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Putin/Lavrov are running rings around Obama/Kerry in the the Middle East

October 5, 2016

Putin takes risks but Obama does not. But whereas Russia’s risk taking is based on some hard calculation of the probability of success, Obama and Kerry are obsessed with risk avoidance. So much so that US policy in Syria and against ISIS could be said to be “paralysis by analysis”. But the Russian risk-taking seems to be paying off.

analysis-paralysis

analysis-paralysis

  1. The Russian intervention started the decline of ISIS
  2. Putin has allied with Iran and Shi’ite interests while remaining on good terms with Netanyahu and Israel,
  3. Putin’s support of Assad, has forced the US supported rebel groups to ally themselves with terroris groups (Al-Nusra front),
  4. While the West has been criticising Erdogan’s purge of his opposition, a remarkable detente has developed between Russia and Turkey (which after the downing of the Russian fighter plane hardly seemed feasible),
  5. Sunni Arab states are so disillusioned with Washington and Russian influence has grown so much in the region, that they are now making overtures to Putin in spite of his support for the Shi’ites.
  6. Saudi Arabia has paused its oil war against Iran and Russia.

An insightful commentary in Reuters:

Putin’s Middle East gamble is paying dividends

Vladimir Putin has made an art of turning weakness into strength.  As Russian and Syrian forces pound Aleppo in the biggest assault of Syria’s five-year civil war, the Russian president clearly has emerged as a dominant force in the Middle East. ……..

…….. Over the last year, Putin has inserted Russia into the Syrian conflict and shored up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad as it was on the verge of collapse. The Russian leader has forged a quasi-military alliance with Iran that has allowed him to project power in the Persian Gulf – something that has evaded Moscow since the end of World War Two.

If that wasn’t enough, Putin’s relationship with Turkey, which seemed to be on a collision course after Ankara downed a Russian fighter jet last year, has now warmed to the point where Putin and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan are about to restore full diplomatic relations. All the while Putin has maintained a close and productive relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu.

…………. 

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the United States has aligned its interest in the Persian Gulf with Sunni monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. In turn, these countries have invested heavily in the United States – from buying U.S. debt, to investing in real estate and buying billions of dollars in American military hardware.

Arab states have also invested heavily in Washington, buying influence in the corridors of power, funding think tanks and hiring public relations firms to help spread a narrative about why their countries are essential to America’s interest in the Middle East. The relationship between Riyadh and Washington remains particularly strong even as the American public questions the logic behind an alliance with a country whose actions often run counter to Washington’s interests. 

These countries feel that Washington is obligated to share their view of the Middle East, which means backing them regardless of whether any conflict they engage in is against the interest of the United States. They have no such influence in Moscow. Even as Moscow backs Shi’ite powerhouse Iran and the Assad regime in Syria, Sunni Arab leaders continue to court Putin and look for ways to collaborate with him. Saudi Arabia, for example is currently trying to coordinate with Moscow on how best to stabilize oil markets and want Putin to pressure Iran to do the same.

Russia’s partnerships are based on cold, hard realism. Putin’s sole aim is to further Moscow’s interest. He’s unburdened by a legacy of alliances that do not serve Russia’s strategic aims. He supports Damascus, Tehran and the Shi’ite government of Iraq because he views Sunni extremism as a long-term threat that has destabilized countries in the Middle East, and which he fears could wreak havoc in countries close to Russia’s borders. Yet this coordination and collaboration with Shi’ite Iran doesn’t preclude him from working with Sunni Arab states to promote trade for Russian industry and its atomic energy program. 

Putin is doing all of this while remaining close to Netanyahu. Even though Putin is working with Syria and Iran – Israel’s mortal enemies – he has convinced Netanyahu that these alliances are not meant to threaten Israel’s existence, but rather serve a larger purpose of defeating Sunni extremism. Russia continues to cooperate with Israel in diverse fields such as energy, agriculture and arms. Russia and Israel also maintain close military contacts and Putin is careful not to transfer offensive weapons to Israel’s foes.

