for the time being, what is pertains to the Trump administration plans for after the Mosul offensive and even ridding Syria of IS.  This is valid for my main botheration with Obama was his failure to plan for what was to occur after the implementation of any of his foreign policy escapades from Yemen to Syria to the South Sudan and especially in Libya.

Unlike the prior administration, I can note that Trump seems to be engaged with the issues but I am not so certain that he grasps the seriousness of a fallout between Erdogan and Turkey and/or the US and the Kurds.  Something must give and I am not at rest that President Trump, as Obama before him, is ready for this. And he is the one who opened this can of worms when his administration announced that the U.S. would back, arm and support the Kurds in their effort against the Islamic State and to show he was about that life, the Trump Defense Department immediately sent military vehicles with American flags to the YPG fighters engaged in combat activities on the Syrian side of the border.

As expected Erdogan was not happy and expressed such through one of his many mouth pieces this time being one of his top foreign policy advisers İlnur Çevik. Cevik expressed succinctly the differences between Washington and Ankara over the U.S. military’s partnership with Kurdish military organizations in Syria by hinting that American troops could be targeted alongside their Kurdish allies in the country since U.S. forces have teamed up with members of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and since Turkish fighter’s patrol along the border region with Syria frequently bombing the YPG who they see more of an enemy than IS. Specifically, Cevik stated that if the U.S. troops would "go to far, our forces would not care if American armor is there, whether armored carriers are there" adding that “Suddenly, by accident, a few rockets can hit them.”

It was a simple choice for Trump based on all he has been talking about wiping the Islamic State off the face of the planet. Easy also because the YPG have shown themselves to be one of the most effective forces on the ground in the fight against IS next to the Syrian Defense Forces. Moreover, most Kurds are Sunni Muslims, however, they consider themselves Kurds first, and Muslims second, and don't want to be absorbed into a universal caliphate or equally any affiliation with Sharia law. Also of importance is that the Kurds are the most pro-American people in the entire Middle East and believe and acknowledge equal right for women.

The fact is northern Syria  has a large Kurdish population which for decades, Turkey has viewed a major political threat due to the mounting influence of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in the region.  Erdogan was hoping the US-YPG alliance which President Barack Obama started would be discontinued under Trump. But it has not and he made this clear in an interview in which he stated that seeing US military vehicles operating close to the border with Syrian Kurdish fighters "seriously saddened" him.

The Kurdish and US soldiers who support them are during an offensive to take Raqqa, ISIS’s Syrian capital, and have recently made significant gains against the extremists in the region but recent attacks by Turkey against Kurdish areas in Syria are hampering the offensive against ISIS. Erdogan doesn’t want the YPG or the PYD to be the leading powers in Syria’s Kurdistan region and sees both as part of the PKK.

To understand this one must understand the Kurds in the region (Iraq, Syria and Turkey). Erdogan’s forces are fighting the Turkish Kurds (The PKK or Banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party led by Abdullah Ocalan who was jailed in 1999 with the help of U.S. CIA) and Erdogan is extremely hostile with the Syrian Kurds (the PYD or Democratic Unity Party) who are aligned with the PKK and have their own militia called the YPG. Last there are the Kurds in Iraq who have established a Kurdish Regional Government since the US invasion/occupation of Iraq and who have their own military forces called the Peshmerga. All three Kurdish areas are fighting IS, but all are considered problems to Erdogan. The Turks want to destroy the PKK and its affiliates, as well as the YPG.  They consider them to be the same or equal to ISIS – terrorist. This is what the U.S. and Russia equally must syphon through because Erdogan sees the possible defeat of IS in Raqqa by the Kurds and U.S. forces as major political leverage for the YPG.

