REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Mattis resigns

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Saturday, December 29, 2018 13:12
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Friday, December 21, 2018 1:14 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Syrian pullout the final straw?


There are a number of interpretations about this. I've long thought that Trump sided with the military as protection from the deep state. (We can see how well that's gone ... not!) But maybe I was wrong.

I don't know if you recall, but early on in the Syrian "intervention" - under Obama - both the military AND the CIA were involved. The CIA was working with jihadist proxies in Syria, and the military was attempting to train "troops" in Jordan for the FSA and other "moderate rebels".

During this period of what appeared to be nothing more than an open competition, there was a lot of cross-criticism aired in the media about each other. The military claimed that weapons provided by the CIA were winding up in the hands of terrorists (which was true). The CIA was claiming that the training program, which cost hundreds of million of dollars, was phenomenally expensive, since after training many of the trainees defected to the terrorist camps or simply disappeared, leaving the final cost at $5 million per trainee (or something like that). After that period, Obama decided to prosecute his "Assad must go" using the CIA and proxies, as it was cheaper than the military way.

*****

Cut to today. Trump threw his weight behind the military in a big way. He defunded the CIA in Syria, and promised the military lots of money and lots of new toys, and he also gave them the power to decide in the field what to do. Mattis must have promised something on Afghanistan with those additional troops, and yet Afghanistan is nowhere being "pacified". The military also got involved in Syria with jets and troops and Kurdish allies, and yet - two years later- they're stymied at every turn by the Russians.

Trump did what he tends to do: He outsourced his military strategy to the military guy, gave him the authority and money to do what he said he could do, and Mattis didn't deliver.

Hence, "You're fired!"

What that means for Trump's larger plans... DOES he have larger plans? ... is anyone guess, but I'll be posting some uninformed speculations later.

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Friday, December 21, 2018 1:32 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


So another bizarre aspect of this is that Trump may be in fact caving in to Erdogan, who has been applying tremendous political pressure (in collusion with our deep state) ... and extracting huge concessions ... over the murder of Khashoggi.

Another point to consider is that the shooting down of the IL20 off the coast of Syria has hardened the Russian stance, and allowed them to threaten Netanyahu and cut him out of any influence - or indeed contact- with the Russians. Russia installed an upgraded version of the S300 missile (a purely defensive weapon btw). But I have read that Syria has also adopted a new policy, which is that any missile strikes on Syrian territory from Israel will lead to a proportionate strike from Syria ... an airport for an airport, as it were.

I'm convinced that this is all wrapped up with "pipelineistan" and the petrodollar.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .

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Friday, December 21, 2018 2:16 PM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
... and Mattis didn't deliver.



He defeated ISIS!

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Friday, December 21, 2018 2:17 PM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...


Erdogan mad over Flynn's exposure exposing them and the holy man in Pennsylvania more likely.

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Friday, December 21, 2018 3:00 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


A Friday afternoon call from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan informed Trump that Turkey’s army was about to launch an attack on the Kurds in Syria. This gave Trump two options. He could have told Erdogan to bring ’em on and gotten ready for a fight. Or he could have backed down and told Erdogan to hold off for a bit while he withdrew American troops.

Erdogan threatened him and he caved. A guy like Erdogan understands that this is the best way to deal with Trump. There’s not much more to it than that.

This AP dispatch confirms that the Erdogan call was what prompted Trump to get out of Dodge.
https://apnews.com/ec2ed217357048ff998225a31534df12

Ironically, it turns out that even Erdogan was surprised at how quickly Trump backed down. He expected Trump to withdraw over a period of a few months, which would have given Turkish troops time to prepare for their assault. Instead, in his typical fashion, Trump just ordered an immediate withdrawal. This will likely produce a little more chaos than Erdogan wanted.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, December 21, 2018 4:08 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


I have a feeling it's more complicated than that.

During his campaign, Trump promised to withdraw our troops from the Middle East. I think that he was persuaded by TBTB that they could accomplish ... something ... that would make our "intervention" worthwhile, but they failed to deliver.