Juxtapose this with how Netanyahu treated Obama and interferes in U.S. domestic politics. In the run-up to the Iran deal, Netanyahu used the influence of AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobbying organizations to try and undermine a sitting president and scuttle his signature foreign policy achievement.

If Israel or another U.S. ally tried to interfere or challenge Putin in such a manner, it’s difficult to imagine that he would reward them with $38 billion in aid for ten years, as Obama has done with Israel, or continue to support them militarily with advanced weapons and intelligence – as Washington has done with Saudi Arabia. …….

……….

 

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The Obama legacy: Syrian chaos abroad and a failed Obamacare at home

October 2, 2016

History may remember Barack Hussein Obama mainly for being the first half-black President. The successes and failures of today which loom so large at the moment may not be of any great significance from the distance of another century or two. Just looking back over the last 8 years, the dominating story about the world would be the financial crisis which started in 2008 and which we have not yet recovered from. In that picture there is nothing that Obama has done which stands out. History will only record that Obama’s efforts to first stop and then recover from the crisis were not particularly noteworthy – neither catastrophic nor very successful. It will surely be recorded that this period was extremely violent in the middle east and saw heavy intervention by the US and Europe to try and effect regime change in a number of countries. History will also record that the interventions in Iraq, Syria and Libya, in particular, in support of rebel groups to the existing regimes caused the rise and explosive growth – and success – of the Islamic State terrorists. It will be recorded that the reluctance of the US to challenge Saudi Arabia allowed easy financing of Sunni terrorist groups. Syria and the Middle East will go down as a spectacular failure of US foreign policy under Barack Obama (aided and abetted by Hillary Clinton and John Kerry). Right now it is the visible face of inept US foreign policy. Depending on what happens in the next year or two, this failure may become something that history will recall and connect with Obama. Or it may just get lost in the continuing maelstrom of the middle east’s bloody and barbarous politics.

When Obama was elected there was an expectation that he would improve the lot of US blacks. That has not happened. If anything it has become somewhat worse. There was a huge expectation of job creation but that has dawdled along in the wake of the financial crisis. During his term the introduction of “health care for all” and the Affordable Care Act was hyped to an extraordinary degree. Obamacare was going to revolutionise health care and make it affordable and available to all. This was going to be his primary domestic legacy.

But it seems that Obamacare has already failed. It does not seem that it could be the kind of success that would be remembered by history. For now it seems to be the most important domestic failure of Obama’s term in office. Whether the failure will be big enough to be remembered by history remains to be seen – but probably not.

obama-7-years-on-image-time

obama-7-years-on-image-time

Chicago Tribune:

  1. Obamacare failed because it flunked Economics 101 and Human Nature 101. It straitjacketed insurers into providing overly expensive, soup-to-nuts policies. It wasn’t flexible enough so that people could buy as much coverage as they wanted and could afford — not what the government dictated. Many healthy people primarily want catastrophic coverage. Obamacare couldn’t lure them in, couldn’t persuade them to buy on the chance they’d get sick. 
  2. Obamacare failed because the penalties for going uncovered are too low when stacked against its skyrocketing premium costs. Next year, the penalty for staying uninsured is $695 per adult, or perhaps 2.5 percent of a family’s taxable household income. That’s far less than many Americans would pay for coverage. Financial incentive: Skip Obamacare.
  3. Obamacare failed because insurance is based on risk pools — that is, the lucky subsidize the unlucky. The unlucky who have big health problems (and big medical bills) reap much greater benefits than those who remain healthy and out of the doctors’ office. But Obamacare’s rules hamstring insurers. They can’t exclude people for pre-existing conditions, and can’t charge older customers more than three times as much as the young. Those are good goals, but they skew the market in ways Obamacare didn’t figure out how to offset. Result: Young and healthy consumers pay far more in premiums than their claims (probably) would justify in order to subsidize the unexpectedly large influx of older, sicker customers who require expensive care. Too many unlucky people, too few lucky people: That will collapse any insurance scheme. 
  4. Obamacare failed because it allowed Americans to sign up after they got sick and needed help paying all those medical bills. Insurance should be structured so that, although you don’t know if you’ll need it, you pay for it anyway, just in case; your alternative is financial doom. But if you can game the system and, for example, buy auto coverage after you crash into your garage, then you have no incentive to buy insurance beforehand. 
  5. Obamacare failed because it hasn’t tamed U.S. medical costs. Health care is about supply and demand: People who get coverage use it, especially if the law mandates free preventive care. Iron law of economics: Nothing is free; someone pays. To pretend otherwise was folly. Those forces combined to spike the costs of care, and thus insurance costs. 
  6. Obamacare failed because too many carriers simply can’t cover expenses, let alone turn a profit, in this rigidly controlled system. Take Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, the state’s dominant Obamacare insurer. Last year, for every dollar the carrier collected, it spent $1.32 buying care and providing services for customers, according to BCBS President Maurice Smith. No wonder BCBS is proposing rate increases from 23 percent to 45 percent for its individual plans.