When the Turkish State was founded in the aftermath of WWI, the Kurds were promised the creation of an independent state as part of the treaty of Sevres in 1920. Unfortunately for them, this part of the treaty was never ratified and Turkey has refused to recognize the existence of a separate Kurdish ethnic community within its borders.  Upon which several major Kurdish rebellions occurred in Kurdish strongholds in Turkey during the 1920s and 1930s. Since then the Turkish ruling class began viewing a separate Kurdish identity as a threat to the nation-state - Turkification.

Now, Turkey has become one of the world's largest and most powerful Muslim fundamentalist states. I say this because it is well known that Erdogan’s administration (maybe with the exceptions of the Saudi’s) is the main state sponsor of ISIS. Add to this that Erdogan is an Islamist that embraces Muslim fundamentalism to the level of even destroying the last bits of democracy in Turkey to eradicate all Kurdish people so that he can establish a new Ottoman Empire for Turks and only Turks.  Now, it is estimated that around fifteen million individuals of Kurdish origin live in Turkey who under the present leadership of the Republic, have been treated worse than a second-class citizenry.

Trump and Putin know that they NEED the YPG to continue with its fight against the Islamic State. Although the U.S. has maintained good relations for the past seven decades, the war on ISIS has led the Pentagon to decide that it is the best interest of the U.S. to work with Kurdish forces if the objective is to defeat ISIS. Thus, the conflict: the U.S. want to work with the Kurds on the ground in Syria effort to take Raqqa (the headquarters of ISIS) but Turkey doesn’t want this thinking that it with give them more clout with the current U.S. administration.

Like Obama (called Erdogan a trusted friend), Trump underestimates Erdogan's hatred of the Kurdish minority and the level of his support of ISIS.  Trump must decide if its relationship with the Kurds in Syria is a temporary relationship of opportuneness until IS is defeated or is the beginning of something new? Something new that could lead to an independent Kurdistan? Erdogan wouldn't be happy about it, but he'd accept this from the U.S. and I believe that is his main concern. After all, we saw what he did after the strong electoral might of the Kurdish party that prevented a parliamentary majority of Erdogan's AKP in June's election. 

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Bush, Obama & Trump Middle East Policy is one in the same

I have attempted to stay out of the fray regarding what has just happened in Syria.  It is almost as if Obama is still in Office and as if Trump has turned into Obama in the same fashion Obama turned into Bush. For all I know Trump is putting together a secret “kill list” like his predecessor and continuing Obama’s drone strike assassination program. I have read some interesting perspectives on this topic and agree with many of them.  For example, Norman Solomon’s suggesting that all this incessant Russian bashing may have been used to ‘bait’ Trump to bomb Syria, with or without evidence. I also agree with MIT professor of Science, Technology, and International Security Dr. Theodore Postol in his assessment of the White House report noting that it provides no evidence that the Sarin came from or was dropped from an Airplane and that without being on the ground at the time such a position is impossible to prove given Assad’s advantage in his battle against IS and other western supported terrorist proxies. For lack of a better statement, to use the words of Mike Whitney, “You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that the case against Syrian President Bashar al Assad is extremely weak.” Or as the free-thinking cats at MOA have pointed out, the White House “assessment” begins with "The United States is confident that the Syrian government conducted a chemical weapon attack, ..." noting that “The U.S…. does not have"proof" - it is just "confident".” And returning to Dr. Postol, he was also correct in 2013 when he disproved the Obama Administration uninformed position that Assad was responsible for a chemical nerve agent attack in Damascus.  My question is will Trump be another Obama with respect to Foreign policy in West Asia and use his war powers even out there past Obama? Will he engage in even more unjustified and clandestine wars in the same way Bush and Obama did by targeting even more majority-Muslim countries?

Let us begin with some historical perspective. The west has had its eye on Syria for decades now.  Although many would assert it started with a 1949 coup attemp timplemented by the CIA just 3 years after Syria became an independent country, I would suggest it started after WW1 in 1919 and continued up until the Franco-Syrian war initially. Specifically, after the implementation of the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916 - which cut up what was left of the Ottoman Empire between France and Britain. The war itself happened in 1920 ending in a victory for the French and the formation of a new pro-French government. This resulted in Syria being divided in to several regions according to religion. This is an important historical event because it appears the object of current western interference and the call for regime change in the nation has a similar objective.