Trump has a plan for the Mideast, or at least a series of visions, even if they don't all mesh. A LOT of people have plans for the Mideast. Jared Kushner convinced him that Israel's expansion could be assured with a grand coalition with Saudi Arabia. There was probably the view that they could isolate Iran (a Zionist/Saudi/Flynn/Turkish caliphate goal) but they would need Turkey to do it. I'm sure that neocons wanted to surround Russia with failed states full of jihadists, and did their best to derail a Russian pipeline thru Turkey. SOMEONE must be thinking about the petrodollar, even if Trump isn't. A lot depended on destroying Syria, but this proved to be militarily impossible so ... what is plan B? A gas pipeline from the eastern Mediterranean to southern Europe?

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .

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Saturday, December 22, 2018 5:34 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


The funniest comment that I read about this called Trump's two advisors Bolt-on and Pompous.

Too true!! I laughed out loud.

*****

Now we get to see the war-dogs in both parties ... and the NATO brass ... and the bumbling EC Eurocrats ... catastrophize endlessly about why we needed ANOTHER "forever" war.

What happens to Iran? Trump is staying true to his promises ... more or less. He's being pressured by the stock market falling (Thanks, Jerome Powell!) and so he's pivoted to a couple of his original campaign promises (the wall, pullout of troops) to distract from the financial aspect. I feel that he being guided/driven by his base ... which isn't a bad thing, considering that previous Presidents scraped "the people" off the bottom of their shoes once they got in office. There is a reason that they call Trump a populist. (Also, there is a reason why populism is making a resurgence across Europe too.)

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .

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Saturday, December 22, 2018 5:53 AM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


One of the biggest concerns folk had about Trump and his Wheeler Dealer ways.

If you don't stand for something, then you'll fall for anything.

I do wish Netanyahu good luck.

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Saturday, December 22, 2018 6:03 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

I do wish Netanyahu good luck.
Not me. The guy is a fucking war criminal who has been busy expropriating Palestinian and Syrian land and maintaining the biggest open-air prison in history.

I see no reason to support Israel ... just as I see no reason to support any other country that doesn't provide us with some sort of benefit. As for Netanyahu himself, I hope he rots in prison.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .

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Saturday, December 22, 2018 6:09 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Again, a lot of people have interests in the Middle East. Quite frankly, if it wasn't such a rich source of oil nobody would give a fuck about miles and miles of miles and miles.

The three largest oil producers in the world are Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the USA. The two biggest POTENTIAL producers are Venezuela (larget proven known reserves in the world) and Iran.

Here is one reason to stay in the ME: IF we can partner with Saudi Arabia (and IF Saudi Arabia can steal Yemen's oil) and IF we can bottle up Venezuela and Iran (which we've done with sanctions) then we can drive the energy market. And IF we can drive the energy market then we can prop up our dollar - the petrodollar. However, a lot of this is driven by China, which is the world's largest consumer of oil. IF China refuses to play along and demands to pay oil with the gold-backed petro-yuan, then all of these machinations are for shit.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .

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Saturday, December 22, 2018 6:25 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK




Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Saturday, December 22, 2018 7:08 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


MOAR WAR!!

RUSSIA!RUSSIA!RUSSIA!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .

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Saturday, December 22, 2018 7:22 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

And IF we can drive the energy market then we can prop up our dollar - the petrodollar. However, a lot of this is driven by China, which is the world's largest consumer of oil. IF China refuses to play along and demands to pay oil with the gold-backed petro-yuan, then all of these machinations are for shit- SIGNY
So having thought about this ... IMHO the USD/petrodollar/world reserve currency is a dead doornail. I see no way of propping it up except in the short term, and every action that we MIGHT take to try to prop it up ... sanctions, wars, destabilizations ... will make the dollar less and less attractive by either increasing our debt or making the dollar an unreliable currency, or both.

Has Trump given up on the petrodollar? Does he even think about it? Apparently not! I think I can eliminate "petrodollar" as one of Trump's considerations; that is the banks' concern.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .

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Saturday, December 22, 2018 9:08 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


The Dec 20 and Dec 21 blogs are relevant

https://www.moonofalabama.org/

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .

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Sunday, December 23, 2018 3:54 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Netanyahu Vows To Intensify Attacks In Syria After US Troop Withdrawal

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-22/netanyahu-vows-intensify-att
acks-syria-after-us-troop-withdrawal


Oh yeah? If he really decides to strike Syria (illegally, I might add, like everything else that he does) then we get to see whether the S-300s dissuade him, or whether Syria's promised "proportionate response" is all talk or not.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .

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Monday, December 24, 2018 5:53 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

Netanyahu Vows To Intensify Attacks In Syria After US Troop Withdrawal

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-22/netanyahu-vows-intensify-att
acks-syria-after-us-troop-withdrawal




What an uber black hell of cheesy ad clicks that site has become. You'd think they were trying to gorge themselves in the trough of digital capitalism or something.

Fwiw - I didn't see them use any quote from Netanyahu where he actually said, "attack." So, pretty shoddy and misleading/inflammatory - guess that's what it takes to sell dog faced t-shirts these days.

I'm guessing you're a fan of their QTR podcast?
"On this podcast, I rant about how fucked everything is. Happy holidays."

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Monday, December 24, 2018 6:47 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The Dec 20 and Dec 21 blogs are relevant

https://www.moonofalabama.org/

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

December 20, 2018
Why Trump Decided To Remove U.S. Troops From Syria
www.moonofalabama.org/2018/12/why-trump-decided-to-remove-us-troops-fr
om-syria.html
Quote:

Last Friday President Trump had another long phonecall with the Turkish President Erdogan. Thereafter he overruled all his advisors and decided to remove the U.S. boots from Syria and to also end the air war.

This was the first time Trump took a decisive stand against the borg, the permanent neoconservative and interventionist establishment in his administration, the military and congress, that usually dictates U.S. foreign policy.

It was this decision, and that he stuck to it, which finally made him presidential.

Since when did it become "Presidential" to make decisions based on Trump's gut feelings and whatever the last person told Trump? It is Trump's shortcut to avoid mental work - he doesn't have to know much before making his decision based on his feelings.

After the phonecall with Erdogan, Trump congratulated himself for beating ISIS. The guy who was actually beating ISIS called Trump a moron, then resigned in protest of Trump’s premature withdrawal from fighting ISIS. Trump said he would have fired the guy sooner if he had known. Then Trump congratulated himself a second time for being so very smart and brave for beating ISIS. I do believe Trump is being properly described when he is called a moron taking all credit for an incomplete victory he had nothing to do with. Trump couldn’t even remember the name of the guy he was firing. And Trump certainly didn’t know what the guy had done in Syria. He had done something, but Trump couldn’t be bothered to remember what.
www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/‘very-telling’-that-trump-didn’t-know-
his-own-anti-isis-point-man-former-official-says/ar-BBRmiWj


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, December 24, 2018 12:23 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

After the phonecall with Erdogan, Trump congratulated himself for beating ISIS. The guy who was actually beating ISIS called Trump a moron ...
"The guy who was actually beating ISIS" ... is Putin. Doesn't it seem strange to you that the only places where ISIS is still operating are all in USA-controlled territory? And Putin probably HAS called Trump a moron, but we would never know.

Quote:

Since when did it become "Presidential" to make decisions based on Trump's gut feelings and whatever the last person told Trump?
Whoever said that Trump was "Presidential"? OTOH, "Presidential" or not, this was a better decision than Hillary's promised "more kinetic" approach.

Quote:

After the phonecall with Erdogan ...
So many people are focusing on Erdogan's phone call, but that doesn't explain why Trump said he'll cut Afghanistan forces from 14,000 to 7,000 too.

I think there's a bigger "pivot" going on than just about Syria, which also affects Afghanistan. How far does that extend? Iraq? Saudi Arabia? Turkey? Iran? Israel? Maybe Trump realized that the military (Mattis) was just blowing smoke up his ass about the mideast. Does this affect Trump's reliance on Kushner to formulate his "Israel and Saudi" policy as well? I think we might know this by looking for any further reference to Kushner's "peace plan" as well as checking to see if Trump continues to support MBS, or if the peace plan and MBS fade from view...