So while the failures of Syria and Obamacare will be the immediately remembered heritage of Obama’s presidency, neither may be of great significance in historical terms.

And then all that remains is that Barack Hussein Obama was the first half-black president of the United States.

 

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Clinton eyes …

September 23, 2016

Clinton eyes,
Wobbling like jelly.
Clinton eyes,
Beginning to close and fail?
How can the hope that burned so brightly
Suddenly burn so pale?
Clinton eyes.

with apologies to rabbits

clinton-eyes-image-gateway-pundit

image gateway-pundit

The Hill:

In 2014 Conan O’Brien did a spoof of Hillary Clinton‘s interview with Diane Sawyer about her lack of lingering health issues following her 2012 concussion. In an obviously photoshopped version Clinton’s eyes are made to oscillate crazily.

It was a very funny piece. Now, it may not seem so funny.

Hillary Clinton exhibited abnormal eye movements during her recent speech in Philadelphia and they were not photoshopped.

Her eyes did not always move in the same direction at the same time. It appears that she has a problem with her left sixth cranial nerve. That nerve serves only one function and that is to make the lateral rectus muscle contract. That muscle turns the eye in the direction away from the midline. 

It comes out of the base of the brain and runs along the floor of the skull, immediately beneath the brain before coursing upward to the eye. Dysfunction of that muscle causes the striking picture of the eyes not aiming in the same direction and causes the patient to suffer double vision.

Like all things medical, there is a long list of potential causes but in my opinion the most likely one, based on Clinton’s known medical history is an intermittent lateral rectus palsy caused by damage to or pressure on her sixth cranial nerve.

It is known that she suffered a traumatic brain injury in late 2012 when she fell and struck her head. What is also known is that she was diagnosed with a transverse sinus thrombosis — blood clot in the major vein at the base of the brain. Almost all patients with a transverse sinus thrombosis suffer swelling of the brain and increased intracranial pressure. Most have headaches, balance issues and visual disturbances — all of which Clinton was reported to have following that event.

Clinton’s physician reported that she was placed on Coumadin (a blood thinner) to dissolve the blood clot. Actually, that is incorrect, because Coumadin has no effect on an existing clot. It serves only to decrease the chance of further clotting occurring Clinton’s physician has also reported that on follow up exam, the clot had resolved. That is surprising since the majority of such clots do not dissolve. The way it was documented that the clot had resolved has not been reported.

If, as is statistically likely, Clinton’s transverse sinus is still blocked, she would still have increased pressure and swelling and decreased blood flow to her brain. That swelling would place pressure on the exposed portion of the sixth cranial nerve at the base of her brain, explaining the apparent lateral rectus palsy. And such a deficit can be partial and/or intermittent. 

Additionally, when patients who have decreased intracranial blood flow becoming volume depleted (dehydrated) or have a drop in blood pressure loss of consciousness can occur. That could explain her witnessed collapse in New York City on 9/11.

One thing that is taught early in medical school is that a patient’s history, physical exam, signs and symptoms should usually lead to a single diagnosis. …….. 

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Trump accepts Obama’s birth was in the US, but the original birther theory was started by Clinton supporters in 2008

September 16, 2016

Someone in Trump’s campaign just said that he accepts that Obama was, in fact, born in the US. That seems to have got a lot of media attention, but it is conveniently forgotten that it was Clinton’s supporters who started the whole Obama “birther movement” in 2008.