In addition, history shows us that the objective of these efforts was to dominate and control the rich natural resources (oil and natural gas) in the region. As early as 1957 President Eisenhower and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan were making plans to establish and support financially the establishment of what they called a “Free Syria Committee” for the singular purpose of regime change in Syria to try and control the oil fields of not only Syria but also Iraq. There was no real geopolitical reason for this other than the desire of the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) to build a Trans-Arabian Pipe Line (TAPLINE) from Saudi Arabia to the Mediterranean via Syria through to Turkey. This required a “Syrian right-of-way” to be agreed upon without input from the Syrian people of course.

Unfortunately, the efforts of the west resulted in making a divide between Shiite and Sunni that has been going on since the seventh century even worse especially if one considers that Shiites are the majority in Iran and Iraq, and are the largest Muslim group in Lebanon and their lands include what many consider the richest oil fields in the entirety of the Middle East. 

These efforts have only increased and intensified over the past few decades with regime change in Syria being priority. First a unified Syria stands in the way of policy objectives in the region to numerous and nuanced to discuss (US interests both in Lebanon and preventing the establishment of an Iraq’s pipeline to the Mediterranean for example). We know this because recently unclassified documents show that the CIA even made plans to use Iraq, Israel and Turkey as proxies in 1983 to pressure the Syrian government by using covert military actions just to establish a pipeline. Although this didn’t manifest, it did not prevent the CIA from continuing to try for in 1986 they drew up some more ideas to overthrow Syria by provoking sectarian tensions (does this sound familiar?). The same policy goals were desired again in 1991 and in 2001.

What we see now - with the supposed “civil war” in Syria - has been years in the making and the recent efforts of ISIS and other terrorist extremist (all supported by the West and Saudi Arabia) may have finally come to fruition after hard work put in by the British government according to former French foreign minister Roland Dumas who is on record saying that he got it from the horse’s mouth that “top British officials” were in the process of arming Sunni nationals “to invade Syria” in 2009 – two years before the anti-Assad protest. Then there is what then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in 2012: that the best way to help Israel deal with Iranis to help overthrow Bashar Assad.

So it seems that President Trump is no different than Obama or Bush or his democratic opponent Hillary Clinton and their desire to use any excuse to make bankers and oil giants the benefactors of the wealth to be generated by a divided Syria without Assad at the helm.  Chemical weapons like WMDs in Iraq, was contrived as an excuse to justify their goals.  I mean we know that Turkey supplied Sarin gas to Syrian rebels in 2013in order to frame the Syrian government. We also know that independent Humanitarian organizations have documented that ISIS has used chemical weapons, including Sarin, chlorine and sulfur mustard agents, at least 52 times on the battlefield in Syria and Iraq since 2014.

We also know that just like the Bush Administration, Hillary Clinton and Obama cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government to fund and arm clandestine operations designed to take down Iran and its ally Syria  by encouraging Sunni extremist groups that not only champion a militant view of Islam but are also are anti-America and sympathetic to ISIS and Al Qaeda. All which seem to be from extremist Islamic fundamentalist groups with origins in or connections to Saudi Arabia. 

In all sincerity, the west, as in Yemen, is backing the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, Sunni’s who are an openly admitted group that considers the U.S. and of Israel as lifelong enemies. By bombing Assad, we are basically s one writer put it serving as the ISIS/Al Qaeda Air force. This in my opinion, is no different that when Barack Obama invaded Libya without Congressional approval in 2011.  Trump clearly is no different and seems to take his marching orders from the neoconservatives and neoliberals who won’t be happy until a major U.S. military intervention happens in Syria (and other places) even if it means a confrontation with Russia and/or China. You may question my analysis but for what it is worth, NSC adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster is no dissimilar than Hillary Clinton, Victoria Nuland, or Nuland’s husband – Robert Kagen on this matter.