Trump does what any good executive does - he leaves the deciding and executing to the experts, but when they're disloyal or they fail ... they're fired.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .

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Tuesday, December 25, 2018 12:57 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:

Taibbi: We Know How Trump's War Game Ends

Authored by Matt Taibbi via RollingStone.com,

Nothing unites our political class like the threat of ending our never-ending war ...

So we’re withdrawing troops from the Middle East.

GOOD!

What’s the War on Terror death count by now, a half-million? How much have we spent, $5 trillion? Five-and-a-half?

For that cost, we’ve destabilized the region to the point of abject chaos, inspired millions of Muslims to hate us, and torn up the Geneva Convention and half the Constitution in pursuit of policies like torture, kidnapping, assassination-by-robot and warrantless detention.

It will be difficult for each of us to even begin to part with our share of honor in those achievements. This must be why all those talking heads on TV are going crazy.

Unless Donald Trump decides to reverse his decision to begin withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, cable news for the next few weeks is going to be one long Scanners marathon of exploding heads.

“Today’s decision would cheer Moscow, ISIS, and Iran!” yelped Nicole Wallace, former George W. Bush communications director.

“Maybe Trump will bring Republicans and Democrats together,” said Bill Kristol, on MSNBC, that “liberal” channel that somehow seems to be populated round the clock by ex-neocons and Pentagon dropouts.


Kristol, who has rarely ever been in the ballpark of right about anything — he once told us Iraq was going to be a “two month war” — might actually be correct.

Trump’s decisions on Syria and Afghanistan will lay bare the real distinctions in American politics. Political power in this country is not divided between right and left, and not even between rich and poor.

The real line is between a war party, and everyone else.

This is why Kristol is probably right. The Democrats’ plan until now was probably to impeach Trump in the House using at minimum some material from the Michael Cohen case involving campaign-finance violations.

That plan never had a chance to succeed in the Senate, but now, who knows? Troop withdrawals may push a collection of hawkish Republicans like Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Ben Sasse and maybe even Mitch McConnell into another camp.

The departure of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis — a standard-issue Pentagon toady who’s never met an unending failure of a military engagement he didn’t like and whose resignation letter is now being celebrated as inspirational literature on the order of the Gettysburg Address or a lost epic by Auden or Eliot — sounded an emergency bell for all these clowns. The letter by Mattis, Rubio said:

“Makes it abundantly clear we are headed towards a series of grave policy errors which will endanger our nation, damage our alliances & empower our adversaries.”

Talk like this is designed to give political cover to Republican fence-sitters on Trump. That wry smile on Kristol’s face is, I’d guess, connected to the knowledge that Trump put the Senate in play by even threatening to pull the plug on our Middle Eastern misadventures.

You’ll hear all sorts of arguments today about why the withdrawals are bad.

You’ll hear Trump has no plan, which is true. He never does, at least not on policy.

But we don’t exactly have a plan for staying in the Middle East, either, beyond installing a permanent garrison in a dozen countries, spending assloads of money and making ourselves permanently despised in the region as civilian deaths pile up through drone-bombings and other “surgical” actions.

You’ll hear we’re abandoning allies and inviting massacres by the likes of Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan. If there was any evidence that our presence there would do anything but screw up the situation even more, I might consider that a real argument. At any rate, there are other solutions beyond committing American lives. We could take in more refugees, kick Turkey out of NATO, impose sanctions, etc.

As to the argument that we’re abandoning Syria to Russians — anyone who is interested in reducing Russian power should be cheering. If there’s any country in the world that equals us in its ability to botch an occupation and get run out on a bloody rail after squandering piles of treasure, it’s Russia. They may even be better at it than us. We can ask the Afghans about that on our way out of there.

The Afghan conflict became the longest military engagement in American history eight years ago. Despite myths to the contrary, Barack Obama did not enter office gung-ho to leave Afghanistan. He felt he needed to win there first, which, as anyone who’s read The Great Game knows, proved impossible. So we ended up staying throughout his presidency.

We were going to continue to stay there, and in other places, forever, because our occupations do not work, as everyone outside of Washington seems to understand.