Clinton supporters started the Obama “birther” movement

The level of ridiculous rhetoric is now going to rise in the US and it will be difficult for Clinton to match Trump. Yesterday he proclaimed (again) to the electorate that she had started the Obama “birther” movement. We can expect much more from Trump and Clinton’s staff may be hard put to keep up. In battles of exaggerated rhetoric, tempo is of critical importance. The person who makes the first claim always has an advantage. It is having the white pieces in a chess game.

But on the birther story, this certainly originated during the Clinton / Obama battle. There is still not much love lost between Clinton and Obama. The birther story was started, if not by Clinton, certainly by one or more of her supporters, and it was in 2008 during her primary battle with Obama. ….

  1. More than a full year before anyone would hear of Orly Taitz, the Birther strategy was first laid out in the Penn memo.

  2. The “othering” foundation was built subliminally by the Clinton campaign itself.

  3. Democrats and Clinton campaign surrogates did the dirtiest of the dirty work: openly spread the Birther lies.

  4. Staffers in Hillary’s actual campaign used email to spread the lies among other 0225_obamaturban_460x276Democrats (this was a Democrat primary after all — so that is the only well you needed to poison a month before a primary).

  5. The campaign released the turban photo. Hillary herself used 60 Minutes to further stoke these lies.

The article reblogged below was published by FactCheck in July 2015, just after Trump had announced his intention to run for President.

Was Hillary Clinton the Original ‘Birther’?

by , Posted on July 2, 2015

Two Republican presidential candidates claim the so-called “birther” movement originated with the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2008. While it’s true that some of her ardent supporters pushed the theory, there is no evidence that Clinton or her campaign had anything to do with it.

In an interview on June 29, Sen. Ted Cruz said “the whole birther thing was started by the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2008,” and earlier this year, Donald Trump claimed “Hillary Clinton wanted [Obama’s] birth certificate. Hillary is a birther.”

Neither Cruz nor Trump presented any evidence that Clinton or anyone on her campaign ever questioned Obama’s birthplace, demanded to see his birth certificate, or otherwise suggested that Obama was not a “natural born citizen” eligible to serve as president.

For those unfamiliar with the controversy over Obama’s birthplace, it refers to those who contend that Obama was born in Kenya and ineligible to be president.

At FactCheck.org, we have written about the issue of Obama’s birthplace on multiple occasions — indeed we were the first media organization to hold his birth certificate in our hot little hands and vouch for the authenticity of it. But facts have done little to squelch the conspiracy theories that continue to bounce around online.

The issue arose again this week in an interview with Cruz, who was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father. Yahoo News’ Katie Couric asked Cruz if he thought that was going to be an issue for voters.

“It’s interesting, the whole birther thing was started by the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2008 against Barack Obama,” Cruz said (at about the 25:25 mark). Cruz then went on to say that he believes he clearly meets the constitutional requirement for a president to be a “natural born citizen.”

The claim about Clinton’s tie to “birthers” was made earlier by Donald Trump in February at the CPAC event (at 24:20 mark). Trump — who has a history of pushing bogus theories about Obama’s birth —  said, “Hillary Clinton wanted [Obama’s] birth certificate. Hillary is a birther. She wanted … but she was unable to get it.”

We asked the Cruz campaign for backup, and it pointed us to two articles. The first ran in Politico on April 22, 2011, under the headline, “Birtherism: Where it all began.”

Politico, April 22, 2011: The answer lies in Democratic, not Republican politics, and in the bitter, exhausting spring of 2008. At the time, the Democratic presidential primary was slipping away from Hillary Clinton and some of her most passionate supporters grasped for something, anything that would deal a final reversal to Barack Obama.

According to the article, the theory that Obama was born in Kenya “first emerged in the spring of 2008, as Clinton supporters circulated an anonymous email questioning Obama’s citizenship.”

The second article, which ran several days after the Politico piece, was published by the Telegraph, a British paper, which stated: “An anonymous email circulated by supporters of Mrs Clinton, Mr Obama’s main rival for the party’s nomination, thrust a new allegation into the national spotlight — that he had not been born in Hawaii.”