Again as I asked in the beginning of this essay, is Trump any different than Bush or Obama? I suspect not. As one writer pointed out: “I don’t think that anybody seriously believes that Assad or anybody else in the Syrian government really ordered a chemical weapons attack on anybody.  To believe that it would require you to find the following sequence logical: first, Assad pretty much wins the war against Daesh which is in full retreat.  Then, the US declares that overthrowing Assad is not a priority anymore (up to here this is all factual and true).  Then, Assad decides to use weapons he does not have.  He decides to bomb a location with no military value, but with lots of kids and cameras.  Then, when the Russians demand a full investigation, the Americans strike as fast as they can before this idea gets any support.  And now the Americans are probing a possible Russian role in this so-called attack.  Frankly, if you believe any of that, you should immediately stop reading and go back to watching TV.”

I remember the Gulf of Tonkin and other major U.S. lies to justify war like the one in 1970 when our government lied to the American people and said, “We didn’t cross the border going into Cambodia” when in fact we did. Former UK ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford, was correct in his assessment equally when he said like Libya, Syria will "implode" if President Assad was removed from office period. Not to mention bombing Syria does nothing to provide humanitarian relief and merely distracts the world from the West supported atrocities in Yemen, Mosul and the South Sudan.

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Is Iraq and Turkey About To Bump Heads, For Real?

While many of us on this side of the pond have either been crying and complaining, or celebrating and enthusiastic due to the election of Donald Trump, there's one thing we can all count on – the lack of mainstream media coverage on what is happening in Libya, Yemen and Iraq. I would add Syria, but the mere mention of Aleppo given the incessant repetition it is written and orally stated daily, may make me want to throw-up. 

It seems that the Iraqi security forces, elements of the Iranian Republican Guard, Shia militias and Kurdish Peshmerga, after more than three months, have ISIS jihadist on the ropes and are finally entering Eastern Mosul, closing in on ISIL/ISIS last positions. To be succinct, the battle has been more of an effort and struggle than the Obama Administration said it would be since the Mosul offensive began October 17. At one point the United Nations had reported that more than 2,000 Iraqi troops had been killed by November (a figure disputed by the Iraqi government and Iraq Joint Operation Command). According to the UN, this includes the army, police, Kurdish Peshmerga, interior ministry forces and pro-government paramilitaries.

At that time, it was reported that Iraqi troops had been the target of 630 suicide car bomb attacks in the first 45 days of the operation alone. The last report of US troop deaths was in November with 16 killed and 27 wounded. Although during that period the US Department of Defense only admitted to there being just a single casualty. Needless to say, both have ended reporting on military causalities as a result of the Mosul offensive.

It is hard to fathom that the Obama administration or the Pentagon did not conceive that recapturing Mosul would not be an easy task in particular given waiting more than two years of ISIL rule to do so and offering advanced notice of the operation. With the unexpected difficulty of uprooting ISIL/ISIS/Daesh fighters, and the more than anticipated length of time it has consumed thus far to do such, another problem has arisen that was not projected – a riff developing between Iraq and Turkey.

The Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi is firmly and openly demanding that Turkish forces leave Bashiqa camp near Mosul. Turkey on the other hand has stated that they will not withdraw its troops from its Bashiqa military camp in northern Iraq until the Mosul offensive against ISIL/ISIS/Daesh is complete. To make their intentions even more clear, Turkey's defense minister Fikri Isik, in November said that their military participation was part of its groundwork for other and more "important developments in the region." This is a moot point for the Iraqi PM who indicated that any efforts of diplomacy with Turkey could "not move forward one step" unless all Turkish forces in northern Iraq withdrew.