TV talking heads will be unanimous on this subject, but the population, not so much. What polls we have suggest voters want out of the region in increasing numbers.

A Morning Consult/Politico poll from last year showed a plurality favored a troop decrease in Afghanistan, while only 5 percent wanted increases. Polls consistently show the public thinks our presence in Afghanistan has been a failure.

There’s less about how the public feels about Syria, but even there, the data doesn’t show overwhelming desire to put boots on the ground.

When Trump first ordered airstrikes in Syria over Assad’s use of chemical weapons, 70 percent favored sanctions according to Politico, while 39 percent favored sending troops. A CBS poll around that time found 45 percent wanted either no involvement period, or airstrikes and no ground troops, versus 18 percent who wanted full military involvement.

Trump is a madman, a far-right extremist and an embarrassment, but that’s not why most people in Washington hate him. It’s his foreign-policy attitudes, particularly toward NATO, that have always most offended DC burghers.

You could see the Beltway beginning to lose its mind back in the Republican primary race, when then-candidate Trump belittled America’s commitment to Middle Eastern oil states.

“Every time there’s a little ruckus, we send those ships and those planes,” he said, early in his campaign. “We get nothing. Why? They’re making a billion a day. We get nothing.”

As he got closer to the nomination, he went after neoconservative theology more explicitly.

“I don’t think we should be nation-building anymore,” he said, in March of 2016. He went on: “I watched as we built schools in Iraq and they’re blown up. We build another one, we get blown up.”

Trump was wrong about a thousand other things, but this was true. I had done a story about how military contractors spent $72 million on what was supposed to be an Iraqi police academy and delivered a pile of rubble so unusable, pedestrians made it into a toilet.

The Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction noted, “We witnessed a light fixture so full of diluted urine and feces that it would not operate.”

SIGIR found we spent over $60 billion on Iraqi reconstruction and did not significantly improvelife for Iraqis. The parallel body covering Afghanistan, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, concluded last year that at least $15.5 billion had been wasted in that country between 2008 and 2017, and this was likely only a “fraction” of financial leakage.

Trump, after sealing the nomination, upped the ante. In the summer of 2016 he said he wasn’t sure he’d send troops to defend NATO members that didn’t pay their bills. NATO members are supposed to kick in 2 percent of GDP for their own defense. At the time, only four NATO members(Estonia, Poland, the U.K. and the U.S.) were in compliance.

Politicians went insane. How dare he ask countries to pay for their own defense! Republican House member Adam Kinzinger, a popular guest in the last 24 hours, said in July 2016 that Trump’s comments were “utterly disastrous.”

“There’s no precedent,” said Thomas Wright, a “Europe scholar” from the Brookings Institute.

When the news came after Trump’s election that he’d only read his intelligence briefings once a week instead of every day as previous presidents had dutifully done, that was it. The gloves were off at that point.

“The open disdain Trump has shown for the agencies is unprecedented,” said Patrick Skinner, a former CIA official for both George W. Bush and Obama.

All that followed, through today, has to be understood through this prism.

Trump dumped on basically every segment of the political establishment en route to Washington, running on a classic authoritarian strategy — bash the elites, pose as a populist.

However fake he was, there were portions of the political establishment that deserved abuse, the Pentagon most of all.

The Department of Defense has been a money pit for decades. It has trillions in expenditures it can’t account for, refused an audit for nearly 30 years and then failed this year (as in failed completely, zero-point-zero, not producing any coherent numbers) when one was finally funded.

We have brave and able soldiers, but their leaders are utter tools who’ve left a legacy of massacres and botched interventions around the world.

NATO? That’s an organization whose mission stopped making sense the moment the Soviet Union collapsed. We should long ago have repurposed our defense plan to focus on terrorism, cyber-crime and cyber-attacks, commercial espionage, financial security, and other threats.

Instead, we continued after the Soviet collapse to maintain a global military alliance fattened with increasingly useless carriers and fighter jets, designed to fight archaic forms of war.

NATO persisted mainly as a PR mechanism for a) justifying continued obscene defense spending levels and b) giving a patina of internationalism to America’s essentially unilateral military adventures.