Both of those stories comport with what we here atFactCheck.org wrote  two-and-a-half years earlier, on Nov. 8, 2008: “This claim was first advanced by diehard Hillary Clinton supporters as her campaign for the party’s nomination faded, and has enjoyed a revival among John McCain’s partisans as he fell substantially behind Obama in public opinion polls.”

Claims about Obama’s birthplace appeared in chain emails bouncing around the Web, and one of the first lawsuits over Obama’s birth certificate was filed by Philip Berg, a former deputy Pennsylvania attorney general and a self-described “moderate to liberal” who supported Clinton.

But none of those stories suggests any link between the Clinton campaign, let alone Clinton herself, and the advocacy of theories questioning Obama’s birth in Hawaii.

One of the authors of the Politico story, Byron Tau, now a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, told FactCheck.org via email that “we never found any links between the Clinton campaign and the rumors in 2008.”

The other coauthor of the Politico story, Ben Smith, now the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, said in a May 2013 interview on MSNBC that the conspiracy theories traced back to “some of [Hillary Clinton’s] passionate supporters,” during the final throes of Clinton’s 2008 campaign. But he said they did not come from “Clinton herself or her staff.”

Josh Schwerin, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said Cruz’s claim is false. “The Clinton campaign never suggested that President Obama was not born here,” Schwerin wrote to us in an email.

It is certainly interesting, and perhaps historically and politically relevant, that “birther” advocacy may have originated with supporters of Hillary Clinton — especially since many view it as an exclusively right-wing movement. But whether those theories were advocated by Clinton and/or her campaign or simply by Clinton “supporters” is an important distinction. Candidates are expected to be held accountable for the actions of their campaigns. Neither Cruz nor Trump, whose campaign did not respond to our request for backup material, provides any compelling evidence that either Clinton or her campaign had anything to do with starting the so-called birther movement.

— Robert Farley

 

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Why is Hillary Clinton’s height still a mystery?

September 15, 2016
clintons-vital-statistics-daily-mail

clintons vital statistics – daily mail

Why is Hillary Clinton’s height such a mystery? Is it 5’5″ or 5’7″? Why should it matter?

After her fainting fit on Sunday at the 9/11 commemoration, and the revelations about her pneumonia, she has now released some information about her various medical conditions.

But not her height and weight.

I observed this exactly a year ago:

Hillary Clinton is still growing.

Back in 2008, she was 5’5″ tall. But she has now reached 5’7″ according to most media and internet sources and, above all, Google. Her campaign has released some of her medical records but is silent about her height. Questions about her height are not answered. …….. So, 5’5″ should be nothing to be so ashamed of. Queen Victoria was only 5′ tall. Queen Elizabeth I was between 5’3″ and 5’5″. And Carly Fiorina with heels is at 5’6″.

No change in the secrecy about her height since a year ago.

Of course one reason could be that it makes it easier to get away with using a “body double” who is actually a different height. Just another conspiracy theory perhaps.

But anybody hearing her coughing fits and observing her behaviour last Sunday, will conclude that a cover-up about her health is continuing. They may well also conclude that the “health conspiracy theory” is turning out to be true.

The body-double theory is a little more far fetched – at least at first sight. Certainly the photographs taken at the 9/11 ceremony and those taken later in the afternoon show a recovery bordering on the incredible and provide much fuel for the “body double” conspiracy. The Clinton campaign’s secrecy around her height also supports the use – perhaps for quite some time – of a body-double. One wonders if the double goes so far as take some of the medical tests when required.

Related:

Now Hillary Clinton reaches for “average” as 5′ 5″ morphs to 5′ 7″

 

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No presidential candidate has died or withdrawn after nomination (yet)

September 12, 2016

That Donald Trump is the nominated Republican candidate has already made this presidential election quite unusual. That the supposed conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton’s health problems are turning out to be true (forgetfulness, coughing fits, fainting …) is also unusual.

What else is or could be unusual?