I am not certain but it would not surprise me that if Turkey, after the attempted Coup and still in the process of culling members of the military andgovernment, was really interested in preventing the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) from establishing a solid link in the region in which they already have large population of Kurds in Turkey and Iraq. Erdogan May also be concerned that this might result in to a stronger diplomatic relationship with the PKK and Iraqi Shia Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).  This is something he cannot allow.  

The Kurdistan Workers' Party is based in Turkey and Iraq. Since 1984 the PKK has waged an armed struggle against the Turkish state for equal rights and self-determination for the purpose of forming their own independent nation state. From this point of view, if I were Erdogan, this would be a tactic that could be employed to prevent the PKK elements from gaining a foot print in Tal Afar, an invalid fear according to according to the Iraqi’s since they have guaranteed that PMF fighters will not get involved in the Mosul and Tel Afar campaigns.

Tel Afar, is a city and district in the Nineveh Governorate of northwestern Iraq. The leadership in Baghdad has vowed to defeat all “foreign troops” in and around Sinjar, PKK and ISIL included. However, a senior representative of one of the many the Shia militias fighting ISIL in concert with the Iraqi government has warned that they are willing to use force against Turkish troops in Nineveh if the Turkish government refuses to withdraw from the area. Jawadal-Tleibawi, a high-ranking leader of the al-Hashd al-Shaabi militia said in press statements said that if diplomacy fail, his fighters are “capable of forcing out the Turkish occupiers” and called the actions of Ankara as “a flagrant intervention in Iraq’s domestic affairs”.

Baghdad has described Turkish military presence in Iraq as a violation of its sovereignty, yet both openly indicate they a committed to meeting in the future to discuss a yet to come withdrawal plan pertaining to Turkish troops in the country. Although Turkey has retained the importance of their troop deployment in the area, they equally prioritize both the importance of training local militias to combat Islamic State militants and reducing the influence of Kurdish PKK militia operating in Iraq. Moreover, Ankara is openly precarious of al-Hashd al-Shaabi’s involvement in Mosul battles, worrying that the predominantly-Shia forces could commit human rights violations against Sunni inhabitants (a concern that has been documented by Amnesty International and Human RightsWatch).

What has been made clear by Baghdad is that the Bashiqa camp is an Iraqi camp has to and will be run and controlled by Iraqi administrative authorities. However a recent visit by a visit to meet Turkish troops by Turkish Health Minister Recep Akdağ and Energy Minister Berat Albayrak to Bashiqa has stirred the pot even more and has troubled the Iraqi government. Iraq and Turkey have agreed that the Turkish military will withdraw from the Bashiqa camp when the Mosul offensive is complete, but until then, Baghdad wants the camp to immediately be turned over to Iraq control. Then there is Turkey’s ultimatum that Baghdad end any and all financial support to local groups in the Sinjar region which they state are affiliated with the PKK.

Whatever the case is, even if ISIL is defeated and removed from Mosul, there will remain a major issue to be settled between the leadership in Ankara and Baghdad.  Will it be settled peacefully with diplomacy or violently taking these two nations to the precipice of war is the query.

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The Aleppo Misdirection

The mess in Syria has been going on for the past six years.  There still is no clarity on the events there with the exception of the facts and the main fact that the US Nobel prize winning president is true to the play book of his predecessor George H.W. Bush. I wanted to write in detail about this a while ago but it was difficult to extract my attention from the humor of liberals whining because their loss to Trump and the sore loseritus was a gift I could not avoid writing about.  But since the U.K., France and U.S. convened this special meeting of the UN Security Council, I had to go in, and I will explain.

I think since Obama announced months ago his plan to attack Mosul (as if he was telegraphing’ to the terrorist, I mean moderates he supports in Iraq and Syria to get ready), he had not perceived that there was even the possibility that Aleppo would be liberated. Given this major lapse in judgement and reasoning, coalition forces have been back peddling ever since. It seems that the manipulation of language (Newspeak) was the first sign that things were all over the place regarding a standard approach on how to deal with Syria.  I say Syria because Aleppo is really a misnomer. They say they just want to help and offer humanitarian aid for the more than a million residents of Aleppo although there is no equal concern for the civilians in Mosul or cities in Yemen. So to try and support their position that Assad must go, the Obama Administration created the term “Moderate Syrian Rebels.”