We’d go into a place like Afghanistan with no real plan for leaving, and a few member nations like Estonia and France and Turkey would send troops to get shot at with us. But it was always basically Team America: World Police with supporting actors. No wonder so few of the member countries paid their dues.

Incidentally, this isn’t exactly a secret. Long before Trump, this is what Barney Frank was saying in 2010: “I think the time has come to reexamine NATO. NATO has become an excuse for other people to get America to do things.”

This has all been a giant, bloody, expensive farce, and it’s long since time we ended it.

We’ll see a lot of hand-wringing today from people who called themselves anti-war in 2002 and 2003, but now pray that the “adults in the room” keep “boots on the ground” to preserve “credibility.”

Part of this is because it’s Trump, but a bigger part is that we’ve successfully brainwashed big chunks of the population into thinking it’s normal for a country to exist in a state of permanent war, fighting in seven countries at once, spending half of all discretionary funding on defense.

It’s not. It’s insane. And we’ll never be a healthy society, or truly respected abroad, until we stop accepting it as normal.

Incidentally, I doubt Trump really follows through on this withdrawal plan. But until he changes (what passes for) his mind, watch what happens in Washington.

We’re about to have a very graphic demonstration of the near-total uniformity of the political class when it comes to the military and its role. The war party is ready for a coming-out party.


https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-syria-withdr
awal-772177
/



-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .

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Tuesday, December 25, 2018 10:51 PM

REAVERFAN


There are only about a dozen or so people who post in here.

Your Russian trolling exposes your methodology.

So much interesting information about you, especially now.

It's all recorded. Congrats.

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Wednesday, December 26, 2018 4:56 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Originally posted by REAVERFAN:
There are only about a dozen or so people who post in here.

Your Russian trolling exposes your methodology.

So much interesting information about you, especially now.

It's all recorded. Congrats.

If you think you're going to doxx me, all you'll do is reveal to everyone that I am exactly who I said I am. As far as I can tell, you're in a no-win situation and your best option is to stop libeling me and shut up.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .

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Friday, December 28, 2018 11:35 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.




Quote:

US Troops Out, Syrian Army In: Kurdish City Handed Back To Damascus As Turkey Poised To Invade

After days of Turkey mustering huge military forces poised to enter the northwestern Syrian Kurdish town of Manbij, and just as American advisers have pulled out of the area based on Trump's broader Syria draw down, what many analysts saw as impossible throughout seven years of war has suddenly happened: the de facto autonomous Syrian Kurdish region has formally invited the Syrian Army to take control to prevent the invading Turks from seizing it.

Damascus has now confirmed government forces have entered Manbij in a move likely to stave off a full-scale Turkish offensive. An official statement said government forces were already entering the city in what is among the most historic moments signalling Assad is likely to take back all of natural Syria: “Considering the Arab Army’s duty and in a response to a call by the people of Manbij, the Syrian general staff announces that the Army has entered Manbij and raised the flag of the Syrian Arab Republic there,” the statement cited by Syrian media said.



The Syrian government had offered the Kurds a very good deal in terms of autonomy a year ago, but the Kurds stupidly rejected that offer and decided to stick with the USA. Now facing the threat of a Turkish invasion, the Kurds have wisely decided that their best chance of survival lies with Assad's Syrian "regime".

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .

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Saturday, December 29, 2018 10:32 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The Syrian government had offered the Kurds a very good deal in terms of autonomy a year ago, but the Kurds stupidly rejected that offer and decided to stick with the USA.



Riiiight, because everyone knows Assad is a stand up guy you can trust.
And now we're not much better. Good one Blimpy! Making enemies out of our allies!

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Saturday, December 29, 2018 1:12 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


I thought TURKEY was our ally. We're both in NATO, correct?

In any case, we should be paying attention to who Trump appoints to replace Mattis (Is he going to go full-neocon, like Bolton?), whether the troops in Syria and Afghanistan will be replaced with contractors or CIA operatives or Israel, and what will happen with Saudi Arabia (and Yemen), Israel, and Iraq.



-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .

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