Hillary is almost 69 and Trump is 70, though Clinton seems more likely to succumb to illness. Though it has never happened before, no presidential candidate has died or withdrawn after being nominated. Between Trump and Clinton it seems this election is going to be won by the one with the lowest negative perceptions on the day. Either of them being perceived as having a serious illness before election day could be so negative as to hand the election to the opponent.

Either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump becoming incapacitated before

  • election day, or
  • after the election but before the electoral college votes, or
  • after being elected but before inauguration, or
  • in office

is not unthinkable. The first 3 scenarios have never happened.  However there have been a few cases which have come close.

  1. William Henry Harrison (February 9, 1773 – April 4, 1841) was the ninth President of the United States (1841). He was 68 years, 23 days old when inaugurated, the oldest president to take office until Ronald Reagan in 1981. Harrison died on his 32nd day in office of complications from pneumonia, serving the shortest tenure in United States presidential history.
  2. In the election of 1872, Horace Greeley was the Democratic nominee for President, but the Democrats lost the general election to the Republican ticket, headed by Ulysses Grant. After the popular vote, but before the Electoral College vote, Greeley died. Because the Democrats had no chance of winning the election, given the outcome of the popular vote and the number of electoral votes already secured by Grant, the party did not bother to stipulate to their electors who an official replacement candidate would be, and most of the Democratic electors in the states that the Democrats had won cast their votes for people other than whom their party had nominated.
  3. In 1912, James Sherman, the Republican candidate for Vice-President (and the incumbent Vice-President under William Howard Taft) died on October 30 of kidney disease, a few days before the general election on November 5. The Republican National Committee scheduled a meeting to be held after the general election, on November 12, to select a successor, and Sherman’s name remained on the ticket for the general election. The Republicans lost, however (the Democratic ticket of Woodrow Wilson and Thomas Marshall won), and decided on November 8 not to meet as they had planned.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties have appropriate Bylaws in place to cater for most eventualities:

Both the Republican and the Democratic parties have rules in their bylaws governing how to fill the vacancy. The Party Chair calls a meeting of the National Committee, and the Committee members at the meeting vote to fill the vacancy on the ticket. A candidate must receive a majority of the votes to win the party’s nod.

The same process would happen if the vacancy were to occur after the general election but before the Electoral College voting. If a vacancy should occur on the winning ticket, it would then be the party’s responsibility to fill it and provide a candidate for whom their electors could vote. ….

A vacancy could occur at the top of a winning ticket during the period after the electoral votes had been cast but before the President-elect had been sworn in. … No President-elect has in fact failed to be sworn in. Nevertheless, the rules for what would happen if a President-elect were to be unavailable to be sworn in actually became a part of our law with the adoption of the 20th Amendment in 1933. This amendment was passed primarily to shorten the length of time between the general election and the beginning of the new administration (inauguration day was moved from March to January). But it also specified that if, at the time of the inauguration, the President-elect has died, then the Vice-President-elect becomes President, and if a President has not yet been qualified by that time, then the Vice-President-elect acts as President until a President has been so qualified.

With either Clinton or Trump as President, the possibility that their term has to be completed by their Vice Presidents is quite high.

 

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By Clinton’s arithmetic slightly less than 33 million Americans are deplorable

September 11, 2016

She started the ruckus by saying that half of all Trump’s supporters were “a basket of deplorables”.

She later backed away from that but only to the extent of saying that the “half” was “wrong” but implied that many – without specifying how many – were still “deplorable”.

les-deplorables

image from theconservativetreehouse.com

The US population is now about 320 million and voter turnout in November will be about 42% of the total population. Of 135 million votes Trump will get – win or lose – about 67 million votes.

Even Hillary Clinton’s grasp of arithmetic should be capable of drawing the conclusion that she has just said that

  1. about 33 million Americans are deplorable, and with her non-apology
  2. something slightly less than 33 million Americans are “deplorable”.

Having used the word “half” she can no longer claim that she actually meant that anything much less than about 33 million Americans are “deplorable”. It could be 49% of 67 million or even 45% but it certainly could not be down to 40% (26 million). It will take some disingenuity for her to get past this.