To be truthful, there is no such thing as a moderate terrorist no more as there is a such thing as a moderate Crip or Blood, in particular with the fluid nature of all of the groups, the alliances they form and assorted reasons for fighting including but not limited to [1] forming a Sunni state run under Sharia law, [2] those who are fighting for autonomous rule (Kurds), and/or [3] the few that want to violently over throw the democratically elected Assad who won a sizable majority last election with more than 70% voter turnout. What has been documented is that militants who are integrated with terror groups like Jaysh al Fatah, Jabhat al Nusra, Ahrar al Sham and Nour al din al Zenki - all of them affiliated with the Al Qaeda terrorist network – are what Western coalition governments consider to be portions of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and at the same time claim to be at war with.

Now before I dive into these so-called moderate rebels, I have to go back to the earlier supposition regarding Mosul and the Obama Administration.  In all fairness, the operation to retake Mosul was not about destroying ISIS but rather to push ISIS back into Syria so they could focus all of their efforts on taking down Assad.  Why do I say this? Well if one reads Carl von Clausewitz, typically the military objective is to close all escape routes and incessantly enclose the enemy and crush them.  The Obama administration had planned operations from all sides with the exception of routes towards the Iraq-Syria border. Thus the objects would have to be removing these terrorist from Iraq and into Syria resulting in the PR circus of claiming a speedy victory in Mosul.  But after three months this is not the case.

Mosul and Raqqa are the two major cities in the self-proclaimed IS caliphate. To destroy IS these must be destroyed. However, when Russia and Iran got involved, the Obama Administration never calculated that they would be able to sway so much influence with the present Iraqi government and subsequently were able to modify the U.S. battle plan to one that would encircle and attempt to destroy all ISIS/ Al Qaeda affiliates in Mosul. This threw a wrench in the Administration’s goal to engender a “Salafist principality” designed to break up or “Balkanize” Syria. It was the same play book used in Libya with the exception of a no-fly zone. So without a no-fly zone, the coalition had to result to other means – namely trying to protect the Salafist in Aleppo they had been funding and arming since they began this proxy war. This is why reports from Aleppo by the West are all over the place.

The information, if any we are getting from Aleppo is really no different than a Hollywood screen play. First the Obama Administration threatened the Russians saying that their planes would be shot down and their troops would be coming home in body bags while at the same time shipping tons of anti-aircraft weaponry to rebels in and around Aleppo when the Obama Administration were supposedly trying to achieve a cease fire. This was at the same time SOS John Kerry was saying he was going to suspend discussions with the Russians regarding Syria, just after US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, vilified the Russian’s for convening a special security council meaning to discuss coalition airstrikes that targeted Syrian government forces, killing more than 80 soldiers. The same US ambassador to the UN would weeks later confront the Russians again, using unverified reports accusing them in concert with Assad of murdering innocent civilians. Now all of this is hard for me to keep track of so I’m guessing it is the same for a lot of people. The reason why is because there never was or has been a civil war in Syria.

The Syrian revolution is a myth. Western Aleppo is being targeted because they resisted these U.S backed Salafist foreign terrorist and the record indicates that clearly more than a half a million civilians left the eastern portion of the city for the west for the same reason. The majority left in Eastern Aleppo are being held hostage by the terrorist or are terrorist and their families. Thus the remaining civilians in this area are being used as human shields and the query remains, if the US narrative of Assad murdering and bombing his own people is accurate, then why would they flee Eastern Aleppo and go to the part held by Assad forces? Makes no sense. Seven million have fled to government held sections over the past four plus years. But the media call these folk Assad supporters when in fact they may or may not be - they just don’t support terrorist or believe that killing and destroying Syria is the best approach for improving their government.