 

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In Syria, the Obama non-strategy: US supported groups fight US supported groups

September 3, 2016

Eric Margolis has this post in The Unz Review and it only confirms for me that Obama’s lasting legacy will be of his “paralysis by analysis”. Obama’s actions are dominated by his fears. He has good intentions and then gets bogged down as soon as the risk analysis gets under way. His Iraq/ Syria/ Turkey/ Iran strategy – if it can be credited with the label of a “strategy” – has been one of avoiding risks as they appear. His actions are all short-term reactions to the appearance of new, perceived risks. His “red lines in the sand” have proven to be shifting lines. Obama’s misguided actions and his inactions allowed the ISIS expansion to flourish. The containing of ISIS expansion has only been made possible by the Russian intervention and the propping-up of Assad.

Obama’s predecessor, Bush Jr., distinguished himself by not thinking anything through. He rushed to conclusions and to actions without too much thought or analysis. In my definitions of behaviour he comes across, not necessarily as without courage, but as foolhardy. Obama, on the other hand, will be remembered, no doubt, for being intelligent and analytical but without courage.

As Margolis points out, the actions from diverse groups within the US have been chaotic and often opposed to one another.

U.S. vs. U.S. in Syria

 

pentagon-cia

What a mess! In the crazy Syrian war, US-backed and armed groups are fighting other US-backed rebel groups. How can this be?

It is so because the Obama White House had stirred up the war in Syria but then lost control of the process. When the US has a strong president, he can usually keep the military and intelligence agencies on a tight leash.

But the Obama administration has had a weak secretary of defense and a bunch of lady strategists who are the worst military commanders since Louis XV, who put his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, in charge of French military forces during the Seven Year’s War. The French were routed by the Prussians. France’s foe, Frederick the Great of Prussia, named one of his dogs, “la Pompadour.”

As a result, the two arms of offensive US strategic power, the Pentagon, and CIA, went separate ways in Syria. Growing competition between the US military and militarized CIA broke into the open in Syria.

Fed up with the astounding incompetence of the White House, the US military launched and supported its own rebel groups in Syria, while CIA did the same.

Fighting soon after erupted in Syria and Iraq between the US-backed groups. US Special Forces joined the fighting in Syria, Iraq and most lately, Libya.

The well-publicized atrocities, like mass murders and decapitations, greatly embarrassed Washington, making it harder to portray their jihadi wildmen as liberators. The only thing exceptional about US policy in Syria was its astounding incompetence.

Few can keep track of the 1,000 groups of jihadis that keep changing their names and shifting alliances. Throw in Turkomans, Yazidis, Armenians, Nestorians, Druze, Circassians, Alawis, Assyrians and Palestinians. Oh yes, and the Alevis.

Meanwhile, ISIS was inflicting mayhem in Syria and Iraq. But who really is ISIS? A few thousand twenty-something hooligans with little knowledge of Islam but a burning desire to dynamite the existing order and a sharp media sense. The leadership of these turbaned anarchists appears to have formed in US prison camps in Afghanistan.

The US, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey armed and financed ISIS as a weapon to unleash on Syria, which was an ally of Iran that refused to take orders from the Western powers. The west bears a heavy responsibility for the deaths of 450,000 Syrians, at least half the nation of 23 million becoming refugees, and destruction of this once lovely country.

At some point, ISIS shook off its western tutors and literally ran amok. But the US has not yet made a concerted attempt to crush ISIS because of its continuing usefulness in Syria and in the US, where ISIS has become the favorite whipping boy of politicians.

Next, come the Kurds, an ancient Indo-European stateless people spread across Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. They have been denied a national state by the western powers since WWI. Kurdish rebels in Iraq have been armed and financed by Israel since the 1970’s.

When America’s Arab jihadists proved militarily feeble, the US turned to the Kurds, who are renowned fighters, arming and financing the Kurdish Syrian YPG which is part of the well-known PKK rebel group that fights Turkey.

I covered the Turkish-Kurdish conflict in eastern Anatolia in the 1980’s in which some 40,000 died.

Turkey is now again battling a rising wave of Kurdish attacks that caused the Turks to probe into northern Syria to prevent a link-up of advancing Kurdish rebel forces.