We never check with organizations on the ground like the Aleppo Medical Association about the number of physicians working there because if we did we would see that there are more than 4000 working there and many are being paid by the Assad government (opposite of the narrative of western media). Unfortunately the rebels or opposition which are really terrorist prevent them from coming in and even giving their services. Add to this that Eastern Aleppo is under the control by the Al Nusura front (Al Qaeda in Syria), yet the Obama administration wants to protect these folk. The Free Idlib army are terrorist too. So given the US media isn’t even on the ground in Aleppo, how can they verify their information? Verification isn’t required when it is all for show bearing in mind the main goal has been and remains regime change in Syria. Just like in Iraq the goal is to create a shadow state in Syria to be controlled by and for the benefit of the West.

The more logical and truthful depiction is that Syrian civilians are at last able to flee from terror gangs that have held them under siege. But this is in contradiction to the reporting by Western media on Syria and Aleppo especially since the US and Western narrative about what has been going on in Aleppo and Syria, Assad and Syrian civilians is far removed from the facts. One has to wonder why they are never in Aleppo or even Syria, if so they are there rarely or else they would have been able to at least interview any one of the tens of thousands of civilians who have left areas once controlled by the motley collection terrorist groups.  They preclude they hate the Assad government but never ask them if they do or fail to query as to how life was living under these terrorist groups – journalism 101. We see US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power refer to unverified reports of civilians being executed in Aleppo while asking at the same time if Syria, Iran or Russia have any shame. But they never seem to compare the devastation US coalition forces are delivering in Yemen or Mosul.

The actuality is Aleppo was invaded by Western-backed mercenary terrorist proxies, or fake moderate rebels, whom the Western governments have sponsored in an attempt to overthrow the government of Syria since July 2012.  These same Western-backed mercenary terrorist proxies, or fake moderate rebels have turned the eastern side of the city into terror haven for a caliphate of manic Wahhabi jihadists that take more pleasure in chopping off heads than secular democratic rule. From Jeish al-Fatah (Army of Conquest) to Jabha Fatah al-Sham (Front for the Conquest of the Levant) and Fatah Halab (Conquest of Aleppo)  they are all terrorist the U.S. supports and arms and would never engage in a ceasefire being implemented of any kind and the Obama administration knows this.

They understand that these groups must keep fighting if the breakup of Syria and the take-down of Assad is ever to be achieved. Otherwise, the Syrian national bank will remain free of western influence and will never be brought under the Bank of International Settlements and thus continue to operate without loans from the IMF which means they can decide their own foreign policy and that dream of a natural gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey will never come to fruition. Moreover, Syria will not be made to submit to using GMO seeds. Recall one of the first things US did after the conquering of Iraq was to outlaw seeds stores and force Iraqi farmers to buy international GMO seeds (see order 81 Iraq).

Regardless of what comes out of Washington from the Administration or the media, Syria as Libya before it will be remembered as just another war crime committed by President Obama in the name of humanitarian intervention by the West when the real geopolitical aim was regime change for the fact remains that US or western security interests were never involved or at risk.  Just as with Gaddafi, who never really ever threaten to massacre civilians, the same is true for Assad.  Gaddafi, just as Assad currently, only went after rebels and similarly, offered them amnesty and free passage out if they would drop their weapons. In both cases, the “responsibility to protect”, is just a fancy way to say it is okay to violate the sovereignty of another nation state.

As the Obama era comes to a close, what can be noted is that he will be remembered as the man who destroyed Libya (at the time Africa's most thriving nation) and will have nothing to show for his foreign policy in Syria with the exception of more than a half a million deaths and a Europe in consternation due to a colossal refugee and migrant crisis. So expect for the amplification of anti-Syrian and anti-Russian newspeak in the US mainstream media to continue because the Syrian Army are continuously advancing through Aleppo and routing the US funded terrorist.  

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