So, Turkey, a key American ally, is now battling CIA-backed Kurdish groups in Syria. Eighty percent of Turks believe the recent failed coup in Turkey was mounted by the US – not the White House, but by the Pentagon which has always been joined at the hip to Turkey’s military.

This major Turkish-Kurdish crisis was perfectly predictable, but the obtuse junior warriors of the Obama administration failed to grasp this point.

Now the Russians have entered the fray in an effort to prevent their ally, Bashar Assad, from being overthrow by western powers. Also perfectly predictable. Russia claimed to be bombing ISIS but in fact, is targeting US-backed groups. Washington is outraged that the wicked Russians are doing in the Mideast what the US has done for decades.

The US and Russia now both claim to have killed a senior ISIS commander in an air strike. Their warplanes are dodging one another, creating a perfect scenario for a head-on clash at a time when neocons in the US are agitating for war with Russia.

Does anyone think poor, demolished Syria is worth the price? Hatred for the US is now seething in Turkey and across the Mideast. Hundreds of millions of US tax dollars have been wasted in this cruel, pointless war.

Time for the US to stop stirring this witch’s brew.

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Is President of Mexico scenting a Trump victory?

August 31, 2016

If the mainstream media are to be believed Donald Trump is already dead and buried. They have gone to unprecedented lengths to vilify and castigate him – and I suspect have gone so far in their vendetta as to now damage their own credibility.

Why then has the President of Mexico invited Trump for private talks?

Trump Mexico

They are going to be meeting today.

Washington Post: Donald Trump is considering jetting to Mexico City on Wednesday for a meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, just hours before he delivers a high-stakes speech in Arizona to clarify his views on immigration policy, according to people in the United States and Mexico familiar with the discussions.

It could be that President Peña Nieto is just playing safe and making sure that channels to a President Trump – however unlikely – are not completely closed. But, I don’t buy that. If Trump’s case is as hopeless as the media claim it to be, Nieto does not need all the negative publicity and certainly not from Hispanics within the US.

Or could it be that the media does not represent the reality among the US electorate and President Nieto is anticipating something that the US media are in denial about?

 

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A matter for the Gods, but what if God is female and Republican?

August 26, 2016

Donald Clinton or Hillary Trump?

I don’t suppose that either is (yet?) the “Chosen of God”. If God is female or a Republican or a Democrat the result is a foregone conclusion. If God is a female Republican then She has a dilemma. If God is a feminist She may abstain from this election.

Hillary Clinton wins if God is female (but not a Republican) If the one true God is Allah, Trump is immediately disqualified, but so is Hillary for being female. If the one true God is Jehovah, He could choose Trump. Donald Trump wins by default if God is a Republican Goddess. He also wins with a Vengeful God. A Compassionate or a Loving or a Caring God has little choice but to abstain. A God for the Meek would also have to abstain. A God of Power would favour Trump while a God of Intrigue would plump for Hillary. A Goddess of Wealth (a Laxmi) would need to decide whether Clinton’s gender was sufficient to offset Trump’s wealth advantage. (If the Clinton Foundation is taken into account, Laxmi would have to choose Clinton). A God of War might well choose Clinton as the most likely to prolong death and destruction in the Middle East. Brahma and Shiva might have reservations about Trump carrying their banners but a Durga could see Hillary Clinton as an acolyte.

If God is black then Clinton wins in the reflected shadow of Barack Obama. If God is a ruddy pink then Trump wins by a landslide. Freyja is the Goddess associated with love, sex, beauty, fertility, gold, war, and death. A Freyja supremacy would speak overwhelmingly for Clinton (with reservations for the sex component). A Crusading God would charge Trump with winning back Constantinople and Jerusalem. Zeus (Jupiter) and his ability to win games of chance would identify himself with Trump. Hera (Juno) might have some difficulty identifying with Hillary.

In the short term the winner will impact the wealth and misery and the deaths of many. For true believers the winner – whoever it is – must have been, and will be, the Chosen One. It is not possible for the winner not to be the Chosen One. It is equally unthinkable for God to have chosen wrong.

It could be that God does not much care who wins.

But in the long term, it does not really matter whether it is Donald Clinton or Hillary Trump who wins.

 

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